Category: Old Things That Are New to Me

Today I’m doing some research on a band for an upcoming review. While surfing around the internet for articles and official bios, I found many passing references and comparisons to two other bands, both I had never heard of before, as being influences. Those bands are The Deep and The Seeds; both relics of psychedelic folk pop of the 1960’s.

Tossing out obscure or little known bands happens a lot in music reviewing, sometimes it’s a bit heavy-handed or pretentious, other times very helpful. In this case, my interest was peaked, so I did some (very) basic info gathering — on All Music Guide, Wikipedia and YouTube, of course.

From what I’ve gathered, The Deep were not all that notable for the era and their name doesn’t carry much weight compared to similar acts of the time. The Deep formed in the mid-1960s, never toured or gained much of a devoted following, but their lone album, The Psychedelic Moods of The Deep, is thought to be one of the first times the word ‘psychedelic’ was used in an album title.

Wikipedia’s entry plainly describes their rock and roll sound as “protopunk at times, while at others, their music delves into more psychedelic sounds,” while AMG’s brief bio says:

“They took a middle ground between the Seeds, the 13th Floor Elevators, and Kim Fowley with a thinly produced, goofy psychedelia on which tomfoolery abounded. Though basically a silly exercise, the group had their interesting moments, and certainly had a greater sense of melody than either Kim Fowley or the Seeds.” (AMG)

Here is a sample of one of their songs, a slow ballad with melodramatic sighs that almost recall French pop songwriter, Serge Gainsbourg’s song “Ballade De Melody Nelson”:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KhTXaj86uE[/youtube]

As for The Seeds, well they were more well known, and had a much lengthier career. Fronted by vocalist Sky Saxon (born Richard Marsh) and guitarist Jan Savage, The Seeds played bluesy, psychedelic garage rock, and were once called — by blues legend Muddy Waters — “America’s own Rolling Stones.”

The band’s first single “Pushin’ Too Hard” was a commercial hit — rising into the Top 40 in 1967 — and immediately spawned ‘sound-alike’ follow-ups, “Mr. Farmer” and “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine,” “in an attempt to replicate their success; the latter came the closest to being a hit, just missing the Top 40.” (AMG)

“Pushin’ Too Hard” on Shebang (hosted by Casey Kasem):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmHTyLBIZ1g[/youtube]

“Can’t Seem To Make You Mine” on American Bandstand:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV8KvKYRxig[/youtube]

Like countless bands at the time, the group turned towards the arty and more experimental psychedelic rock, no doubt influenced by The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s, but never produced another hit and disbanded at the end of the decade.

After the break up of The Seeds, Saxon joined the Ya Ho Wha religious sect and released several albums as the Yahowha 13 in the mid 1970s.

It’s hard to tell how much influence bands like The Deep or The Seeds have had on the landscape of pop and psychedelic rock (especially compared to more notable “The” bands from the era: The Beatles, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Turtles, The Stooges, The Kinks, even The Monkees — not to mention Hermans Hermits and Love), but clearly their sound has left a small imprint in current acts who mine the hooks and poppy clatter, whether they know they are or not.

Paul Kelly’s song “The Upset” popped up on my iTunes a couple days ago. I had never heard it before nor did I initially know how it got to be on my computer. As it turns out, it was released as part of a compilation called Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label as put out by the Numero Group label. This particular collection, which focuses on Miami’s Deep City label, came out in 2005 and somehow found its place along with three other similar collections on my iPod.

If you’re not familiar with Numero Group, essentially they are a new-ish independent record label that specializes in re-releasing and curating stellar collections of out-of-print soul, r&b, afro-cuban, funk, kiddie soul and SO much more great music that has fallen through the cracks over the years.

Like many imprints that dig for curiosities and obscure music, many of the artists and long-since-gone labels they mine for aren’t the names most people know at all. In fact while much of the music feels familiar to the Motown and blues and funk sounds of groups we know, there is very little in the way of top name talent. But that does not really diminish the countless great artists and songs collected on these albums.

