Author Archives: Alby

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Song of the Day 4/15: Cheap Trick, “Taxman, Mr. Thief”

Today’s the deadline for mailing their 2023 federal tax return for most people. If you live in Massachusetts or Maine you get a break because of the Patriot’s Day holiday, and if you live in a disaster area you get until June, because you have bigger problems.

“Taxman, Mr. Thief” appeared on Cheap Trick’s 1977 debut album, which featured a harder rock sound than the slicker power-pop approach the Rick Neilsen-led quartet developed later. This number was a straight-up homage to the Beatles’ “Taxman” – its chorus shout-out to “Mr. Heath” is a callback to a background vocal in the original. (Edward Heath, the leader of the UK’s Conservative Party when George Harrison wrote the song in 1966, wasn’t actually the one responsible for the 95% tax rate on the super-rich that brought each of the Fab Four to the brink of bankruptcy that year. That policy came from the Prime Minister, Labour leader Harold Wilson.)

The band, which remains active despite the departure of original drummer Bun E. Carlos, has kept the tune in its repertoire. They broke it out last month when they visited Daryl Hall last month for a Live From Daryl’s House session.

Song of the Day 4/14: The Byrds, “Eight Miles High”

In popular consciousness, “Eight Miles High” is a drug song. Radio stations certainly thought so when it was released in 1966 – many refused to play it, so it only reached No. 14 on the Hot 100. But it’s considered by many critics and historians to be the first psychedelic rock song.

The musical inspirations were the John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar tapes David Crosby played on the tour bus, but Gene Clark’s lyrics are mostly about the band’s flight to London for their 1965 tour of the UK, where they opened for the Rolling Stones (and were panned by the rabid British music press). Planes don’t fly quite that high, but eight scanned better than six or seven, and when talk of drugs and bans started their management strongly denied it – it’s about a trip to London! Years later Clark said that as an impressionistic poem, it was about a lot of things, and Crosby pointed out, “We were stoned when we wrote it.”

The obtuse lyrics, jazzy chords and buzzy, droning guitars helped kick off the psychedelic rock craze that swept the music word for a couple of years, even after the Byrds switched to a country-rock sound. Here they are lip-synching the single on American Bandstand.

The version released by Columbia wasn’t the band’s first crack at recording the song. A month earlier they had recorded it at RCA’s studio, but Columbia refused to release it because the band hadn’t used their facility. Both Crosby and Roger McGuinn said they preferred the RCA version, which was finally released in 1987.

Robyn Hitchcock covered it in the ’90s, and with his clear reading of the lyrics it’s pretty obvious the trip to London is the main subject, whatever side trips were taken along the way.

Song of the Day 4/13: Paula Cole, “I Don’t Want to Wait”

Yet another Trump stunt to delay his hush-money trial got rejected yesterday, so it’s almost certain to start Monday. Almost certain. The title of this song sums up my feelings on the matter.

Paula Cole burned briefly but brightly in 1997, when two singles from “This Fire,” her self-produced second album, scaled the Billboard charts. “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” reached No. 8 and was nominated for three Grammy Awards. Its follow-up, “I Don’t Want to Wait,” stalled at No. 11 but stayed on the Hot 100 for over a year, boosted when the teen TV soap “Dawson’s Creek” used it as its theme song. Cole said she wrote it about her grandparents, who lived down the street when she was a girl. “When you grow up with your grandparents you can really see the generations and the energy of the parenting,” she said. “I was looking at it and thinking, ‘I don’t want to make some of these mistakes. I really hope I don’t’.”

Her follow-up album was a stylistic departure but a commercial flop, and she took nearly a decade off to raise a daughter. She returned to performing on a much smaller scale and has released several albums independently. She’s touring this summer behind her latest LP, “Lo.” This is the single she released from it late last year, an homage to her musical mentor, Mark Hutchins, who introduced her to the bands in the title.

DL Open Thread Saturday, April 13, 2024

People who thought Ron DeSantis might stop acting like a tinhorn dictator after his presidential-race embarrassment can abandon that hope. He signed a bill that turns police oversight boards over to the police.

In what’s now a running gag, Truth Social’s stock price fell again. It would make a better reality show than the one that got Trump a star in a Hollywood sidewalk. BTW, Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, the guy who you’ve read has a “position” in the company, doesn’t much care what direction the stock goes in – he makes money either way, unless it goes bankrupt. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joe DiStefano explains how: Basically, he buys a bunch of stock and shorts it at the same time, making a profit when he sells to people buying in either direction.

There’s word that Biden “is considering”dropping charges against Julian Assange. Talk, especially from Biden, is cheap. Is this a feeler for a sop to the left angry about genocide in Palestine?

A lot of people think the Russians are paying lawmakers and influencers to push Putin’s agenda in Ukraine. As this ex-CIA author notes, it’s happening in Europe, and it seems the likeliest explanation for the anti-Ukraine fervor in some quarters of Congress.

