Alaska Employment Law

What we used to call popular music has splintered into so many fragmented markets that it’s easy for good bands to fail, and for you and me to miss good music.  There’s no Top 40 radio anymore, Virginia.  So in the spirit of calling out some good music to people with open (or at least not convex) minds – music you are likely to have missed if you listen to this kind of music – I want to mention a few good things.

        The Silver Brazilians.  If you listen to Little Steven’s Underground Garage (Channel 59 on XM Radio), the latest “coolest song in the world” is “Kate Winslet” by The Silver Brazilians.  A rockin’ little number I want my jockey to play, “Kate Winslet” sounds amazingly like John Lennon singing “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” so much so that Larry Williams, if he is alive, should probably sue for royalties.  (Larry ripped off Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” so maybe no one in rock and roll has clean hands.)  The punch line here is that the singer of the Brazilians’ song favors Kate’s look when she is more, not less, Rubenesque.

        Trashy Garage Rock.  Listening to The Brazilians reminded me how much I like cheesy garage and psychedelic rock from any era, but particularly the 60s.  There are numerous collections of this stuff, some better than others.  Most contain bands you never heard of, and most of them really rock.  I commend to you The Trash Box (2004), 5 CDs that partially compile the Pebbles series of garage rock releases.  Last year, Sundazed Records released the 2-CD 2131 South Michigan Avenue: ’60s Garage & Psychedelia from U.S.A. and Destination Records, a play on 2121 South Michigan Avenue, the home of R&B giant Chess Records (Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, etc.).  The 2131 set features Chicago bands and is great.  For a nastier, funkier vibe, get Back From the Grave, Volumes 1 and 2, featuring a wider sampling of garage rock that is fun and a bit more in your face.  Unlike Sundazed, Crypt Records, the people who put together BFTG, simply converted scratchy old 45 rpms to disc, and frankly, I love the awful sound.  It’s just like it should be.

        Trashy Garage/Psychedelic Rock.  In the category, “greatest Texas blues-psychedelic bands of the 60s,” we find The 13th Floor Elevators and their lead singer Roky Erickson, whose “You’re Gonna Miss Me” is widely anthologized.  Last spring their label, International Artists Records, released an amazing 10-CD box set of the Elevators, complete with massive 4-color book on the band and its recording sessions.  Only 4000 copies of Sign of the 3-Eyed Men were produced, of which I have #3356 or so, and it’s completely sold out.  The Elevators were hugely influential despite (or maybe because of) the huge quantities of LSD they were supposed to have consumed.  I understand that the individual discs on this box will be released separately, so if you are intellectually curious, look for them.

        Tegan & Sara.  I am definitely not part of their target demographic, but ever since Little Steven put “Walking with A Ghost” by Tegan & Sara on one his compilation albums (the White Stripes covered “Ghost” as well, though the original is way better), I have been a huge fan of these twin girls from Canada.  Their best albums are Jealousy, The Con (featuring “Back In Your Head,” a song you can’t get out of your head) and the new one, Sainthood.  Infectious.  The singers’ voices can take a little getting used to, and I recommend making the effort.

        Little Axe.  And finally, one of my favorites is a musician who calls himself Little Axe.  Born in Ohio as Bernard Alexander in 1949, the musician changed his name to Skip McDonald somewhere along the way, and in the 70s was in the house band for Sugarhill Records, backing Grandmaster Flash (“The Message” and “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”) at the dawn of the age of rap.  (If you don’t know the original Grandmaster Flash sides, or hip-hop inventor Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock,” you have not completed your liberal arts education.)  McDonald has gone on to a career of his own, calling himself Little Axe and playing most of the instruments on The Wolf That House Built, a fabulous record that is part house, part dub, part blues – I am sure the record stores had no idea where to put this guy’s stuff so that people could find it.  But it’s great, especially “Never Turn Back, Parts 1 and 2.”  Incidentally, the Wolf in the title is Howlin’, as in Chester Burnett.