I don’t know what to think of these guys. Where do they fit in the pantheon of Beatles imitators?
Utopia uses Beatles’ sounding vocal harmonies, use of harmonica and some familiar sounding guitar riffs. But it’s mostly patched together pieces of Beatles.
They are more polished sounding than the 1970’s band The Flamin’ Groovies whom, I believe, deliberately chose to present a garage band version of Beatlemania.
And Utopia’s lyrics are an odd lot. Their very first song on the album sends up “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ It’s called “I Just Want to Touch You (Do You Want me to Touch You Too?”)
They lead off side two with a song called ‘Hoi Poloi, with it’s ‘Penny Lane’ trumpets, followed by ‘Life Goes On’ with lyrics such as ‘The world keeps turning.’
The song ‘All Smiles,’ with its sound effects, resembles the Kinks more than the Beatles.
Overall the songs flow together well and if you weren’t paying attention you might think you were listening to the Fab Four.
But there have been others who did it better, the Spongetones from the 1980s and, original British Invaders the Dave Clark Five, to name a couple.
Todd Rundgren was the leader of Utopia and it was called Todd Rundgren’s Utopia in its early days. Mostly known as a progressive band with songs clocking in at 30 minutes, Utopia’s Deface the Music was a departure from that style.
Rundgren is best known for his solo hit ‘Hello It’s Me.’
This is the soundtrack to the movie some critics have called the greatest rock concert movie of all time. They aren’t far off base, although I think the Martin Scorsese film featuring the Band and many others, ‘The Last Waltz,” is a worthy adversary for that ‘best’ title. Some might say Woodstock.
The movies are similar only in that rock music was being played.
Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, is a concept performance that totally works. It makes the Talking Heads seem better than you thought they were. And they were good.
Filmed live over four nights in Los Angeles, the movie starts with David Byrne, the Heads’ lead singer and chief songwriter, walking on stage with a ‘boombox,” setting it down and seeming to turn it on. It’s the song Psycho Killer and Byrne sings solo with the beats. For each song another musician joins Byrne on stage so by the time they get to ‘Burning Down the House,’ the entire group is playing.
Byrne is wearing a ridiculous oversized business suit as they go through their songs. This whole thing wouldn’t work if it were not for the song quality. Songs like ‘Once in a Life Time,’ ‘Life During Wartime,’ ‘Slippery People,’ and the Al Green cover ‘Take Me to the River.’
A song about living in violent times, Life During Wartime, is just as relevant today:
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, This ain’t no fooling around No time for dancing, or lovey dovey, I ain’t got time for that now
There are many more great lyrical lines: ‘This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife …Hey how did I get here ‘ from Once in a Lifetime.
Every song is a winner and played live so perfectly that it sounds studio produced sometimes on the record where you can’t see the performance.
If you are to buy only one format, I’d probably buy the DVD. I didn’t do that because I rarely buy DVD’s, especially movies I have seen.
That’s because it was kind of uncool to like Three Dog Night in my teen years. ‘Too commercial’ and ‘they don’t write their own songs’ were among the comments. But when you are driving down the road, and ‘Joy to the World’ comes on you can’t resist the urge to unleash your best shower-trained rock voice: Jeremiah was a bullfrog!
They may have been a glorified covers band but between 1969 and 1975 the band notched 21 Top 40 hits — three of those were No. 1.
Was a good friend of mine!
Three Dog Night introduced artists to a wider audience. Joy to the World was written by country artist Hoyt Axton, for example. Laura Nyro (Eli’s Coming); Randy Newman (Mama Told Me Not to Come); and Harry Nillson (One) to name a few others the band made hits of their songs.
Never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his wine … Joy to the world, all the boys and girls now, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me. … and so on.
Besides a knack for picking good songs, Three Dog Night used three lead singers: Chuck Negron, Cory Wells and Danny Hutton, all strong singers in different ways. It allowed the group to match the lead voice with the song.
YouTuber ‘The Professor of Rock’ called the opening to Joy to the World to be the best known four-word opening in the history of rock.
Other Three Dog Night songs you may know the words to: ‘I’ve Never Been to Spain,’ ‘Black and White,’ ‘Shambala,’ ‘Easy to be Hard,’ ‘Liar,’ and ‘Just an Old Fashioned Love Song.
Given the name and menacing bald guy on the cover, you might think this is some hard-core punk or something way off the beaten path.
But the Screaming Blue Messiahs aren’t blue and they only scream a little bit. This defunct British trio shook things up a bit in the 1980s with a trio of albums that basically hit you in the face with straight ahead rock and roll.
There was some rockabilly, some Clash and BoDeans all tied up in the trio’s straightforward rock.
My album, ‘Gun Shy,’ was their second full-length album and yielded a minor hit called ‘Wild Blue Yonder.’ Good song!
Their biggest hit was ‘I Wanna be a Flinstone” off of their second album ‘Bikini Red.’
Gun-Shy showed them at the top of their game. Critics loved it — even getting a complimentary write-up in the New York Times, according to the Tidal.com website in its ‘Unsung Heroes’ feature.
