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Pop Rock Nation

Author: David Middleton

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #20: His & Hers Electric Chairs

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    THE M-80’S  “You’ve Been Told” b/w “What I’m After” (Get Hip Records #GH-118, 1989)

    In their incendiary original (but very short-lived) lineup, Virginia garage-rock denizens The M-80’s will live forever in my Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.  Like The Ramones and AC/DC before them, this band was made up of a handful of suburban misfits and ne’er-do-wells, the kind you don’t bring home to mother, the kind who would’ve never lasted in a pedestrian covers-type bar band.  Not merely a bunch of wannabes who formed a band after hearing some Nuggets comps, these guys feasted on a regular diet of Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, The Pretty Things and The MC5, and lived that music.  At a time when it was not cool to do so, I might add.  While most folks were blaming it on the rain or stating it was their prerogative, these boys’ pummelling, amphetamine-fueled live shows were becoming the stuff of underground legend, often culminating in physical violence and broken guitars.  It wasn’t bound to last.  But oh, while it did…

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    The moment my needle hit the groove of this clear-red vinyl 45, the first of several quality singles The M-80’s would release over the next few months, I jumped up so hard my head hit the ceiling and my skull cracked wide open and my brains splattered all over the floor and I died and maggots and vultures swooped in and devoured my still-writhing carcass.  I never fully recovered, but looking back now I can enjoy the purity of this honest, blistering rock & roll moment.  I still get the DTs when I hear the opening chords of  this disc’s A-side, “You’ve Been Told.”  Catch a rare live clip of them performing the track, along with the concert favorite, “Kick The Shit Out Of You,” below.

    See The M-80\’s perform \”You\’ve Been Told\” live on YouTube

    Side-B features the  mid-tempo stomper, “What I’m After,” a Chocolate Watchband-style creeper soaked in reverb thick enough to make The Cramps jealous.  There’s no clip available, but you can stream it at a sweet MySpace page dedicated to their memory.  Meanwhile, don’t miss this other rare clip of the band performing their explosive ’91 Estrus single “’57 Nomad,” complete with powerhouse singer Eddie Pierce’s bad-ass spoken introduction.

    See THE M-80\’S perform \”\’57 Nomad\” live on YouTube

    Pittsburgh-based indie Get Hip released the first M-80’s full-length, In A Fury, later in the year, but women, dope addiction, incarceration, mental illness, and all the other myriad things that make rock bands great, took their toll on the band at the dawn of the 1990’s.  By ’92 our boys were history;  a posthumous collection of unreleased takes compiled by bassist Rob Katherman (featuring the coulda-benna-hit, George Carlin-inspired anthem, “Toledo Windowbox”) the only evidence of what was missed.  For years, their name remained spray-painted all over their hometown like the footprints of a ghost.

    Eddie, Witt, Rob & Rusty, you guys thrilled me.  It’s because I saw you that I know what real rock & roll is.  And every time I spin this 45, my head still hits the ceiling.

    NEXT WEEK: A Minnesota country boy sings a ‘Nam-era protest song, and takes it all the way to the Top 5.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #19: Stand By Your Manboobs

    ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS  “You Little Fool” b/w “Big Sister” & “The Stamping Ground” (F-Beat Records UK #XX26, 1982)

    “A pretty prime cut,” it says, etched in some unknown stranger’s messy handwriting on the inner groove of this imported 7-inch.  I’d have to wholeheartedly agree, given the 3 great tracks to which we’re being treated on this week’s edition of 45 RPM.  International raconteur and talk-show host Declan MacManus needs no introduction, so let’s just dive right in, shall we?

    See the video for Elvis Costello\’s \”You Little Fool\” on YouTube

    Early MTVophiles will recall this video, starring The Impostor himself as the dismissive, scowling headmaster.  I nabbed this imported copy of “…Fool” a few weeks before the release of Imperial Bedroom, up to this point the most ambitious of EC & The A’s full-lengths.  Initially, I was stunned and a bit taken aback by the track’s rich, lush production, atypical of Costello’s previous Nick Lowe-helmed output.  Though the 45 artwork was misleading, it proved to be Geoff Emerick, the former Abbey Road engineer made famous by his legendary work with The Beatles, who was responsible for EC’s new and vibrant sound.  A big step in a great new direction, or at least it seemed at the time.  I’d have to wait ’til street date for the hotly-anticipated Bedroom to bring the fruits of this laborious collaboration full-circle.  Meanwhile…

    Side B features two tracks, first of which is “Big Sister,” an outtake from the sessions that became 1981’s Trust LP.  Those familiar with that album know its finale, the spooky and lyrically similar “Big Sister’s Clothes.”  Well, this is apparently an earlier version, produced by Nick Lowe and showcasing that hard-rocking Stax/Volt bar-band side of The Attractions so well-explored on albums like Trust and Get Happy!!  EC himself later referred to the track’s lyrics as an “unsubtle commentary on (Margaret Thatcher)’s enthusiasm for Cold War posturing.”  In-dubitably!

