THE RETURN: K-Dillie's Super Sounds of the 70s

Last year I dedicated a post to a few of my favorite 70s jams. . . the kind of stuff you shamelessly crank up in your car on a road trip when all the music you're not embarassed to listen to starts to bore the living shit out of you. Go ahead, try putting on an Arcade Fire record 12 hours into a road trip. You've passed the cool point. Tossing that Grizzly Bear CD on may just get you a punch in the face from a grumpy travelling companion.

Here's how I described it in my K-Dilly post from last year:

While every era in music has its cheese, from the corny stuff in the '50s to the hippy-dippy shit in the 60s to the Candleboxian "grunge" of the '90s, I seem to have a soft spot for the 70s stuff.

The 70s produced a lot of bad music, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't even be afraid to say that some of tonight's music is, in some way, bad. I just don't care. This stuff isn't brain surgery. This is the 70s stuff that was custom made for a few specific activities. Drinking in your backyard. Lighting a shitload of fireworks. Watching, or participating in, a roller derby. Driving fast, especially in a Camaro.

For the entire month of September, I'm posting only the sweetest in 70s rawk. This time around, my idea was basically to construct a playlist of songs that, if played in a dingy biker bar jukebox, the kind of bar where Pee Wee Herman almost lost his life in Big Adventure, would NOT get your ass kicked.


"Hello There"
"ELO Kiddies" by CHEAP TRICK:
What better way to start things off than with a couple of hello/ello's from Chicago's reigning pop rockers? Some of my earliest memories revolve around Cheap Trick, who -- though we may have forgotten this now -- were HUGE when I was young. Maybe it was just because I was growing up in the midwest, but the kids in my 'hood, especially the ones my older brothers' age, loved them. They had a great look, a cool name, a fantastic lead singer in Robin Zander, a goofy guitarist, and a drummer with one of the best names in the history of rock: Bun E. Carlos. "Hello There" was the song Cheap Trick played to open the majority of their shows, and it's easy to see why: it's punk as fuck. "ELO Kiddies," from the band's debut, is no slouch either, sounding like some crazy mix of Gang of Four and Alice Cooper.

"Last Child"
"Mama Kin"
"Toys in the Attic"
"Back in the Saddle" by AEROSMITH:
I have to admit, it took Guitar Hero 2 to re-awaken my love for old Aerosmith. There's a band who have not done themselves any favors (at least in my eyes) for at LEAST 15 to 20 years. "Love in an Elevator?" "Falling in Love is So Hard on the Knees?" They don't write songs anymore. . . they just go to Spencer's Gifts and lift lyrics off the worst bumper stickers they can find. Don't even get me started on all of those Dianne Warren soundtrack tunes they've been shitting out ad nauseum. But man, back in the day? Aerosmith were kinda the shit. Clock the stoned out brilliance of "Last Child," which starts out all slow like it's going to be another "Dream On," before turning into some kind of whiskey soaked porn soundtrack. (Is it a rule that Steven Tyler has to rhyme something with "sassyfrassy" on every song they do?) I was in grade school when I bought their debut album on cassette because it contained "Dream On." Once I got over that drag of a tune, I found the real gem in "Mama Kin" (so had Guns n' Roses, who covered it on the Live Like a Suicide half of their Lies EP). When I was 14 or 15, my mom and dad gave me the awesome gift of their Pandora's Box boxed set, which collected all kinds of great pre-Permanent Vacation/career revival music like "Toys in the Attic" and "Back in the Saddle." I stupidly sold the set in college, and now more than ever wish I had it back.

"Black Betty" by RAM JAM:
I can't say I own a single Ram Jam record (of course, there are only two). I honestly don't have any idea what the rest of their "catalogue" sounds like. All I know is that I'm dying to play this song on the 8-track player in a crazy souped up Camaro on a backwoods dirt road.

