Revolution on a Stick Welcome Guest | Login or Register

Courtesy of cnn.com

• Beyonce does interview with bleeding feet
• Newest Obama ‘loves to chew on feet’

1. Patsy Cline, “Sweet Dreams (Of You).” We start it off this week very sad and very weepy. If you can’t feel the heartbreak spilling out of the speakers when this tune comes on, you may simply not have a heart to begin with.
2. Strangeloves, “I Want Candy.” And now for something completely different. No heartbreak here. A big, bouncy Bo-Diddley beat and a heady dose of young lust.
3. Tom Lehrer, “A Christmas Carol.” Way out of season, of course. But such is the randomness of shuffle play. And, as Lehrer notes in his lead-in, to get a Christmas song on the radio in a timely fashion, one has to start early. Very early. And given the expanding Christmas creep phenomenon, there may already be Christmas displays going up in shopping malls near you even as we speak.
4. Solomon Burke, “‘Til I Get It Right.” From Nashville, Burke’s 2006 followup to his surprising (and wonderful) 2002 “comeback” album, Don’t Give Up On Me. They’re both strong, though I like the latter more than the former.
5. Bonnie Raitt, “(Goin’) Wild for You.” Why did it take so long for Raitt to have a big hit anyway? It’s not like she suddenly got good with “Thing Called Love,” after all, or as if she adopted a new style that worked where the old one hadn’t . . . or even as if her “hit” style was simply something that the rest of the world finally caught up with late. Except in her case. Ah well.
6. Dominoes, “Sixty Minute Man.” My first MMM repeat track, I believe. And it’s certainly a fine one to revisit. All night long . . .
7. P.J. Harvey, “Highway 61 Revisited.” On my iPod courtesy of a “Girlfriend Is Better” mix of mine: songs originally sung by men, covered by women . . . who do them better. Or, at the very least (since some of the originals are pretty damned good), the covers still add something wondrous and different to the original. I think P.J.’s take on Dylan’s tune may fall into the latter category. I love them both. But, on any given day, I’d probably reach to play hers before his.
8. Muddy Waters, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’.” Another track from the aforementioned “First Rock ‘n’ Roll Record” discs. And a much better candidate for the honor than the Arthur Shibley track. (And, yes, for musical historians keeping score at home, “Sixty Minute Man” is on that list too.)
9. Tampa Red, “What’s That Taste Like Gravy?” Ahem. Very old, very saucy blues. In multiple senses of the word. And a rare dirty blues — at least among those sung by men — celebrating the glories of cunnilingus.
10. Gary “US” Bonds, “Quarter to Three.” Probably one of the muddiest mixes to ever hit the Top 40. But some damned fine early ’60s dance party music. And a major inspiration for the E Street Band’s sound a decade and a half later.

