Sam’s Place

Long Shot Liner Notes

1. “Long Shot Kick de Bucket” – The Pioneers

I had basically not listened to music for years when I saw a Trojan Records CD box set sitting on top of the check-out machine at the main SF library. Since it was sitting there & no-one seemed to want it, I saved a librarian the effort of filing it & checked it out myself. The music — late-’60s Jamaican dance music — was so exciting to me that I eventually checked out all of the library’s Trojan CDs & other Jamaican music besides. This was my favorite song on that collection, I think. It’s just crazy — a groove that goes on & on w/ only slight alteration but also a catchy verse & chorus, & harmony vocals (little Bea sings along w/ “kicky bucket”; if a toddler likes it you know it’s catchy). I later read the story of the recording in Solid Foundation: An Oral History Of Reggae (recommended).

The Pioneers had had a hit called “Long Shot,” about a racehorse (the sport is huge in Jamaica). Then, one day, The Pioneers and a bunch of session men (in Jamaica the producers were the stars & the musicians were all session men) were loafing around the studio. In rushes the producer (Leslie Kong, I think) who tells them that Long Shot has just lost a big race or died or something (I’m not going to look up any “facts” in these liner notes. Reader beware) & tasks them to write & record a song about the event before leaving the studio. Which they do. Like a news flash. The song becomes a big hit, & it is much better than the song it was following up (I’ve heard it but can’t remember it). The song is later re-recorded (or semi-re-recorded; producers would sometimes have musicians play over their old tracks — bass, drums, everything) with a dj talking over parts of it. (I’ll include that version at the end my bonus dub mix made for next week’s get-together.) Not nearly as good.

“Long Shot Kick de Bucket” was a hit in Britain in 1969, & The Pioneers eventually moved there. I think some version of the group is currently on tour in the UK. Here are the lyrics, according to someone on the Internet:

“What a weepin’ and wailin’ dung a Caymanas park [a racetrack near Kingston]
Long Shot – him kick de bucket
Get up, get up in the first race
and them pull up the pace
and Long Shot – him kick de bucket
Long Shot kick de bucket
Them wail, them wail, them reel
but they couldn’t take the trail
and Long Shot – him kick de bucket
Long Shot kick de bucket
It was Starbright, Combat, Corazon, Long Shot on the rear
Combat fell, Long Shot fell all we money gone a hell
all we money gone a hell
and Long Shot – him kick de bucket
Long Shot kick de bucket”

You gotta love how they start a song about a racehorse with a Biblical reference!

Earlier in their career, The Pioneers mainly recorded with Joe Gibbs (see song #11, below), & the band included Desmond Dekker’s half brother (see song #4).

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2. “If I Had a Hammer” – Ace Cannon

I first remember hearing Ace Cannon’s music only recently — on Pandora (the best music-discovery media since the invention of radio; its very existence is threatened by the decaying music industry & government bureaucrats). He was in Bill Black’s Combo, Memphis, Tennessee, Sun Records, along w/ Elvis, Carl Perkins, etc. I just looked up his website & read that he’s been very popular in the Caribbean since the late-’50s (toured Barbados in ‘59) — so there you go.

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3. “A Groovy Kind of Love” – Boris Gardiner

I had wanted to use Gardiner’s instrumental cover of the Association’s “Never My Love” but it wasn’t available on itunes (even though it is on Pandora — where’s that “long tail” when you need it?), so I went with this. Sometimes I love it; other times not so much. What do you think? This is circa 1970, I think. Previously Gardiner was bassist in The Upsetters (see track #12). As an example of the weird ownership issues in Jamaican music: Gardiner’s 1st album was originally released under the name of his producer.

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4. “Israelites” – Desmond Dekker

They used to play this song on Boston rock radio when I was kid in the late-’70s. I didn’t know what to make of it; it didn’t sound like anything else, & I don’t remember anyone mentioning that it was Jamaican. What a great song! Kinda obvious for this compilation, but what the heck! Lotsa loud electric rhythm guitar; catchy, catchy, catchy; great intro w/ surprise jump to falsetto…

This song was an international hit in 1968. The 1st Jamaican recording to chart in the US, & the 1st UK #1. Dekker, like The Pioneers, recorded with Leslie Kong, & then, like them, moved to the UK, where he died a couple of years ago.

