Time for a Monday classic from the cave. This is like a Punk/Country/Pop song from the great L.A. band “X” . Hardcore fans might say they sold out to get on the charts. I don’t know or care what the thinking was on this because it is well crafted and quality music that lasts a lifetime, it has that feel of all the X songs…you know…”We’re desperate, get used to it” … Happy Monday everyone!
music
ZZ Top and John Lee Hooker-Cheap Sunglasses- The Origins of Rock Part 1
I have started working on a timeline of Rock music and I am being careful; something I post on WordPress might not get corrected immediately. It could stand there for a long time as a monument to my ineptitude-so we go one step at a time.
There is an argument about the first rock song ever created-Is it “Rock around the Clock” by Bill Haley or one of the many other better sounding songs around that era? John Lee Hooker gets thrown in this mix with his 1948 “Boogie Chillun”.
While my brain is churning these things- I hear “Cheap Sunglasses” on the radio and all I can think is “Damn- that is John Lee Hooker- from the growling “tiger in a cage” vocal to the surly guitar riff.” But then -that is not John Lee Hooker-that is three guys from Texas putting a strong amount of boogie flavor into a song about wearing plastic sunglasses while stalking cute chicks and trying to look cool with epic beards.
They take a musical style and bend it to their own view point- adding in the tight sweaters and cheap sunglasses while removing years and years of the frustration that created the riff to begin with.
I don’t want to start another lawsuit but this goes right to the roots of rock. That difference between inspiration and downright theft. When white musicians started borrowing blues and gospel for the first time -Rock started to gain form. Almost nobody disputes that.
John Lee Hooker playing John Lee Hooker is pure blues. ZZ Top playing John Lee Hooker is Rock Music. Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup doing “That’s alright Mama” is delta R&B while Elvis Presley covering the same song is Rock n Roll. It’s like the same river flowing through a different landscape. I am not saying that the originals are bad…I love all of it!!!…Even those famed Robert Johnson records from the 1930’s, but when Eric Clapton takes those records and channels them through his own experience and talent-they become something else…they have to …different time-different culture-different world.
Joni Mitchell – “River” Not a fan, but I’m not done yet so who knows.
I heard the Sarah McLachlan version of this song a couple days ago and it hit me as a well written Christmas ballad. I’ve heard it before but it kind of went over or under my head and never really stuck. Reason #387 that music is cool –You can listen to stuff, even good stuff and it might take a while for you to really hear it and have it hit you. I don’t know why that is…just like I don’t know why time and mood and all the other elements that make you you seem to have a connection to what you hear and what you don’t. You can hear stuff as just ambient background fuzz or it can dance with your soul. Same music – just you in a different place.
Instead of the Canadian Mclaclan doing her excellent version of fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell’s song…I kicked around a bit to find a Scottish dude doing a version…Hey…this piece of music is very wimpy for the cave so I needed Scotland to give it a little nip of whiskey, salmon fishing and a cold north wind…you know, rustic masculine stuff.
So here we go with a Travis version of this song that starts with a good story. Good stories make everything better.
Merry Christmas from the Cave!
Chrissie Hynde covers Radiohead “Creep”
Chrissie Hynde is Rock n Roll. The first Pretenders record is a great record- If you only heard Brass in Pocket, you only know the weakest track on it. I am in love with this woman…she just sets stuff up and kicks it down. And I don’t mean that creepy, stalker kind of weird love even though I am picking a music track that is about that creepy stalker weird kind of love. I mean that 14 year old girl to Justin Bieber kind of love. That AAAHHHHH! OMG!, there is Justin….I can’t believe it….here is a sharpie Justin…please sign something while I text all my BFFs…Ahhhhhhhh! Kind of love.
O.K I admit to being a bit star struck and here she is doing that beautifully dark lullaby to isolation and unrequited-ness…I don’t think there is a better song about it.
Top 4 Worst Rock songs about Rock…too painful to add a 5th one!~
1.Kiss – Rock n roll all night- it’s warm with an instant flavor packet of melodic stadiumness. It is the Ramen noodles of a rock song….no substance, but it will take the hunger away and fool you into temporarily thinking you had something, you had nothing.
2. Bob Seger -Old time rock and Roll -“just take them old records off the shelf, I’ll sit and listen to them by myself’…why don’t you do that Bob- Horrible song which may have faded away had it not been for Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear in “Risky Business” .
3. Billy Joel -Still Rock n Roll to me– This song actually made it to number 1 for two weeks in 1980- What dark days these were…Bette Midler released “The Rose” which is better than this(Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of Bette, but if I happen to end up in a Mexican prison and they give me a choice of these two songs to listen to, not knowing what implications making this choice will lead to, I will take “The Rose” and hope for some “wind beneath my wings” to get the hell outa there!) Also in 1980 Michael Jackson was the still untarnished “king of pop/good angel” with “Rock with You” at the top of the charts (he had yet to hang babies out the window, marry Lisa Marie Presley for a couple weeks and sleep with 10 year olds) I am not judging here…I am just saying… he had some quirky habits.
4.Jefferson Starship– We built this city (on Rock and Roll) -Bernie Taupin was in on writing this??? Is this the same Bernie that wrote the great songs with Elton John? How do you go from “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” to this?- And Grace Slick was part of this mess? “one pill makes you change the name from airplane to starship and sing on one of the most insipid tracks of all time”. (that is a reference to Jefferson Starships’ “White Rabbit” for those that may not know-a great rock song)…What happened here? San Francisco must be some kind of city for people to produce this crap in an effort to keep paying the rent so they can stay there…that is the only reason that makes any sense.
Cave of Fame 