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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: David Middleton

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #17: Elephant’s Gerald

    KILKENNY CATS  “Attractive Figure” b/w “Of Talk”  (Coyote Records COY111, 1984)

    Back in 45 RPM #6, I wrote about the magical impact of the 7-inch on ’80’s indie rock.  Well here’s another great artifact from that time period.  Even though I was lucky enough to witness their live set a few times, Athens, GA’s Kilkenny Cats have always held great mystery for me.  Even to this day not much is widely known about them, which makes this single all the more fun and entertaining.  So I won’t bore you with silly details about my underage beer-soaked nights at the 40-Watt Club, I’ll just let these Cats’ sexy vibe speak for itself.

    A VU-influenced ode to the joys of taking speed, side-A’s “Attractive Figure” introduces us early to the KC’s ratatat drumming and steel-rake guitars, then propels us head-first into its stop-start verse and soaring chorus.  Great music for shaking off a hard day’s work, or more likely a long week’s finals.  And when the band stops and singer Tom Cheek does that little thing where he breathes in?  Pure sex.

    The disc’s longer B-side, “Of Talk,” sounds like it could be an outtake from the Steve Wynn/Dream Syndicate 1982 classic Days Of Wine & Roses LP.  Walls of distorted guitars bury Cheek’s low Lou Reed-like mumble, creating a dreamy atmosphere perfect to smoke pot (or shoot heroin) to.  Or just kick back & let the music be your drug, which I think is the idea here.

    Unfortunately my little lo-fi YouTube uploads failed this week.  Probably too many grandmas at once trying to upload shots of cats chasing string.  Anyway, there’s virtually no extensive footage of Kilkenny Cats anywhere on the internet.  A travesty if you ask me, but you can catch a quick blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of the band in this trailer for the film ATHENS, GA INSIDE-OUT from 1986.  A great film if you can find a copy, AGIO serves not only as a stellar indie-rock time-capsule, but also as a snapshot of how and why so much unusual and influential music could emerge from such a quiet little Southern college town.

    NEXT WEEK:  A double A-side from what I imagine would be Marvin Nash’s least favorite band.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #16: Viva Lost Vegans

    STEVE MARTIN  “Grandmother’s Song”  b/w  “Let’s Get Small” (Warner Bros. Records WBS 8503, 1977)

    Novelty songs and comedy records were of no short supply in my house as a kid growing up.  In my Dad’s collection alone, amongst the guitar virtuosos and big western-swing bands, there were scads of 78 RPM platters by the likes of Spike Jones and Kay Kyser’s Kampus Kowboys.  My older brother had the motherlode, of course:  pristine full-length stereophonic LPs of Lenny Bruce, The Smothers Brothers, Woody Allen and Bob Newhart (whose Button-Down Mind we practically memorized;  I can still do the whole “hair-piece” bit), as well as the adult (read: drug-fueled) comedy of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Cheech & Chong and the incomparable Redd Foxx, who’s still cussing a “blue” streak somewhere, I’m sure.

    My personal favorite was the yellow gatefold double-album from Kermit Schaefer’s Pardon My

    Blooper! series.  What’s more funny to a pre-teen boy than professional broadcasters royally blowing it on-air?  Nothing, that’s what.  (And obviously little has changed, as trillions of YouTubers will testify.)  Hell, I can still crack myself up at any time simply by saying, “Wonder For The Best Bread And Rolls” real fast.  Now that’s entertainment!

    Millions of late-night television viewers fell madly in love with Andy Kaufman and Steve Martin in the mid-’70’s, and I was no exception.  In the years pre-VCR, I would place a cassette recorder in front of the single monaural speaker on my little black & white portable and capture the audio portion of their genius performances on The Tonight Show, NBC’s Saturday Night, Fridays and The Midnight Special for review the next day.  And the next.  And for permanent memorization thereafter.  Kaufman’s bits, being less jokey and more visual, ultimately didn’t translate well to audio.  Martin, however, had by this point crafted the surreal audio joke into an art form.  So if Steve Martin was on Saturday Night Live, I was out in the garage after church Sunday morning, with my brother’s banjo slung around my neck and a prop arrow stuck through my head, doing all the bits.  Most notably this one, where a lovely little “life lesson” ditty quickly descends into a clusterfuck of bestial proportions.

    STEVE MARTIN \”Grandmother\’s Song\” on YouTube

    Learn to play this song, and play it for your kids, nephews, cousins or whatever children you have in your family, and they will adore you forever.  Kids absolutely LOVE this song, especially when they get to sing, “Put a live chicken in your underwear.”  Kids will call it “The Chicken Underwear Song.”  “Play ‘Chicken Underwear’!  Play ‘Chicken Underwear’!” they will scream, and you must oblige, as they have now been exposed to the great surreal masterpiece that is Steve Martin’s “Grandmother’s Song,” and their lives will never be the same.  They will never be sad again, as they can always sing these words and laugh hysterically anytime life gets them down.  I know that’s what I do.

