Boy wonder vocalist out of the chute at the speed of sound.
Sweet 16 and burning white soul-boy vocals with the Box Tops.
Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane Ain’t got time to take a fast train Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home My baby, just-a wrote me a letter
Killer opening. What’s the encore?
Alex Chilton was going to be a Big Star.
He was, and he wasn’t. The star fell without anyone seeing it.
Oh, but a few did. An influential few remembered the shooting star.
A song by one of the world’s coolest bands, The Replacements, was titled Alex Chilton. REM declared him a divine inspiration.
Big Star had some big expectations. How could their three albums, or just one of them not set the world on fire.
After that didn’t play out, Chilton did something many would do. Screw it. I’ll do what I want, start an indie career where you put out albums like this one where songs like Volare — are you kidding me?– become part of the buoyant fun. Toss off a Carole King song here, an obscure instrumental, and not so subtle (or sexy) invitation to get naughty.
All in fun. And it was, sort of. Sad, too.
Chilton died at 59 in 2010.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
This is an important album by an important band. Camper Van Beethoven have something to say.
These California, early indie, alternative songmakers make you work to figure out what they were trying to say. But in the work therein lies the answer, or at least the point. And that point? Something about skewering and deconstructing suburbia, and making fun of popular culture and Patty Hearst. All legit rock angles, for sure.
Whether it was about the Eye of Fatima or figuring it all out, it was well played and it sounded about right.
One of these days
When you figure, figure it all out
Well be sure to let me know
David Lowery’s voice drips rock ‘n roll irony, as guitars get circled by a violin. This is a band whose first real ‘hit,’ if you can call it that, was: “Take the Skinheads Bowling.’
Every day, I get up and pray to Jah And he increases the number of clocks by exactly one
Everybody’s comin’ home for lunch these days
Last night there were skinheads on my lawn
Take the skinheads bowling …
If you like this Camper Van Beethoven album, you might also explore Key Lime Pie, a follow-up album which has that wonderful take on human optimism, ‘When I Win the Lottery.”
Also, I highly recommend a spin-off band, Cracker, which I also have digitally only. Kind off like a more rocking Camper stripped of artsy flourishes (and violin).
Cracker was known for the song that had the line: Cause what the world needs now is another folk singer like I need a hole in my head.
Good stuff. Cracker and Camper. David Lowery is the common key creative force here. He looks at things a little differently.
For example thanking Patty Hearst, the Revolutionary Sweetheart, for making life more interesting.
Oh, my beloved revolutionary sweetheart I can see your newsprint face turn yellow in the gutter It makes me sad How I long for the days when you came to liberate us from boredom From driving around from the hours between five and seven in the evening
My Beloved Tania
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
NOTE TO HIDDEN POEM SEARCHERS: YOU NEED TO CLICK THE TITLE OF THE WARNING POST. THE NEW ‘HIDDEN POEM‘ IS AT THE BOTTOM (‘THE SWITCH IS REAL IS OLDER)’
As a short preamble to what I am attempting here, I write this note. At best, I’ve dabbled in poetry. I took it in college at Auburn under the esteemed Dr. John Nist, now deceased, who said he thought i showed promise. We had to read our poems in front of the class. He was encouraging, yes, until I actually started to process what he said. What’s promise in the poetry field? I wondered. I went into Journalism, which at that time post-Watergate, was a popular major. I continued to dabble in poetry. I took literature classes, admired poets from Blake to Yeats to Hopkins and American poets Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll, ee cummings, Whitman, T.S. Elliott, and Dylan Thomas. And, of course, Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.
Gerard Manley Hopkins Wikipedia public domain
But I can’t say I’ve looked at poetry or seriously thought of writing it again until this brain diagnosis. I will tell you I still can’t read two pages of Joyce’s Ulysses and make sense of it — but it does fascinate me, the word play, the obscure and dense references, and the stream of consciousness, kind of like a Capt. Beefheart album.
So, without further ado, here’s my poem:
This Switch is Real
The expansive Sleep fell away
To consciousness just like the Big Switch
On, off. On, again?
She drinks the clear water. And puts the biscuits up.
