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Pop Rock Nation

Author: David Middleton

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #32: If You Like Penis Colossal

    Cheech & Chong's "Earache My Eye"

    CHEECH & CHONG  “Earache My Eye” (featuring Alice Bowie) b/w  “Turn That Thing Down” (A&M/Ode Records #66102, August 1974)

    Oh, how my mom hated this one.  All I remember is my older brother was driving me somewhere, and this 5-minutes-&-change comedy sketch popped up on the radio.  We both howled with laughter until our sides ached, and I insisted we stop off at King’s department store (the most cavernous, dimly-lit treasure chest on Earth) and buy the record.  Being the ultimate enabler, my brother agreed.  My copy even still has the “Dept. 1-463” sticker on the back.

    Since then, this track has become both a comedy and rock classic, the S&M-joke-riddled father/son sketch at the back referenced by hundreds of writers, and the untitled Gaye Delorme-penned glam satire at the front nicked by everyone from 2 Live Crew to Soundgarden.  And let’s face it, nothing’s funnier than Cheech Marin, America’s super-stoned answer to Cantinflas, wearing a tutu and pasties.

    See Cheech & Chong\’s \”Earache My Eye\” Live from 1978

    This disc’s non-LP flip, “Turn That Thing Down” is merely a cacophonous continuation of side A’s ending, effectively extending the whole sketch to 10 minutes total, for the true masochist in you.  A lease-breaker if there ever was one.

    Whaddaya tryin' to do? Tickle me?

    Personally, I would’ve preferred to hear one of Cheech & Chong’s Wedding Album‘s other great sketches, like “Black Lassie” or that “3 Little Pigs” bit, but I’m not one to begrudge C&C their dadaism.  After all, “Earache My Eye” spent 8 weeks in the Top 40, peaking at #9.  Not bad for a hilarious clusterfuck of satirical slacker stoner raunch.

    Cheech & Chong to this day continue to…oh, I don’t need to go into it.

    NEXT WEEK: I try to separate my body from my mind.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #31: We Built This City On New Wave

    Ritchie Valens' "Donna"

    RITCHIE VALENS  “Donna”  b/w  “La Bamba” (Lost-Nite Records #201, early-’80’s reissue;  Original release: Del-Fi Records #4110, 1958)

    You could Google “Valens” or “La Bamba” or even “famous plane crashes” and learn all you’d ever need to know about the late great Ritchie Valens, but you’d still only be skimming the surface.   The young Pacoima, CA wunderkind, tragically killed at 17 in the same historic crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson 50 years ago this past February, left such an indelible stamp on rock music that it’s now literally impossible to fathom a world without him.

    Winter Dance Party

    Though Valens left behind only about an album & 1/2-worth of recorded material, those recordings are so genuine and heartfelt that they still explode from the turntable with an incendiary fury, making evident why Valens remains a major touchstone to everyone from the obvious (Santana, Los Lobos) to the not-so (Led Zeppelin, Richard Hell & The Voidoids).  His biggest hit, captured here on a somewhat questionable oldies-bin reissue, was this 1958 ballad dedicated to the gal that stole his heart, “Donna.”

    Play \”Donna\” by Ritchie Valens

    Lost-love laments in the style of The Platters or The Moonglows were common by 1958, but it’s Ritchie’s fresh-faced honesty that really sells the song here.  And sell it did, spending 18 weeks in the Top 40, peaking at #2 in December and riding on through into early ’59, when DJs flipped the record and discovered its blistering B-side.

    C'mon Let's Go!

    Valens took “La Bamba,” a 300-year-old Mexican folk song, turbocharged it with an electrifying rock ‘n’ roll backbeat and face-melting guitar solos, and created the world’s first Spanish-language rock smash.  And then, like a blazing comet zipping through the evening sky, he was gone.

    Play \”La Bamba\” by Ritchie Valens

    Though only a B-side, “La Bamba” spent 8 weeks in the Top 40, reaching #22.  Los Lobos recorded the song (along with several other faithful Valens covers for the hit biopic of the same name) and sent it to #1 in the Summer of ’87.  But you know that.