“The Upset” by Paul Kelly is one such song that mines the Motown sounds somewhere between Otis Redding, The Temptations and perhaps bits of Sam Cooke or Nina Simone. But it still sounds sorta modern at times. Hell, the first time I heard this, I was convinced it was Gnarls Barkley covering an old Motown standard.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/PaulKelly_TheUpset.mp3]

With big powerful horn arrangements open the song, and the slinky upstroke of the guitar, it feels like a lamenting dirge. But when coupled with Kelly’s soaring vocal melodies that slide into the notes with the ease of Otis or Nina, the choruses elevate the song to a level of overcoming the adversity he sings about. Truly a great song.

Another song by Kelly is featured on this collection: “It’s My Baby.” This song sounds like a near rip of “My Girl” by the Temptations. From the chord progression and the horn arrangements, to the rhythm section and vibe of the song and certainly the vocal melody that borrows liberally from the song, it’s amazing there was no lawsuit involved.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/PaulKelly_ItsMyBaby.mp3]

And yet, it still sounds great, even if it does put you more in the mood to listen to “My Girl” instead. For comparison’s sake, here is the Temptations:

[youtube]ltRwmgYEUr8[/youtube]

As a lifelong fan of The Beatles, I’m always surprised to come across a song I am less familiar with. This is the case with “Rain,” a fantastic, if lesser-known B-side found on the “Paperback Writer” single. While I have heard this song a small handful of times, it’s certainly not as ingrained within me compared to practically every other song in their repertoire.

Recorded in roughly two or three days in April of 1966, along with the aforementioned “Paperback Writer” during the Revolver sessions, “Rain” is a great upbeat jangly song. With those bright slightly crunched lead guitar lines, and the tight vocal harmonies its fairly typical for this era of The Beatles. But in many ways the song is an unsung transition point between the mod early period and the more experimental, psychedelic era to follow.

The song contains many musical elements that would be used later on such as Paul’s increasingly melodic bass lines, delicate string arrangements, boombastic drums (via close mic’ing inside the bassdrum, the droning chords (that foreshadowed the use of sitar and the influence of Indian ragas) and of course the backwords tape loops.

During this time, The Beatles, along with producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick, began toying with new sonic sounds and effects. Emerick came up with ways to alter the sonic textures of a track by recording parts “faster than normal.” Then, when playing back normally,  the music’s tonal quality was radically changed. Similarly, the technique was used to alter Lennon’s lead vocal: recorded with the machine slowed down, which made Lennon’s voice higher when played at normal speeds.

Also in the song’s coda John’s voice can be heard singing the first lyrics of the song “When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads” played in a reverse.

According to sources found on Wikipedia, Lennon described the origins of this idea said:

“After we’d done the session on that particular song—it ended at about four or five in the morning—I went home with a tape to see what else you could do with it. And I was sort of very tired, you know, not knowing what I was doing, and I just happened to put it on my own tape recorder and it came out backwards. And I liked it better. So that’s how it happened.*“

George Martin, though also claims to have come up with the idea:

“I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John’s voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it on another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed.**(Emerick, p. 117)”

Emerick also noted that the “‘Paperback Writer/”Rain’ single was the first to use a new device invented by the maintenance department at Abbey Road called ‘ATOC’ for ‘Automatic Transient Overload Control.'” The invention enabled the record to be cut at a louder volume, and as he put it, “louder than any other single up to that time.”

It should be said that many of these tricks had been experimented with by a few avant-garde composers and emerging electronic musicians. But in 1966, a pop song like this was revolutionary. This recording process also helped to re-energize the band creatively as they morphed from a performance entity to a more artistic studio force. Obviously later on, The Beatles experimental vision would be realized on Revolver‘s remarkable closer “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour and so on and on. (We all know this by now.)

