web analytics

Pop Rock Nation

Author: David Middleton

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #8: Love Me Tongue

    SHANE MACGOWAN & THE POPES  “Nancy Whiskey” b/w “That Woman’s Got Me Drinking” (ZTT/Warner Bros. 7-17782 white label promo, 1995)

    I recall chuckling out loud when I’d heard that The Pogues had “fired” their captivating frontman, Shane MacGowan, for…well you can guess what for.  It wasn’t so much the circumstances that cracked me up as it was the fact that the remaining Pogues had stated they would continue without him.   That just made no sense to me;  The Pogues were, in my opinion, THEE ultimate Irish folk group, and MacGowan THEE classic drunken poet and centerpiece, bar none.  Joe Strummer filled in for some live shows, which I imagine was fun, but ultimately the band tried to go on with a giant gaping hole where Shane was.  It wasn’t bound to last.

    MacGowan, on the other hand, trundled onward like a cockroach, carrying drink and dope addictions and a skull rotting his head to pieces from the mouth out.  Before long he had a new backup band, The Popes, and an album, titled The Snake, to promote.  Warner Bros. obviously handed out hundreds of these white-label promo singles in an attempt to drum up some interest in the album, and possibly to get some airplay and snag a slot or 2 on a jukebox here or there.  The disc came with no artwork, of course, just a white paper sleeve.  But it did feature this little jukebox slot-card, which drums up a mental image of a couple at a malt shop, holding hands and saying, “Oh honey, it’s ‘Nancy Whiskey,’ our song!”

    Of course, I imagine some of the old Irish codgers down at the local pub or diner might recognize the A-side, a traditional drinking song, arranged by MacGowan.  Not far from standard Pogues fare, the track offers up nothing new, but methinks this was a purposeful attempt at reactivating the old Pogues audience.  It doesn’t fail, but it’s the B-side that’s the real scorcher here.

    “That Woman’s Got Me Drinking” (notice the running theme here?) covers the flip with 3:24 of pure liquor-soaked thrash.  While The Popes bash away at the standard three-chord E-D-A progression that is the bastion of so much classic garage rock (think “G-L-O-R-I-A!”), Shane gives us his take on the economical aftermath of The Teapot Dome Scandal.  It’s punk as fuck.  Thrill to the video, directed by and starring your friend and mine, Mr. Johnny Depp.

    SHANE MACGOWAN & THE POPES \”That Woman\’s Got Me Drinking\” on YouTube

    MacGowan and The Pogues eventually reconciled, and are touring and performing together again.  Sometimes.

    NEXT WEEK: It’s round on the ends and high in the middle, and it rolls like a snowplow through the Motor City.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #7: Gary Gilmore Girls

    SISTER DOUBLE HAPPINESS  “Don’t Worry” b/w “Wheels A’ Spinning” (Sub Pop Records SP77, October 1990)

    “Hey Loser.  Wanna find some action?  Tired of being left out?  Here at SUB POP we’ve just started a special club for lonely record collectors like yourself:  THE SUB POP SINGLES CLUB.  Every month we’ll send you a limited edition 45.  All you have to do is SEND US YOUR MONEY.  $35.00 for a full year, $20.00 for 6 months.  Your subscription begins the month we receive your $$$.”

    Yes, I was a Sub Pop loser.  I mean, c’mon…it was inevitable, right?  Make an offer like that to a vinyl fetishist working in a little indie store at the height of the grunge boom…fucking BLAMMO, you are going to get your sales on, Seattleites!  At what amounts to roughly $2.92 per single (or $3.33 if you go for the 6-month sub), and with at least 2 tracks per platter, we’re talkin’ ’round $1.46 per track.  Consider that nowadays people are paying 99 cents apiece for these shitty, pathetic, tinny-sounding little downloads with no artwork or sweet colored vinyl to look at.  PFFT!  I’ll take my Singles Club & go home, thanks.  Wish it was still around, I’d still be a member, dammit.

    (more…)

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #6: Reaching Out To Capture A Marmoset

    OTHER BRIGHT COLORS  “Stands To Reason” b/w “Circle Square” (1985)

    Sporting no visible label name or serial number of any sort, Other Bright Colors’ first and only 7-inch appeared magically in stores around the fall of 1985.  This was, as you can guess, a fertile time period for young indie bands in the southeastern US.  Early ’80’s LA punk stalwarts Black Flag had forged a giant path, like a modern-day Lewis & Clark, through the Deep South and the Great Northwest and back again, paving the way for what would become the American Indie Revolution. 

    Soon, kids nationwide were turning burned-out churches and abandoned VFW halls into punk co-ops, creating fanzines and record labels from Xerox paper and glue, and galvanizing bored drop-outs everywhere to stand up and say, “Fuck, we can do this, too!”  Suddenly, it was as if there was a flood of little black plastic discs raining down from the sky.  The “45-as-art” concept that started when Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel” hit the stands in ’74 had now come full-circle.  This was our CNN.  Or maybe not, but whatever it was, it was glorious.  Anyway…

    Hailing from Chapel Hill, NC, Other Bright Colors quickly gained a foothold in the greater East Coast rock clubs with this sweet little teaser of a single.  I remember the thing that caught my eye about it was the way the artwork, a simple handwritten scrawl over orange-and-flesh backdrop with sepia-tone “band frolicking through nature” photo on back, seemed both very D.I.Y. and very professional at the same time.  And the rich music contained on the plastic held even more mystery.

    OTHER BRIGHT COLORS \”Stands To Reason\” on YouTube

    (more…)