    Play “Big Sister” by Elvis Costello & The Attractions

    Our Liverpudlian friend is no stranger to aliases.  (Hell, he even recorded under the name Napoleon Dynamite nearly 20 years before the famous Jared Hess flick.)  Blithely credited to The Emotional Toothpaste, “The Stamping Ground” gives us 3-plus minutes of tremolo guitars and Everly Brothers-style harmonies in 3/4 time.  In other words, it’s an EC solo demo.  A sad elegy to the tired old singles-bar scene, this warbling, bleary-eyed and beer-soaked track would not have sounded out of place being growled by Shane MacGowan on a mid-period Pogues album.  Some seriously emotional toothpaste, indeed.

    Play “The Stamping Ground” by The Emotional Toothpaste

    To this day, you can always count on Elvis Costello to be up to something.  His most recent full-length, Momofuku (Lost Highway Records), was one of the few albums that blew me away in 2008.  You can keep up with his crafty doings at http://www.elviscostello.com.

    NEXT WEEK: You’ve been told what I’m after.  On see-thru red plastic, no less.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #18: Born Sippy

     

    STEALERS WHEEL “Star” b/w “What More Could You Want” (A&M Records #AM-1483-S, 1973)

    Everybody knows Scottish folk/pop/rock duo Stealers Wheel’s Dylanesque 1973 Top-10 smash, “Stuck In The Middle With You,” a classic oldies-station staple even before that director included it in that movie. (Sense a theme here?  Backtrack to 45 RPM #15.  I assure ya, boys, it’s purely coincidental.)  Fewer people, however, know about “Star,” the Wheel’s follow-up single, much less their brilliant 3-LP output.  I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, a little ancient history.

    Like that famous postage stamp with the upside-down airplane (though worth considerably less money), my copy of  “Star” is misprinted.  The B-side label is pressed onto both sides of the disc, giving the illusion that both sides feature the same track, “What More Could You Want.”  Double-A-side 45s were common in the early ’70’s, usually pressed in limited quantity for in-store or radio play.  If one side became worn out or scratched, you could simply flip the disc and play the clean side without having to pony up the bread for a fresh copy.  Sucker that I was, I bought this fake-double-A-side platter at my neighborhood drug store thinking it was the Stealers’ new single.  For months, I played “What More Could You Want” over and over, thinking, “This song is great!  How come it’s not on the radio?  How come it’s not a smash hit?”  Then one day I accidentally flipped it over, and the opening strums of “Star” emerged from my little stereo.  Oops.

     

    A catchy shuffle of the Lennonesque variety, “Star” is 3 minutes of pure shimmering acoustic-guitar pop loveliness and honey-throated vocal harmonies, punctuated with spikes of harmonica, kazoo, woodblock, and bawdy barrelhouse piano.  It spent 3 weeks on the US singles charts, peaking at #29 in March of ’74.  The duo of Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan went on to produce one more brilliant (but underrated and underperforming) album for A&M before sadly parting ways in ’75.

     

    And as for that B-side I played to death after mistaking it for an A-side?  Well suffice to say it rocks.  “What More Could You Want” is a ballsy, two-chord stomper, with tricky time-signature changes and stop-start verses, that could fit right between The Sweet and Badfinger on your next Roots Of Brit-Pop mixtape.  Hell, remove the squiggly synths and beef up the guitars a tad and it wouldn’t be out of place on an early KISS album.  And listen up all you overpaid computer geeks at Activision — break that slide rule out of your pocket-protector and put on your horn-rimmed glasses with tape in the middle now!  With lyrics like, “You got a brand new Telecaster / What more could you want,” this track is a must-have for the next edition of Guitar Hero. So get on it, you slack-ass fucks.

    Both Rafferty and Egan pursued solo careers.  Stateside, Rafferty ended up back in the Top 20 in 1978 with “Right Down The Line” and the sax-fueled classic, “Baker Street” from his multi-platinum United Artists LP, City To City.  The 3-LP Stealers Wheel catalog [Stealers Wheel, Ferguslie Park and Right Or Wrong] has been reissued in the UK by Cherry Red Records, and is well worth seeking out.

    NEXT WEEK: It Came (Crawling To The U.S.A.) From Liverpool!