Less clownish rock band with pretty girl making Faustian deals. Way less Iggy Pop.
Now, Iron Man 2 is more like it, making better use of heavy metal and rock star metaphors.
Iron Man set to AC/DC.
Mickey Rourke as The Wrestler as the Bounty Hunter as Whiplash, originally one of the “ten crappiest Iron Man villains” ever. Well-explained here.
And Don Cheadle as War Machine. Doesn’t he seem a little small for the part to you? War Machine was big and mighty, like the young Jim Brown. Ah, Robert Downey’s wee, too, and he works splendidly as Tony Stark.
Tipped by Armchair Generalist, someone with a good eye. The second trailer is cooler than the first.
Guaranteed to spawn too many US military officers and analysts telling magazines and newspapers America needs its defense contractors to make something like that. To limit collateral damage in the war on terror, of course.
The SPIN magazine backpages are in Google Books as noted here mid-point through last month.
If you’ve delved the sidebar links you’ll know that at one time DD wrote rock criticism. And I did it on and off for a long time until it became nothing but 50-word advertising blipverts with everyone who could be appropriately supercilious about the release schedule for the week banned in favor of industry tail-chasers.
I wrote about Stryper back in 1988. They wore stage wear with the color scheme of bumblebees. Perhaps it was to get across the message they were as the industrious pure-hearted worker insect, toiling without complaint — for Jesus. One of their records was called The Yellow and Black Attack.
They were made for me to insult.
Brian Carson, drummer for the Highway Kings, really loved Stryper. Paradoxically, it never impeded his playing rock ‘n’ roll for bikers, power drunks and miscellaneous scum in dive bars.
Over the weekend DD ‘discovered’ Kevin Coyne, an old British rocker/singer/songwriter/poet who passed away in 2002.
A colleague on the I Love Music chat board piqued my interest:
Anybody care about Kevin Coyne? Eccentric British guy, early ’80s. The one album I have, In Living Black And White from 1973, is a live one; his guitarist plays pretty loud rock, though his band doesn’t much — come closest in “Eastbourne Ladies” and “Mummy,” maybe. He has a Joe Cocker growl that occasionally sounds a little Ian Hunter, but he doesn’t seem to have much in the way of tunes. (Maybe the studio albums are more tuneful, I dunno.) Sings about insane asylums (used to work in one according the liner notes), suicidal fat girls, burning down the world with turpentine, America being a land of disease, and British class stuff I don’t understand much. Don’t know what to make of the guy.
It immediately sent me off in search of Coyne records from the late Sixties to the mid-Seventies.
Much of his material has been posted to the Internet, so it certainly wasn’t hard.
There are a couple old videos of Coyne at a festival and a Rainbow appearance broadcast on the Beeb, now available on YouTube.
“Strange Locomotion,” from a ‘75 Rainbow show shows a young Andy Summers (later famous in the Police) on guitar.
It’s stomping Brit rhythm & boogie. And since embedding is disabled it is here.
“Eastbourne Ladies,” from the 1974 album, Marjory Razorblade, is similar.
Performed in front of a festival audience in the Seventies, it’s boogie with the guys and gals bopping in a polite hippies we’re-having-a-party-in-Blighty
way. The camera pans back to show it’s next to a pasture, the cows grazing unperturbed. Coyne has a pair of Walter Brennan ‘real McCoy’ farm pants on and humps a pole a little. He asks if even the big black cow would give him some money.
This was back when you could look real crappy and the crowd loved you for it.
Another great tune is “House On the Hill,” a compelling country folk whine about what a local insane asylum was like. Coyne was a social worker in the mental illness system and his songs about it capture this bleak part of English life.
“Eastbourne Ladies” is one his career hight points. His gruff voice, occasionally spitting out a Wolfman Jack howl, is backed by a “Highway 61 Revisited” rhythm thing, except the song is about snobby high class dames who look nice.
Coyne wonders if they go to bed wearing crowns.
“Holiday in Spain” — another tune from the same album, is a spoof on Brit package holidays to the title country set to a flamenco beat.
The Spaniard waiting on the table frightens and offends the British tourists, looking to make their white skin turn a little brown on vacation. The vacationers think the man looks like a gangster from an evil side of town. Yes, there’s certainly risk to the sensibilities when holidaying in places where everyone doesn’t look like you.
Marjory Razorblade is a very good album with a unique taste of its own. Coyne gets his country folk blues complaints and japes going but always follows after awhile with a thumping piece of R&B pub rock — like “Chicken Wing.”
Coyne is a master of of these tones and styles, using his idiosyncratic voice and lyrics so well within the spare arrangements that he always sounds natural bending them to to completely odd purposes.