“With twanging, squealing guitars and walloping drums, Gun-Shy comes on like a pickup truck full of Furies,” wrote the NYT.
But alas personal differences felled this promising band. In an interview with members Kenny Harris and Chris Thompson were asked about the possibility of reuniting with third member Bill Carter to play.
‘No, we are not in touch with him and as for a reformation, you have a better chance of seeing Elvis on stage supported by The Beatles,’ Thompson said.
Before there was Prince and the Revolution there was Sly and the Family Stone. They both had an integrated band black, white, female, male and played tight funk, rock and soul music.
Think of Prince singing ‘When Doves Cry’ and that opening just before the guitar beat when Prince goes ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’ in what can only be described as air pushed from his lungs through a vocal chord strung very tight. It sounds like he opens his mouth and out come the whirring sound of cicadas.
Sly sang a whole song in that mode: ‘If You Want Me to Stay.’ Well, maybe not the whole song but surely you remember Sly snapping out ‘got to get the message over to you now’ (in that cicada voice). He carries the voice down down before going way far back up to scat sing in a falsetto. Prince uses this technique a lot.
The point being. What does the point be? The point being that Prince was heavily influenced by Sly Stone and they both were influenced by Little Richard, James Brown, and to a degree Jimi Hendrix (especially in style and presence).
My album is an anthology in chronological order. It has their numerous hits –Everyday People, Family Affair, and Dance to the Music. But it also has some deeper album cuts that tend toward harder extended-play funk like ‘Sing a Simple Song.’
Music critic Joel Selvin wrote (according to Wikipedia): “..there are two types of black music: black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone.”
Sadly, in the 1980s Sly descended into darkness, drugs, and homelessness. Just like everyday people.
Now here’s a bit of a switch. Frank Sinatra. He’s arguably one of the best or best known singers of the 20th Century.
I picked this re-issue up in Birmingham sometime in the 1980s. I can’t remember exactly why — I may have heard a Sinatra song in a movie. Or, I may have just wanted to be able to field a request. If someone’s at my house listening to music — which was a common pastime — and said, ‘Hey got any Sinatra? I could say, ‘Of course.’
For me, his music was ‘easy listening or jazzy easy listening. Critics often cite his ‘effortless’ singing style and phrasing as to what made him so good. I see that. The songs come out fully baked, casual, effortless and you are left wondering ‘how did he make me like this song.
I have little awareness of the days when he was in his prime. This greatest hits captures some of his best and best known songs like ‘Young at Heart,’ ‘High Hopes,’ and ‘Chicago.’ Noticeably absent however is ‘Strangers in the Night,’ which supposedly Sinatra hated. Also ‘My Way’ is not here. I’m going to dock the grade a point for not having those iconic songs on a ‘Best of.’
When I was a kid I knew a little about the Rat Pack. I liked Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin the best; I actually didn’t see Sinatra on TV as much as Davis and Martin.
I even read Davis’ autobiography, how he lost his eye and all of that. I knew Dean Martin through the Jerry Lewis movies and and his own variety TV show. Martin always had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And that was while he was singing(:
I did pick up some Frank Sinatra on 78 records but I still need to sift through a stack of these to see what I have.
It was a whole different world of popular music back then —1940s and 50s. Sinatra, however, in the 1960s must have been listening to newer stuff. He called the Beatle George Harrison’s song, “Something,’ the ‘greatest love song of the past 50 years.’
Sinatra covered that song as did about every crooner around the world, from Liberace to James Brown to (more recently) Billie Eilish.
If you like rock and blues guitar, I see no reason why you shouldn’t have some Robin Trower in your collection.
Let’s get over the glaringly (hearingly?) obvious. The dude sounds a lot like Jimi Hendrix.
Like Stevie Ray Vaughn he can choose to play like Hendrix when warranted. It’s like when Stevie Ray plays a Hendrix tune, ‘Little Wing, for example. But he puts his SRV stamp on it.
Trower is like Hendrix without without the boots and bandana. Trower next to Hendrix is like a peacock without its feathers. It may not be stunningly garish, but you can still eat it. Um, no, we don’t eat peacocks, do we? Well, you get my drift: Trower’s got chops, they just aren’t as flamboyant as Jimi. But who was?
The question becomes why would you want to listen to Trower when there are seemingly dozens of Hendrix re-issues and found tapes out there? Again I say, if you love well played rock guitar and blues, Trower can deliver that better than 90 percent of his peers.
On the live album ‘Dreamland’ is a song where Trower subdues the guitar and makes it sing. The title cut ‘Bridge of Sighs’ sounds a little like U2’s Edge trying to channel Hendrix. The band has a nice asset in vocalist/bass player James Dewar.
Allmusic.com reviewer Hal Horowitz writes in a review of ‘Bridge of Sighs’:
Guitarist Robin Trower’s watershed sophomore solo disc remains his most stunning, representative and consistent collection of tunes.’
Earlier, Trower was guitarist for the band Procol Harum, which scored in the 1960s with two big hits ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and ‘Conquistador.’
Feargall Sharkey in the 1970s was lead singer of the northern Irish punk band The Undertones. I believe I still have my CD anthology of this influential group best known for its song ‘Teenage Kicks.’