Those gift cards you see hanging in racks at the grocery store and other retailers have become targets for fraudsters.

Card draining is when criminals remove gift cards from a store display, open them in a separate location, and either record the card numbers and PINs or replace them with a new barcode. The crooks then repair the packaging, return to a store and place the cards back on a rack. When a customer unwittingly selects and loads money onto a tampered card, the criminal is able to access the card online and steal the balance.

The feds are investigating, and Pro Publica reports that Chinese organized crime appears to be behind it.

Speaking of organized crime, Leonard Leo, the Man Who Sold the Courts, is defying a Senate subpoena, demonstrating the consistency of his position: He wants the courts he stacked to be the supreme rulers of the land. He doesn’t have to listen to the elected representatives of the people. As Republicans like to remind us, this isn’t a democracy.

The floor’s yours.

Song of the Day 4/12: Dada, “Dizz Knee Land”

The worst thing about this timeline is that it makes me root for people and institutions I hate. The FBI and CIA, for instance. I hate them, but I hate Trump more, so I end up rooting for the FBI and CIA. I resent that, and it’s far from the only example – Liz Cheney, anyone?

That’s why I was glad to hear that Disney settled its legal dispute with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new oversight board for the theme park’s self-government. I hate Disney, but I hate DeSantis more, so I had to reluctantly root for the Mouse House. Now that they’re not fighting I can go back to hating them both.

Southern California band Dada scored a No. 5 hit on the Modern Rock chart with the first single from its 1992 debut album – the line “I just flipped off President George” is about the first George Bush, not his feckless son. Though the refrain plays off the then-current Disney ad campaign that paid sports stars who just won a championship to say “I’m going to Disneyland!” bassist Joie Calio, who wrote most of the song, said, “The song isn’t about Disneyland at all.”

It has more to do with the craziness of the juxtaposition of the state of your every day. Just looking around you. You could see a guy’s head being chopped off and, you know, a leg flying away and someone embracing someone in a lovely kiss and then flip the channel and then a chainsaw goes buzzing through, you know, some butter and it accidentally cuts your mom’s head off and then you flip again and they’re making love and then you flip again and it’s [Joe] Montana going ‘I’m going to Disneyland.’

The band is still active, but they’ve never had another hit.

Song of the Day 4/11: Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, “Where’s the Money?”

Turns out Donald Trump’s $175 million bond was posted by a company that isn’t licensed to do so, doesn’t have the capital required to back it up and doesn’t promise to pay up if Trump loses his appeal. That means that he’s once again running out of time to come up with someone else’s money.

Dan Hicks started playing guitar as a college student during the folk music revival of the late ’50s and early ’60s, then joined the San Francisco psychedelic band the Charlatans as their drummer. By the time he recorded his first album, “Original Recordings,” in 1969, he was back on guitar playing what he came to call “folk swing,” based on the popular music of the ’20s to ’40s.

He was most familiar to the broader public through his humorous tunes, like “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?” After his 1973 LP “Last Train to Hicksville” he broke up his band and went away, seldom recording or appearing until re-emerging in the ’90s. He died in 2016.

This was the title track to his second LP, 1971’s “Where’s the Money?”

Song of the Day 4/10: Huey Lewis and the News, “Back in Time”

In its third installment the “Back to the Future” film series sent Marty McFly back to the Old West. Arizona’s Supreme Court did the same thing to Arizona’s womenfolk yesterday.

You might recall that the original film, released in 1985, featured a couple of songs by Huey Lewis and the News, the Hootie and the Blowfish of their day. When the film’s producers approached Lewis about writing songs for the soundtrack, he said he had no idea how. They said they’d take anything, so he gave them “The Power of Love,” which has nothing to do with the movie, but then penned “Back in Time,” which uses lots of elements from the plot. “The Power of Love” was a Billboard No. 1 single. “Back in Time,” which ran during the closing credits, wasn’t released as a single but reached No. 3 on the airplay-based Modern Rock chart.

For those who don’t keep abreast of theater, “Back to the Future” is now a Broadway musical, after earning surprisingly good reviews in its run in London’s West End. The show’s music is by Alan Silvestri, who wrote the scores for the films, and hitmaker Glen Ballard, but it also includes the two songs by Lewis. As it did for the original film, “Back in Time” closes the show. Here it is sung by Olly Dobson, who created the role of Marty McFly on the West End.

DL Open Thread Wednesday, April 10, 2024

The day after Trump pretended he’d let the states make their own decisions about abortion, the Arizona Supreme Court gave away the game by reinstating an 1864 ban on the procedure, notable because Arizona wasn’t even a state back then. The result: Republicans rushed to pretend they had nothing to do with it. The White House reminded everyone otherwise.

Those who put stock in polling have been worried for months about Biden’s weak numbers dating back to his withdrawal from Afghanistan. They should have less to worry about recently, because he’s been gaining ground on Trump in all of them. They can now start worrying that he’s not far enough ahead to overcome Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College.