Yesterday’s coffee at bedside. Like every day.
But it’s not my coffee. Not my bed. I dreamed I looked at my hands last night. And feet.
I had shiny black shoes. I need to grab the railing.
There are cereal bowls with milk on the bottom. Silly soft cotton pajama bottoms.
Morning? It’s Friday, no, Thursday. A 24-hour interval intervenes, droops over the table.
I fold the clocks. Put them in that space. TV blares for argument sake. In another space. What a good space, she says. Toast burns.
Hello? Hello? I want to hold my girls Hannah, Emily, Claire.
Catherine. Himmelman name-check. God Bless You.
The flowers match the curtains, how odd, yellow-green.
Not the matching colors, the flowers. Are they real?
Buzzing voices hum with low talk.
They are all here. I know them all but do not really.
The light dims with time. Lord knows what time it is.
Are they my hands?
How can it be?
Music is hard to hear in the air. Need a better conductor. Stand By Me.
No. Let It Be. The hardcore life is not where it’s at.
Heavy, I helped lower the titanic vehicle into the hole.
I’m typing my letter of resignation. It was an interesting experiment. I made a ripple; Everyone makes ripples. So many ripples. Fat-skinny ripples. They crash, clash and push against each other until finally smooth.
Am I alive?
Bang, you’re dead. This Switch is real.
I Am.
Oh My God
(Mike Oliver, Jan. 14, 2018)
NEW POEM
Congratulations you have found the Hidden Poem. Now explain it.
Ha! Not so easy. Even for me.
Lots of riffing off rhymes, after market sand blasting. Still doesn’t blast, far enough to find the underlying truth. The truth, lying under.
So here we go.
The Hidden Poem
This is about the mind.
Brain drops keep falling
But a hard rain yet to come
Burn the Beatles, shake it up
Like a hurricane
Keep in mind. Keep your mind.
Cross out the triangle and orchestrate a reversal to a circle. It’s a dance.
Burn the Beatles shake it up
Here in Birmingham.
Play date. Replay. The grievance system all day.
OK, OK,
Call the man, go ahead call the Man.
Burn the Beatles break it up.
Combo unit, turntable, CD,
Blue Ray, Radio, TV,
AM/FM., PM, LMNOP.
TeeeVeee.
Burn the Beatles. Shake it up.
Remember and hit save. For later you ex-Hume the past. I Think.
Therefore. You Are. Don’t put DesCartes before the hors
Tainted from an Apple byte.
Don’t Soft Cell my brain sell.
Burn the Beatles. Shake it up.
The MC is KC. Discipline. Words.
Word.
Badger, banter. Re-Cognition.
Not fragile words fall to the ground and shatter into a thousand pieces. What? OK, a million pieces. What? Okay, a billion pieces.
No sunshine needed KC. Shake your booty, Shake your groove thing. Shake like Alabama Shakes. Towns in splinters from winds of violent change. Like a bent fire hydrant.
And red white and blues from an orange tyrant
What Marvin said. Mercy.
Keep in mind.
In mindfulness you will find.
Keep in mind there’s no revelation.
Except for this: You are the cherry on top of creation.
ALBUMS: Talking with the Taxman about Poetry (1986); Back to Basics (1987)
MVC Rating: Taxman 4.0/$$$; Basics, 3.5/$$$$
A smart bloke this Billy Bragg. Articulate working class. We could be mates I think, over a pint.
He doesn’t even try to change his thick English accent. Hell why should he? To sell more records, maybe?
Basics is a compilation of early songs, mostly just Bragg and his guitar. Taxman has higher production values which means a violin and trumpet sneak in some of the songs.
He was a smart lad; I haven’t followed him in years but I’m sure he retains his intellect, if not his passionate fight for the poor and working class. But I do know he worked with Wilco producing an extraordinary song together called ‘California Stars,’ taken from unpublished writings of Woody Guthrie.
To get a sense of his mind, one can look at the song titles: ‘Ideology,’ ‘There is Power in a Union’ ‘Help save the Youth of America’ ‘To Have and to Not Have.’
