The Mekons — Rosanne
(from the LP It Falleth Like the Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story, CND Records 1982)
In print on CD for about 45 seconds in the mid-’90s, It Falleth Like The Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story is the reason why it took me forever to get into the Mekons. I heard a few of their songs on my local college radio station during their countryish period — “The Trimdon Grange Explosion,” “Chop That Child In Half,” their version of “Lost Highway” — and was intrigued enough to go exploring at Ralph’s and at University Records, where I found this double LP set. Assuming it was a greatest hits (which seemed like a better introduction than just a regular album), I bought it — thereby decimating my record store budget for that week, because it might have cost as much as $19 — and spent the evening listening to it in the guest room that I had sneakily transformed into my private sanctuary, having moved my stereo, records, books and things into it bit by bit until my actual bedroom had nothing in it but my bed and my clothes. (Luckily, we didn’t have overnight guests that often.) Mostly, I was sitting on the floor with my eyes closed, listening intently to the stereo and thinking, “Okay, seriously, what the fuck?”
What I hadn’t known at the time was that far from being the best-of I had expected, It Falleth Like The Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story is a hodgepodge of unreleased tracks, rarities, radio sessions and demos covering the first era of the Mekons, punctuated by the band’s David Spencer drunkenly relating the story of the band’s first 1978-82 incarnation. A mixture of DIY punk, bizarre forays into synth pop, and finally “The Building,” the a cappella song that Greil Marcus later wrote about at some length in Lipstick Traces, this didn’t make a damn bit of sense to my teenage self. I sold it back to University Records when I was in college, which I’m still kicking myself over a bit. Even then, though, I kinda liked the song “Rosanne,” which is about as close as the album comes to a traditional post-punk tune.
Incidentally, one of my sisters is named Rozann. Like me, she despairs of anyone spelling her name correctly the first time out. Me, I’ve always made the habit of just giving my last name if the restaurant hostess or whoever asks for it, just because I know she’s probably going to spell it “Stuart,” and even know I’ll never see it, its existence bugs me.
I fully aware this is a really uncool stand but…honestly, I can mostly take or leave the Fleshtones. I don’t dislike them or anything, but I’ve never thought they were the saviors of garage rock that their most fervent fans claimed them to be. On the other hand, their 1983 single “Right Side of a Good Thing” is clearly just a goddamn masterpiece. Specifically, it’s the semi-feral falsetto in the chorus that makes it, as well as the judicious use of what I believe is an electric sitar. This was the first Fleshtones song I ever heard, and I’ve always been slightly disappointed that more of their stuff didn’t sound like this.
(from the EP Hello Amsterdam, Reprise Records 1995)
I’ve long suspected that either American Music Club themselves or someone at Reprise Records realized belatedly that 1994’s San Francisco wasn’t actually a very good album, because rather than release a basic CD-single for the single “Hello Amsterdam,” they released a full six-track, 22-minute EP that frankly beats almost everything on the album proper. (Mark Eitzel’s solo piano and vocal rendition of “On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever)” is particularly nice.) It’s tough to choose only one song, but I have to go with “The President’s Test For Physical Fitness” simply because it’s probably AMC’s funniest and meanest song. And they had more funny, mean songs than you might think: for a guy regularly thought of as a humorless, uptight prig, Eitzel has a great snarky sense of humor. See also “All Your Jeans Were Too Tight,” from the 1993 AIDS-benefit compilation No Alternative. I have no doubt that the lyrics of this song — in which Eitzel and guitarist Vudi run into a famous rock star on the decline and get a sanctimonious lecture from him — have their roots in real life. For some reason, I’m guessing Alice Cooper. The second verse, in which Eitzel audibly affects the symptoms of Coke Nose as he’s singing, is particularly dead-on and cruel. This EP was in all the better remainder bins within a year of its release, and I suspect you can still find copies on Amazon Marketplace for under a buck. Totally worth it: this is a great, underrated EP.
When Torch Song released their first album, Wish Thing, in late 1984, they seemed to me like the odd group out on IRS Records. It’s not that the London-based trio’s brand of moody synth-dance pop was out of fashion in general — this song reminds me hugely of Section 25, who were at the height of their cult popularity at the time — it’s just that IRS was the label of R.E.M. and the Go-Go’s and the Fleshtones and Wall of Voodoo and stuff like that. This wasn’t what they normally did. But label head Miles Copeland clearly had a thing for the trio, and especially their leader William Orbit: he even floated a completely baseless rumor that Torch Song had been tapped to produce Sting’s first solo record to promote that album. But aside for some club play for the two singles, this bit of percolating dream pop and the much more energetic “Prepare To Energize,” Wish Thing didn’t do much. Oddly, though, the band not only weren’t dropped, they released a newish album, Exhibit A, in 1987 in an effort to re-establish the group (by then slimmed down to a duo of Orbit and singer Laurie Mayer, saxophonist Grant Gilbert having left a couple years before); about half of Exhibit A consisted of the best songs from Wish Thing, slightly remixed. Still nothing. Orbit’s solo career took off among club-dance folks not long after that, however, and it was a decade later that he co-wrote and produced Madonna’s last really good song, “Ray of Light.” Which in a lot of ways is just “Don’t Look Now” sped up by about 25%.