"Parchman Farm" by CACTUS:
Remember that scene in Ghost World, where Steve Buscemi goes to see a blues concert and is met with the white boy blues cockrocksanity of BLUESHAMMER? Yeah. That shit happened in 1970, and that band was Cactus. If scientists had to predict the sound it would make when you combine the rhythm section of Vanilla Fudge with the vocalist from the Amboy Dukes and Mitch Ryder's guitarist, they'd probably actually come really close to predicting this sound. Their debut album, which spawned this rocking but totally hilarious cover of a blues classic, gets an incredibly overstated 4.5 stars over at Allmusic.com.

"New York Groove" by ACE FREHLEY:
As a show, Entourage sucks more and more as it progresses. Lately, however, they've at least been making some interesting musical choices. Digging up this glorious glam rock anthem, off of the Ace Frehley solo KISS record. Back in September of 1978 (29 years ago, Christ!), all the members of KISS released solo albums on the same day. The only one I ever bought (again, on cassette) when I was going through my KISS phase was Ace's, which was just a bit less spotty than the rest of them but still had some great songs like "Groove" and the ode to cocaine, "Snow Blind." I'll get to KISS a post or two from now, so I'll just leave you to enjoy Frehley's take on a song that had been a hit for a band called Hello a few years before this version was released.

Alright kids, that's all for now, but stay tuned all through September for more 70s grooves. . .

Last pimp o' the month: CANON BLUE

(Sorry about the inactivity. There has been a whole boatload of stress in my hands lately, what with my return to college, my health, etc.. I've got something great planned for September, and I hope you'll stick with me and stop by often. The only hint I'll give is that my radio dial is going to be stuck on K-DILLY for the entire month. This will hopefully be great news to some readers, like Nick from Eux Autres. For now, I'd like to highlight a new artist. . .)

It's pretty rare -- hell, almost never -- that I have a chance to follow up on any of the promos or publicity emails that I get in my Pimps of Gore inbox. It's not that I don't love discovering new artists, it's just that this blog was originally intended to just be this little page where I sent some of my favorite music along to my friends. I never really anticipated that there would be any sort of readership around here. I just figured I'd drop in every once in a while and share a few songs I'd been listening to that day or that week.

After several months of running the site, I started to get random email, sometimes from publicists, sometimes from musicians or bands, pimping new music. At first, I figured this was all just spam. No offense to people who may have sent me this stuff, but I just figured these people were fruitcakes and rarely even bothered to open the mail.

Then I started to notice that people were reading. Songs were being downloaded, and occasionally people would actually return and read more. Gradually, I started paying a little more attention to the emails I was getting. Still, I rarely heard anything that caught my attention enough for me to say "This belongs right alongside the stuff I've been posting." It didn't help that when I did my weekly bloghunt, where I pore over the 50+ music blogs I follow, I'd see that I'd already been beat to the punch on posting this stuff. I never saw Pimps of Gore as a site for new music, but more of a place where you might find something you missed when it first came around 5, 10, 20 years ago.

I got an email a few weeks ago from a guy named Daniel James, a very nice email which discussed a shared love of producer/composer David Axelrod. In the email, James mentioned that he was releasing an album of material he'd recorded on his own, under the name CANON BLUE. Seeing "I recorded/produced it myself" did not, in all honesty, bode well. I've received some of the absolute shittiest "self-recorded" music known to man, but the fact that Mr. James had already referenced David Axelrod was a plus. He also mentioned that his album, Colonies, had been mixed and further produced by GRIZZLY BEAR's Chris Taylor. and mastered by CHRISTIAN VOGEL, an expirmental techno artist whose name I recognized from some of his remix work.

"Okay, maybe this guy's got something," I thought, and for the first time in a long time, I clicked the link in the email that would take me to one of his songs.

That song: "Pilguin Pop"

Goddamn, was I surprised. This didn't sound like some nutjob holed up in his apartment, jerking around and putting it all down on 4-track tape. This was real music: dreamy, somewhat trippy techno folk with layers of instruments, melody and nuance. I immediately wrote James back and asked if he could send me the whole album.

