Weezer Impresses Geezer

UPDATED 10/30/09, 7:19 am:
At the end of this post I’ve added YouTube video of Weezer’s performance last night on the Late Show with David Letterman.

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I plead guilty to having for the most part ignored new music since the late ’80s. As a dad of three boys ranging in age from 12 to 18, that hasn’t been easy to do.

 

One of the few artists to have (barely) penetrated my musical consciousness since the late ’80s is the band Weezer.

They were one of son #1’s first favorite artists. More recently, son #2, age 14, has become a Weezer fanatic. Monday night he was thrilled to learn he was one of the winners of a Weezer fan photo contest on Facebook run by iheartradio, the web streaming portal property of terrestrial radio giant Clear Channel Communications. The prize: two tickets to an invitation-only Weezer show at the P.C. Richard & Son Theater in New York City.

Yesterday I took the afternoon off to escort my son and three friends to the show (one of those friends won the contest too). I hadn’t expected to see the show myself, but the promoters, as they crossed off the names of the contest winners and their guests lined up outside the theater waiting for the doors to open, offered me free admission.

Little Green Doggy Bag

My favorite DJs on Blip.fm have turned me on to several cool songs I’d long forgotten. In some cases I’d either forgotten or never knew the title and artist — like in the case of “Little Green Bag” by George Baker Selection, a number 21 hit in the U.S. in 1970.

You know how a song gets stuck in your head? Well, usually it’s just part of a song — the part of the song that contains what music industry insiders refer to as “the hook” — because it grabs you.

Can a song be one large hook? I ask because “Little Green Bag” is stuck in my head in its entirety.

Suffice to say, “Bag” is hook-laden. I warn you: Don’t play this video unless you’re prepared for a musical brain imprint that could take days to fade.

Smiling yet? Go ahead. Play it again. Or play one of the many other videos of this song on YouTube. I can wait.

Rock Shows at the Concertgebouw

UPDATED 7/28/09, 8:23 pm:
Corrected date of 10cc/Rory Gallagher concert (H/T commenter Milo, publisher of the Gallagher tribute site Shadowplays).

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I’ve been focusing on music here lately. For this post I exercised my memory cells in order to compile a list of the rock shows — that is, concerts — by “name” acts that I’ve attended over the years.

The list below is in pretty close to chronological order, but almost all the dates are approximate. Headliners are listed first for shows with multiple acts.

By the way, the title of this post is based on a line in the Paul McCartney and Wings song “Rock Show” — “If There’s Rock Show at The Concertgebouw …”. The Het Concertgebouw is a concert hall in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The list:

Chicago	Spectrum	Philadelphia	1972
5th Dimension Bill Withers	Hollywood Bowl	Los Angeles	1972
Yes	Spectrum	Philadelphia	1973
J. Geils Band	Warner Theater	Wilmington, DE	1973
Doobie Brothers	Spectrum	Philadelphia	1975
10cc Rory Gallagher	Tower Theater	Upper Darby, PA	12/5/75
Tom Waits	Irvine Auditorium	Philadelphia	1976-78
Dave Mason	Irvine Auditorium	Philadelphia	1976-78
Elvis Costello & the Attractions	Tower Theater	Upper Darby, PA	1976-78
Beach Boys	Spectrum	Philadelphia	1978
Stevie Wonder	Spectrum	Philadelphia	1986
Monkees other revival acts	Mann Music Center	Philadelphia	1987
Paul McCartney	Veterans Stadium	Philadelphia	1996
Karla Bonoff	some park	near Norristown, PA	2000
James Taylor	Hersheypark Stadium	Hershey, PA	2006

Not Just Another Pair of Parens

Listeners to my selections on Blip.fm wouldn’t be surprised if I were to write a post on a song with a parenthetical title — for example, “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today)” — due to my propensity for “blipping” such songs. That post won’t be this one, though. Rather, this one is about a song by a band with a parenthetical name. Wow! The song is “She’s Not Just Another Woman” by 100 Proof (Aged in Soul), um, I mean the 8th Day. I’ll explain the confusion about the name of the band after I get through extolling the virtues of the song.

“She’s Not Just Another Woman” went to #11 on the US pop charts in 1971. I have a memory of it being played in my junior high school cafeteria during lunch break, but that memory must be inaccurate, for the last lunch break I had in that particular school was at the end of September 1970. Distant memories are easily confused, aren’t they? Musical memories may be especially prone to confusion.

