Dammed By The Radio

After a week in Michigan, I still feel like I'm still on Michigan time.  I get pretty tired during the 5 oclock hour.  Still have a stack of CDs that I need to sort through, to listen to.  Plenty of stuff to listen from the pawnshop, More Widespread Panic, Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy Rogers.   Half Priced Books had a Belle & Sebastian in the two dollar bins, ended up listening to Fivespeed, some emo screamo band that made a album for Virgin and it's your typical forgettible music of the Aughts. 

If we don't work next weekend, Los Lobos plays at the Iowa City Art Festival.  But I'm sure my work place will be busy enough on the weekends to miss this like we did miss Teddy Thompson last year.

Pain on the radio again, thanks to our CCC owned stations.  Clear Channel/Cumulus have the worst stations ever.  KZIA last night played the overbearing and annoying Hey Soul Sister by Train (Goddamn song has been out for almost two years and every GD station plays it, from top 40 to KDAT to Fart 100.3 to the damn alternative station.  I'm surprised country stations don't play it, Fuck you Pat Monahan, you have given the world this decade's version of Broken Wings.

Nathan, our co worker in Packaging was playing his MP3 collection and it was a big relief from Soul Sister.  He was some interesting taste that range from Gerry Mulligan/Chet Baker to Velvet Underground to a lot of the real alternative stuff of the 90s to which I think he was a big part of.  Pavement, Breeders, Kate Bush and a few missteps (Radiohead yuk yuk) but for the most part he impressed the hell out of me with his playlist. Made the night go by fairly fast till the Packaging boss came down and said no radios on the shipping line.  Which spared us the misery of KZIA and fucking Train or Pink.

A lotta complaining has been going on at our friends at Farce The Music about the state of country music and Luke Bryan Country Girl (Shake It For Me) single which raised the ire of him the faithful. But then again the state of country music hasn't been helped with the rise of the Average Joe's Record roster and the three Stooges songwriter Conglomerate known as the Peach Pickers to which I really have no clue who they are till it was pointed out that Dallas Davison was co writer of Country Girl Shake It All Night.  This is how far down the state of country is today.  Gene Simmons wrote better lyrics and Harlan Howard is turning over in his grave on this.  But with the state of Brantley Gilbert or Colt Ford, we may as well include The Georgia Satellites into country music since Country Girl is no different than Keep Your Hands To Yourself.  But with today's country songwriters branding backward baseball caps, tattoos and mohawk haircuts the country trads are just throwing their hands up in the air and moving over to Christian Music or the dreaded softrock to which Soul Sister is played every hour on the hour somewhere in the CCC controlled land.   Peach Pickers?  More like Peach Pits dude.

The music of my generation is fast becoming a memory as musicians and artists get old and die or commit suicide as in the case of CC Banana, the funny interviewer at Metal Sludge.  We are resigned to the fact that none of the major labels care about establishing the next Beatles or Bob Dylan, that takes too long to do so, it's hits now.  Get the Peach Pits to cowrite you a silly dilly and you might get it on radio more than you can on your very own songs.  Autotune the hell out of your voice so it fits in the fake shit on top forty.   Or whine and scream and you just might get on rock radio although it didn't help Fivespeed.  The problem with new music, nothing stands out and if it does it can only be heard on a blog or net radio station that 10 people know about.  The CCC owned radio station will not help you.  Hell, it didn't helped Train's new album which bombed but they'll play the hell out of Soul Sister that you want to bitch slap Pat Monahan.  No wonder Johnny Colt up and left and joined Lynyrd Skynyrd when he left, he took what's left of the rock and roll that was Train.

When we grew up back in the dark ages, we lived on the new 45 of the week and albums were a celebration of something new and exciting and we spend hours listening to the new Kiss or Rush and talk about how great it was.  Nowadays it's Red Solo Cup and Country Girl Shake It For Me and Boom Boom Speakers.  Growing up, radio broke in new music from the artists we brought records from, nowadays radio pukes up the same old same old and renames the radio station to make you think it's all new.   There's no classic albums anymore because the labels are interested in the single of the day.  Which will date the next week.  I don't think Garth Brooks would touch most of the Peach Pits' songs, not of mindless fun but most of their stuff is mindless period.   And to which they're making Bob Diperio or Rivers Rutherford the Harlen Howard/Bill Anderson songwriters of the decade. 

It's tough times in country music and top forty radio.  And it's not about to get any better.

There's not much in terms of new music to review.  Delta Moon's latest will get reviewed if I get a copy.  Mike Eldred Trio has a new Elvis Unplugged album coming out as well.  But for now we'll settle on.

The Knack-Having A Rave Up Live In Los Angeles 1978  (Zen/Omnivore)

Back in 1979 everybody had a copy of Get The Knack and basically it was a pretty good new wave album.  Problem was it got bigger than originally thought and critics nuked The Knack from every other album onward.  Yeah, I have all of the Capitol Knack albums, even Round Trip to which you have to read the liner notes about Jack Douglas' production techniques.  But this 1978 low fi live recording is where it all begins and was the reason why Capitol ended up signing The Knack soon after.

The Knack has always been a hard rocking live act although My Sharona on this recording is still being worked out on stage and Bruce Gary trying to figure out where to speed it up on the lead guitar extension. Doug Fieger even then had a stoic attitude on girls, lust and love before they hit it big.  There's a better version of Rave Up (B side to Can't Put A Price On Love) and My Sharona plods too much on this version but Good Girls Don't (with that line of when she's sitting on your face, priceless) and a intense End Of The Game (one of their better 2 minute metal workouts) shows that The Knack had plenty of potential to top the charts and a year after this live document they would have their number 1 hit with My Sharona, which was more realized and more rocking.  The Knack has been unfairly berated throughout rock history but since their albums are now out of print have been commanding inflated prices on Amazon.com maybe they weren't so bad after all.   This live recording is rough, taken from old cassettes from the late Doug Fieger's collection and Richard Bosworth does his best to at least make them sound decent but it's still low fi.  But it does give credo to the argument that The Knack rocked.  And the rest is history.

Grade B