I've been listening to Colonies for a couple of weeks now, and am continually impressed with his music. I know it sucks that all new artists have to go through that phase of their careers where their work gets compared to other people's work, but it's an inevitability. No one has to say "Sonic Youth sounds like . . ." because they're fucking Sonic Youth. So, if I have to do the shitty "Sounds like. . . " thing, I'd have to say Canon Blue sounds like what would have happened if Jeff Buckley had decided not to go swimming in the Wolf River that fateful night and instead decided to make a record that sounded like a mixture of Bjork and the Folk Implosion.

There are some really oustanding tracks on the record, which comes out in about a month on Rumraket records. I highly rec seeking out "Mother Tongue," as it's my favorite on the album, but I'm not going to post it tonight (partly at James' request, and partly to entice you to go seek out Colonies for yourself). I'm closing instead with another beauty:

"Rum Diary"

For more on CANON BLUE:

- Here's a link to CB/Daniel James' MySpace profile, with several more songs streaming from the new album.

LEE HAZLEWOOD R.I.P.

"Some Velvet Morning"
"Sand"
"Been Down So Long"
"Summer Wine"
"She Comes Running"
"Won't You Tell Your Dreams"
"Trouble is a Lonesome Town"

NANCY SINATRA lip-synching "These Boots. . .":



PRIMAL SCREAM's cover of "Some Velvet Morning":

"See it all. See the world."

"All I Could Do is Cry"
"Hey Henry" by ETTA JAMES:
My friend Bill sent me a request via email to see if I could fill in some of the gaps for songs he needed to DJ our friend Laura's wedding in a few weeks. The list included some really cool choices from Bob Dylan, Hank Williams (a hilarious choice, "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)"), Willie Nelson, Cat Power and more, and also included "At Last" by Etta James. Now, don't get me wrong: "At Last" is a fantastic song with a goosebump-inducing vocal performance from the legendary Ms. James. My problem with it is that EVERY WOMAN ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH HAS IT PLAYED AT HER WEDDING. I'm surprised there isn't just a section in all wedding programs saying, "The playing of "At Last" will be at 11:00." As I said in my email to Bill: "I just want every female to know that "At Last" is like the fucking "Stairway to Heaven" of songs for women. Remember in "Wayne's World," how there's a sign in the guitar shop that says "NO STAIRWAY!" There should be a sign like that at weddings for "At Last." "At Last" is like "Star Wars" for a woman. They have "At Last" action figures and shit."

Anyway, "All I Could Do is Cry" is something like the anti-"At Last." Like the Doug Sahm track I posted the other day, it's the perfect soundtrack for that terrible moment at a wedding when you realize this person you liked is going home with somebody else. . . forever. Next time I watch someone I had a crush on get married, I'll have this song blaring in my head to block out the sounds of "At Last" coming from the dance floor. Really though, if you want to get those asses shaking at your wedding party, try "Hey Henry" instead.

"Maybe Sparrow" by NEKO CASE:
From Neko Case's unbelievable Fox Confessor Brings the Flood comes this haunting, impeccably produced heartbreaker. Case's vocals here are so chilling and note-perfect they will freeze the blood in your veins.

Here's Neko performing the song on Letterman:


"The Beginning of the End" by BILL RICCHINI:
I met Bill Ricchini on the night of his debut CD release party at the North Star Bar in Philadelphia many years ago. I was with a friend who had gone to high school with him, so it was kind of cute to watch her getting all excited and proud about her old school buddy. Of course, Ricchini has since proven himself as a top rate songwriter and arranger, especially with 2005's Tonight I Burn Brightly, which sees Ricchini shining like a young Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson. The Sam Prekop-esque "The Beginning of the End" is from Ricchini's debut, Ordinary Time. I highly recommend both albums, which you can sample and buy here.

