Back in 2011, when Spotify was new to these United States, I embarked upon a little "exercise in self-indulgence" and created a Spotify playlist of songs "that were parodied, stolen, alluded to, mentioned in passing in or somehow have a spiritual connection" with tunes on my 1981 smash hit album Picnic Time For Potatoheads.
Posting about that Spotify list on this very blog, I quipped, "If the album actually ever had been successful, here are some of the lawsuits I would have faced."
I thought about that list and the blog post tonight while reading a rant by my friend John Egenes posted on Facebook concerning a lawsuit over music copyrights.
I recalled my blog post, so I looked it up and re-read the thing. (And I fixed a four-year-old typo I hadn't noticed before.)
The entry about "My True Story" by The Jive Five said:
This song itself didn't directly inspire "The Green Weenie," but it's part of the great Doo-Wop Collective Consciousness that did. (I was disappointed that the Frank Zappa catalogue is not on Spotify. My first choice would have been a Ruben & The Jets tune in honor of the late Jimmy Carl Black, who played on "The Green Weenie.")
It occurred to me that in more recent times, I had seen Zappa on Spotify.
So what the hell, I updated it with my favorite Ruben song "Later That Night."
It's the last one on the playlist
I'm keeping the Jive Five tune on there just because it's such a great song.
And here is the song Ruben & The Jets inspired (drums by the late, great Jimmy Carl Black!)
Faith and begorrah and Erin go braugh, it's only five days until St. Patrick's Day!
So here is a look at one of my favorite Irish outlaw songs, the tale of a "brave young highwayman" named Willie Brennan.
Here is one version of the lyrics:
'Tis of a brave young highwayman this story we will tell, His name was Willie Brennan and in Ireland he did dwell. 'Twas on the Kilworth Mountains he commenced his wild career, And many a wealthy nobleman before him shook with fear. Refrain: And it's Brennan on the moor, Brennan on the moor, Bold, brave and undaunted was young Brennan on the moor. One day upon the highway, as Willie he went down, He met the mayor of Cashel, a mile outside of town. The mayor, he knew his features, and he said, "Young man," said he, "Your name is Willie Brennan, you must come along with me." (Refrain)
Now Brennan's wife had gone to town provisions for to buy, And when she saw her Willie she commenced to weep and cry. Said, "Hand to me that ten-penny," as soon as Willie spoke, She handed him a blunderbuss from underneath her cloak (Refrain)
Now with his loaded blunderbuss—the truth I will unfold— He made the mayor to tremble, and he robbed him of his gold. One hundred pounds was offered for his apprehension there, So he, with horse and saddle, to the mountains did repair, Did young Brennan on the moor, Brennan on the moor, Bold, brave and undaunted was young Brennan on the moor. (Refrain) Now Brennan being an outlaw upon the mountains high, With cavalry and infantry to take him they did try. He laughed at them with scorn until at last 'twas said By a false-hearted woman he was cruelly betrayed, (Refrain)
Although others, notably Burl Ives, had recorded it before, it's Tommy Makem & The Clancy Brothers' version from the early 1960s that introduced me to the song.
"This song was widely sung in the Victorian era ... William Brennan really did exist, and was one of the most famous Irish criminals of the period. It is not easy to get authoritative information about him , mainly because legend quickly obscured fact, and even his date of death is not known for sure; 1804 is most cited, but there are other references to 1809, and even 1812, and while most sources claim that he was taken by authorities and formally executed, there is also a tradition that he was killed by one of his potential victims in a highway robbery which went wrong."
The Penguin book notes that like most outlaw ballads, this song turns Willie Brennan into a Robin Hood-like character, "And many a wealthy nobleman before him shook with fear ..."
Basically it was the gangsta rap of its day.
In his cool website ... Just Another Song, folklorist Jürgen Kloss, in writing about "Brennan on the Moor" notes that 18th Century lawyer John Edward Walsh in 1747 claimed that the children's "integrity and sense of right and wrong was confounded, by proposing the actions of lawless felons as the objects of interest and imitation."
So, for the love of God, keep this vile song away from the children!
It should be noted that in some versions, Willie's own mother denounces him for his outlaw ways: "Oh, would to God that Willie had within his cradle died.'" (In some, it's his father who makes this declaration.)
And in some versions, "modern" ones Kloss says, the ghost of Willie still rides: "They see him with his blunderbuss, all in the midnight chill."
A young Bob Dylan dug The Clancys' take on "Brennan on the Moor.
In the liner notes of Dylan;s first Bootleg Series, John Bauldie wrote: "Dylan heard them sing the song in New York and loved it immediately. He told film director Derek Bailey in 1984: `I'd never heard those kind of songs before...all the legendary people they used to sing about - Brennan on the Moor or Roddy Macaulay...I would think of Brennan on the Moor the same way as I would think of Jesse James or something. You know, I wrote some of my own songs to some of the melodies that I heard them do...' "
And a website called Bob Dylan's Musical Roots quotes Liam Clancy: "I met the young Dylan on 4th St. in the Village one morning as I was rushing to rehearsal. 'Hey Liam, hey man. I wrote a song to the tune of `Brennan on the Moor' last night. Wanta hear it man?, only 15 verses man, wanna hear it'."
I'm very thankful that nobody was recording me that fateful night about 15 years ago when I basically cleared out an after-hours party at a downtown Albuquerque bar with my karaoke rendition of "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma."
So I have some sympathy for the poor folks who basically are the butts of the joke in all these videos.
That being said, I think these are hilarious.
