The “blackest white group around.” That’s how they were described by one rock critic in the 1960.
These five young Rascals from New Jersey — with their ragged energy -hooky radio friendly songs — they made a good case for that description.
Songs like ‘Good Lovin,’ rocked. Beautiful Morning was a feel good song, and Groovin’ took it down a notch. This is a nice greatest hits album and the place to go if you want to check out these Rascals, led by the soulful voice of Felix Cavaliere.
This is a good album that didn’t get played that much — not just by me but collectively the record buying public . But it launched some careers and served as a bridge between the love of country and western music and punk rock.
Lot of groups made a stab at it with varying degrees of success — the Beat Farmers, the Long Ryders (for whom Escovido played for a while., Jason and the Scorchers, and Rubber Rodeo.
Rank and File played it a little straighter than the aforementioned groups, whose songs dripped with irony. But Rank and FIle would b a nice find in a used record store.
If you iike country, rockabilly and a pinch of punk, this is up your alley.
Rank and File had moderate success, Guitarist Alejandro Escoveda put out some excellent solo abums and burned the house down at Bottle Tree (now defunct) in Birmingham some years ago. I thought it was one of the best small venue Friday night live shows I had seen.
Standing room only in a packed room the size of a middle bedroom, Escoveda let it rip.
It would be easy to dismiss this average white band as a great bar band and go with that. But they are actually a good bump above that description. They are an American band in the Grand Funk mode or blue-eyed rock and soul of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.
Rare Earth was from Detroit, and like Mitch Ryder’s great band, absorbed the Motor City’s soul music tradition.
Detroit Wheels had some funk and soul in their approach. Rare Earth was one of the first successful- all- white bands to be signed by Motown Records. (Others had been signed but never had a hit or achieved much success.) Some audiences called the band too white sounding and others called the band too black sounding, but a lot more liked the sound. One of their biggest hits was a cover of a Temptations song, ‘Get Ready’ which was a real jam — like 30 minutes of jam in concert. They were loud, both vocally and musically.
I saw them at an outdoor free concert in West Lafayette, Indiana, in around 1974 or 1975. Or, maybe that was the J. Geils Band (?). I don’t know. I do know I became familiar with Rare Earth’s songs around this time as they bombarded the radio airways.
‘Born to Wander,’ ‘Hey Big Brother,’ ‘(I Know) I’m Losing You’ and my favorite: ‘I just Want to Celebrate.’
Here’s an excerpt about a pretty amazing song. I just posted on AL.com:
Living on free food tickets, Water in the milk, From a hole in the roof, Where the rain came through, What can you do? MmmWhat is it about this song?It’s called ‘Love of the Common People,’ first recorded in 1967, it has been recorded by many many artists — some quite big , yet it always seems to be flying under the radar.“I’ve heard that before. Who sings it?” is the reaction I get most often when I play it for someone.Maybe it was at a friend’s house? Or your parents played one of its abundant iterations. I’ve heard that song before. Who sings it?From country singers to reggae versions to punk and soul. Waylon Jennings, John Denver, Elton John and the Everly Brothers.
Happy Mother’s Day everybody. It’s Mom’s Appreciation Day or MAD as we call it. Actually, no It’s, of course Mother’s Day (for MD, what every mom wanted their son or daughter to grow up and be.} Well, we didn’t all become doctors but I’ve lived for the most part a wonderful life and I bless and acknowledge my mother’s assistance in that. Please try to empathize with our Moms. Today‘s a day where we stop and say I Love You.
(And a very happy BIRTHDAY, tomorrow May 11, to the love of my life, Catherine.
I also want t say RIP to one of the greats, Little RIchard, who is on my countdown albeit I don’t really have any vinyl of the rock and roll Little RIchard — rather I have a gospel record.
Little Richard, aka Richard Penniman from Macon, Ga., belongs up there with Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and the Beatles in completing the crossover mixture of white and black song stylings that melded in what we call rock and rollld.
His jagged falsetto and frenetic presentation of rock and roll songs had never been heard quite like Little Richard delivered them. His influences can be heard all over rock and roll, very specifically in Paul McCartney’s vocal yells and yelps.
The multimillionaire record mogul was worried enough about the group to sue them for using Quincy as the name of their band. I’m getting this from a compilation of sources, blogs and bios, incuding IMDb’s profile, of one of the ex-band members, Gerald Emerick.
Quincy Jones who has set the record for Grammy nominations with 80 (he won 28) went after a New Wave band with no hits and just a little promise. Because they called themselves Quincy?
I picked up the band’s self-entitled album in a bargain bin I believe while I was in Auburn. 1980. The music is pretty good New Wave, power pop with some synth highlights. The songs bounce a la Boomtown Rats or Elvis Costello or the Cars.
Maybe it’s a collectible because it’s the first and only album (that I know of) under the name Quincy. The band was no match for Mr. Jones and settled out of court.
For their second album, their name was Lulu Temple.
After not much success, the band that had once been a frequent performer at CGBG’s, disbanded and went their separate ways.