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5. “Ap Special” – Augustus Pablo

Why? Because it doesn’t include the melodica! (And cuz it’s good.)

Horace Swaby took the name Augustus Pablo from producer Herman Chin-Loy (Leslie Kong’s cousin), who had used the name on keyboard LPs he’d produced. Most of the latter Pablo’s albums were melodica jams over dubbed out versions of old Studio One classics. Studio One was the label home of Perry, Sugar Minott (see track #16), Bob Marley (track #19), etc.

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6. “Rudy, A Message to You” – Dandy Livingstone

Rico Rodriguez (MBE) played trombone on this & also on The Specials’ version (see track #18). This version (released 1967) must have been recorded live, or nearly live. Hear that great horn riff? Listen during the sax solo & notice that the sax drops out of the riff, & the same for the trombone during the trombone solo. And what are those drums? Certainly not any kind of conventional kit. Sounds a little like a punching bag.

Livingstone moved from Jamaica to the UK when he was 15, circa 1958, then moved back to Jamaica in the ’70s, then back to the UK.

Rodriguez moved from Jamaica to the UK in the early-’60s.

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7. “Dreams to Remember” – The Hippy Boys

Aka Lloyd Charmers & the Hippy Boys. “Charmers” was a keyboardist & producer who used a number of aliases, & was known for producing songs with naughty lyrics. The Hippy Boys recorded with Max Romeo, whose song “Wet Dream” was a “rude boy” anthem. I think this “Dreams to Remember” is an instrumental version of “Wet Dream.”

I sometimes think this song totally rocks & sometimes think it’s too calliope-like. (What do you think?) The band released an album called “Psychedelic Reggae” circa 1970, which (isn’t really psychedelic,) features acoustic piano, & is mellower.

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8. “The Dog” – The Harry J. All Stars

This was the session band of producer Harry Johnson (Bob Marley, Augustus Pablo, etc.). I initially intended to used The Harry J. All Stars’ version of the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down,” but I just love this song’s lazy hand-claps. Is this a good time to mention that Jamaican artists could record songs by anyone because the country wasn’t part of international copyright conventions?

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9. “Walk On the Side” – Tommy McCook & The Super Sonics

Tommy McCook was the band leader of The Skatalites, & recorded loads of great sax instrumentals, which I was introduced to on Pandora. McCook was born in Cuba, moved to Jamaica as a child, & then lived in the US, where he heard John Coltrane, before returning to Jamaica.

I chose this song cuz it has electric guitar solos, something pretty rare in this kind of music. Also, cuz it’s great & McCook should be more famous than he is.

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10. “Save Me” – Jem

Uh, uh.

And I like the outro.

Wales to Sussex.

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11. “Worrier” – Joe Gibbs & The Professionals

A Jamaican who lived for a while in the US, he was a business partner of Lee Perry in the ’60s. Went on to record The Pioneers, Tommy McCook, Hippy Boys, etc. The Professionals included Sly & Robbie. Also co-produced Culture’s punk-influential “Two Sevens Clash.”

Besides being a studio innovator on other’s albums, Joe Gibbs released a series of 4 great “African Dub” albums under his own name. This song is from the 1st one. He died this February, & an obit I read said that he’d been silenced towards the end of his life by a copyright lawsuit brought by country artist Charlie Pride in the ’80s — by then international copyright law had reached into Jamaica.

The basic tracks of this song, “Worrier,” have been used many times. I own another version or two of it (did I put one on my 1st 3mpmp mix?) but, unlike the others, this is really tasteful. I love the quiet piano part. Dub with acoustic piano: good stuff.

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12. “Dyon-Anasaw” – Lee “Scratch” Perry & The Upsetters

What can I say? Except that what they’re singing should not be spelled “dyon-anasaw.” I like the outro sound effects.

