LOOSE! Vol. 4 - Songs By Singers Who Go Down Easy!

 

LOOSE! Vol. 4

If you’re paying attention, the LOOSE! series features songs about humping, pumping, swallowing, gagging, and being too drunk for any of those things compliments of Dead Kennedys.

Other boys behaving badly that include: Mac Davis, David Allan Coe, Matt Lucas, Amos Wilburn, Al Perry, & Dan Stuart.  And the girls gone wild include: Amy Winehouse,  The Pandoras, The Ace Of Cups, & Angie & The Car Wrecks.

“Danger! Will Robinson!”  LOOSE! Vol. 4 also contains a track by Lost In Space star Billy Mumy’s Dr. Demento duo Barnes & Barnes.  David Lee Roth’s inspiration, Jim Dandy delivers Hot & Nasty with the help of his cronies in Black Oak Arkansas. The Stones can always be counted on to contribute something sleazy., and Poison shocks us all by doing the same.

The link is in the comments, so “when in Rome…”

Geraint Watkins - Recorded in Bop-A-Phonic

I have seen Geraint Watkins just once, when he was part of Dave Edmunds’ post Rockpile band, at the No Nukes Festival in Utrecht, 1982, excellent show.

Geraint did the vocals on Fine, Fine, Fine and played his accordion like a maniac, brilliant.

Besides that I had a copy of his 1979 Dominators album (with the much cooler Dutch cover!), which I played often, great collection of 50 Rock & Roll covers, as well as the Willie and The Poor Boys 1985 lp, which was basically a one-off fun project of Bill Wyman & Charlie Watts with some like minded musicians, incl. Andy Fairweather-Low, Mickey Gee, and Geraint himself.

Geraint played with lots of others, usually key boards and accordion, such as Nick Lowe, Van Morrison, Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Mark Knopfler, Rory Gallagher, Carl Perkins, Tom Jones, Roger Daltrey and John Martyn, but also in Sweden (The Refreshments) and even in the Netherlands (Normaal).

Like Albert Lee (whom we featured here on JOKONKY as well), Geraint could have easily had a separate compilation for all his sideman activities but I decided to focus on his vocal work instead.

This compilation includes his some of his earliest recordings as the Geraint Watkins Band, The Balham Alligators, a collaboration with Andy Fairweather-Low, his solo Stiff Records single, 2 tracks of Willie and The Poor Boys, a collaboration with The Refreshments, another one with Martin Belmont, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings (singing Johnny Be Goode following The Balham Alligators’ version!), a few solo tracks and 2 special live ones; Easy to Say 'Bon Temps Rouler' on Later with Jools Holland (with Nick Lowe) and a great version of Heart Of The City with his band The Mosquitoes!

Check Out My Medleys

 

It's been over a month since Koen introduced The Medleys as one of our many series of compilations.  After Koen's first two volumes, Stinky served up a tasty variety of medleys.  At the time, I could only think of a couple of songs.  But after marinating on the idea for awhile (and with some help from Koen and Richard), I have this.  I wanted to include an excerpt from The Third Reich And Roll (which is essentially an LP with a medley on each side), but settled for an outtake from The Residents' Commercial Album.  

There was a lively discussion in the comments about the "Stars On 45" phenomenon, and today we have a few punk and New Wave versions of the fad.  Captain Sensible concocted "Damned On 45", Squeeze did "Squabs On 45", The Circle Jerks did "Jerks On 45", and The New Bomb Turks did "Dogs On 45" for a split single with The Devil Dogs. 

Long before samplers and audio mixing software made mashups possible, we all had fun singing the lyrics from one song to the melody of another.  The Flaming Lips recorded two of these.  They put the words from PiL's "Rise" to the music of "One Toke Over The Line", and they combined "Seven Nation Army" with the lyrics from The Butthole Surfers' "Moving To Florida". Another "live mashup" (probably not the best term for it) was performed by The Tater Totz. They're not exactly medleys, but they're entertaining.

