Tag: Rock

Saturday Matinee – The Marshall Tucker Band, Sam The Sham & James “Super Chikan” Johnson

In the late 70s, there was a shift away from hard rock, pop, disco, and other over-produced gag-inducing genres, and I took a liking to Country Rock Jazz fusion. The Marshall Tucker Band caught my ear with “The Last of the Singing Cowboys,” one of the prettiest songs ever written, featuring one of the greatest country rock vocalists ever: Doug Gray (and yeah, that’s one silly-ass hat on the guitar player.)

Domingo “Sam” Samudio is still live and howlin’ in this vid from 2000. IIRC, Sam took his nic “The Sham” because he only knew 3 chords. “Little Red Riding Hood” is probably my favorite STSATP song – even in elementary school we got the innuendo. “Oh, That’s Good” was fun due to our juvenile misinterpretation of the lyrics: “He operated on my 3rd leg…”

Okay, um, let’s move on.

Never heard of James “Super Chikan” Johnson? Crank it up.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow for more inanity.

Saturday Matinee – The Archers of Loaf, The Axis of Awesome, Zappa & Santana

Archers of Loaf. Great 3-chord rock. According to Wiki, they disbanded, reformed, broke up and now reorganized before disappearing completely.

In 2009, The Axis of Awesome discovered the secret 4-chord progression required to make a hit record.

Zappa’s “Variations on the Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression” is a classic. Unfortunately the video is not an actual performance, but a compilation of images pasted over the music. So what. I still like it. We’ll let Carlos Santana have the last word.

Woodstock put Carlos Santana on the map in 1969. Great jam.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow and we’ll mess around with stuff.

Saturday Matinee – Howlers, Howlers, Howlers, etc.

Very cool trio from Williams, Arizona, not to be confused with the Midnight Howlers of Madera, California.

Very cool trio from unknown regions, not to be confused with Ivory Joe & the Midnight Howlers of Nashville, Tennessee.

Very cool party band from Nashville, Tennessee, not to be confused with the inane and expensive Halloween costume called the Midnight Howler.

Inane and expensive Halloween costume called the Midnight Howler, not to be confused with Midnight Howler.

Okay, I’ll stop. Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here in a few short hours.

Saturday Matinee – Allotria Jazz Band, Fats Waller, Leon Redbone & Captain Beefheart

Die Allotria Jazzband ist eine Combo, die 1969 in München gegründet wurde und dem traditionellen Jazz verpflichtet ist. [Allotria translates to Monkey Business.] “Wolverine Blues” was written and recorded by Jelly Roll Morton in 1923.

Two decades later, Fats Waller was playing the same style.

Nice lip-sync of a pretty song. According to the UToobage:
“Myra Johnson voiced-over the girl “vocalist” sitting on the piano, who, according to trumpeter Eddie Henderson, is his mother.”

In 1975, over five decades later, Leon Redbone recorded his own version (and this isn’t it. Click the link). Mr. Redbone’s music is meant for eggs and coffee and a side of toast.

That’s a version of Blind Blake‘s recording from 1929.

Captain Beefheart recorded an entirely different song called “Diddy Wah Diddy” that was later covered by The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Whoa. I just found out that “Diddy Wah Diddy” was written by Willie Dixon and Bo Diddley, and was recorded in 1956.

Now it all makes sense.

Have a great weekend folks and be back here tomorrow for more diddy wah diddy.

Saturday Matinee – Porcapizza (aka Massimo Tortella)

Porcapizza is amazing [via].

Saturday Matinee – Two Ronnies, Bagpipe Rock, Jim Stafford & George Harrison

American humor cannot match that of Ronnie Corbett & Ronnie Barker [via].

Not sure who they are, but they’re a Scottish Bagpipe Rock Band.

Meanwhile, Jim Stafford is both an underrated guitarist, a talented comedian, and he had some minor hits in the 70s, and he’s still alive. Congrats.

Stafford had a number of minor hits, but I remember one in particular. I’d just lost a girlfriend, and this song seemed to make sense of it all. In retrospect it didn’t, but so what.

Dude was and is funny.

Here’s one of the prettiest songs George Harrison ever wrote and one of the most appropriate videos I’ve ever seen.

For some unknown reason that song always makes me tear up, and there’s something in that innocent video that hits my heart.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – TUOOGB, Steppenwolf & Link Wray

I’m embarrassed to say that I never heard of The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain (TUOOGB) until recently, even though they’ve been around for a while. From their website:

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is a group of all-singing, all-strumming Ukulele players, using instruments bought with loose change, which believes that all genres of music are available for reinterpretation, as long as they are played on the Ukulele.

Great stuff. The world is your lobster if you have a bass ukulele.

Nice groove.
It’s a cover of Willie Dixons’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” by Steppenwolf at the Riverfront Festival in Louisville, KY, 7 October, 2000.

How ’bout some 1974 retro?

Link Wray played so dirty and nasty. No flourishes.
It was all in-your-face-deal-with-it-badass-rock the way it was always meant to be.

You still want toast?

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here in a few hours.

 

Saturday Matinee – Live From NorWay, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Fishbone & The Allman Brothers Band

LIVE CAM: Train Engineer’s Cab View in Norway [click here for local time]. Not sure which line this is, where it’s headed, or if it’s running above the Arctic Circle. Check it out in full screen view and I’ll see you back here in a couple of days.

Someday, I suppose I’ll go to Norwegia and ride that train. Meanwhile, I’ll listen to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones from 1993.

Or maybe I’ll roll with Fishbone, one of the tightest ska/rock/funk bands I ever heard. Those guys won me over a long time ago. (Check out this 1987 live version. Sound quality sucks, but the energy is killer.)

Let’s turn it down a bit with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower.” The Allman Brothers Band in 2011 always found a nice groove (presumed band lineup here).

Have a great Easter/Passover/Seder weekend, folks. See you soon.

 

Shark Artistry

[Found here.]

Saturday Matinee – Elmore James Jr., The Allman Brothers Band, ZZ Top, George Thorogood with Albert Collins & Elmore James

Not sure what to make of this. The son of one of the greatest blues guitarists ever appeared on a Chicago children’s TV show in 2010 and lip-synched his way through the embarrassment. In the YouTube comments, his grandaughter posted her kudos:

There are a lot of Utoobage entries for Elmore James, but I couldn’t find any live video performances, so let’s go with some covers, with links to the original recordings.

In 1972, The Allman Brothers Band covered “One Way Out” (1961).

In 1980, ZZ Top covered Elmore James’ Dust My Broom (1951) which was itself a cover of Robert Johnson’s recording (1936).

In 1984, George Thorogood & Albert Collins nailed Elmore James’ Madison Blues (1960).

Great stuff that. Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Bonus: