Robert Hunter's 10 Commandments of Rock and Roll

From "The New Book of Rock Lists"

http://www.amazon.com/New-Book-Rock-Lists/dp/0671787004





China Cat Sunflower
Lyrics by Robert Hunter

Look for a while at the china cat sunflower,
Proud walking jingle in the midnight sun.
Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono,
Like a crazy quilt stargown through a dream night wind.

Crazy cat peekin through a lace bandanna,
Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack.
A leaf of all colors plays a golden-string fiddle,
To a double-e waterfall over my back.

Comic book colors on a violin river cryin leonardo,
Words from out a silk trombone.
I rang a silent bell, beneath a shower of pearls,
In the eagle-winged palace of the queen chinee.

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Dancing In The Moonlight (but not drumming)

Listen to Dancing In The Moonlight at Napster!

One of my favorite pop songs was, and still is, Dancin' In The Moonlight by King Harvest. So imagine my surprise and delight when the new drummer, Manny, in my musician friend's band mentioned that he himself was a member of King Harvest! A bit later my friend warned me that Manny was prone to some serious BS-ing, but he always managed to BS about things that were hard to check up on (at the risk of dating myself, I should point out that this was before the Internet). Still, I wanted to believe. I wanted to have another "brush with greatness" in my collection.

Then one day I was flipping through some old used albums somewhere, and came across the one above. No Manny. It was BS and I had the goods on him. Like I said, I love the song so I bought the album and of course showed the cover to everyone. When confronted Manny explained that he wasn't there the day they took the photo.

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When the Going Gets Weird ...

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
- Hunter S. Thompson

Do you like weird music? Then you'll want to check out http://www.weirdomusic.com.

Welcome everyone. This is it: weirdomusic.com - your first step in exploring the wonderful world of strange, wacky, odd, and just plain bizarre music.

Exotica? Easy Listening? Outsider Music? Space Age Pop? Library Music? Incredibly Strange Music? Whatever it is that you're looking for, weirdomusic.com will try to point you in the right direction.

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Mrs. Miller

Some things have to be heard to be believed.

Listen to Mrs. Miller on Napster!



From wikipedia:

She was born in Joplin, Missouri and moved first to Jetmore, Kansas and then Dodge City, Kansas before settling in Claremont, California. She sporadically studied music at Pomona College. Later, she sang at churches around Claremont and, although she said that her singing was just "a hobby", she self-released a small number of records, mainly made up of classical, gospel and children's songs. It was while making one of these records that the arranger Fred Bock heard her. He convinced her to try some more modern songs, and took the resulting recordings around record labels.

Thanks to this, Mrs. Miller was signed to Capitol Records by their A&R man, Lex de Azevedo. Her first LP on that label, ironically titled Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits appeared in 1966 when she was 59 years old. It was made up entirely of pop songs, and sold more than 250,000 copies in its first three weeks. Will Success Spoil Mrs. Miller?! followed later the same year, and The Country Soul of Mrs. Miller a year later.

She appeared on the Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, Joey Bishop, Mike Douglas and Jack Paar shows, sang for the troops in Vietnam, performed at the Hollywood Bowl and appeared in Roddy McDowall's film The Cool Ones. However, as with other novelty acts who were popular in the 60s, interest in Mrs. Miller soon waned. She was dropped by Capitol, and in 1968 she released her final album, Mrs. Miller Does Her Thing on the small Amaret label. She later put out a couple of singles on her own Vibrato Records. By the mid-1970s, she had retired from singing.

Mrs. Miller's success, like that of Florence Foster Jenkins and Wing, was undoubtedly due to the perceived awfulness of her singing. It seems that Capitol were keen to emphasize this—in a 1967 interview with Life magazine, she said that during recording sessions she was conducted half a beat ahead or behind time, and the worst of several different recordings of a song would be included on the finished record. She claimed to be initially unaware that her technical inability was being ridiculed, but eventually realised what was going on. At first she resented this, but eventually decided to play along with the joke. Nonetheless, she later attributed her split with Capitol to her wanting to sing "straight" and record ballads, and Capitol wanting to continue with the "so bad it's good" angle.

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Bubble Gum Lit

Love You Save, The by The Jackson 5

The Love You Save, Performed by the Jackson Five and written by The Corporation, tells quite a story.

(Listen to The Love You Save by The Jackson 5 )

The young man thinks his girlfriend is a car wreck waiting to happen.
"Car wreck" in this case meaning her having sex with someone else.

He's desperate. He tries threats veiled as public service announcements:

"Stop, the love you save may be your own."

"Look both ways before you cross me."

He talks about what people will say behind her back (though clearly
it's his reputation he's worried about, not hers):

I'm the one who loves you
I'm the one you need
Those other guys will put you down
As soon as they succeed

They'll ruin your reputation
They'll label you a flirt
The way they talk about you
They'll turn your name to dirt

He tries to scare her into submission:

"Darling take it slow, or someday you'll be all alone."

"You're headed for a danger zone!"

He admits he should have known better. It seems that when they used
to play tag in grade school she always wanted to be "it" because she
loved chasing boys so much. Well, they're not playing tag anymore and
lo and behold the minx is still "doing the same old thing."

In order to add weight to his protestations he decides to put things
in staid perspective with a romantic dime-store romp through
historical promiscuity, bringing in the likes of Newton, Bell,
Franklin, and Columbus:

Isaac said he kissed you, beneath the apple tree
When Benji held your hand he felt, e-lec-tri-ci-ty
When Alexander caught you, he said he rang your chimes
Christopher discovered, you're way ahead of your time!