Or burrow down deeper into his lyrics. In one of his best songs, Levi Stubb’s Tears, a few lines capture a world of hurt.
She ran away from home in her mother’s best coat She was married before she was even entitled to vote And her husband was one of those blokes The sort that only laughs at his own jokes The sort a war takes away And when there wasn’t a war he left anyway
Weaving songs of personal relationships and their many hazards with songs of protest and activism have an interesting way of meshing; one side illuminates the others.
But listening through these earlier songs, a line jumps out that’s probably not surprising given his age and by the fact it is hard and slow to change the system.
Bragg sang, “I don’t want to change the world. I’m not looking for a new England, I’m just looking for another girl.”
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
ALBUMS: Pet Sounds (1966) Shut Down Volume 2 (1964)
MVC Rating: Pet Sounds, 5.0/$$$$$; Shut Down 4.0/$$$$
So, we’ve had the Beat Farmers, Beat Rodeo and the Beat. Before we get to another band with a ‘Beat’ in it, let’s go to the Beach.
This copy of ‘Pet Sounds’ is a little worn. My rock roots were decidedly Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who, Al Green, Hendrix, Janis, Otis Redding, Allmans and so on.
The Beach Boys on the west coast, specifically Southern California, seemed so white-surfer- boy with a decidedly middle class orientation — and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But for all their initial radio beach and car songs, there was genius at work from Brian Wilson. Listening to arguably their best work, ‘Pet Sounds,’ one is struck by the arrangements and interlocking melodies, a jazz sensibility. ‘God only Knows’ is a near perfect song. Sloop John is perennial.
Shut Down has Fun, Fun, Fun, which is definitely worth the three Funs. Shut Down also had some talking interludes which reminded me of a Zappa interlude if Zappa wasn’t so cynical. Come to think of it Zappa was actually making fun of the Beach Boys. Interestingly on Pet Sounds, there is some secret freak out at the end of the album after ‘Caroline No.’
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
ALBUMS: Tales of the New West (1985), Van Go (1986)
MVC Rating: ‘Tales’ 4.0/$$, Van Go 3.0/$$
Now this group I haven’t listened to in more than a decade but I remember a time in the 1980s that some of my close Birmingham News friends thought this (first record anyway) was the greatest thing since sliced beets. We even had a tradition that lasted years where we passed around a can of beets. Never opened it mind you, just passed it along, the same can.
I don’t know how it started exactly but at the height of Beat Farmer mania, someone bought a can of beets to a party held by say Will and Adele. So then Bob and Tondee have a party and guess what: Will has a can of beets behind his back. Surprise! Beets! Tag you’re it!
(I know it, sounds like a B-52’s song but that’s what happens when you are living in your own private Idaho). This little beet shenanigans was going on about 1985-86
When the Beat Farmers came to Birmingham we all went to the Nick to see them. Or was it still the The Wooden Nickel at that time? Anyway, the band lived up to its reputation as being one of the best bar bands anywhere.
I have to say, and stop me if you can, but I truly believe that The Beat Farmers’ style was rootsy, and grounded in the beat.
And they were funny. If not a little profane.
Their funny songs were often sung by the now deceased Country Dick Montana, who had to be midway between 6 and 7 feet tall and had a bass voice so low, it made the china chatter when we put one of his songs on in the house. Here’s a sample lyric from California Kid with Country Dick on beat vocals (at the risk of revealing what we all thought was funny when we were 20-somethings.
She undid my boots, she untied my jeans She untied my tubes I had tied in my teens ‘Bout that time the front door was kicked in And there stood some scumball all covered in sin He said “that’s my woman” I said “that’s no lie” I blew a hole in him just as big as the sky
I got my Colt Forty Five, right by my side I’m the California Kid, I hope you’re quite prepared to die
Whew! The Beat Farmers ladies and gentlemen.
They also had a song called Happy Boy which was silly enough to be a regular feature on the Dr. Demento show.
Country Dick died Nov. 8, 1996 with his boots on in the middle of a song, massive heart attack at age 40.
The video below will feature one of their more ‘normal’ songs.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
UMS: Talking with the Taxman about Poetry (1986); Back to Basics (1987)