1. Amos Milburn, “House Party (Tonite).” A bit of old jump blues that means just what its title says.
2. Rick James & Ike Turner, “Love Gravy.” Leave it to South Park to put together two musical greats — and poster children for domestic abuse — and manage to make it funky.
3. Billy Bragg, “Mr. Love & Justice.” [solo version] I saw Bragg perform at a local musical institution last summer. It was just him and a guitar. No band. He was riveting, smart, and funny. One of the best shows I saw last year. He joked in the middle of a song that he wanted us all to be his Facebook friends . . . except it was no joke. He’s got a Facebook page. Go on. Look for yourself. Then friend him. He won’t bite.
4. Sponge, “Molly.” I can’t pretend to know much about this track, besides the fact that it’s a bouncy little ditty about that ’80s teen starlet, Molly Ringwald. I’d heard of Sponge, but never actually heard them till a friend put this track on a mix CD for me. It does make me smile broadly whenever it turns up in my daily shuffling, though.
5. Ella Fitzgerald, “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” And now for something completely different. Fitzgerald purrs and growls and swings and scats . . . and it’s all damned good.
6. Dinah Washington, “Teach Me Tonight.” Speaking of purring . . . and let’s just leave it at that for now. Mmm . . .
7. Pirates of the Caribbean, “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me).” Heh. This only semi-nautical bit of Disney-esque camp appears courtesy of a pirate-themed birthday mix I made for a friend a couple of years back. The same mix that has two different versions of “The Good Ship Venus” on it. Though this thankfully brief bit of piracy is a far cry from either of those gems.
8. Arthur Shibley, “Hot Rod Race.” There’s a fine little book called What Was the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Record that appears to now be out of print. Which is a damned shame. The book doesn’t resolve the question: it simply offers fifty candidates for the title. And though I don’t think the authors ever intended it to work out this way, those fifty songs happen to fit perfectly on two CDs. Shibley may not sound like “rock ‘n’ roll” to most people’s ears today (mine included), but it is a musical precursor to a host of later (and greater) rock ‘n’ roll car races, from “Maybellene” to “Dead Man’s Curve.”
9. Bruce Springsteen, “My Oklahoma Home.” From the Seeger Sessions CD, which — briefly — made me love Bruce once again. It’s a great retro-roots disc . . . and, even though it’s largely made up of songs that predate rock ‘n’ roll by 10-50 years, it actually rocks and rolls better than anything else Bruce has made in, oh, twenty years or so.
10. Johnny “Guitar” Watson, “Hot Little Mama.” Some fine, old-style Texas blues.

1. Perez Prado, “Mambo #8.” Say what you will about Lou Bega’s cheesy 1999 hit, “Mambo #5.” It was catchy enough to make me want to know more about the sampled song at its core. Which led me to Perez Prado’s infinitely better tune of the same name . . . and while Bega was a one trick pony, Prado was not. I don’t pretend to have tapped his oeuvre very deeply, but what I’ve found makes me very happy indeed.
2. Ray Charles, “What Would I Do Without You?” A weeper and a wailer from Brother Ray. I don’t think this was ever a major hit (not on the pop side of things anyway) — and that’s a cryin’ shame.
3. Elvis Presley, “A Big Hunk O’ Love.” I know. There’s Elvis . . . on my iPod? Surprise. And that’s not really a wishbone in his pocket: he’s just glad to see you.
4. Tom Waits, “Shiny Things.” There’s a lot of Waits on my iPod, too. He’s come up three times now since I started the MMM game. And it’s always been one of the more obscure and less remarkable tracks from Orphans. And so you get an unremarkable bit of commentary here. Ah well.
5. Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London.” For years, I thought the exclamation point line towards the end of this track was “And his hair was purple!” Why I ever thought it made sense for Zevon to be singing about some sort of punked-out lycanthrope, I dunno.
6. Dinah Washington, “All Because of You.” Straight-up sweetness from the Queen of the Blues.
7. Aretha Franklin, “Call Me.” Speaking of soulful sweetness from musical Queens . . .
8. Gladys Knight & the Pips, “If I Were Your Woman.” Sometimes, the shuffle feature deals you a lovely three-part history lesson. Or at least a sequence of artists, each of whom arguably owes an awful lot to the one who shuffled up immediately before. I don’t plan these things. They just happen. Does the chain continue past Gladys? . . .
9. Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues.” . . . No, of course it doesn’t. We jump backwards in time and skip over a genre or two. But this is a nice forward-thinking tune on the first day since October or so where Minneapolis has seen the thermometer push past 60 degrees. Let’s keep that rhythm going now, okay?
10. Stevie Ray Vaughan, “Pride and Joy.” And we finish up with some fine, fine, superfine grind-it-out Texas blues. I gave up on fetishizing most of the guitar heroes of my youth a long time ago. But somehow Stevie Ray’s licks — like the love he has for his pride and joy — never seem to grow old.

So someone who’s evidently too shy to venture off Facebook and comment on my actual blog scribbled the following message on my “wall” this afternoon:

yesterday was monday.

something is missing…..

So I’m trying to offer a “makeup” post today. Ten tunes. But no comments this time. It’s another swamped week, I’m afraid.