Speaking of idiosyncracy, it would be a hard person who wouldn’t break out laughing at Coyne’s “Karate King” with lyrics like this:
His white and muscled flexing at all the passing girls, smashing his way through the window frame, ripping apart his mother’s pearls — they’re lieing on the dressing table … Chop! Chop!
If you see the Karate King: Help him! Help him! Comment on his pommaded hair, tell him he would have been an excellent kamikaze pilot in the Second World War! That’s what the Karate King wants to hear … in the gymnasium.
Priceless in the context of rock ‘protest’ music, really.
Which brings us, dear readers, to Coyne’s “Good Boy.”
If there’s a theme song that’s better for this blog, I can’t imagine it.
The song delivers sarcasm and class resentment in ways that are beyond 99 percent of American pop music artists. While Frank Zappa comes to mind, it was rare that he was so musically direct. Since it’s a cut off the original Marjory Razorblade record, it probably won’t last long on the video channel.
Closing out, here’s some Coyne fast boogie. Obviously, the older and uglier you are the better you get at it. I’m serious.
The above is a snap from SAC Command Post, a short film made by the Air Force. One fashioned to apparently counter perceived bad publicity from the movie Dr. Strangelove.
It is here at the nuclear archive at George Washington Uni.
It’s a wonderful 18 minute snapshot from a time long gone. You could watch it back to back with Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom!
The end result is something Kubrick could have used as warm-up while the crowd seated itself prior to a showing of Strangelove. Rather than counter anything, it nicely seasons the premise of his movie which is, perhaps, why SAC Command Post never even remotely climbed into national consciousness like the former.
Full of old analog equipment and telephones, it harkens back to a time when the US actually was a world leader with a working government.
The movie opens portentously: The Strategic Air Command has the power to immediately strike back at any aggressor who would dare to start a general war.
The Soviet Union is neither mentioned nor pictured anywhere in the film.
A few teasers:
SAC, guarded by vigilant dogs so no one crazy can interfere!
A general reads his daily paper before being called to alert!
The SAC controller shows a bit of anxiousness under the cameras. Chosen for lantern jaw.
It’s only a test!
That ‘impact’ counter doesn’t go high enough.
Nothing can go worng wrong between the gold and the red telephone sets.
Yes, gentlemen, they are on their way in and no one can bring them back. For the sake of our country and our way of life I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them, otherwise we will be totally destroyed by Red retaliation. So let’s get going, there’s no other choice. God willing, we shall prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. — General Jack Ripper, Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove is one of DD’s favorite movies. It and the mythos of the Strategic Air Command resulted in this song, “Strategic Air Command”, on the second Highway Kings album, Brutality.
At this point, then, Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan — and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power.
But there is a kind of logic to the current Republican position: in effect, the party is doubling down on starve-the-beast. Depriving the government of revenue, it turns out, wasn’t enough to push politicians into dismantling the welfare state. So now the de facto strategy is to oppose any responsible action until we are in the midst of a fiscal catastrophe. You read it here first.
This is the paradigm set by California mentioned yesterday here.
Paradoxically, the Governator — Arnold Schwarzenegger — was on CNN on Sunday night calling his party The Party of No. And it wasn’t in the context of a compliment.
There is a great deal of irony in that the Reagan-worshipping Schwarzenegger is now just the kind of government politician the great mean of the GOP despises.
While Schwarzenegger will inherit a lasting reputation as a terrible governor, it was his own party in Sacramento which did him in.
In Washington, the blame can be spread around a little more generously. While the GOP blocks everything, the Democrats and President are equally contemptible for allowing them to succeed doing just that.
The world no longer needs a US when the superpower is run this badly.
Many years ago, when Schwarzenegger was made governor, I wrote this in the context of some spoof tunes about the situation.
The Gropinators explain the politics behind the big man’s success, using rock and roll. Our leader’s election came not through reasoned judgment, but a good old angry and mentally ill snapout, a desire of the polity to strike, to lash out, to schlag — someone in government. We weren’t going to take it! Take what? Who cares? But someone, like Gray Davis, had to be made to pay and Arnold was the benefactor. Lyric: You sent him to Sac-ra-men-to; No rotten car tax, no, no! We sent ‘im to Sac-ra-men-to; We’re not gonna take it, no, no! Arghhh! Danger! Get out of the way, we might have to hit you.
Sound familiar?
Schwarzenegger was elected by the public on his promise to eliminate the car tax. He did so and forced a refund for everyone in the state who had ever paid it. The shortfall caused by that overturned the state government’s finances and precipitated the current catastrophe. The California legislature — effectively ruled by the minority GOP, like the US Senate — blocked all efforts by Schwarzenegger to do anything palliative.
The comedy song, “I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich,” which was about the publicizing of the governor’s reputation as a serial groper — in particular, one woman named Carla, prior to his installment is here.