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13. “Police & Thieves” – Junior Murvin

Simply a classic. But you’ve gotta include classics sometimes. Lee Perry produced and co-wrote this, psychedelically, & The Clash covered it well.

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14. “Warning Sign” – Talking Heads

I don’t care what anyone says, they used to be good. Radiohead (see #16) got their name from Talking Heads’ “Radio Head.”

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15. “Black Messiah” – The Kinks

OK, he says “honky” and the narrator is, arguably, racist. Still, it fits musically, &, anyway, if “enlightened” knowledge workers would listen to poor whites more maybe they’d win more elections. Not to mention that conservatives have been right about a bunch of stuff.

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16. “Exit Music (For a Film)” – Easy Star All-Stars & Sugar Minott

The Radiohead song. I’ll admit I like the Easy Star record more. (And I like their “Dub Side of the Moon” better than the Pink Floyd original — fun video here.) But, to be fair, Jonny Greenwood was the Trojan Records controller.

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17. “The Tide Is High” (fun video with Darth Vader here) - Blondie

Not actually a great version of the song (which is yet another late-’60s Jamaican tune) but it is from my youth, not bad, & appropriate.

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18. “Ghost Town (Extended Version)” – The Specials

The un-extended version hit UK #1 in 1981. I’m thinking that must be Rico Rodriguez on the trombone solo.

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19. “Crazy Baldheads” – Monty Alexander & Delfeayo Marsalis

Alexander, a pianist, was born in Jamaica & played with Sinatra. Not many people can say that. I’m still checking it out but I think Alexander has a better album — with Ernest Ranglin — than this all-Bob Marley covers album. But still it’s pretty cool, & marketing genius.

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20. “Alley Oop” – Bonzo Dog Band

This is a cover of an old US doo wop song by British eccentrics. (One of these dudes used to be in The Scaffold, Paul McCartney’s brother’s band. I had wanted to use The Scaffold’s “Thank U Very Much” but it’s not available on itunes.) The Beatles were big fans of the Bonzos, & put them in the Magical Mystery Tour movie. They toured the US with the Who & played with The Kinks. One of the Bonzos apparently went to “university” with my father-in-law. Small world.

 

 

So I have my first “friends” on MySpace. Now to start removing music from this blog.

So I went ahead & set up a MySpace music site using the Tyler recordings. It’s a mess right now, can’t even post a blog message there for some reason, but it’s a start.

The Tyler project was Dennis & me from the Sarnos plus a number of other people who I’ve lost track of. Let’s see how many I can find. There was Tod Preuss on drums, formerly of A Subtle Plague (did those guys move back to Germany or something?). He went on The Sarnos last mini-tour up the West Coast, then recorded for the Tyler project. I googled his name & saw other recording projects of his but no website for him. MySpace lists someone w/ his name, around the right age, in Everett WA, but it’s just a shell account w/ no other info.

Adam Cohen/ Adam Elk, ex-Mommyhead — he produced about 1/2 the songs, played instruments, sang, etc. I viewed him as Mr Music but he seems to have quit when the ’90s rolled over. I know he moved to LA, then back to Brooklyn, & I googled that he recorded a couple of songs w/ ex-Mommyhead Michael Holt (who lives in Toronto) in 2004, but that’s it.

Jeff Palmer produced the songs Adam didn’t & he played coconuts or something on the song “Acoustic Coconuts and Moonbeams.” Jeff’s been in more bands than anyone else & now plays w/ Radar Bros., & records w/ Greg Freeman (who we recorded w/) as Checksum.

Jen Clapp sang on some of the Tyler songs, including her angelic bridge on the song I’m calling “Open the Dirge,” available on my MySpace page. Her husband, ex-Mommyhead, Dan Fisherman is drumming w/ her now, & they live back East, instead of a block from me, where they used to lived. That means that all of the Mommyheads have left San Francisco.

Alice Bierhorst sang w/ Jen, & she’s in New York now too, & I see she’s still playing music w/ Jen & Michael Holt.