The continuing slide of the still-vastly-overvalued Truth Social stock has caused Bloomberg to dump Trump from its running list of billionaires. Bloomberg updates this list daily, which is an indictment of our society all by itself.

Inflation at the grocery store has been out of control. Biden gets blamed, but the real culprit is consolidation towards monopoly all along the food chain, from producers to retailers. Easier to blame Biden, though.

Trying to hold corporations accountable is an uphill battle. Remember when the only Palestine in the headlines was East Palestine, Ohio, the site of last year’s train derailment and toxic chemical spill? The negligent railroad, Norfolk Southern, reached an agreement in principle to pay $600 million to settle lawsuits. The corporation did not, however, admit to any liability. Never forget that corporations have more rights than you do.

The floor’s yours.

Song of the Day 4/9: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain’t Got No Home”

You don’t have to check, puck. Singer and pianist Clarence “Frogman” Henry died Sunday in his native New Orleans, age 87. His ability to sing in a frog’s croak, a skill he said he developed to scare the girls at school, gave him both his nickname and his most enduring hit.

Henry was just 18 and playing in saxophonist Eddie Smith’s band when he improvised what became “Ain’t Got a Home” in a New Orleans club in the wee hours, making up the words as he went along. The crowd loved it when he started croaking, and a novelty hit was born, though it wasn’t recorded and released until late 1956. It became a No. 3 R&B hit and reached No. 20 on the Hot 100, giving Henry a place among New Orleans’ contingent of early rock ‘n’ rollers. The style remained popular through the mid-’60s, enough so that Henry was an opening act on the Beatles’ 1964 American tour.

“Ain’t Got No Home” wasn’t Henry’s biggest hit. He reached No. 4 in 1961 with his cover of “I Don’t Know Why (But I Do).”

Henry’s recording career ended as the New Orleans sound fell out of favor, but he remained active in clubs in and around the city until his death. He was scheduled to play the New Orleans Jazz Festival next month.

DL Open Thread Tuesday, April 9, 2024

The news, apparently spooked by yesterday’s eclipse, went into hiding, so the media, as always, fell back on Trump. After a big buildup teasing his position on abortion – can you name another candidate who, eight years after entering the White House, still hadn’t formulated one? – only to chicken out and say the decision should rest with the states. Maybe that’s why his makeup is that weird orange color – the foundation is a wide yellow streak.

Another Trump story with legs: the continuing decline of his Truth Social scamstock, which keeps shedding value the way Donnie Two Scoops is shedding pounds on his new Ozempic diet.

Even grafted apples fall close to the tree, as the New York Times found when it stopped concern-trolling trans people long enough to look into Jared Kushner’s shady business dealings with foreigners. It’s not as if it hasn’t been going on for years, NYT. Nice of you to finally notice.

The floor’s yours.

Song of the Day 4/8: Pink Floyd, “Eclipse”

C’mon, what else would you expect? The final track from the LP that has spent more than 1,000 weeks on the Billboard album chart, with sales of more than 45 million. For those who’ve never used the record as an alternate soundtrack to “The Wizard of Oz,” the heartbeat fade-out plays just as the Tin Man is telling Dorothy and the Scarecrow that he doesn’t have a heart.

Don’t know if this afternoon’s weather will cooperate – with luck “partly cloudy” means the clouds will part – but the show starts at 2:08 p.m. and lasts until 4:25, with peak coverage of the sun’s disc at about 3:20. You young-‘uns might be around when the state gets to witness a total eclipse, in 2079.

DL Open Thread Monday, April 8, 2024

Klaatu barada nikto, motherfuckers. Welcome to the Day the News Stood Still. Whatever else is happening in the country has taken a back seat to this afternoon’s total eclipse. In Delaware, 80-90% of the sun’s disc will be obscured, matching the amount of other news being overlooked because of the event.

One story squeaked through: The guy who set a fire at the entrance to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Burlington, Vt., office was arrested and charged after being identified through security footage. I’m just surprised he didn’t livestream it himself.

The rest of the world is more interested in Israel’s withdrawal of most of its troops from southern Gaza as another round of cease-fire talks is set to begin in Egypt. Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue his genociding regardless.

You might not believe this, but a Daily Beast analysis of that $175 million “bond” Trump got appears to be bogus, because it doesn’t guarantee anything. OTOH, maybe you will believe it.

The floor’s yours.

Song of the Day 4/7: Len, “Steal My Sunshine”

Showing you can make up doomsday theories about anything, TikTokers and other assorted nuts – looking at you, Alex Jones – have concocted a witches’ brew of crackpot claims about “elites” conducting “Masonic rituals” when the sun disappears. Oooh, sounds scary, kids!

Len is a Canadian brother and sister who record with various guest artists. They scored their only hit in 1999, when this became the song of the summer, thanks in part to its appearance on the soundtrack for “Go,” a Tarantino-style action-comedy that was well-reviewed at the time. The song reached No. 9 on the Hot 100, and though Len has stayed active ever since, they’ve never had anything close to another hit.