The Graham Gouldman Thing

In the mid-1960s Graham Gouldman was a one-man Goffin/King or Boyce & Hart. The British musician and songwriter wrote perfect pop songs that were totally of their time, and which were popularized by other, better-known acts. Gouldman penned the two best songs The Hollies ever recorded (“Bus Stop” and “Look Through Any Window”) two of the better tracks done by The Yardbirds (“For Your Love” and “Heart Full of Soul”) and also provided material for Herman’s Hermits, P.J. Proby, Wayne Fontana . . .

In ’68 Gouldman – who had previously been part of two different bands, both of them flops – decided it was time to put his own versions of some of his songs on record. John Paul Jones (Francoise Hardy’s playmate, and later bassist of Led Zeppelin) was brought on board as arranger and co-producer. Some top-of-the-line sessions musicians took up instruments. And Gouldman sat down and cobbled together a workbook of songs that had been hits for other artists, as well as some new and previously unrecorded material.

What came out is a record that should be generally regarded as a Mod-era classic, right alongside The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, The Kinks’ Face to Face, and early recordings by The Who, as well as the afore-mentioned Hollies and Yardbirds. But the album wasn’t even released in Gouldman’s native land, and only managed to hit the lower reaches of the Billboard Top 100 in the U.S.

The artist/band Gouldman most sounds like on this record is Emitt Rhodes and The Merry-Go-Round. Gouldman the vocalist has a lisp, and he sings in that almost girlish way that Rhodes does. The arrangements and the production of the material on The G.G. Thing are bubblegumy poppy, a la The Merry-Go-Round – that kind of bubblegum where Pure Pop meets Mod Cool.

Gouldman later become a member of The Mindbenders, before the 70s saw him and another Mindbender form 10CC. Later into the 70s he did the soundtrack to the Farrah Fawcett movie, Sunburn.

In 2004 BMG reissued The Graham Gouldman Thing, and anybody who’s into 60’s Mod pop should thank them. It is one of the best records of its kind.

Leftovers

Which, I guess, is what you’d call things larger than crumbs…

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First, of course, there’s the story of the Burden of History Santas. Now that these despicable objects have all been destroyed, it’s safe to direct you to the Spiegel Online story about them. Make sure you enlarge the photo there so you can see the offending gesture.

This paranoia about the “Hitler salute” is omnipresent. I was on the upper level of a double-decker bus one time when a bunch of high-school boys thundered up the stairs and took some seats. They had just left a group of friends outside, and as the bus pulled away, one of the kids nudged another one and said “Hey, he’s waving at you.” The second kid raised his arm to wave, and suddenly blushed bright red as his friend slapped his arm down.

From this cautionary Christmas tale, I’d assume that pointing at the Star of Bethlehem on the part of shepherds or Magi isn’t depicted in German Christmas ornaments. I’ll be on the lookout when I make my customary tour of the Christmas markets some weekend in the near future. Can’t be too safe!

***

While lamenting the disappearance of things I like here, it’s, um, fair and balanced to point out the disappearance of things I’ve always hated, and on a recent walk to Alexanderplatz, I noted that the pedestrian subway, a large, DDR-era tiled collection of underground tunnels connecting various parts of Alex, had been paved over. True, it was the best way to get out of the rain, and a huge gallery for graffiti artists, but it was also the realm of the worst street musician ever, a flutist with one of those mephistophelean beards who played over orchestral tracks on a boom-box. I don’t think I have ever heard a musician play with less feeling, not to mention that his cassette seemed to contain only three tunes, which, excepting that Brandenburg Concerto movement, I’ve utterly forgotten.

Street musicians here have to be licensed, and I’ve been told that the licenses, which are issued at some preposterous hour of the morning like 6:30, are controlled by the Russian mob, which sends a few guys down to pick them all up and then doles them out to musicians, mostly Russian, who agree to their terms. One of those terms, apparently, is learning scams: some friends of mine once had a restaurant, and a friendly, funny guitarist would show up from time to time to entertain. Then he’d take all his small change and ask for a beer and the favor of converting his handfuls of coins into larger currency. Oddly, the restaurant kept coming up short at the cash register at 3 am, when it closed, and finally my friends made the connection and banned him. The police later confirmed that this was a very common scam with these musicians.