Jeff Krebs sang on a few songs, & played Middle Eastern banjo on one. He also was my co-worker & helped get me my job at Red & White Fleet many years ago. He moved to Michigan, plays solo & w/ the band Bourbon Sprawl. In the ’80s he was in SF band The Easy Hoes, w/ that guy from Everclear, & w/ Kim Rohrbach, who later played in the band Four Eyes w/ members of Red House Painters but who appears to be no longer performing music, but who is still in SF, & is known in Noe Valley for her Real Foods organizing drive. (I used to work there too.)

Raul Navarrette played trombone, & I see he’s playing latin music in NY now (w/ no website).

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Also, The Colonial West

and Norad 9/11 over at the Antiwar.com blog.

I pruned back the book list at Progress Daily. The Internet is already too full of stuff.

I finally checked out MySpace, & I found an ex-Sarno: Don, now playing w/ Borg9. And Pat Thomas; he doesn’t have The Sarnos on his resume but he did play drums once or twice for us circa 1990. Jeff Palmer, not an ex-Sarno but an ex-roommate of The Sarnos, & he engineered/produced/played on some of the songs on our unreleased final recording (recorded at John Vanderslice’s). I’m thinking maybe I should be over there.

I read an excellent article about Bob Dylan by Louis Menand, “Bob on Bob“:

… Nothing that Dylan did to get from Hibbing to “Blonde on Blonde” was scandalous, or even eccentric. He happened to come of musical age at a moment when rock and roll was moribund—Frankie Avalon stuff, songs for high-school sock hops. If you were serious, you played folk songs. And to become a folkie, unless you actually were from Oklahoma, you invented a persona. The whole folk revival was make-believe, anyway: it was urban kids trying to sound like hillbillies and sharecroppers. One of the folk-music veterans when Dylan came on the scene was Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, a singer with a cowboy twang who had once hoboed around with Guthrie himself. Ramblin’ Jack was the stage name of one Elliot Adnopoz, a Jewish kid from Flatbush whose father was a prominent surgeon. Cambridge was another center of the folk revival—it’s where Baez got her start, in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square. (She was a B.U. dropout.) There was a bluegrass group in that scene, composed mostly of college students, who called themselves the Charles River Valley Boys. Artifice was the price of authenticity. …

He liked Judy Garland singing “The Man That Got Away” and Frank Sinatra singing “Ebb Tide.” He loved “Stardust” and “Moon River.” He didn’t “come out of” any tradition. He was a magpie. The biggest inspiration for his songwriting was a Kurt Weill song, “Pirate Jenny,” from “The Threepenny Opera.” He heard it when he was waiting to meet his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who was working on a production of the play on Christopher Street. (“The Threepenny Opera” was followed by an anthology production called “Brecht on Brecht,” which may have been the inspiration for the title of “Blonde on Blonde.”) …

Elijah Wald (Van Ronk’s co-author), in his indispensable revisionist history of the blues, “Escaping the Delta,” points out that Muddy Waters had more songs in his repertoire by Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, than by any blues musician; that Louis Armstrong’s favorite band was Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians; and that Robert Johnson played Bing Crosby songs. “If I had only one artist to listen to through eternity,” Chuck Berry said, “it would be Nat Cole.” …

Click here for Dylan’s MySpace page. And here’s a poem:

Mr. Dylan
How would you define folk music?
As a constitutional re-play of mass production
Would you call your songs “folk songs”?
No
Are protest songs “folk songs”?
I guess
If they’re a constitutional re-play of mass production
Do you prefer songs with a subtle or obvious message?
With a what?
A subtle or obvious message?
Uh
I don’t really prefer those kinds of songs at all
“Message”
You mean like
What songs with a message?
Well, like “Eve of Destruction” and things like that
Do I prefer that to what?
I don’t know
But your songs are supposed to have a subtle message
Subtle message?
Well, they’re supposed to
Where’d you hear that?