"Police On My Back" by THE EQUALS:
The Equals were a multi-racial Merseybeat group formed by a teenaged Eddy Grant (you might know him as the singer of 80s electro/reggae "Electric Avenue"), known for their interesting twist of mixing ska and other island rhythms (Grant was originally born in British Guyana) into their Britpop. It wasn't until recently I'd heard this track, which I'd first heard performed by The Clash. For three days after it popped up on my iPod, it was all I listened to on my 10 minute drive to and from work.

"Hello Sunshine"
"Hello Sunshine (Weevil Mix)" by SUPER FURRY ANIMALS:
Back when I lived in Chicago, I used to love cueing this song up as I got off the subway downtown. It was either this or "The Cedar Room" by Doves, but both songs gave me that same great feeling that I was stepping into something epic, full of the good and bad in humanity, along with that odd sense of crowded isolation that you can only get being in a huge city, bouncing off of thousands of people while feeling connected to almost none of them. With either song, it felt like you were breathing new air. I wasn't sure if I had posted "Hello Sunshine" before, so tonight I'm also including a cool remix from the Phantom Phorce remix album.

"Breath" (live in Italy) by PEARL JAM:
A liquor store run with a few tipsy friends who wanted to hear the Pearl Jam songs from the Singles soundtrack inspired my inclusion of this live track. Even the Italian crowd understands how rarely played this song is in the long legacy of Pearl Jam setlists.


image by Jiri Bohdal

"You say it's the real thing this time. . ."

From "Alight Trio" by Betsy Popp

"Listen, Listen" by THE MERRY-GO-ROUND:
Thanks to an anonymous response to my previous post on Emitt Rhodes, I now have a few extra Rhodes song in my digital collection, including a handful of songs from Rhodes pre-solo career band, The Merry-Go-Round. "Listen, Listen" is one of those new (to me) songs, and it's a rocking nugget of California pop via filtered through the Beatles (Rhodes never denied his love for the Beatles in interviews).

"I Am Not Willing" by MOBY GRAPE
"Little Hands" by ALEXANDER "SKIP" SPENCE
"I Am Not Willing" by WILCO:
Alexander "Skip" Spence was the original drummer for Jefferson Airplane and one of the founding members and guitarists in Moby Grape. Spence DOES NOT, however, play on the first song in this trio of tunes, "I Am Not Willing." The reason Spence was not in the band by the time they recorded "I Am Not Willing?" Skip, during the sessions for Grape's second album Wow, smashed through one of his bandmate's hotel doors while freaking out on acid. Spence was committed to New York's Bellevue Hospital, the beginning of a long and tragic life ruined by mental illness. The story goes that Spence, upon being released from Bellevue, drove a motorcycle (wearing only his pajamas) to Nashville and recorded the insane and brilliant Oar. "Little Hands" is the first, and probably least weird, song on that record. Spence died from lung cander in 1999, after years of mental and physical illness.

Wilco's cover of "I Am Not Willing" appeared as a b-side on "Box Full of Letters," their 1995 debut single.

"The Mental Traveler" by DAVID AXELROD:
I've written about Axelrod previously, so I'll spare you the explanation this time around. This comes from the soundtrack to Guy Ritchie's "Revolver," a 1995 film I didn't even know existed, and I was a big fan of Lock, Stock and Snatch! That Madonna movie he made, however, is an irredeemable turd.

"Re-Arrange"
"Linus & Lucy" by BUILT TO SPILL:
Built to Spill just announced the somewhat random release of two new songs to online retailers (the tracks are also to be released as a 12" vinyl single), "They Got Away" and a cover of the Gladiators "Re-Arrange." While the former sees the band in a spacey reggae mode, their cover of "Re-Arrange" turns the reggae song into a Built to Spill song, so much so that if you weren't aware it was a cover, you'd swear it was their own. The Gladiators recorded one of my favorite reggae songs of all time, "Soul Rebel." I'll save that one for another day. I will, however, include Built to Spill's live cover of one of the most classic themes from the animated Charlie Brown features, "Linus & Lucy." I've posted this one before, right?