Enjoy
When I first heard this song sung by Dolly Parton on a car radio in the 70s, I was so awestruck, I almost drove my car off the road. When I heard this, I wanted to drive my car at a high speed toward the singer.
I wouldn't want to hear much more of Amy, but she's got personality
This guy isn't as cute or funny as Amy, but that's o.k. He sings even worse.
I have to admit, I don't think I'd sing very well either if I was suspended over a tank full of frogs and water snakes. This apparently is some kind of weird game show in Thailand.
Sunday, March 8, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Webcasting! 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's the playlist below
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican March 6, 2015 In some alternative universe, some parallel world somewhere over some rainbow, the return of Sleater-Kinney in 2015 with an album as riveting as No Cities to Love is considered to be as big as the return of the Beatles was in 1975. (This is a separate reality, remember.)
Of course, it’s not quite like that here in the material world.
Truth is, most folks don’t value rock ’n’ roll as much as many of us used to. Perhaps Sleater really was the greatest band alive when it went on “hiatus” nearly a decade ago.
But outside of alt-rock or punk rock circles, it wasn’t and, sadly, still isn’t universally known. I’ve got a feeling that Carrie Brownstein is more famous for her co-starring role on the comedy series Portlandia than she is for her role with Sleater-Kinney.
So, for those not familiar with this important band, here’s the lowdown: This Pacific Northwest group is a trio with Brownstein and Corin Tucker on vocals and guitar and Janet Weiss on drums. Sleater-Kinney’s self-titled debut album was released in 1995, at the tail end of the Riot Grrrl scene, but S-K quickly transcended the generic girl-punk sound.
Vox recently described the group as a “left-leaning, feminism-preaching” band. Maybe that’s true, but the beauty of Sleater-Kinney is that it rarely, if ever, sounded like it was preaching. Any politics in the band’s songs were subtle and personal — no sloganeering or polemics. The group grew and actually intensified through the years, never losing its original frantic energy. It split up after its 2005 album, The Woods.
We rock ’n’ roll die-hards tend to view comebacks with jaundiced, jaded eyes, despite some good ones returning in recent years — Mission of Burma, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and the Afghan Whigs, for example, came back with strong records. No Cities to Love is also one of the good ones: It’s an unmitigated joy.
I consider Wild Flag, the 2011 album by the group with the same name, which includes two-thirds of Sleater — Brownstein and Weiss — (as well as singer/guitarist Mary Timony, who fronted the ’90s indie band Helium) to be a precursor of No Cities to Love. Shortly before then, Tucker made a solo record she described as “middle-aged-mom” music. (As I said back then, despite my senior citizenship, I’m still not ready for “middle-aged-mom” stuff.) But in 2012, she came back with a harder edge with Kill My Blues. With that and Wild Flag, I should have known that reviving Sleater-Kinney wasn’t an impossible dream.
No Cities opens with “Price Tag” — with what first appears as a lazy, almost bluesy groove. But seconds later, the drums kick in, the beat speeds up, and Tucker starts singing urgently: “The bell goes off/The buzzer coughs/The traffic starts to buzz,” and all of a sudden we’re in the middle of the rat race, punching a timecard at a crappy job, stocking shelves and worrying. Tucker sings as if she’s being crushed by the pressure — and the music is even more anxious than the lyrics.
Similarly, the stark, muscular “Gimme Love” is about someone who was born “too small, too weak, too weird” and who is “numb from the wicked this life imparts,” while “Surface Envy” employs images of drowning, though it’s a hopeful song. In the last verse, Tucker sings, “I’m breaking the surface, tasting the air/Reaching for things I never could before.”
But all is not so heavy on this album. In fact, “A New Wave,” sung by Brownstein, who also plays a distorted, rubber-toned guitar, reminds me of The B52s. (The official video for this tune features a cartoon version of the band playing for characters from Bob’s Burgers.)
In the final chorus of “Bury Our Friends,” Tucker and Brownstein sing, “We speak in circles, we dance in code/Untame and hungry, on fire in the cold/ Exhume our idols, bury our friends/We’re wild and weary but we won’t give in.”
Here’s hoping Sleater-Kinney stays wild and never gives in.
Also recommended: * Ballsierby The Grannies. America needs this music. The country needs musicians like these, who aren’t afraid to dress up like nightmarish parodies of old ladies and play crazy, aggressive, funny, profane, politically incorrect, and ridiculous music.
The Grannies don’t care if they make it on network TV or get invited to the White House — or anywhere else where there is polite company. They don’t care that they’ll never play the Super Bowl — though anyone who has survived one of their shows knows the Super Bowl would be much cooler if they did.
This album is punk rock — punk rock as the good Lord intended it to sound. It’s 11 snot-slingin’, beer-spittin’, breakneck, gut-bustin’ punk rock songs with titles like “Wade in Bloody Water,” “Outta My Skull,” and “Hillbilly With Knife Skills,” And there’s a crunching cover of the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right.”
Grannies in action, San Marcos, Texas. 2014
Then there are a couple of remixes of Grannies songs, my favorite being a total re-imagining of one of my Grannies faves, “The Corner of Fuck and You” A producer named Ben Addison used flutes, soft horns and an ultra-cheesy beat to turn the song into something that sounds like it's from some bad British swingin’ ‘60s romantic comedy
The album is produced by Seattle titan Jack Endino, who’s been behind the knobs on some of your finer grunge and punk records.
Blog Bonuses
First off, here's a live show broadcast on NPR a couple of weeks agoCLICK HERE
Here's that Bob;s Burgers video
Here are a couple of songs by The Grannies. First, an old one