I wasn’t born yet when MGM Records tried to create the “Bosstown Sound” out of whole cloth by signing a lot of fairly mediocre psych bands from Boston — okay, Orpheus had their moments — and pretending it was an organic scene. But I am fascinated by those occasional attempts to promote the “_________ Invasion” that have cropped up in the years since. One I remember fondly was a nearly year-long attempt by A&M Records to create buzz for the Australian new wave scene circa 1983. They even went so far as to establish an A&M sublabel, Oz, promoted with a bunch of ads in various music magazines and a heavily promoted budget compilation LP, the name of which escapes me at the moment, but I’m sure someone in the comments will remember it.
The albums they were pushing included Tim Finn’s first solo album, Escapade (a collaboration with ex-Rutle Ricky Fataar which I still think is probably his best solo record), the soundtrack to Gillian Armstrong’s movie Starstruck (which had some Swingers tracks on it), Split Enz’s Conflicting Emotions (which I then and now think is easily one of the band’s worst albums, although the single “Message To My Girl” is undeniably swell), the debut by Hunters and Collectors (which was really the odd album out), an album by a band called the Expression that I remember absolutely nothing about other than the band name, and Mental As Anything’s Creatures of Leisure. A year or so before, A&M had released Mental As Anything’s “first” album, If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too, which turned out to be a compilation boiling down the band’s first four years’ worth of releases, stretching all the way back to this track from their proper first album, 1979’s Get Wet. Mental As Anything were a band I always wanted to like much more than I did, but there was usually something about their music — usually the too-slick production — that put me off. I’ve always loved this one, though.
Oz Records didn’t last much past the dawn of 1984, I don’t think. I think the total commercial failure of Conflicting Emotions after the slow build of Split Enz’s US success over the course of the three prior albums caused the label to pull the plug.
I just heard a tease for tomorrow’s edition of The Bryant Park Project in which it was mentioned that Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville will be reissued later this month. Looking up more info, I saw a couple passing mentions that the album has been out of print for apparently quite some time, which kind of shocked me given how often it appears on various critics-faves lists. So too is its immediate follow-up, Whip-Smart, which is kind of a shame, because I’ve always thought this album was quite unfairly reviewed at the time. The hype over Exile had gotten so massive that a backlash was inevitable (a backlash that has never really stopped in some quarters, I’m afraid), but I think Whip-Smart is a much better record than its detractors claimed. (Its case was not helped at all, I admit, by the fact that the first single, “Supernova,” was one of the worst songs on the album.) In particular, its final track, “May Queen,” is one of my favorites in Phair’s entire canon, a brief and unexpectedly lovely bit of wounded-romantic wistfulness that puts paid to the shallow “Fuck and Run” persona that even a lot of Phair’s fans subscribed to. There’s one moment in particular, the transition into the first chorus, that has been my favorite single moment in Liz Phair’s entire catalogue ever since I first heard it.
Why, it’s been weeks — weeks! — since we engaged in unabashed Barbara Manning adulation here at Little Hits, so let that wrong be righted. Actually, this is just the last of a batch of singles I bought at Twisted Village in March. Prior to this single, Manning and Seymour Glass, a San Francisco scenester, zine editor and tape/noise musician, had released an album called Northern Exposure Will Be Right Back under the name Glands of External Secretion, but this somewhat more mainstream effort is a bit closer in effect to Manning’s regular material. In fact, Manning recut this song for the first SF Seals album, minus Glass’ trademark effects. I kinda like this version a bit more.
(from the compilation CD Human Music, Homestead Records 1988)
Honor Role was from Richmond, Virginia and while most of their stuff was more standard late-’80s hardcore, to my ears “Lives of the Saints No. 135 (Naked Wife)” — the flipside of a 1986 single — sounds more like an even more demented version of Atlanta dance-noise duo the Method Actors. Which is a good thing, far as I’m concerned. (Incidentally, this song is on a Merge Records compilation called Album, which came out in 1996 and I think is out of print but relatively easy to find used.)
As longtime LH readers know, I spent the majority of my teenage years living in and around Lubbock, Texas, which is probably the closest thing I have to a hometown considering that I lived in 12 different houses by the time I was old enough to drink. (My dad’s job required a lot of moving.) As annoying as living in Lubbock often was as a teenager, it has its merits, and I largely have good thoughts about the place now even though I’m also quite happy that I don’t live there anymore. I’ll tell you one thing, though, Lubbock has a lot of hometown pride. The most minor celebrity to have come from the city has pride of place in the city’s civic heart, and there’s certainly been a lot of great musicians to have come from Lubbock: Buddy, of course, but also the Flatlanders, Terry Allen and Natalie Maines. Funny thing, though: I was nearly in my 30s before I found out that the Legendary Stardust Cowboy was from Lubbock. Best known for two things, the 1968 gonzo freakout single “Paralyzed” and the fact that David Bowie cribbed his surname for his character Ziggy Stardust, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy is every bit as much an outsider Texas musician as Roky Erickson or Jandek, but without the self-important fanboys. Good ol’ Norman Carl Odam is just too silly for that crowd, the sort of singer who considers an appearance on Laugh-In a highlight of his career. This track is the flipside to his 1987 single “Standing In A Trashcan (Thinking of You),” and it’s about as close as the Ledge ever got to a straightforward pop song.
One of the good’uns died this week: Earle Hagen was largely unknown — hell, the Boston Globe didn’t even spell his name correctly in the headline of his obituary — but you know his music. Along with “The Fishin’ Hole,” the theme to The Andy Griffith Show, he wrote the themes to The Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl and many other classic TV themes, as well as a lovely bit of film-noir jazz called “Harlem Nocturne.”