It’s insane to think that this song, like many of the singles and b-sides by the group, were left off a proper album. While the one-two punch of “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” were hugely popular as radio hits, b-sides such as “Rain” received far less attention as they were eventually relegated to those Red & Blue greatest hits collections. But time has proven that these Revolver sessions songs are equally enduring and influential in The Beatles’ catalog, if not more so. All in all, “Rain” is an amazingly catchy pop rock tune.

Check out the promo videos (an early precursor to music videos) for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain”:

[youtube]fXOsi6gPvDs[/youtube]

**For more about Geoff Emerick’s work recording the Beatles, I highly recommend his memoir Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles.

Somehow today I was reminded of one of the weirdest characters on SNL — Dieter. You might remember those “Sprockets” sketches Mike Myers did where he played the late 70s, early 80s Kraftwerk-inspired, monkey touching, post-industrial German tv host.

There was something about that character that was always hilarious to me, even when I had no idea what it was spoofing. Thinking back, it’s odd how popular that character was for a time, mostly because that early Euro-electronic movement was always relatively unknown to the mainstream… especially in the States during the early ’90s when the sketches aired on SNL.

Anyway, I came across this video on the ol’ YouTubes, one I hadn’t seen, which looks to be the first appearance of Dieter, before the Sprockets sketches. It might be my new favourite because of all the strange references to art college in Stuttgart, S&M\monkey touching culture and the duo’s ambiguous relationship. The whole thing seems really ahead of its time.

Take a look here. (Apparently you cannot embed this video b\c NBC or whomever think that embedding videos is stealing. In this case it is more like unearthing a long forgotten classic for people…it’s free advertising people!)

Watching end of Packers\Seahawks game tonight and during some stats segment I heard a pretty familiar funky tune that I instantly recognized as a Sesame Street song. I remember Sesame Street always having really great guests and musicians drop by as well as pretty cool songs (and educational too!). Check it out below.

[youtube]HgocE-JfWFI[/youtube]

Slow day at the office so to speak… so here are a few things I’ve rediscovered this week. None are really all that ‘new’ to me per se, but sometimes you sort of just forget about things for awhile, until someone mentions or pops up somewhere (iPod, internet). Such is the case here.

1) They Might Be Giants — I remember how fun and crazy this band was when I discovered them back in late grade school (like most people my age did via Tiny Toons’ Particle Man). It’s amazing to think that this band has consistently put out quality records for over 20 years and really have never wavered from much from their quirky, lovable sound. Their forthcoming second children’s album Here Come the 123’s looks to be more of the same. Check out this great video from their first self-titled album.

[youtube]VJQnZZ-Wmao[/youtube]

2) Blonde Redhead — Definitely not old, nor new to me but the past video reminded me of this video from Blonde Redhead’s “Top Ranking” from last year’s 23 album. They’re coming here to the DC next week so I might just have to go.

[youtube]bMH1yFQFj5I[/youtube]

3) Daft Hands — Recently I became aware of yet another fad in YouTube videos…this one involving hand dances set to Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.” The video is a highly coordinated series of hand motions spelling out the lyrics with hands and fingers (with the words drawn in sharpie). But the amazing thing is that if you search just a little, you will find more than a few imitation videos of other people coming up with their own versions, some even trying to outdo the original.

I have never quite understood this variety of ‘original content’ that surfaces on the site; in my mind it’s one thing to create your own short film or video or mash up etc. I get that…they’re often funny, sometimes painful, and most likely completely terrible. But when others create videos of themselves enacting the Crank Dat (Soulja Boy) dance or those old mash ups of that poor ‘Star Wars kid’ I do wonder what drives people to do that. I obviously feel old and out of touch so really I just want to feel young and hip again before they change whatever hip is.

Either way it’s not a new phenomenon by any means, but just interesting how one decent idea yields so many imitations. I suppose that with the ease of creating videos and music and sharing ideas (on crappy blogs like this one), anyone can have a voice, which ultimately inspires others to try it for themselves.

Anyway…enough rambling about the obvious…here’s the damn video.

[youtube]K2cYWfq–Nw[/youtube]