    Side B of this short-but-sweet single provides the title cut from Martin’s 1977 debut LP, Let’s Get Small, from which both these tracks are taken.  Clocking in at a scant 1:24, “…Small” stands as Martin’s classic piss-take on America’s ever-popular drug humor;  simply by changing the word “high” to “small,” Martin becomes a comedian playing a comedian doing a bit about drugs.  Not until Mitch Hedberg slipped in then slipped away did we get a wider bird’s-eye view of the comic brain on drugs.  Since I don’t have a clip of this bit handy, I’ll leave you with this somewhat related, yet significantly more chaotic sketch from the same year, pairing Martin with a different kind of wild-and-crazy guy, The Who’s Keith Moon.

    STEVE MARTIN & KEITH MOON on YouTube

    Steve Martin’s career, which extended beyond standup and into acting, writing and music, is chronicled thoroughly in his best-selling 2007 autobiography, Born Standing Up.

    NEXT WEEK: Four attractive young men from Athens, GA release a single.  And the rest is history.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #15: Pardon My Pussy

    URGE OVERKILL  THE STULL EP   (Insipid Vinyl/Touch & Go Records IV-10, 1992)

    Chicago power-trio Urge Overkill ultimately proved to be one of those “in-between” anomalies we sometimes stumble upon in the record world:  too glammy and commercial for indie-rock snobs, yet too rough-hewn and tongue-in-cheek for serious corporate shilling.  Like fellow Illinoisans Cheap Trick before them, UO should have been the ultimate teenagers’ rock group of their era, pumping out one hard-driving, head-banging smash after another while giving a knowing wink on the side to their smarter-than-average loyal fans.  But, in the words of a more famous power-trio, nevermind.

    In 1992, after a few Steve Albini-produced releases that proved UO to be non-starters in the nascent alternate rock universe, National Kato, Blackie Onassis & King Roeser loosened the reins a bit on their tightly-wound glam-punk sound and released this sweet Kramer-produced 4-song double-7″ EP, Stull.  Disc 1, Side A opens the EP on a stellar note, with UO’s stunning and sexy rendition of the Neil Diamond 1967 Top-10 hit, “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon.”  For most people, this is the only Urge Overkill track they’ve ever heard, because Quentin Tarantino planted it smack-dab in the middle of his hit film, Pulp Fiction, two years later.  At the time of this release, however, it was just a super-cool Neil Diamond cover.

    See the video for URGE OVERKILL\’s \”Girl, You\’ll Be A Woman Soon\” on YouTube

    The B-Side of Disc 1 gives us the King/Kato-penned title-track, “Stull (Part 1).”  Exorcising some long-standing Rolling Stones demons, this 5-plus minute workout resembles the introduction to “Gimme Shelter,” yet it never fully explodes into a “Gimme Shelter” if you know what I mean.  But that’s not really the point here;  it’s all about the hypno-groove, something this newly electrified version of Urge did very well.  Check it out.

    Click here to play URGE OVERKILL’s “Stull (Part 1)”

    Disc 2, Side A wakes us up with another cover song, this time of obscure Seattle punk legends The Alan Milman Sect’s “Stitches In My Head,” here retitled simply, “Stitches.”  As purely psychotic as American punk songs get, “Stitches” accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: disturb.  Make sure the DJ spins THIS at your next wedding, and watch the mayhem ensue.

    Click here to play URGE OVERKILL’s “Stitches”

    And, last but not least, Side B of Disc 2 bids us a tearful farewell with “Goodbye To Guyville,” as much of a kiss-off to their native Chicago (which was never all that friendly to them in the first place) as a divine inspiration to fellow Windy City heterosexual-relationship authority Liz Phair, who titled her butt-kicking Matador debut, “Exile In Guyville” the following year.  Let the last teardrop fall.

    Click here to play URGE OVERKILL’s “Goodbye To Guyville”

    Originally just a sexy little sampler platter of what these guys were capable of when given a chance to stretch out, The Stull EP  turned out to be a stepping stone for UO, leading to a couple of stellar major-label releases, lots of MTV airplay and massive world tours.  But alas, the public at large never really caught on to their heady brew of cocky rock swagger, nudge-&-wink humor, and super-rock monster riffs.  A shame, really.  In the long run, I think we may have missed out on something truly great.

    (Note:  The CD version of Stull adds two slammin’ tracks from UO’s ’92 Sub Pop Singles Club release #SP109, “(Now That’s) The Barclords” and “What’s This Generation Coming To?”.  With any luck, this platter will be the feature of a future 45 RPM column.)

    NEXT WEEK:  I get all excited and go to a yawning festival.