All I can say is Quincy Jones. Wow. Lulu Temple. Wow. Wasn’t there a popular TV show about this time called ‘Quincy?’
I haven’t seen that Jack Klugman vehicle in a long time. Maybe it’s called something else now? I can I picture Jack Klugman smoking a big cigar yelling: “Quit calling me Lulu.”
ALBUMS: Queen II (1974); Sheer Heart Attack (1974; A Night at the Opera (1975); News of the World (1977).
MVC Ratings: Queen II 4.0/$$$; Sheer 4.0/$$$; Opera 4.5/$$$$; News, 3.5/$$$
I was an early Queen adopter. And that’s saying something because Queen was so sonic in your face, bombastic and so not Bohemian that many had strong feelings strong negative feelings about Queen.
The critics pretty much panned the group. In a Village Voice review pompastic critic Robert Christgau gave Queen II a five -word dismissal review. He wrote: Wimpoid royaloid heavoid android void. C
Oh my Goid.
Of course it must have been all downhill from there. Not quite.
They later became at their peak, one of the most popular bands of all time.
Sure Queen II was heavoid but I was 14-year-old and thought the songs on the black side and white side (good versus evil) were really cool. Taking from the short-lived Glitter/Glam scene and heavy metal, Queen had musical talent on hand. Freddie Mercury, the lead singer with an amazingly powerful and wide-ranging voice, was also primary songwriter.
I never have had the self-entitled first album, although I’m familiar with it (the song’Tie Your Mother Down.’ particularly. Queen seemed to have pivoted after the critical slams of Queen II and released Sheer Heart Attack. It was a group of songs that that all sounded different, no connectivity whatsoever. There was, however, ‘Lily of the Valley’ which sounded like it belonged on Queen II.
A friend in my neighborhood in Indiana, who had introduced me to the group, said ‘They sold out, with Sheer Heart Attack.’ I didn’t agree.
(Shouldn’t we have been listening to John Mellencamp or John Hiatt in Indiana? Well, I moved before those two artists came to my attention).
In retrospect, it seems odd that some adolescent boys from Indiana known for its corn and a car race would be listening to Glam-rock British rockers. But we were, and still do.
The universal-ness of it all. Uh oh heavoid again.
So the scattershot nature of Sheer Heart Attack worked, mainly because of the big hit single ‘Killer Queen.’ This success set up the album ‘A Night at the Opera, which had the mega-hit ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ a single like perhaps no other. There have been other ‘songs-within-a-song’ before — ‘Uncle Albert’ by Paul McCartney, ‘A Day in the Life’ by the Beatles and ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ by Meatloaf come to mind.
But none of those, although quite popular, I think equals the universal appeal of Bohemian Rhapsody with its outrageous blending of opera, rock and roll and romantic balladry.
About this time 1977-78, I was getting ready to graduate from high school and moving on in the state of Georgia. I inherited ‘News of the World’ from my wife, but it wasn’t the same Queen, and it wasn’t the same me.
I was ready to movoid down the road picking up other great music along the way. Like Mellencamp and Hiatt.
As some of my columns go I didn’t expect to write a column when I was just fiddling around on my computer. And thinking.
So I wrote up a little ditty about thinking. (Other stuff coming: a review on my Queen records and something about a Mixtape. And don’t forget my recent P.J {Proby review, a character indeed.)
Keep thinking folks!
Do our brains have an infinite number of thoughts?
When you are forming a thought you could go in a million directions. Or, maybe an infinite number of directions.
I’m thinking right now of the beach. I’m thinking of the emerald blue water and white sugar sand, I’m thinking of lotion, and sunburn. I’m thinking about the coronavirus. I’m thinking of a story I read about two cats in different parts of New York who got the coronavirus.
“I wonder if dolphins get the disease,” I think. Stop!
Stop these thoughts, I’ve got to finish this column.
So think about it: Do we have an infinite number of thoughts?
No, you say?
When you die, your brain dies so that would end the thoughts, you aver. Therefore, the number of thoughts a person has is finite.
But wait a minute, what if we are talking about everybody’s brain, not just a brain. Or, let’s suppose we are immortal and the universe is infinite. Seems like we would have, or be capable of having, an endless number of thoughts?
Google receives 63,000 searches per second.
Of those searches, 15 percent have never been searched on Google, according to the SEOtribunal.com, which I found using Google. Never? Never!
That’s an astounding number of new queries if you think about it. That’s 229 million per hour and 15 percent would mean that 34 million Google searches each hour are searches that have never been made before.
Like, I just Googled: “Do dolphins get the coronavirus?” The answer is yes so it probably has been searched. OK, new search: “Given that dolphins do get the disease how far is a safe distance from an infected dolphin firing off snot through its blowhole? Well, 100 yards is the immediate answer, I think Google has had that one too. (So, you can see it’s hard to come up with something new to search.)
Moving on, I believe there may be an infinite number of thoughts.
I would like to see if that 15 percent of searches number holds steady over the years.
I’m dipping my toe, here, into the ‘infinite monkeys theorem.’ You know the one: If you give an infinite number of monkeys a typewriter and teach them to mash keys at random, the monkeys would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare (or maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs). It’s true, in theory.