It's not all punk rock -- there's bluegrass and hip hop!  And a classic from Timperly's maestro of medleys, Frank Sidebottom!  Even if you don't like rap, you may appreciate Khruangbin's instrumental medley of funk and soul classics that became famous again as hip hop samples. 

A STINKY CHRISTMAS 2024

 A STINKY CHRISTMAS 2024:

CHRISTMAS really snuck up on me this year.  Luckily I started on this collection of Holiday songs LAST Christmas!  Thanks for stopping by to feast your ears on this tasty treat with songs by Ivan Julian, Wayne Toups, Patti Smith, Vampire Weekend, and Over The Rhine.

More traditional fare snuck in like Peggy Lee’s Don’t Forget To Feed The Reindeer, but is frankly is short supply.  I had to make room for Duke Tomatoe, The Grateful Dead, A.W. Wooley & The Swingin' Doors, & Oscar McLollie and His Honey Jumpers.

My beloved Cub Koda pops up with a story about HIS pop, and power pop-star Dwight Twilly acquits himself nicely with Christmas Night.  There’s something from Sia and Rainbow Kitten, as well.  

I think I speak for the other two reprobates when I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season—whichever holiday you celebrate.

Maybe you’ll be kind enough to share with us (in the comments) the most disappointing present you ever received?

Beat That #?!* Drum

My first encounter with Sandy Nelson’s instrumentals was probably through his "Let There Be Drums" which I got as a 45 rpm record from my uncle. Later I managed to get some more singles and albums but the quality was uneven at times, not that the playing was bad, but rather bland to be polite… However there were always a few instrumentals that stood out and consequently were played a lot!

Earlier this month Stinky shared one of his new compilations with Jonder and me, Sidemen In The Spotlight Vol. 1, which featured "Let There Be Drums”. I was a bit confused to see Sandy included as a ’sideman’ and asked Stinky for the reason, as I only knew him as a solo performer. Stinky gave me a few links to further my musical education and that was quite surprising to say the least. Besides being an active session drummer, I also learned about his playing in bands such as Kip Tyler & The Flips and later The Renegades.

After gaining respect as a session drummer, Nelson played on several hit singles including The Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is To Love Him" (1958), The Hollywood Argyles' "Alley Oop" (1960) and Kathy Young and the Innocents' "A Thousand Stars" (1960). He also played on Gene Vincent’s album Crazy Time as well as various lesser known artists/groups such as Johnny Crawford’s “Daydreams”, Joel Hill’s “Little Lover”, and others by The Vibrations, Little Caesar & The Romans, and Sonny Knight. 

Interestingly enough his musical heroes were Gene Krupa and Earl Palmer, Sandy never considered himself a ‘real’ rock ’n’ roll pounder, but more a kind of swing drummer!
The enormous amount of albums recorded were pushed by his record bosses, something he didn’t like much as he had to record covers of hits of the day which he didn’t really want to do. Taking lots of painkillers because of the pain in his leg, serious drinking, and having almost no creative input made it only worse. Between 1965 and 1975 Nelson added a further 21 albums to his catalogue…
Luckily in 1976 he stopped drinking and got his life (sort of) back on track again, but the huge number of recordings was definitely finished.
He died in Las Vegas on February 14, 2022, at the age of 83 from complications of a stroke he had in 2017.

I guess we’re all familiar here with the expression ‘All Killer, No Filler’  but with Sandy it unfortunately looks more like ‘Shitloads Of Filler, Some Killer’!
There are a huge number of compilations of Sandy’s work on the market, but most of these contain plenty of filler, although the ACE compilations (Big Sixties Frat Party!!!, Rock ’N’ Roll Drum Beat) are pretty good with great liner notes as well!
Even so, there’s no overview which includes his early session work, singles, some deep album cuts, and later tracks, which seemed like a good reason for another JOKONKY compilation!

LOOSE! Vol. 3 - Another Stinky's Homemade Record!

LOOSE! Volume 3!  