(And you thought Newton was just daydreaming when that apple plunked
his melon... Hey, Franklin, nice "Kite" story. Alexander Graham Bell,
the first "operator?" Just America Chris? Yes, dear, just America. Uh
huh.)

In a last ditch effort, giving up on direct communication, he tries to
subliminally keep her chaste by SPELLING!

S is for "Save it"
T is for "Take it slow"
O is for "Oh, no!"
P is for "Please, please, don't go!"

She might not understand from whence the notion, but with any luck
she'll get the urge to S-T-O-P what she's doing.

Worth a try.

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One Size Does Not Fit All

25 years ago Anne Beatts, a writer for Saturday Night Live, created the TV show "Square Pegs," a high-school sitcom centering on two girls who just didn't fit in, however much they wanted to hang with the popular crowd. One of those girls, the "smart one", was none other than Sarah Jessica Parker (below, at left), an actress now much more associated with the glamour of Sex and the City than gawky teenage-hood.


I really liked the show but apparently I was in the minority as it only ran for one season. No doubt it was too smart and knowing to be popular, itself a square peg in the vast wasteland of network television. Oh the irony.

Listen to the Square Pegs theme song at Napster

As good as the show was, the theme song was even better. Performed by The Waitresses, who were too cool for school themselves, I'm guessing it was the first TV theme by an experimental new-wave band. The Waitresses were best know for their quirky paean to grrrl power, I Know What Boys Like ("...boys like me", duh), performed in the video below.

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Nova Slum Goddess

The Lower East Side of New York was an epicenter of hippie culture in the sixties. The Fillmore East concert hall presented the likes of Greatful Dead, Santana, The Allman Brothers Band, Iron Butterfly, and Janis Joplin. Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable featured Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground as the resident house band. At the Astor Place Playhouse one could see The Fugs. Less known now, but a vital part of the scene at the time, The Fugs were beat poet folk rockers, featuring songs with "frank lyrics about sex, drugs, and politics" but usually with with a humorous satirical bent. (See the Fugs wikipedia page).

In celebrating the Fugs in 2007, the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, I offer the lyrics to Nova Slum Goddess on Greatest Hits by The Fugs.

Listen to Nova Slum Goddess at Napster

NOVA SLUM GODDESS
The Fugs

Sherry ran away, come to live in the slums
Her parents hired detectives, they were posing as bums
Taking acid in a crash pad again
Slum Goddess from the lower East Side
Slum Goddess won't you please be my bride
She organized a commune on Avenue A
She swears the revolution's just a pamphlet away
One Big Union with peacock feather dues
Dope sex revolution pretty paisley hues
Slum Goddess from the lower East Side
Slum Goddess won't you please be my bride
It was the summer of love, 1967
She said, come lie with me and we'll check into heaven
There were 16 mattresses, a candle-wax floor
And posters from the love-in on her day-glow door
All the poets want to be with her, Sherry
Dionysus wants to dance with her, Sherry
All the pacifists want to love her, Sherry
ooo Sherry Sherry Sherry
ooo Sherry Sherry Sherry
Slum Goddess from the lower East Side
Slum Goddess won't you please be my bride
She walks through the park, all the hippie hearts melt
Her skirt's not much wider than a farrison belt
She says history's no mystery
Blast the past
It's the hour of power for Blake's sunflower
Slum Goddess from the lower East Side
Slum Goddess won't you please be my bride
Slum Goddess from the lower East Side
I'm going to make her my bride

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fugs hippies lower east side 60's beats

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Things You Didn't Know

This is kind of a fun site: http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/inner.php
Lots of features, including one called "Things you didn't know", for all you fun-fact fans out there. (Find the it in the list of features on the left-hand side bar.)

Here's just one example:

"The most disparately aged duo to score a UK hit single is Andy Williams (b. 3rd Dec 1928) & actress Denise Van Outen (b. 14th Jan 1974). Separated by an age gap of 45 years, 1 month and 11 days; the biggest of any duo. They had the 2002 No.23 hit 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You'."

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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2007 Inductees

As reported by the New York Times, "Van Halen, The Ronettes, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, R.E.M.. and Patti Smith will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, in the 22nd annual round of honors, the organization announced this morning."

Unlike some years (I'm looking at you, Tom Petty), I have no problem with any of the inductees. In fact, I love the diversity of this list as it represents so beautifully: rock, pop, rap, alternative and punk. As artists can only be inducted after at least 25 years since inception, I think that says something about the late 70's, early 80's music scence. There was definitely a lot going on.

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My Favorite Sunday Songs

In honor of today being Sunday, here are my Top 5 Sunday songs:



1. Sunday Morning on The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground

2. Sunday Will Never Be The Same on Greatest Hits by Spanky & Our Gang

3. Pleasant Valley Sunday on The Essentials by The Monkees



4. Beautiful Sunday on Country Sunshine (2 CDs) by Daniel Boone

5. Met Him On A Sunday on 50's Goldies, Vol 1 by The Shirelles

On a related note, I quite like The Sundays.

Finally, for the record, these are my least favorite Sunday songs:

Sunday Morning on Songs About Jane by Maroon 5

Sunday Bloody Sunday on The Best Of 1980-1990 by U2

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overplayed favorites sunday

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