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Pop Rock Nation

Author: David Middleton

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #3: Roped Into Something Unnatural

    Bedhead's single for "Bedside Table"

    BEDHEAD  “Bedside Table” b/w “Living Well”  (Direct Hit Records DH005RJN1, May 1992)

    It seems like a lifetime ago.  I had been living & working in New York City for a few years, and I really needed a break.  Working two jobs, taking odd night gigs playing bass, sleeping on a little cot in a warehouse.  It all was taking its toll on me fast.  I needed a change of scenery, so I did what any sane person would do in this situation:  I borrowed a car & drove to Texas. 

    Remember The Alamo?  The “Chirping” Crickets?  Janis Joplin?  The Butthole Surfers!  Fuck yeah, and Fuck Emo’s, The Lone Star State was the place I needed to be.  So I looked up an old friend when I got to Dallas, & we proceeded to hit every rib joint, thrift store, bowling alley, strip club, country bar, record store & porno shop from Houston to Austin to San Antonio, & all points in between.  We left no stone unturned, no beer undrank, no spliff unsmoked.  Braised rabbit and buffalo brisket in Deep Ellum.  The Grassy Knoll/The Book Depository.  Emo’s.  Threadgill’s.  Late-night coffehouses in Denton.  Waterloo.  And oh, yeah…The Alamo, too.  You name it, we did it, saw it, made fun of it & laughed at it.  But I only kept one souvenir.

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  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #2: The Chums Of Chance

    CRYING LOTT  “Inside” b/w “The Beast”  (Lott Records .01 Oct. 1982)

    Ocean View, Virginia is a seaside community bordering the north shore of the city of Norfolk, nestled in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.  At the start of the 20th century, the OV resembled sister east-coast beach resorts like Coney Island and Asbury Park;  folks from all walks of life flocked to the shoreline to breathe in salty air,  bathe in seaweed-heavy waters, and dine on corndogs and onion rings (or fresh spot, flounder and steamed blue crabs) while enjoying an amusement park, a casino and a bevy of fine hotels.

    Also like its northern counterparts, Ocean View fell into decay in the ’70’s & ’80’s, becoming a blown-out shell of its former self.  Transient military personnel, shipbuilders & longshoremen traded fisticuffs with drunks, bums & derelicts on D-View Street.  Dark, unidentifiable sludge was washing ashore at Sarah Constant Shrine.  Burned-out motor lodges stood empty like rows of old shoeboxes along the coastline.  Old movie theaters like The Rosele and The Showcase became what are now remembered as “grindhouses,” showing 3rd-rate gore and grade-B softcore to near-empty seats.  This was not by any means a breeding ground for new independent alternative music, nor any art of any sort, for that matter.  This, my friends, is where I grew up.

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  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #1: Laughing In A Crashing Car

    My friends call it The Red Monstrosity, but I lovingly refer to it as Heaven.  It’s a large black & burnt-red pine cabinet I liberated from a neighbor many years ago and proceeded to stuff with my favorite substance: 7-inch vinyl.  Decades of being a rock & pop music fan, not to mention working in record stores and for record labels, landed thousands of these sexy little platters in my lap over the years.  Yet I’ve never really considered myself a collector;  more like an accumulator, I suppose.  I’ve never concerned myself with “the first-pressing of this” or “the rare picture disc of that.”  Fact is, this overstuffed termite festival is probably worthless to anyone but myself, which leads me to a conundrum:  in this hyper-digitized age, what do I do with all this antediluvian stuff??  The answer, of course, is enjoy it.  So each week in this column, I am going to grab a slab of plastic at random out of The Red Monstrosity, spin it, and talk about it.  Like rummaging through old photographs, it might bring up some funny anecdotes.  Or embarrassing moments.  First up…

    THE JAM  “Absolute Beginners” b/w “Tales From The Riverbank”(Polydor UK POSP 350 Oct. 1981)

    While The Clash looked out from England onto the rest of the world, Paul Weller and The Jam seemed to be peering backwards into English suburban life, not unlike The Kinks before them.  And also like Davies & Co., they came across as way too English for the rest of the world, or at least America.  But nevermind that.  The fact is that when young Paul Weller was on, he was ON.  And in the very early 1980s he was one of the few rock artists who could be counted on to relelase a great single, whether it scraped the top of any noteable charts or not.  So I was not exactly “rolling the dice” when I plunked down (probably somewhere around) $2.00 US for this lovely little imported single with a strange title that I didn’t understand.  The 16-year-old version of myself was not yet aware of Colin MacInnes’ 1959 novel titled “Absolute Beginners,” and Julian Temple’s musical film adaptation was five years away.  Regardless, when I got this disc home to my bedroom and slapped it on my little stereo, there was one thing I knew for sure:  it was EXPLOSIVE.  And I do mean literally.  The Jam always prided in mastering their records very hot, with Bruce Foxton’s bass EQ’ed round, crisp and BIG to fill the bottom end, while Weller’s brittle, often distorted guitar and Rick Buckler’s bright, splashy cymbals rang out in the top register.  I was aware of this from spending time with their previous albums, most notably Sound Affects, whose one-two opening punch (on the US LP version) of “Start!” and “Pretty Green” often sent my speakers dancing across the floor.  But my system was not prepared for the triple-forte bass/drums/horns blast of the opening notes of “Absolute Beginners.”  By the time the song swung down into the main D-major to B-minor verse progression, the damage was done:  the woofer in my left-channel speaker had popped outward, looking like the shell of a washed-up sandcrab.  And sounding like one, too.  Speaker blown, stereo ruined, I did not turn off the music.  In fact, I turned it UP.  “Absolute Beginners” turned out to be The Jam at their highest power, at their most captivating and thrilling, and no blown speaker was going to stand between me and my enjoyment of this moment.  I played this disc over & over again, all through the afternoon and night, woofer rattling away like hell, with not a care in the world.

    And that’s just the A-side.  On the flip, “Tales From The Riverbank” turned out to be a great track too, once I got around to it.  A minor-key ballad that swings upward to Bowie-esqe heights then back down again, “Tales” makes great use of Foxton’s rich bass-tone, opening with the kind of snaky, haunting line that would inspire a million lifts (The Smithereens’ “Blood And Roses” comes to mind).  This B-side could easily have been an A-side, and I recall reading somewhere that it almost was.  But I think things worked out OK as is.

    “Absolute Beginners” reached #4 on the UK charts.  Here’s a link to the video, which some “early MTV-o-philes”, and those of you who remember the USA Network or Twiggy’s Juke Box, may remember.

    The Jam Absolute Beginners

    NEXT WEEK:  A band that got their name from Pynchon, their lyrics from Yeats, and their sound from across the Atlantic.