To be honest, nobody asked for more, but everyone around here has come to expect me to beat a good idea into the ground!  And, to quote Ben Grimm: “It’s clobberin’ time!”  As I post Vol. 3 there are  two more right behind it.

To recap: LOOSE! got it’s start in the days of CASSETTE compilations.  My nephew was in THE KISS ARMY, and I felt it was their salacious subject matter that he liked as much as the music.  So like any good uncle, in hopes of widening his horizons--I sent him a series of cassettes entitled: ONE TRACK TAPES.  These songs are about what the singer wants done, and who the singer wants to do it!  These songs are full of LOOSE: loose morals, loose women, loose men, & loose lips (which sink ships).

LOOSE! Volume 3 has tracks by some bands that should come as no surprise: Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lee Lewis, & The Knack.  And, some that you might not expect: Big Star, The Everly Brothers, & Lenny & The Squigtones.  Some of the artists are obscure in general like L.A.’s The Groovy Rednecks, Holly Penfield, & Jeanette Katt who went on form The Chubbies.  Lucinda Williams is here, and so is her longtime guitarist/producer-gone-solo Gurf Morlix singing about Your Sister.  "Hey!  Them’s fightin’ words!"

But the stars of this outing are the pop artists.  Jefferson Starships' Mickey Thomas joins Elvin Bishop in slagging Miss Slick Titty Boom (one of my favorite B-Sides).  Songbird Sam Phillips sings All Night, Bree Sharp is Not Your Girl, and Toni Tennille wants to know how The Captain learned to “do it like that”.  

As it turns out, Dutch superstar Herman Brood is all about Doin’ It, as well.

Don’t be uptight—get LOOSE! (in the comments!)

 

PRINCE JAZZED UP

When Prince started entering the Dutch hit parade (and appeared on TV of course) I have to admit that I couldn’t care less as his type of music didn’t appeal to me at all at the time…

Although I do recall when the whole family saw him performing ‘Kiss’ on television, we were all flabbergasted, that sounded completely different from anyone else at the time!

Years later in Thailand I heard his ’Sign O’ The Times’ which hit all the right spots, amazing song, both musically and lyrically.

Even so, I never really got into Prince despite some admittedly fantastic songs…

Time for a jazzy detour!

Bob Belden had quite a track record at Blue Note Records, as saxophonist, bandleader, composer, producer and arranger and I started paying more attention to him when he came up with a remarkable interpretation of Sting/The Police’s songs entitled: Straight To My Heart: The Bob Belden Ensemble Performs The Music Of Sting (1991).

According to Belden: “With Sting’s music I wanted to learn about lyrical form.”

This was followed by When Doves Cry: The Music Of Prince in 1994 of which Belden said the following: “With Prince I could explore the complete vocabulary of pop music.”

Much later I found out that actually he had released another Prince album that same year, but only in Japan as Bob Belden's Manhattan Rhythm Club - Princejazz (a collector’s item!)…

That last album has only instrumental interpretations and is more jazzy compared to When Doves Cry which features several vocal tracks.

Prince himself was at times also interested in doing Jazz style work, he even created a new band for that specific purpose: Madhouse.

Madhouse at its heart was just two people: Prince and Eric Leeds, with Eric playing saxophone/flute and Prince virtually everything else.

Miles Davis was intrigued, he even covered a Madhouse track (Penetration) in concert.

A collaboration with Prince didn’t really work out that well but the resulting Can I Play With U finally got released many years later on the expanded edition of Sign O' The Times.

Eric Leeds released a solo album in 1991, Times Squared, on which Prince played along as well…

Once the Madhouse project was finished Prince did release an all instrumental album called Xpectation in 2001.

Over the years Prince’s songs have been covered by loads of artists in various styles, from funk to jazz to reggae and beyond.

For your listening pleasure here are 2 CD length albums of Prince’s songs showcasing a more Jazz side of his work, artists include a.m.o. Bob Belden's Manhattan Rhythm Club, Nina Simone, Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and of course The Artist Formerly Known As himself!