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Also, Design

Previous episode here: http://www.samkoritz.com/?p=83

You can see where this is going: both of my acquaintances, my boss & my buddy, who killed themselves apparently had mental suicide soundtracks. Which got me thinking about how easy it is for people to be swayed. Movies, for example, are absurd. We watch them knowing that the actors are pretending, the same plots are rehashed over & over again, yet we pay good money to be emotionally manipulated. (My cousin Nan Goldin wrote that the moment just before a movie starts is when she’s most happy — or something like that.) And music plays an important part in making movies work. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the tv show) quickly moves from comedy to melodrama to horror, & after watching the episodes a 2nd or 3rd time you start to notice how, for example in ”The Zeppo,” the sappy romantic music drops out mid-scene to mock the show’s own overheatedness.

Scientists are divided about why music exists. Some intriguing info from “Sorry, Maestro Barenboim. Music is for idiots and Neanderthals,” by Terence Kealey, The Times:

Geoffrey Miller has examined the gender and age of the singers of 6,000 recent jazz, rock and classical albums, and showed that 90 per cent of commercial songs are produced by males, and that their peak age of production is 30 (the peak age for male success in coition, apparently).

Dr Anne Fernald has shown that babies respond appropriately, with smiles or frowns, to praise or admonishment when delivered in baby talk, even if the language is foreign. “What a good girl!,” delivered in French, provokes a happy smile in an English nursery.

Studies on mothers have shown that, in the privacy of their homes, 100% of mothers sing to their babies.

Jenny Saffron has shown that human babies are born with perfect pitch.

More music science here: http://www.progressdaily.com/?s=music.

 

 

And speaking of Buffy & singing, here’s a song from 1 of my favorite episodes, “Once More with Feeling“:

Every single night the same arrangement
I go out and fight the fight
Still, I always feel the strange estrangement
Nothing here is real,
Nothing here is right
I’ve been making shows of trading blows
Just hoping no one knows
That I’ve been

Going through the motions
Walking through the part
Nothing seems to penetrate my heart
I was always brave and kind of righteous
Now I find I’m wavering
Crawl out of your grave you’ll find this fight
Just doesn’t mean a thing

She ain’t got that swing

Thanks for noticing

She does pretty well with fiends from hell
But lately, we can tell
That she’s just

Going through the motions
Faking it somehow
She’s not even half the girl she…
Ow!

Will I stay this way forever?
Sleepwalk through my life’s endeavor

How can I repay?

Whatever
I don’t want to be

Going through the motions
Losing all my drive
I can’t even see
If this is really me
And I just wanna be
Alive

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Also, Intangible Assets http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/10/08/intangible-assets/

Previous episode here.

As I was saying, I was listening to some loud music a while back & it reminded me of a time in the early- or mid-90s when I was working at a “record store.” One evening after we closed the owner blasted Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.” He usually didn’t play music in the store, & at no other time that I know of did he play music at a deafening volume. He shortly thereafter killed himself but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I made the connection, somehow.

A few years later, an acquaintance of mine gave me a tape of songs by his band. For no apparent reason he ended the tape w/ a recording by Ozzy Osbourne, “Goodbye to Romance” — video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PibEhjo54XM. Lyrics here:

Yesterday has been and gone
Tomorrow will I find the sun
Or will it rain
Everybody’s having fun
Except me, I’m the lonely one
I live in shame

I’ve been the king, I’ve been the clown
Now broken wings can’t hold me down
I’m free again
The jester with the broken crown
It won’t be me this time around
To love in vain

And I feel the time is right
Although I know that you just might say to me
What’cha gonna do
But I have to take this chance goodbye
To friends and to romance
And to all of you
Come on now

And the weather’s looking fine
And I think the sun will shine again
And I feel I’ve cleared my mind
All the past is left behind again

I say goodbye to romance, yeah
Goodbye to friends, I tell you
Goodbye to all the past
I guess that we’ll meet
We’ll meet in the end

(To be continued.)

