Category Archives: Video

Durocs: Durocs

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Clever late-70s studio rock finally rescued from obscurity

The Durocs 1979 debut (and, as it turns out, album swansong) was a singular combination of collaborators and the times in which they collaborated. The two principals, Ron Nagle and Scott Mathews, had already been working together for a few years when they signed a deal with Capitol in the late ‘70s. Nagle had co-founded San Francisco’s Mystery Trend in 1965, playing key venues and releasing a single on Verve. He went on to record a Jack Nitzsche-produced solo album, Bad Rice, in 1970, but garnered his primary renown as a ceramicist and university art professor. Mathews was a songwriter and producer whose multi-instrumental talents made him something of a child prodigy. The pair wrote songs for other artists and produced audio for film soundtracks, leading them, via their connection to Nitasche, to Capitol.

Nagle and Mathews produced the album with Elliot Mazur, in their own San Franciscostudio, overdubbing most of the instruments and vocals, and adding selected guests, such as sax player Steve Douglas. Their thick production sound brings to mind Todd Rundgren (both as an artist and producer), the Tubes (for whom Nagle co-wrote the signature “Don’t Touch Me There”), and Phil Spector’s later work on the Ramones’ 1981 End of the Century. Nagle explains in the liner notes, “restraint just wasn’t our forte at the time,” which explains both their over-the-top production and the enthusiasms of their lyrics. They’re equally unbridled confessing the shame of a cuckold as they are reveling in the connections of a successful relationship. They excoriate the excesses of ‘70s self-empowerment as easily as they offer reassurance to a partner in need.

The album gained fans inEuropeand on college radio, but failed commercially, despite two inventive promotional videos. The Durocs slipped through Capitol during a brief moment of major label adventurousness, and the band’s inventiveness is finally rewarded by this reissue, thirty-three years after the fact. Real Gone adds eight bonus tracks that fit stylistically with the original album, highlighted by a cross of Mitch Ryder, Mink DeVille and a modern rock guitar on “No Big Deal,” the baritone-guitar country twang “Drinkin’ One Day at a Time,” and Ernie K-Doe’s bizarre autobiographical monolog on “Nawgahide.” The two-panel slip-sleeve has a microscopic reproduction of the lyrics, and an eight-page booklet includes liner notes by Gene Sculatti. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

Bikini Machine: Let’s Party with Bikini Machine

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60s-styled fuzz-guitar soundtrack-ready instrumentals

Bikini Machine seems to have been teleported into the present from the soundtrack of a mid-60s American International Pictures film. Drawing their name (as well as a vocal drop used in their title song) from the 1965 film Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, there’s a healthy dose of Davie Allan and the Arrows in their beat-heavy instrumental go-go rock. Given that the film was originally slated to be a musical (you can hear some of the vocal tunes cut from the film in the Shindig television special The Weird Wild World of Dr. Goldfoot [1 2 3]), it’s only fitting that a band would eventually find retro inspiration here. The fuzz guitars, primitive keyboards and wordless vocals give the tunes a space-age bachelor pad dimension that suggests the great UK production library music, cinema soundtracks (including ample hints of blacksploitation soul) and instrumental knock-offs of the mid-to-late ‘60s, all driven by really snappy drumming. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

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The Soho Hobo: Little London Lou

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From the YouTube page hosting this video:

I wrote ‘Little London Lou’ in memory of a wonderful girl whom I was very fond of. Louise Cattell died aged 21 on 2nd March 2011 from an accidental overdose of ketamine. Her spirit was one that lifted everyone who knew her. Louise’s family want her spirit to continue fueling you and everyone you know, by sharing her story through this song and to raise awareness about the dangers that face young people today.

When you BUY this single, ALL PROCEEDS will go to The Angelus Foundation (Angelusfoundation.com), a charity dedicated to raising awareness of the dangers of legal highs and club drugs.

A beautiful eulogy, but one written much too early.

The Soho Hobo’s Home Page

Sheb Wooley: White Lightnin’

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Boogie, swing and honky-tonk from 1945 to 1959

To those weaned on Wooley’s 1958 chart-topping rock ‘n’ roll novelty, “Purple People Eater,” his acting roles in High Noon, Giant and Rio Bravo, or his tenure in a featured slot on television’s Rawhide, the totality of his recording career may come as something of a surprise. Starting in the mid-40s on the Nashville-based Bullet label, moving on to the Fort Worth-based Blue Bonnet, and settling in with the coastal MGM label, Wooley recorded a wealth of country, boogie, swing and honky-tonk sides, both under his own name, and as a parodist, under the name of Ben Colder. He topped the charts a second time – the country chart, this time – with 1962’s “That’s My Pa,” and continued to score with singles throughout the rest of the decade.

Wooley’s acting career sustained him financially, but it was his move to Hollywood – ostensibly to break in to the movies as a singing cowboy – that shaped the sound of his records. Recording in California, he was backed by many of the same West Coast musicians (including Speedy West, Jimmy Bryant and Cliffie Stone) that played on Capitol sessions for Merle Travis, Tex Ritter and Tennessee Ernie Ford. But even before he got to California, Wooley was recording dance tunes like his steel-swing “Oklahoma Honky Tonk Girl” and the fiddle-led “Peepin’ Through the Keyhole (Watching Jole Blon).” He sang his upbeat tunes with a smile, stringing together clever wordplay on “Lazy Mazy” that echoes the hipster jazz sides of the late ‘30s. And even when he wasn’t writing parodies, he often wrote with humor, such as the troubled date of “Wha’ Hoppen to Me, Baby” and doghouse lodgings of “Rover Scoot Over.”

