Saturday Matinee – Page 45

Saturday Matinee – Rain in Los Angeles, Bass Bash & The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

STORM WATCH! [via].

There’s something really wrong with bass players, and I’ve got a Rickenbacker.

Simmer down, y’all, a’cause The Mighty Mighty Bosstones be done say so.

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

Saturday Matinee – Ленинград, Les McCann w/ Eddie Harris, Alvin Lee & Ten Years After

Russian Ska/Punk/Dixieland Band Leningrad features a woman with bigger choppers than Carly Simon. No idea what they’re singing about, but I like the sound.

BTW, Vladimir Putin can go to hell and take the KGB and Pravda with him. [Related post here.]

1969 jazz classic by pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris has staying power. The music was great and the lyrics are relevant today, but with a different meaning.

I was at a stop light recently and a 1970 convertible Mustang pulled up cranking some awesome.
I hollered at the graybeard, “WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?”
He yelled back, “ALVIN LEE!“

Ten Years After, recorded live: 4 August 1975 – Winterland (San Francisco, CA).

Have a great weekend, folks, we’ll be back tomorrow despite the heat and the traffic.

Saturday Matinee – Louis Jordan, Little Walter & Charles E. Anderson

Louis Jordan‘s “Let The Good Times Roll” is a bonafide 1940s classic and features some nice legs, too.

Little Walter reinvented blues harmonica in the 1950s. Read more about him here. (Guess where James Cotton & Magic Dick Salwitz got their licks?)

Charles Edward Anderson is a legend, made a name for himself by transforming traditional blues into what’s now considered classic Rock-N-Roll, and he did it by electrifying it and changing the tempo. That’s not news to anyone, but it was news to me when he released his best album, “London Berry Blues” in October 1972 and played T-Bone Walker‘s “Mean ‘Ol World” straight up. Yep, I’m talking about Chuck Berry.

Have a great weekend, folks, and remember that Gun-Free Zones only assist those deviants who choose to commit atrocities because they know that no one is able to shoot back.

Saturday Matinee – Best Coast, The Ray Beats & Bishop Bullwinkle

So I axed Bunkessa about the song she played last weekend on our patio hi-fi. She said it was “Our Deal” by Best Coast, a Beach Goth band from L.A. Never heard of the group nor the genre, but so what. I like the retro sound. [The video accompaniment is a Cliff’s Notes mime version of West Side Story.]

Okay, so what to post next? Let’s keep the retro thang going.

The Ray Beats were kinda Chantays, kinda Ventures, kinda Dick Dale and kinda NY punk in the late 70s/early 80s. In other words, kinda young, kinda wow.

Here’s another talent who dodged my radar: Bishop Bullwinkle and “Hell 2 Da Naw Naw.” Apparently it went viral in August and I’m late to the party [via]. Dude’s got a great message.

Have a great weekend folks. See you back here tomorrow, even if you’re headed out on a 3-day family road trip to See Ruby Falls.

Saturday Matinee – Mott The Hoople, The SAHB & Rory Gallagher,

Mott The Hoople, 1973.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, 1973.

Rory Gallagher, 1979.

Yeah I was on a 70’s rock vibe tonight. Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow. –Bunk

Saturday Matinee 1977 – The Tubes, The Sanford-Townsend Band & Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

The Tubes “WPOD” featuring Fee Waybill as Quay Lewd in 1977. I missed out on seeing them live, but I have a couple of their early albums. “Don’t Touch Me There” was one of my favorites; lotta talent in that band.

I remember that year (and the Winter of 77-78) and it was about that time I realized that I hated a lot of the garbage the rock stations were pumping (czech out the 1977 Top 100 Billboard List. Leo Sayer? Really?) My music preferences went rogue.

However, there are a couple of songs on that list that I secretly liked, like this one:

The Sanford-Townsend Band‘s “Smoke From A Distant Fire” was such an up-beat song, and it got the girls dancing. (Heh – the band was introduced by Helen Reddy.)

Two years later, Rickie Lee Jones recorded an almost identical song chord-wise, “Chuck E.’s In Love,” and I loved that one, too.