Real Arnold vocals, too. If you don’t laugh, you’ll surely have to cry.
After twenty five years I decided to see if I could still play one of the old signature tunes from the DD & the Highway Kings’ first album.
“Roadkill” was the choice, an instrumental played at every gig. Originally, recorded on a 4-track tape machine, all the analog equipment I used to do it is long gone.
Back in ‘84 or ‘85 I started a set in front of a group of hardcore punks with “Roadkill.”
This was a serious mistake.
You have to understand many hardcore punk kids had adopted a set of odd moral standards stringently adhered to. Beating up girls, for instance, was OK. But doing anything perceived to be mean to animals was verboten.
“Roadkill” starts out with a maniacal laugh and shout of its title.
You can imagine how this went over. The punks stood there with backs turned and arms folded for the rest of the set. And that was the last time DD ever played for a crowd of them.
Most people think Pasadena is very upscale, a place where it’s hard to find bum wine.
Not true!
In at least one spot, made up of two small markets at the intersection of North Wilson and Villa, Thunderbird and Night Train Express are in stock.
These beverages served and serve a purpose. They’re for when you’ve really hit the skids. And because they are fortified with about 18 percent alcohol by volume, they’re bona fide painkillers.
Yes, it’s been a very bad year here in Pasadena and it looks to only get worse.
Well before Bill Cosby’s enshrinement as a TV star in the Huxtable family, DD thought he was hilarious.
If you were a smartypants kid living in Pennsylvania within easy travel of Philadelphia in the mid-Sixties, Cosby was the homegrown comic for you.
The most played Cosby vinyl in the Smith household, between my brother and I, was “Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow Right!” — a live recording of him doing his thing at the Bitter End in NYC.
But there was one Bill Cosby record that was off style.
“Bill Cosby Sings Hooray for the Salvation Army Band!” was an album of Cosby singing — or yelling and chanting if you prefer — old favorites, many with his own lyrics tacked on, while backed by a funk band.
Viewed with a fishy eye by some regular fans, it was at first perceived to be a joke album by a jokester putting one over on the same fans.
It wasn’t.
DD was introduced to it by fellow Pine Grove Area School District student Dave Berger. Berger showed up in class one day reciting the lyrics to the title track. Even without music, they were a laugh riot if you were in our state of mind.
As we were easily entertained, Berger’s description of Bill Cosby singing about “stealing tires” and getting ready to “have a little sin” set to an unusual interpretation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Purple Haze” sounded top shelf — not a piece of eye-rolling junk to try your patience.
After that, it was about a week before I had convinced my grandfather to drive me to Pomeroy’s in Pottsville to secure a copy.
In the Eighties in Bethlehem I always wanted to perform “Hooray for the Salvation Army Band” but the Highway Kings would have never went for it.
The song was recorded using Roger Linn’s Adrenalinn III magic box. The Adrenalinn III is a guitar amp emulator and drummer coupled to beat-synchronized multi-effects. What that means is you can play a guitar through its digital selection of vintage pieces of equipment, like amplifiers chosen for their rock and roll history and tone. Through the software and processing power in the Adrenalinn III’s chips, your playing is lashed to the beat of any song you would like to record or perform.
The Adrenalinn has been around for years, upgraded intermittently but very effectively by its designers. It is the embodiment of sophisticated music machine fun and it’s hard to imagine making a recording or writing a new tune without employing it.
So the Adrenalinn III was the perfect tool for “Hooray for the Salvation Army Band” as it provides settings and sound ideal for something loosely based on “Purple Haze” — the original’s basic drum track, plus the old Marshall amplifier and octave fuzztone used by Jimi Hendrix.
Everything on the track (with the exception of the “Bringing In the Sheaves” punchline) was sent through the Adrenalinn III.
If you have Cosby’s original album — it is back in print — you know the tune was interpreted as garage-style funk rock. DD has altered it slightly, toward a more psychedelic hard rock flavor.
No, you’re not seeing double. This is an old post migrated from DD’s old Blogger-administered site. In advance of Blogger’s shutdown of FTP publishing.
“Needle and Spoon” first appeared on Savoy Brown’s Raw Sienna album from 1970. Penned by Chris Youlden, the band’s gruff but soulful blues shouter, it has always been one of my favorite blues rock tunes.
I’ve kept the fast shuffling beat, added a bit more thumping acoustic guitar, plus a short fuzz solo tossed in behind a vocal imprecation. For just that old-timey feel.
No one in this edition of Savoy Brown was a heroin user so rack it up to bumping into other rock ‘n’ rollers in 1970 Blighty who were. There was no shortage.
For extra fun, consider the single to have a virtual B-side, “Internal Revenue Boogie,” here.
Jolly good!
Gear: Roger Linn Design Adrenalinn III, lotsa guitars — at least three.