    To those of you reading this who have children, please do them a big favor:  go to eBay (or better yet a garage sale or flea market) and buy them an old monaural 45 RPM record player and a stack of old rock singles.  Turn off the fucking video games for once in their lifetime.  Let them sit cross-legged on the floor listening to Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Ritchie Valens, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and all the other great architects of rock.  Let them thrill to the tight & smooth harmonies of The Drifters or chuckle at the aural slapstick of The Coasters.  Let them jump up & down like total maniacs to Cousin Jerry Lee’s pounding “Pi-Anna” and Uncle Ritchie’s “Flying Guitar.”   Jump up & down with them until the records skip and you all fall down on the floor together laughing hysterically.  Let your kids feel early in their lives the real, pure, true, uplifting power of rock.  They will love you forever.

    NEXT WEEK: Turn around & bend over!

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #30: Jackboots & Kilt

    Napoleon XIV's 1966 novelty hit, "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!"

    NAPOLEON XIV  “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!”  b/w “Photogenic, Schizophrenic You” (Eric Records #195, early-’80’s reissue.  Originally released on Warner Bros. #5831, Summer 1966)

    When it comes to artistic integrity, few social groups get maligned as much as the mentally challenged.  Even in this enlightened era of advanced education, when extensive research is being done to comprehend such phenomena as autism, terms like “outsider” still separate the layers of our ability to understand the deeper workings of the human brain.  Probably out of fear.  Fear of discovering that, one way or another, we are all outsiders.

    Early rock performers like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis clearly understood the minds of the mentally challenged.  They knew that there was a little bit of crazy in all of us, that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and that all we had to do was just open up and let it out.  Few later rockers understood this better than The Cramps’ late leader, Lux Interior, whose pure joy in performing for mental patients is chronicled in the stunning Live At Napa State Mental Hospital DVD.  “Finally!” you can imagine the patients thinking as they jump around to the band’s pounding, distorted rockabilly, “Music for ME!  Music that speaks to ME!”

    "...to the funny farm..."

    Back in the Summer of ’66, one record ratcheted up the insanity to previously unprecedented levels when 28-year-old New Yorker Jerry Samuels (under the nom-de-straitjacket, Napoleon XIV) recorded a totally batshit spoken-word ode to a misbehaving, runaway pup.  Released on Warner Bros., it sped to the top of the charts thanks to tons of airplay and just plain utter “gotta-hear-it-to-believe-it” ridiculousness.  Behold the psycho-chaotic masterpiece of marching-band drums, helium vocals and ambulance sirens that is, “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!”

    Play \”They\’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!\” by Napoleon XIV

    Not psychotic enough for ya?  Check out the B-side of the original Warners 45, “!aah-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er’yehT” (which is — you guessed it! — the A-side backwards).

    yalP \”!aah-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er\’yehT\” yb VIX noelopaN

    Great fun on jukeboxes.  Anyway, my early-’80’s Eric Records (the pre-Rhino Rhino) pressing of ” They’re Coming…” is backed with a later Samuels composition, “Photogenic Schizophrenic You.”  Slightly more melodic and ballad-like than the A-side, “Photo-Schizo” once again employs the device of the narrator blaming the cause of his mental illness on that of another, this time a gorgeous, but of course completely multiplexed, blonde (a stone from which modern gag writers still manage to wring blood).

    Play \”Photogenic, Schizophrenic You\” by Napoleon XIV

    “They’re Coming…” shot to #3 on the Billboard singles chart before insensitivity protests from advocacy groups wiped out the airplay entirely.  Nonplussed, Samuels went on to record two whole albums of nuthouse-inspired novelty tracks for Warners.  These days, like a modern Broadway Danny Rose, he runs the successful Philly-based Jerry Samuels Talent Agency, booking  juggling clowns and one-man-bands into homes for the physically and mentally challenged.  Viva Napoleon!

    NEXT WEEK: I’m not a sailor, I’m the captain.