The band eventually split over differences in musical direction, according to Wikipedia’s bio. It’s easy to figure out the differences upon listening to Sharkey’s solo albums. His music was glossy and very poppy. Feargall was going for the big commercial score.
His bandmates updated their punk-pop sound of the Undertones by launching the hard-edged band That Petrol Emotion. I will review that album later (if I can find it.)
Sharkey’s albums are overproduced and inoffensive shmears of big band, balladeer and dance. I know what your thinking. If they are bad, why do you have two. OK, the first album got me with its two inexplicably catchy singles: ‘A Good Heart,’ and ‘You Little Thief,’ songs that had a little oomph to them. So, I bought the second album on the basis of those two songs on the first album. (Maybe there would be four or five good songs this time? But, eh, no.)
‘You Little Thief’ does have a great line in a break-up song: ‘There’s no hard feelings, there’s no feelings at all.’
‘A Good Heart’ was written by Lone Justice singer Maria McKee.
ALBUMS: Life in the Foodchain (1978); Amerika (1980) La Bomba (1982); Romeo Unchained (1986); Notes From the Lost Civilization (1987)
MVC Ratings: Life 5.0/$$$$$; Amerika 4.5/$$$$$; La Bomba, 4.0/$$$$; Romeo 4.5/$$$$$; Notes 4.0/$$$$
Well, it’s finally time. Time for one of my favorite artists. Tonio K. (Real name Steve Krikorian; He takes his moniker from Tonio Kroger, a novel by Thomas Mann.)
I fell for Tonio K. the first time I heard the song ‘Life in the Foodchain’ at a watering hole/hamburger place in Athens, Ga., about 1980, or somewhere in that vicinity. I remember it took me a while in those days before Google to find anything about Tonio K. You couldn’t just find bios and histories and contact information with a few keystrokes on a search engine.
I ended up finding Tonio K. through my record expert Chuck at WUXTRY Records. Readers of this blog know I bought a significant amount of used records from WUXTRY, both in Athens and Chuck’s spinoff in Birmingham and Cahaba Heights.
Tonio K. was right up my alley. He was glib, cynical, angry and funny. I mean funny. I go back and listen to the records sometimes and marvel at the wordplay.
“Baby don’t leave me here alone, don’t break up our happy home, think of the children,’ Tonio sings. ‘I know we ain’t got no kids, but think of if we did, it would surely upset them.’
Another song, he sings she’ll be waiting for him ’till the cattle come home.’ He changes cows to cattle. One word change and he sets up some ‘t’s.’ so he can punctuate his angry delivery rat-atat-tat. That’s the small stuff.
His debut album was alternately a punk metal precursor to a group like the Bay Area’s punks Rancid and the already crazy Warren Zevon going more crazy. His first band while a teen was called Raik’s Progress, a psychedelic punk band worth seeking out a recent re-issue.
The opening lines tell you about the harsh realities faced in a survival-of-the-fittest world.
‘Well your mother was there to protect you’ (Wham a one-chord punctuation mark)/Your papa was there to provide (wham)/So how in the world did the excellent baby wind up in this hotel so broken inside.’
Then a little later: Cause it’s dog eat dog/and it’s cat and mouse/it’s watch your step and cross yourself and get back in the house/and it’s do or die/it’s push and shove/because everybody’s hungry and there just isn’t quite enough.
Beyond this survival theme, broken relationships seemed to be his inspiration. Here’s from the not-so-subtle H-A-T-R-E-D.
‘I wish I was as mellow, as for instance Jackson Browne, but ‘Fountain of Sorry’ my ass $%^&***/ I hope you wind up in the ground.
But then Tonio K. got religion, or at least his music did. From ‘You Will Go Free’ with T-Bone Burnett on back-up vocals.
You can call it the devil/call it the big lie/call it a fallen world whatever it is, it ruins almost everything you try … But in the midst of all of this darkness, in the middle of the night/The truth cuts through like a razor, a pure and holy light.
Tonio was in the Buddy Holly band, the Crickets, after Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. He has also collaborated with Burt Bacharach and has written songs for numerous other artists.
I see his musical career in two parts. The angry Tonio of younger years, hurt in relationships, wounded in love. That would encompass the Life and Amerika albums. Then La Bomba was kind of a transitional piece. The guitars were less grungy — just as loud — but not the same as amped up Earl Slick, Nick Van Maarth, Albert Lee and Dick Dale.
After the hard (but clean) rock of La Bomba, Tonio K. moved into a slicker 1980s sound with Romeo Unchained and the Lost Civilization that to these ears almost pushed the music to boring. Couple standouts though, ‘You Will Go Free,” and ‘Perfect World’ on Romeo and ‘You Were There,’ — which always makes my wife cry — and ‘Children’s Crusade on Notes.’ The records had talent to burn with the entrance of T-Bone Burnett. The albums appeared on an A&M subsidiary that promoted Christian artists.
This is not the full extent of K.’s discography. Go to his website www.toniok.com for more. I highly recommend getting Ole’ which has songs to match many on this playlist.