In 1975 Aerosmith came out with their classic “Walk This Way” and it climbed all the way up to No. 90 in 1977. Go figger. The only other song on that Billboard List that I remember liking much was this one:

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band‘s version of Bruce Springsteen‘s “Blinded By The Light” was more popular than the original and made it to No. 36 on the Billboard Top 100 for 1977. (BTW, Mann was never the lead singer. He was the keyboardist.)

Have a great Fathers’ Day Weekend folks, appreciate all that your dad does (or did) for you, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Animals & Mirrors, The Doghouse, The Greg Johnson Set & The Fabulous Thunderbirds

Animals and mirrors [via].

Beware of The Doghouse. Been there. I overlooked the first Valentine’s Day post-marriage as I considered it to be a dating holiday. I ate damp corrugated cardboard for months [via].

The Greg Johnson Set is a band from New Zealand, sounds like a traditional Irish band, performs “People Can’t Talk In This Town” from 1992. Somehow the concept of Freedom of Speech is being quietly vanquished [via].

Lets lighten it up a tad. How ’bout some great rippin’ by Jimmie Vaughan with The Fabulous Thunderbirds?

Have a great weekend. Be back here tomorrow for more powerful stuff.

Saturday Matinee – Pensen Paletti, Wayne Hancock, Doc Watson & Aerosmith

THIS is pure awesome. Pensen Paletti [aka Peer Jenson of the Monsters of LeiderMaching] wired up his acoustic guitar and added drum synth keys. Wait for the Theme To Peter Gunn.

“Milk Cow Blues” was originally recorded by Sleepy John Estes in 1930. This version is a kinda late night early morning retro country thang performed by Wayne Hancock & Co. in 2008. Hoy hoy hoy, indeed. Here are two other versions:

Doc Watson was awesome.

Aerosmith did a nice cover of “Milk Cow Blues” that had nothing to do with the 1930 original that I can tell, but at least they worked in some Chuck Berry riffs.

Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll be back here tomorrow whether you like it or not.

[Note that the Utoobage link for Sleepy John Estes’ “Milk Cow Blues” is not the same song.]

Saturday Matinee – Tributes to Ben E. King, Johnny Cash & The B-52’s

Tribute to a great singer Ben E. King, who passed away 30 April 2015, as performed by an a cappella group featuring Grandpa Eliott Small.

Prior to his solo career, Ben E. King was a key member of The Drifters, a doo-wop group founded in 1953 and fronted by Clyde McPhatter. King replaced McPhatter as lead singer in 1958, and the New Drifters were born. Most of King’s hits were written by the team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, prolific songwriters of the time.

Tribute to Johnny Cash (1932-2003) on beer bottles [via].

Tribute to the B-52s by Full Blown Cherry. Yeah, it’s a crappy video, but watch what they pull off. They’re not amateurs, and by 02:50 a roadie has to hold the amp down. Any three-man band that can pull off a Rockabilly Tribute To The Ramones gets my full respect.

Have a great weekend folks, be back here in a few minutes.

Saturday Matinee – Lee Morse; Doc Watson, David Grisman & Jack Lawrence, & Jimmie Rogers

Here’s a description of Lee Morse [via]:

“She was 5 feet tall. She was less than 100 lbs “soaking wet”. She spent her childhood in Oregon and Idaho yet was proud of her family’s Southern roots. She could hunt and fish and, if you deserved it, she could punch your lights out! She was Lee Morse, one of the most popular female recording artists during the Jazz Age 20’s and 30’s. And, she is worth remembering.” ~Ian House

Doc Watson, David “Dawg” Grisman and Jack Lawrence live in 1995. Lawrence was the late Watson’s accompianist for many years.

“My Blue Eyed Jane” was written by Lulu Belle White and Jimmie Rogers, first recorded by Jimmy Rogers with Bob Sawyer’s Jazz Band in 1930.

Jimmie Rogers (1897-1933) is considered the Father of Country Music for his long-lasting music influences, worked the railroad until he contracted tuberculosis in 1925. While fighting off the disease and unable to perform physical labor, he returned to his original love, writing and performing, until he succumbed at the age of 35.

Sadly, there was a vaccine to combat TB as early as 1921, but according to Wiki it wasn’t widely available in the U.S. or Europe until after WWII. Rogers also sang about his affliction in “TB Blues.”

Here’s Jimmie Rogers in the Columbia Pictures short “The Singing Brakeman” from 1930.