1. Professor Longhair, “Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”
2. Todd Rhodes, “Rocket 69.”
3. Lou Ann Barton, “Sugar Coated Love.”
4. Marcia Ball, “Married Life.”
5. Madonna, “Don’t Tell Me.”
6. Asylum Street Spankers, “Beer.”
7. Lyle Lovett, “I Love Everybody.”
8. Cole Porter, “You’re the Top.”
9. Louis Prima, “It’s Good as New (I Painted It Blue).”
10. Dinah Washington, “I Love You, Yes I Do.”

It’s back. I won’t know until I hit “Play” whether it’s better than ever. But it’s back.

1. Dinah Washington, “No Voot, No Bout.” Innuendo-laden jazz, rather than blues or r&b — though Dinah did plenty of those in her day as well. And did them damned well.
2. Wynonie Harris, “Lovin’ Machine.” Hmm. Looks like it’s going to be one of those MMMs. Harris made a good-sized career of saucy jump blues tunes like this one. “You put a quarter in the slot, things light up, out comes your lovin’ in a Dixie cup.”
3. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Want Your Body.” Today’s randomness is definitely all hot and bothered . . . and growing more so by the minute.
4. Joe Tex, “I Want to Do Everything for You.” One of the more underrated figures of ’60s/’70s soul.
5. Fats Witherspoon, “Hook Line and Sinker.” I’ll be honest. I know next to nothing about this track. I think I found it on a compilation of old r&b sides, and it somehow found its way from there onto the iPod. A yeoman-like effort. It won’t make anyone forget Louis Jordan or Fats Domino . . . but it’s also nothing I’d turn away from if it came up on the radio.
6. Al Green, “Let’s Stay Together,” Is there a sweeter voice in ’70s soul than Al Green’s? I know there are many who can compete, of course. And a few who are undoubtedly his equal. But anyone who can put him to shame? I don’t think so.
7. Drifters, “Try Try Baby.” I’m pretty sure this would be the early Clyde McPhatter version of the Drifters. Not one of their bigger hits, but some vintage early ’50s doo-wop all the same.
8. Tom Waits, “Puttin’ on the Dog.” One of the “Brawlers” from Waits’ Orphans three-disc set. Play an old Howlin’ Wolf record at half-speed, lay a whiskey-soaked mashup of lyrics from various Rufus Thomas and Big Joe Turner tunes on top, and you’ve got this track.
9. Four Tops, “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).” Some classic early ’70s Motown — and the last Top Ten hit for the Tops. The little “Shaft”-like bursts of guitar scattered intermittently in the background always make me smile.
10. Adverts, “One Chord Wonders.” And now for something completely different. Nine straight tracks that all live somewhere in (or at least near) the blues/r&b/soul . . . and then straight into ’70s punk DIY nihilism. I think if you listen close enough to the last thirty seconds, you might actually be able to hear Kurt Cobain being born in the midst of the multiple repetitions of “We don’t give a damn.” No, really, you can. Honest.

Better than ever? Maybe not. But at least one friend told me that MMM has become the highlight of her week, and that she’d missed it during its hiatus. That can’t possibly be true, of course. I’m sure MMM is merely the third or fourth best part of anyone’s week — at best — but, wherever it ranks in your personal pantheon, I’ll try not to take it away again anytime soon.

Sorry.  Maybe next week.  All six of you who pay attention to this will survive for the next seven days, I’m sure.  (And, if not, then I’m truly sorry for having contributed to your early demise.)

1. Sam & Dave, “Soul Man.” Some days, the world is on serendipitous shuffle play.  This tune popped up on the radio Saturday while I was enjoying a pleasant afternoon out and about with some friends, where we traded trivia tidbits about Stax’s perpetually squabbling duo while singing along.  And here it is again, popping up right away for Monday’s blog shuffle.  If this is what randomness sounds like, I’m all for it.
2. Madonna, “Keep It Together.” Madonna’s no longer the controversy magnet she was back in the ’80s and ’90s . . . but I was always struck by the ways that, even then, there was this ridiculously obvious instant public amnesia about her music.  Despite numerous tracks like this one — e.g., big hits that weren’t even remotely scandalous — the dominant discourse around Her Materialness always suggested that everything she did was dripping with deliberately button-pushing smut and sacrilege.  Like this infectiously danceable groove about the virtues of holding on to one’s family “forever and ever.”
3. Louis Armstrong, “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.” A sweet little burst of tenderness and love . . . and some mighty fine horn-blowing from Satch, too.
4. Bonnie Raitt, “Love Letter.” Second verse, same as the first?  Arguably, this is the same basic theme as the previous track — an ode to those first thrilling yet scary (or is that the other way around?) feelings of a newly born love — though the groove here is more bottleneck blues than Dixieland jazz.  On a not-quite-related note, I can never hear the chorus of this song without thinking of Marilyn Monroe.  Asked about what she had on when she posed for Playboy, Monroe allegedly quipped “the radio.”
5. Nat Kendricks & the Swans, “Mashed Potatoes.” An early ’60s R&B dance groove from Atlantic.  A little goofy.  A little silly.  But that’s not a bad thing at all, is it?
6. Skyliners, “Since I Don’t Have You.” A classic old tearjerker.  And a great roadtrip sing-along tune, at least for the closing thirty seconds or so of over-the-top wailing, screaming, keening, repetition of “you, you, you.”  Highly cathartic, even when you’re not going through heartbreak.
7. Mojo Nixon & Jello Biafra, “Plastic Jesus.” Mojo and Jello: two great tastes that taste great together.  This probably isn’t the sort of track you want booming out of your system when you show up for Sunday services . . . but, then again, if you’re the type to take Sunday services seriously, you’re not likely to have this one in your musical library anyway.
8. Huey “Piano” Smith & the Clowns, “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.” If there had never been an Elvis Presley . . . well, Huey “Piano” Smith probably wouldn’t have taken his place.  But rock’n'roll could very easily have come to be a piano-centric music (think Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis).  And tracks like this one would hold a much higher place in the canon.
9. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Sorry.  I’ve got nothing to say here right now.  I’m too busy thinkin’ ’bout the simple beauties of this song.  (And how painfully Diana Ross’ talking-not-singing version destroys those beauties.  Okay, maybe that’s something to say after all.)
10. Bonnie Raitt, “You Got to Know How.” It must be a Bonnie morning ’round here.  And I can certainly live with that.

1. Asylum Street Spankers, “Think About Your Troubles.” A cover of an old Harry Nilsson song.  And a testament to the Spankers’ versatility.  It’s not too many bands who can do sweet and sincere children’s tunes (like this one) and bawdy bits of musical sauciness . . . and do them both well.  Even better, they can manage to do them all in the same song at once (cf. their “You Only Love Me for My Lunchbox”).
2. Brenda Lee, “Dynamite.” Of course, sometimes saucy youngsters make their own music.
3. Rolling Stones, “Let It Bleed.” And then, sometimes, the baddest of bad boys can serve up odes to tender emotional support and friendship.  (Okay, okay.  They still manage to get in a few lines about coke and cream and knifings and junkies.  But what’s a little stoned bloodletting between friends?)
4. Eurythmics, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Eventually, of course, the randomness of the iPod shuffle algorithm serves up a tune that can’t be shoehorned into some serendipitous theme except by the most gratuitous forms of textual violence.  So let’s just enjoy these five minutes or so of classic ’80s synth-pop coolness, eh?
5. Neneh Cherry, “Outre Risque Locomotive.” Whatever happened to her?  A brilliant debut album.  A decent, but (IMHO) not wildly exciting, second effort.  A gorgeous one-shot contribution (a stunning rendition of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”) to the Red, Hot, and Blue AIDS benefit album.  And then . . . what?  Was there a third album?  If so, is it worth chasing down?  If not, why the hell not?
6. Staple Singers, “I’ll Take You There.” There’s a meme floating around on Facebook among some of my friends right now — “25 (or 20, for some people) Songs I Can’t Live Without” — that I’ve resisted playing along with . . . but I’ve toyed with some rough lists.  It’s a major “favorite child” question for someone like me.  Limiting myself to 25 artists would be tough.  25 albums seems like cruel and unusual punishment.  25 songs?!?  That’s just not right.  Still.  This is a groove that would definitely need to be on my “long short list” for consideration.
7. U2, “Desire.” I’d estimate that roughly one out of every three U2 songs has the Bo Diddley beat in it somewhere.  This is only the most obvious example.
8. Temptations, “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” Some classic Motown . . . with a mini-version of the Bo Diddley beat snuck into the middle eight.
9. Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “My Baby’s 3-D.” From the same group who gave us “Sixty Minute Man,” this is a simple yet sassy homage to the lead singer’s multi-faceted gal, who evidently has “got it upstairs (Lena Horne), she’s got it downstairs (Betty Grable), and she’s got it on her balcony (Janey Russell).”
10. Queen, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” A little throwback rockabilly action from from those champions of glam-rock.

1. Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters, “Money Honey.” A glorious, old-school, doo-wop dissertation on the cruelties of capitalism and its detrimental effects on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  No, really, it is.
2. Ray Charles, “Hey Good Lookin’.” Brother Ray makes Hank Williams swing and jive.  And a party where the strongest refreshment is “soda pop” never sounded more fun than it does here.
3. Joe Diffie, “Good Brown Gravy.” I have no idea who Joe Diffie is.  None.  I originally found this track online when I was trying to round out a mix CD devoted to the intertwinement of food and love/lust.  I suspect I dropped “gravy” into a search engine (inspired by a track I already knew: Tampa Red’s extraordinarily smutty “What’s That Taste Like Gravy?”) and this was one of the winners that turned up.  Maybe the only winner on that search.  But a beaut.  “You can sop it with a biscuit, you can eat it from a pan, you can lick it off your fingers when it’s runnin’ down your hand.”  Who knew that the Waffle House menu could be so sexy?
4. Dominoes, “Sixty Minute Man.” A classic bit of ’50s R&B raunch.  Less well known is the Dominoes’ followup record, “Can’t Do Sixty No More”: the sad saga of what happens to Lovin’ Dan when he’s finally “blown his fuse” for good.
5. Cat Stevens, “If You Want to Sing Out.” Sweet and simple, and one of the many lovely things to come out of that quirky little gem of a cult movie, Harold and Maude.  (And whatever happened to Bud Cort anyway?)
6. Jackson Five, “ABC.” Decades later, it would become the core hook sampled for Naughty by Nature’s “OPP.”  But this remains one of those tunes that always pulls me back to childhood memories of Saturday mornings in front of the TV — where I always sided with the Jackson brothers over the Osmond brothers, both in terms of music and in the land of animated cartoons.  The prepubescent Michael’s exhortations to his “girl” to get up and “show me what you can do” didn’t mean anything to me then — and they’re actually a little creepy in retrospect — but it’s still a damned fine pop-funk groove.
7. Tom Waits, “Nirvana.” A largely spoken-word track from Waits’ Orphans three-disc set.  Here, there are no drunken peg-legged dwarves playing canasta.  No baying hounds nipping at the heels of the circus clown.  No tattooed barmaids pouring bourbon into cracked tin cups.  And yet it’s still very much Tom Waits.
8. Jon Rauhouse, “5 After 5.” I think I said something about Rauhouse before.  And I don’t think I’ve got anything much to add to that . . . unless it’s to note my keen excitement about the upcoming release of Neko’s newest.
9. MFSB & the Three Degrees, “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia).” I spent five years living in Philly as an undergrad (and immediately thereafter).  It never sounded like this.  That’s not a knock on Philly, mind you.  I loved the city when I was there.  But the streets were not filled with righteous riffs, glorious grooves, and soulful strings.
10. Asylum Street Spankers, “Pakalolo Baby.” Ah, the Spankers!  If you ever get the chance to see them live, do.  Just do.  You’ll thank me later.  And you may be getting a very rare treat at this point, since I gather the costs of touring have led them to scale way, way, way back on their previously robust itineraries.  Now you may have to travel to Texas to see them spank it up.