The two 1959 sides that close the set showcase different sides of Wooley. The driller-themed “Roughneck” has a rockabilly beat, while the hit single “That’s My Pa” is a talking blues novelty that anticipates “A Boy Named Sue.” The all-mono audio shows only minimal surface noise on some of the earliest sides, and noise reduction is so discreet as to be inaudible. The digipack is decorated with vibrant graphics, and the 31-page booklet includes photos, poster and label reproductions, a detailed discography (including label, recording dates and personnel) and liner notes by Todd Everett. This is a great look at Wooley’s boogie sides, and compliments Bear Family volumes that focus on western tunes and rockin’ sides, as well as their 4-CD box set. But for an introduction to Wooley’s country and honky-tonk sides, this is a great place to start. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

Little Richard: Here’s Little Richard

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A founding text of rock ‘n’ roll

Fifty-five years after its initial release, Little Richard’s debut LP resounds with the primordial fire of rhythm ‘n’ blues’ jump to rock ‘n’ roll. Richard took everything up a notch – the tempos, the innuendo and above all, the volume and energy of his vocals. Recorded primarily at New Orleans’ legendary J&M studios, Richard was backed by the cream of the Crescent City’s musicians, including Lee Allen, Alvin Taylor, Frank Fields and Earl Palmer. Though the same crew could be heard on other artists’ records, with Richard in the lead, they heated up their New Orleans boogie-woogie as on few other sessions. There’s a level of fervor, abandon and outrageousness in both Richard’s singing and piano playing that none of his fellow founders could match.

The original dozen tracks clock in at just over 28 minutes, but it’s 28 minutes of killer rock ‘n’ roll, with zero filler. The first hits were “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” “Rip it Up,” “Ready Teddy” and “She’s Got It.” Three more – “Jenny Jenny,” “Miss Ann” and “True Fine Mama” – charted in ’57 and ’58. That leaves only three that didn’t chart – “Can’t Believe You Wanna Leave,” “Baby” and “Oh Why?” – each of which has the same incendiary spark of the better known singles. The CD reissue adds three audio tracks and two videos. The audio includes Richard’s two original audition tracks and a previously unreleased interview with Specialty Records founder Art Rupe. Rupe talks about the audition tape, Richard’s persistence at getting signed, the New Orleans sessions, the impact of “Tutti Frutti” and the on-again, off-again career it created.

The audition tracks – Little Richard originals “Baby” and “All Night Long” – are surprising for their lack of indication of what was to come. Richard sang straight blues, with the band subdued behind him, not even hinting at the rock ‘n’ roll mayhem he’d bring to his Specialty sessions. Rupe, looking for a B.B. King-type singer, heard something he liked, but had no idea what he was really getting. The videos are color screen tests (for The Girl Can’t Help It) of Richard lip-synching “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally,” highlighted visually by his swanky suits, awesome pompadour, pencil-thin moustache and his uninhibited dancing in the instrumental breaks. The set’s 24-page booklet includes photos, the album’s original liner notes, new notes by Lee Hildebrand and a poster of the album cover. Rock ‘n’ roll stars simply didn’t shine any brighter than this. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

Rick Springfield: Beginnings

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The early ‘70s singer-songwriter roots of Rick Springfield

By the time that Rick Springfield hit it big as a pop star, with 1981’s “Jessie’s Girl,” his fame as an actor all but obscured his very real roots as a musician. But a decade before topping the U.S. charts, Springfield was a working musician in the rock band Zoot (on whose heavy cover of “Eleanor Rigby” a young Springfield can be seen playing guitar) and a solo artist with a Top 10 hit in Australia. A reworked version of that hit single, “Speak to the Sky,” reached the Billboard Top 20, and took this debut album into the Top 40. The 1981 view of a dilettante actor dabbling in music is wiped away by this record of his earlier work, for which Springfield wrote ten original tunes, sang and played guitar, keyboards and banjo.

Springfield’s songs and the production sound are heavily indebted to late ‘60s and early ‘70s rock, particularly the bass, drums and piano sounds of the Beatles, Badfinger and Big Star. The album mixes deeper numbers with bubblegum, showing Springfield’s voice to work well in both heavy and light arrangements. “The Unhappy Ending” anticipates the histrionics of Queen (and presages the opening of “Killer Queen”), while the happy-go-lucky (but war-tinged) “Hooky Jo” sports hooks worthy of Kasnetz-Katz and Graham Gouldman. Springfield’s infatuation with Paul McCartney is evidenced by the album’s chugging beats, but there are notes of soul, country-rock and pop.

The publicity build-up Springfield received with the album’s success leaned to teen idoldom, and though a few of his songs offered the romance expected by readers of Tiger Beat, he also wrote of faith, regret, marital traps and suicide. The disconnect between his publicity and music, coupled with a disastrous rumor that Capitol was inflating sales numbers, doomed Springfield’s initial into the U.S. market. Three more albums failed to right those wrongs until 1981’s Working Class Dog, bolstered by his role on General Hospital, earned him pop stardom. In addition to being a lost gem of early ‘70s pop, this debut shows Springfield’s success as a musician was honest, hard-won, and only by lucky timing the by-product of his acting fame. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]

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