Don't know why but am enjoying this. Distinctly remember walking somewhere in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2004 or so listening to this blasting on my headphones. Sort of a motley combination of Led Zeppelin's version of "Travelin' Riverside Blues" and the Stooges "Down on the Street" or something.
Music like this seems particularly cringe these days. And honestly, I never listen to this kind of shit at all. But sometimes, just sometimes, you want to hear the knockoff, the pastiche, rather than the original. There must be a German word for when you prefer the imitation of the imitation to the original. Also, let no one say that Jack White cannot play guitar. One a good day, he's probably as good as Jack Black. He may not be as good as Meg White is a drummer but he's can hold his own.
This song was a deep cut from the album Make the World Go Away from Donny and Marie Osmond, released some time in 1975 and written by Donny and his older brother Merrill Osmond, who was the lead vocalist (and bassist!) for the Osmonds. The song itself is an example of classic '70s pop craft, somewhere between Burt Bacharach and the theme from M.A.S.H. There's very little about the album that I can find online, especially who played what. The guitar is quite expertly played and suggests some slick session player, perhaps on his off-day from a Steely Dan session for Katy Lied.
For a very brief period in 1975, my older sister was a fan of the Osmonds, and by osmosis, I absorbed some of their music, including this track.
Interesting story about the producer of this track (and the album as a whole), one Mike Curb who (gulp) later on served as the Republican Party's Lieutenant Governor of the state of California in the early '80s. I guess he would be known as more of a Democrat these days, given how rightward the Republican Party has moved in the past three or four decades, given his early advocacy for gay rights, but in many other respects he was definitely a kind of fiscal conservative.
Curb scored music for A LOT of movies in the sixties and also was a lucrative songwriter of some repute too. More important, he started his own label which merged with MGM Records and Verve Records, and he, Mr. Mike Curb, became President of the new company in 1969. Yes, the company that released records by the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa.
In the 1970s, his subsidiary label (Curb Records, obviously) put out music by Eric Burdon, War, Ritchie Havens, Gloria Gaynor, etc. Apparently, Curb records is still a thing now (in 2024!), and Mike Curb still heads it at the age of 79. Good for him.
Other facts about Mike Curb:
- he headed the country and western subsidiary of Motown Records (yes, Motown Records) in the 1970s
- Curb organized the Inaugural Youth Concert to start the second term of Richard Nixon (!) in January 1973. Among the artists who played for Nixon were Jimmy Osmond (kid brother to Donny who sings here), Ray Stevens, and a bunch of other people I've never heard of. I wonder how they felt when in the subsequent months, the Watergate scandal broke.
- Curb, as President of MGM, fired 18 artists from their roster for their supposed promotion of "hard drugs" in their songs. Well, "Heroin" by VU will do that.
Anyway, so Donny & Mary Osmond -- yeah, the vapid duo at the center of probably the worst music made in the seventies, recorded this here song. I like it. What can I say. It captures so perfectly the ennui of mid-70s TV movie's middle interlude when the two lovers have split up and their independent lives are soundtracked by the mourning sound of Donny and Marie.
Lovely new song from the new Crowded House album. A bit of a surprise because I honestly have not paid attention to Crowded House in 30 years. A beautiful bit of jangle pop, circa the Sundays who might have driven past Real Estate. But you know, he's an old dude (like me), so it hits harder.
On May 22, 1975, I was definitely glued to TV. It was a Thursday night and Top of the Pops was on British TV. I was an impressionable nine-year old, but every single (well, almost every single) act on the show was something that made a deep impression on me. Slade's not-so-well-known but utterly brilliant four-on-the-floor rock "Thanks for the Memory" was followed by "Send in the Clowns," a late period classic from Judy Collins that I am sure perplexed me with its inscrutable lyrics. Then there was Desmond Decker's proto-reggae classic "Israelites" which, originally recorded and released in 1968, was a "re-release," a notion that was just as applicable to the final song on the show that night, Tammy Wynette's beautiful "Stand By Your Man," also originally from 1968, but a hit in 1975 again.
But let's face it, the star of the show was "Sing Baby Sing" by the Stylistics, the Philly soul troupe that went from strength to strength in the seventies with a slew of beautifully crafted falsetto gems. Their zenith in my mind was "Sing Baby Sing" which infused a touch of grandeur to their soul, the cadence of the chorus lifting it to the level of angels harmonizing in some heavenly stage. That feeling always stayed with me.
This song, "There Will Be No Morning Copy" by the long ago band Clann Zú, an Australian-Irish band is one of the few that takes a direct and honest look at Palestinian liberation. The band existed only for a short time, from 1999 to 2005 but were incendiary in the right ways, speaking truth to power. Their second and last album, Black Coats & Bandages (2004) was a broadside against imperialism, war, and organized religion. Turn this up real loud:
Your borders are bloody mirages that expand and contract
at the will of the blade drawn across the back of a people in shadow.
We are on the ropes.
Tasting the blood in our mouths, mixing with what little hope we have left as it slides down our throats constricted by hands of avarice, soft media, oxymorons and military might.
How long must we live in the shadow of your wall that divides our lives, our loves and our hopes?
How long must we live in the daily fear of returning home to find it gone?
We are refugees in our own land, waiting in hope for the day when we can walk our own streets.
Just because you have the biggest gun doesn't mean your war is won.
Just because you take our homes doesn't mean our hope is gone.
Just because you claim your cause as just doesn't mean that you're still not wrong.
Just because you build a wall doesn't mean it will last that long.
A bullet flies through the head of another ten-year-old boy who held a rock in his hand against a thirty-ton tank in his people's land.
One last song for the birthday -- "Junk" originally released on McCartney (1970). My mother's older brother, who we called Boro Mamu, lived downstairs to us in our flat in Lalmatia in Dhaka in the late '70s and early '80s. He owned a copy of McCartney but for some reason, side one of the album was totally damaged and unlistenable so when I borrowed the album, I could only listen to side two, which included an instrumental version of the track which was called "Singalong Junk." For like decades I had no idea that there was a version of the track with actual words called "Junk," because it was on side one which I never heard until like the '90s or something.
Anyway, here is the instrumental version:
Here is the version with words, just called "Junk":
And here is the version from the Beatle days (1968) when McCartney demoed the track for possible inclusion on The White Album:
It is my birthday today so I thought I would post a song or two. Recently, I've bought a lot of vinyl, just kind of splurged. Today I got (in the mail) the new vinyl remaster of Television's Marquee Moon. Now, normally, I don't really care for remastering old albums -- these are mostly just scams, but word on the street was that this was a significant upgrade of the musty old warhorse. So I just succumbed and bought it from Rhino. It was super pricey. But I will tell you that it was well worth it. Yes, what more could you possibly wring out of this record? And how many more times can you hear it to discern some deeper truth about life? Anyway, it's a fucking monumental piece of sound that never gets old.
I will, however, not post a song from Marquee Moon -- just go listen to it yourself. But I will post a live version of the opening track from their highly-underrated and completely forgotten self-titled album from 1992, a song called "1880 or so." Both Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd produce serrated, distended, and orchestral solos, which they drop from like warp-speed torpedoes that zone out and into the cosmic ether. Close your eyes and prepare yourself:
Happy Birthday to me:
And in the spirit of the crime of time, here are the Rolling Stones with the classic (and also forgotten) "Time Waits for No One" from the album It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (1974) in which Mick Taylor crafts a beautiful solo, the aural equivalent of unraveling a beautiful tapestry, string by string as it falls apart in front of you. I have a memory of this from the fall of 1984, perhaps lying in my bed, dreaming of better things.