So I started wandering down this path of thought, when I was reminded of a measurement I do know.
And that is: The human brain has 100 billion brain cells.
I have Lewy body dementia and it kills brain cells.
But think about our mindpower. There are 7.5 billion people on Earth with (maybe) an infinite number of thoughts.
There are thoughts leading-to-questions-leading-to-cures for my condition, for Parkinson’s, for Alzheimer’s for cancer, and, yes, COVID-19.
So think people. Think.
And use Google when necessary.
Mike Oliver is an opinion columnist who writes about living with Lewy body dementia and other topical issues. Read his blog at www.myvinylcountdown.com.
ALBUMS: Three Week Hero-PJP (1969); Enigma (1966): You Can’t Come Home Again (45 rpm) (1968): Somewhere (1967): What’s Wrong With My World (1968): Focus Con Proby (1977)
MVC Rating: Hero 4.0/$$$; Enigma 4.0/$$$; Home (45) 3.5/$$; Somewhere 3.5/$$; What’s Wrong with My World 2.5/$$; Focus Con Proby. (pending review)
I have written about Proby earlier when I named one of his albums one of the seven most underrated albums in My VInyl Countdown collection.
Proby’s story is certainly a wild one: he got kicked out of England; Van Morrison wrote a song about him; his sister dated Elvis; he played Elvis in a stage production; sang mostly rock and roll and ballads but at one point in the 1970s was lead singer for Focus the heavy prog band from the Netherlands in ‘Focus Con Proby.’ Focus is a group best known for their heavy metal yodeling song called Hocus Pocus.
First, a quick update on My Vinyl Countdown.com. That’s my website where I state my mission by vowing to listen to, write about and list (in alphabetical order) all of the records I have collected since, oh about age 12.
I’m 60 now. (I took about a two-decade detour into digital).
I am doing this to raise awareness of Lewy body dementia, which I have.
There is no cure for this disease, the second-leading form of degenerative dementia after Alzheimer’s. So yes, I am forgetful and I have tremors now and then. But thanks to modern science and miracles of their cost prohibitive I’m doing fine. My bank account may not be doing fine, but I am.
So anyway, I started with 678 records and have reviewed 438. Now I have about 240 records to go. (Give or take).
Thanks to everyone with the notes and kind words throughout this. It keeps me hanging on. (Got a Vanilla Fudge album to do when I get to the V’s).
Proby is one of those artists that I really didn’t know during my formative vinyl years. He’s one of several on the countdown that I have purchased more recently (past 3 years) as I started thumbing through bargain bins and thrift shops.
Coming home after a thrift store find I put on his Enigma record and immediately noticed the voice. It was an entity all to itself, Vegas, swamp rock, Elvis, Otis, Tom Jones — that voice channeled just about everything.
He was not moving the needle much in the U.S. but the UK seemed to love him. He was like Bizarro World Elvis: or Tom Jones playing Mick Jagger in a movie about the Stones; or Johnny Cash if he had grown up in Ireland during the 1950s and 60s and was heavily influenced by Van Morrison.
(These are fun, I could go on but I’ll restrain myself.)
The ‘accident’ sparked so much audience reaction that it happened again ……..and again. I couldn’t find any stories that detailed how many times it happened. But an oversight office on moral turpitude basically had Proby thrown out of the country.
PJ Proby’s albums were often a hodgepodge of styles looking for a theme. Some real gems however found within.
About the music. I would recommend Enigma which has his single ‘Niki Hoeky’ a Deep South novelty tune in the vein of Tony Joe White’s ‘Polk Salad Annie.’ Or about anything Jim Stafford would do.
Proby’s vocals jump comfortably from falsetto to hard rock/soul back down again.
The man knew he had a voice and that was possibly his downfall.
On stage he knew he could wow anyone when he opened his mouth to sing. But his ability to sing any type of song also meant that he recorded any type of songs — as if he was going for the shotgun affect and seeing which style will stick
The problem, which comes clear in the very-good-but-disjointed ‘Three Week Hero., ‘ is that he thinks it’s all too funny, like a comedian who has no sense of when to quit repeating the punch line. His exaggerated bumpkin accent on the opening title song on Hero has no reasoning behind it, context.
It’s bizarre as if he was brushing up to be on TV’s Hee Haw.
In another really good song he sounds like Johnny Cash — only better!
Then he airs out a completely gut wrenching Otis Redding like vocal on a song that made me readjust the listening device. He covered ” It’s so hard to be a N-word.’ No, I’m not going to write it).
It’s a song written by Georgia civil rights activist and African American Mable Hillery. I was brought up that white people never use the N-word so I questioned the appropriateness of a white man singing. Here’s Mable’s version.
And here is Proby’s version with the backing of a group of four men called the New Yardbirds.
Yes, the New Yardbirds were John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. It is believed to be the first time the future Led Zeppelin members recorded together.
NOTE: This song is part of a 3-song medley that also includes ‘George Wallace came Rolling in this Morning.’
Off the same album is this one which sounds like it could have been a single.