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Plus, Women, Education & Income & Information & Decision-Making

And a new Backtalk

 

 

I’ve been reading some fiction, which is fairly unusual for me. I just finished Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother. JR recommended Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, about an autistic savant, & I really enjoyed that so I gave ASoB a try. I liked Curious Incident better; unlike ASoB it had a single narrative perspective & a mystery to drive the plot. ASoB had its moments, though, & without spoiling the plot too much I can say that it’s a celebration of love, marriage, family (even dysfunctional family), & community. (It would make a good movie.) That might seem conservative but one of the couples portrayed is gay & the only religious characters are unflatteringly portrayed. 

Haddon has a great website — http://www.markhaddon.com – divided into two sections, Art & Life. Which reminds me of a song that proves that not everything can be googled. I think it’s called “Art & Life,” from defunct SF band The Furies’ album Fun Around the World. The lyrics are not Google-able. Something like:

What’s the difference between art & life?
One’s full of struggle & one’s full of strife.

Art has life; they call it passion.
Life has art; they call it fashion.

Sometimes it’s really hard to tell them apart
Because there is no difference between life & art.

Let’s bury Andy Warhol & get on with it.

 

I just finished reading Lisa Carver’s Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir. If the names Costes, GG Allin, Smog, & Suckdog mean anything to you, it’s worth reading, otherwise probably not. There seems to be a trend of 30-something women writing about their youthful sex, drugs, & music/writing shenanigans. The best of these that I’ve read, imo, is Michelle Tea’s Chelsea Whistle: blue collar Massachusetts, divorced parents, weird stepdad, lesbianism, prostitution, San Francisco, spoken word, creative writing. Drugs Are Nice: “white trash” New Hampshire, divorced parents, criminal dad, performance art, Paris, music, San Francisco, prostitution, drugs, s&m, marriage, divorce, motherhood. Beth Lisick’s Everybody in the Pool: intact family, suburban California, attempted bi-sexuality, San Francisco, M. Tea’s spoken word group, creative writing, music, marriage, motherhood.

Previous episode here.

Boys Life was not the only Boston band whose singer affected an English-ish accent.  That was one of the new music memes at the time. (Gang of Four-influenced) The Proletariat, for example, managed to be a respected punk band despite their Anglo-inflected singer & propagandistic lyrics. I liked their song “Options” but thought it was unintentionally funny:

Bend my ear
Twist my arm
Tell me the options
Tell me the options
Military service
Factory employment
Welfare assistance
Tell me the options

Turns out (see Prole link above) that the band members dropped out of college & worked blue collar jobs.

(To be continued.)

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Also, More Monkeynomics

Power of Music I, II, & III 

 

 

I thought of someone else from Malden, the band Boys Life. They were a good band that made surprisingly sophisticated music, considering their home town. I thought Malden was somewhat better than Everett, which was somewhat better than Chelsea. Michelle Tea writes about moving to Everett from Chelsea briefly & feeling like she’d moved to a better place. But an early punk rock fan friend of mine from Everett transferred to a private school in Malden & got beat up & stuffed into & locked in a locker (I seem to remember that he toned down his punkness thereafter). Not much of that treatment in Everett; though I remember an old man in Brigham’s Ice Cream yelling at DD: “Why don’t you get the hell out of this country.”

Boys Life’s singer sang in a sorta British accent, bizarrely. Kinda like Psych Furs. Their lyricist/manager wrote a book of poems called Malden. Here’s one (I can relate to) called “The Savior,” about Bobby Orr & Phil Esposito:

Streets reserved seven days a week
for endless games of street hockey
tennis courts and school yards
filled with stick wielding boys
all pretending to be Bobby
Ice rinks popping up in town after town
to accommodate
all these Bobbys:
Working class kids.
Working class Bobbys.
Irish and Italian kids.
Irish and Italian Bobbys.
all Bobbys.
all
except me:
I pretended to be Phil.

I just now found out that Boys Life’s sax player later played in Black Cat Bone — a sorta goth/blues band I liked. I knew 1 or 2 of their members, because they lived & practiced near our Thayer St loft. (1 of their songs is on this comp CD.) Small world.

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Also, The Wisdom of Independent Guessing