Of course, the other thing about pedestrian subways, common around the world as far as I can tell, is that they serve as late night urinals for the terminally inebriated, and on a warm summer day the one at Alex exuded a strong odor unless the cleaning crews, who also worked on the graffiti, had made their monthly appearance. The only positive aspect of this I can think of is that the flutist had to inhale the miasma in gasps as he thundered through the goddam Brandenburg.

Now, access to Alex is via surface, which means you have to stand in the rain waiting for the light to change. A small price to pay, given everything.

***

Thanks to Brent for this (translated) article from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, confirming what the local tabloid headlines have been screaming all week: THE HAUPTBAHNHOF MUST BE COMPLETELY REBUILT! Not true, of course, as you’ll read, but within the story is confirmation of something I’ve been saying here (and to anyone who’ll listen) about the attitude of Germany’s former monopolies (Deutsche Post, Deutsche Telekom, and, here, Deutsche Bahn) towards the public at large.

What the article doesn’t mention specifically is that the platform-length issue isn’t just a matter of esthetics. The east-west trains board outdoors, on the top level, and one of the “savings” DB instituted as they revised the architect’s original plans was to shorten not the platform, but the roof covering that platform. In thus saving a bit of money, they forgot that the high-speed ICE trains that pull into Berlin are really long, because they often split in two at a later destination. Several cars of these trains (and, thus, the passengers waiting to board) are thus exposed to the elements because the roof isn’t long enough, and the biggest irony is that these very cars are usually the first class ones, so you’ve just paid a premium to stand in the rain waiting to board. It’s true that the ticket envelopes and route-guides inside the trains often have ads for cold remedies, but this is a rather cruel way of drumming up business for them, I think.

I also wonder if the vaulted ceilings that may be part of the rebuilding, if it happens, will make the lower levels of the station any lighter. For all its glass and high-tech appurtenances, the Hauptbahnhof is one of the gloomiest places I’ve ever been in, a shopping mall in a cave.

It’s also worth noting the prose style of the article, which I think is accurately translated. This is what readers of Germany’s “better” papers (and this one is considered the best) have to slog through in order to get their information. No wonder so many people read the tabloids.

Female Bunch/Alley Tramp

Another passion of mine, besides music, is Exploitation cinema from the 60s and 70s. Films that should have been seen at the drive-in, but you’ll take watching them at home on VHS or DVD, because that’s the only way you can see them now. The worse the acting, the thinner the plot, the tackier the set pieces, the better. My latest great find in this realm is an odd and highly enjoyable film from 1969 called The Female Bunch. If Russ Meyer and Sergio Leone had ever collaborated on a movie, this is what might have come from such an ungodly marriage. It’s warped Spaghetti Western meets Warped Sexploitation as a band of pissed-off, man-hating honeys set up a commune on a ranch in New Mexico. There, they drink, do drugs, brawl, and maim or kill any many unlucky enough to wander onto the ranch or look at them the wrong way. A young Russ Tamblyn and a not-so-young Lon Chaney are among the hapless victims. There is a theme song that is absolutely cool and which sounds like the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! theme, if it had been written by Ennio Morricone. I got my DVD copy of this film from an independent seller on Amazon Marketplace. The picture quality is not the best ever, but the film is perfectly watchable.

Prior to that, my most recent trash movie happening was when I bought Something Weird Video’s twin bill of Alley Tramp and Over 18 and Ready. The second feature is kinda cool in its own way, but the real rave-ability of this DVD is all about Alley Tramp. This is what B-movies can and should be. A teenage girl with an annoying Midwestern accent, who catches both of her parents cheating on each other, decides she’s going to join in on the fun. The scene where her parents, who now know that she is fooling around with a distant cousin, confront her about skipping school and generally carrying on in a shameful way, will have you giggling hysterically and doing multiple playbacks. But maybe the coolest part of this movie is the music. In the opening scene, the bad girl walks into her house after a day at school, pops on a record on her parents’ stereo console, and what comes out, and what she does a dramatic dance to, is some kind of groovy, reverb-heavy instrumental that sounds like a cross between The Velvet Undergound and the backing track to a song by The Association. Airy yet rocking.

I’ve been amused this week by a conservabot’s comm…

I’ve been amused this week by a conservabot’s comments on The House Next Door about his perceptions on The Wire’s political leanings. David Simon himself steps in:

Did someone actually describe me as a “self-confessed” liberal? Self-confessed?

Since when did liberalism become something that requires confession? After the last six disastrous years, I would think that to have your political allegiances on the other end of the spectrum might be cause for some angst, shame and reflection. But even harboring such sentiment, I would not be so insulting as to call anyone a self-confessed conservative.

I won’t go into a long political diatribe about the content olf that particular email, its willful ignorance of the profound economic, social and political limitations at work in the West Baltimores of the world, places crippled by decades of deindustrialization, profound social deprivation, political marginalization at the hands of gerrymandering, racialist political parties, a prohibition-induced drug economy that has become the only meaningful economic engine and naturalized unemployment rates at over 50 percent for adult black males — including those who do buy into the system and make “choices” of a kind that would not not bring the judgment of trickle-down, up-from-the-bootstraps, i-know-the-game-isn’t-rigged-because-I-did-so-well-coming-from-the-suburb-I-came-from-motherfuckers down on their already burdened selves. I am sure there are plenty of people who want to debate whether all the characters in The Wire made all of the right personal choices, will find that they did not — Randy for example should have never taken that five-spot to deliver a message to Lex; damn his fourteen-year-old ass to hell — and will find a new way to calculate the degree of personal blame without regard to the two vastly different Americas that we have built for generations now. And I’m sure others will excuse all personal foible by citing political, social and economic conditions — something that The Wire has also resisted doing with its characters. The two sides can have at each other and argue to their hearts’ content. I am indifferent to the nature-versus-nurture pissing match. It doesn’t matter to people on the ground, anymore. It doesn’t matter to a boy in West Baltimore looking to a future that isn’t there. It is the stuff of lame ideologues, each trying to shape facts to fit story. Have at it.

But the next time anyone suggests that I have “confessed” to my political beliefs, they have an invitation to kiss my ass. I am on some issues conservative, on others middling, and on many matters way left of liberal. In Europe, I might be called a social democrat, maybe a green, or, depending on the country, a labourite.

In these United States, I am someone who has spent enough careful time in the other, marginalized America to be wholly contemptuous of anyone who equates raw, unencumbered capitalism — absent any other social or political framework — as even a poor excuse for how to run a country and take care of its people.

Self-confessed. Like I’m guilty of anything other than speaking my mind. Fuck you, asshole.

David Simon
Baltimore, Md.

Lewis Taylor Re-ducks

Those of you with only short-term memory faculties working will note my last blog was about a genius psychedelic neo-soul one-man-band type by the name of Lewis Taylor.

Well, that blog immediately started some things in motion as far as gathering info on this eccentric artist. Within one day after publishing the blog here I heard from the owners of Hacktone Records concerning what I had written regarding them and their artist.

First off, it seems the kind but obviously jealous folks at Shout! Factory had lied to me regarding the status of the Hacktone label. It is, in fact, NOT defunct but has simply changed distributors and has chosen not to work with the fine, fibbing folks at Shout! Factory any more.

Secondly, they report Lewis Taylor has recovered from the nodes on his vocal cords and continues to work on new music for eventual release. While it is too late to promote the US release of the album Stoned (which is four years old anyway), it does mean new material will be released eventually from Taylor.

The label also informed me that, in the meantime, another Lewis Taylor album will be released in early 2007. Titled The Lost Album, it is about a decade old, and was recorded between Taylor’s first and second albums on Island but has never been released.

Seems that Taylor’s disgust at Island Records for not knowing how to promote him lead Taylor to go into the studio and record an album totally removed from the rich, swirling soul music of his first Island record. Instead of sweet soul, Taylor recorded some bristling rock music modeled more after Fleetwood Mac than Al Green. After laying the tracks down and working all of the anger out of his system, Taylor decided to shelve the tracks and instead went back to preparing for another Island album full of his trademark psychedelic soul music.

Now that he is long removed from his Island experience, Taylor has been slowly releasing these tracks. First as a freebie passed out at his gigs and then for sale strictly at his website. Now, the fellas at Hacktone are releasing the record to the world. Again, it seems to be a one-man-band affair and promises a new look at a Taylor so few have heard regardless.

Though newer music would be better than another old album, I am happy to be getting anything at all from this reclusive artist. Hacktone reports that Lewis just hates to tour so whatever albums we get are all we are going to get from Taylor so if we want to experience his genius, we have to take what he and his label give us.

So I will. And I will be happy about it.

Getting to hear the genius will be enough.

When the album comes out, expect a review here. Please pick it up regardless, as it will no doubt blow your mind like Stoned did to me.

The Music Nerd knows………..