"I'm Glad for Your Sake (But I'm Sorry for Mine)" by DOUG SAHM AND THE SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET:
Ever have one of those moments where you realize you're standing as an observer at the wedding of a woman/man you were once in love with? Where you can't pay attention to the ceremony because you're about to explode inside? Where you watch that man/woman dance with one of the cute young nephews of the groom, and you can't bear to watch so you walk away as you think, "That should have been MY nephew she was dancing with? That was supposed to be MY dad giving the tipsy, embarassing-but-funny toast."

Maybe it was just me. Anyway, if you ever find yourself in that situation (here's a word of advice: get a pack of ciggs, and plan on spending most of the wedding choking down that smoke), I challenge you not to conjure in your mind Doug Sahm's brutally on-the-nose "I'm Glad for Your Sake (But I'm Sorry for Mine)." Also, pray for an open bar.

"M62 Song" (Four Tet Remix) by DOVES/FOUR TET:
Radically different from the original. Gotta respect that.

"Be thankful every day for everything, and pray. . ."

"Seven Curses" by BOB DYLAN:
One of the darkest, most powerful Dylan songs I've ever discovered was included in the 3 CD box set The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3, the same release from which I previously cribbed "I'll Keep it With Mine." "Seven Curses" tells the story of a man named Old Reilly who goes to jail for stealing a horse and is sentenced to hang. Reilly's daughter hears news of her father and comes bearing riches to free him, but the judge gives her only one option: you must sleep with me to free your dad. The way Dylan describes the tragedy of the pay-off of the judge's sexual bribe without actually describing the act itself is chilling: "The gallows shadows shook the evening / In the night, a hound dog bayed / In the night, the grounds was groanin' / In the night the price was paid." I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say that "Seven Curses" is as old-school-Country and cold blooded as it gets.

"Sea Ghost" by THE UNICORNS:
Always a mix-tape favorite.

"Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" (live)
"Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" by ROBERT POLLARD:
The sad reality that Guided by Voices are no more shouldn't have an effect on recognizing the continuing greatness of frontman Robert Pollard. I've recently been loving the live version of "Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" (I'm also including the album version, from Pollard's From a Compound Eye double LP). I thought I'd read somewhere that Pollard was releasing a double CD "Best of" from his Fading Captain series of albums, EPs and ephemera. Since I've fallen behind on trying to keep up with the prolific Pollard, this will be a nice way of trimming down his expansive catalogue to the most listenable bits.

"Problem Child" by THE DAMNED:
Every six months, I have a new favorite Damned song. This one just recently beat out the old favorite, "New Rose."


"Teen Age Riot" by DAVID KITT
"Teen Age Riot"
"Teen Age Riot" (live, 2003)
"Theresa's Sound World" by SONIC YOUTH:
While Goo was the first Sonic Youth album I ever heard, Daydream Nation was the first Sonic Youth album I ever owned. For no other reason than that the record store was out of stock in the former, so I went with the remaining album I thought had the best cover art and song titles. "Eric's Trip," "Total Trash," and the best one of all, "Teen Age Riot." Since I was 14 years old, just back from a YMCA summer camp where I'd discovered Goo, my CD buying dollar meant a lot to me. It took a long time, and probably a couple of miserable Omaha summer lawn mowings, to save that kind of money. I remember my thoughts at the exact moment on this song, the album opener, when that fast guitar finally kicks in at 1:22: "Worth the money."

David Kitt, a singer/songwriter guy who dabbles in a bit of electronica, brilliantly extracts the melody of this song and shows any doubters the clever pop sensibilities hidden in some of Sonic Youth's more structured songs. I apologize for the static-y bits that pop up toward this song's end. If you find it really frustrating, I suggest actually seeking out and buying the track or album from a store near you.

As for "Theresa's Sound World," I guess the only reason I'm including it in tonight's playlist is that it kicks fucking ass.


"Kerze" by Gerhard Richter