“Just” plants its instrumental hook in the opening measures. Then it cooks along with Steve Mancha’s demonstrative lead vocal so gritty some may find it abrasive. The variations in tempo and the hard, straight-ahead drumming that punctuates the up-shifts work particularly well for me.

Blip.fm DJs — What’s Your BLA?

Regarding my recent unplanned, unannounced hiatus:
I was gratified by the presidential election result, but in the aftermath of the election my interest in blogging suddenly decreased. After having been emotionally invested in the election for so many months, a letdown was inevitable I suppose. I haven’t a clue about my future posting frequency, but I’m happy this post gets me off the schnide. I’ve recently been distracted from blogging by Blip.fm, the subject of this post.

Blip.fm is a music community site modeled after the ultra-popular microblogging site Twitter. Sign up for Blip.fm and you become a Blip.fm DJ. My DJ name is nitetalker. A blip is analogous to a Twitter tweet.

Like a song you just heard on your iPod or the radio or wherever? Search for it on Blip.fm and if you find it — and you probably will — blip it. That’s the essence of Blip.fm — everything flows from there. A blip consists of embedded streaming audio of the chosen song and an accompanying comment of 150 characters or less. Writing a comment is optional but it makes blipping a lot more fun.

Blip.fm: search results followed by the most recent blip by one of my Favorite DJs — Jeffie

As other DJs view and listen to your blips, some of them may favorite you, meaning they become one of your listeners. You may return the favor. Some DJs may give you props for what they feel are particularly inspired blips on your part. Here again, you may return the favor.

Matching Mismatches

I’ve heard one of my favorite songs, “My Old School” by Steely Dan, hundreds of times. However, it was not until this past Saturday, October 18, just hours before I went to a college football game in Newark, Delaware between the University of Delaware and The College of William and Mary, that I realized this part of the song lyrics specifies the commonly used moniker of the visiting school:

I was smoking with the boys upstairs
When I heard about the whole affair
I said oh no
William and Mary won’t do

Is this lyric a reference to the college? When I told Mrs. QC of my revelation, she insisted it has to be a reference to the college. Color me skeptical. I’ll revisit this controversy at the end of this post.

Now to the topic at hand — the football game. The University of Delaware is “my old school” for both myself and Mrs. QC. We went to grad school there. I previously wrote how I used to attend Delaware games when I was growing up.

It was a beautiful day for football — sunny, not too breezy, temperature pushing 60°. Mrs. QC and I bought subs on the way to Newark and then tailgated briefly before going into the stadium.

The game was a mismatch. Au contraire, Steely Dan — William and Mary did do — they rolled to a 27-3 victory. It was the first time Delaware failed to score a touchdown in a home game since 1990.

My thanks to Mrs. QC for taking these pictures. Click ‘em to enlarge to 800 × 531 pixels.

The west stands at Tubby Raymond Field at Delaware Stadium, University of Delaware, Newark, DE.

The Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens (in blue) and the William and Mary Tribe at the line of scrimmage prior to one of the first plays of the game.

The Jumbotron (video display) is new at Delaware this season. It's not all that jumbo-sized, though. I couldn't see it very well from my seat at the 15-yard line near the other end of Tubby Raymond Field.

What It’s All About

Felix Cavaliere starts off the underrated Rascals track “A Girl Like You” singing …

I don’t know what it’s all about

Then he proceeds to pile up a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

A word about videos in my music posts:
True concept or performance music videos are not available for many older songs, such as the song featured in this post, “A Girl Like You” by the Rascals. In such cases I embed a “video” where available, even if it is just a still photo with audio or, as in this case, a slide show with audio, because it is the easiest way to provide access to the full-length track as streaming media.

So many of the songs from my formative years are love songs. Indeed, love was the favorite topic of hit records back in 1967 when “Girl” rose to number 10 on the US pop chart (number one in Canada) for the band, then known as The Young Rascals. I’ve been a long-time fan of Cavaliere’s soulful vocals, and he’s at his demonstrative best on “Girl”.

He waxes poetically about his new love. No interpretive skills are necessary. Even I have no trouble getting it.

Must be you that caused this feelin’ in me. (Must be you.)
You that fills me confidently, (Must be you.)
You that brings out the best in me.
You … nobody but you.

Cavaliere is on a romantic bender — and he wants to make sure the object of his affection knows it. He co-wrote “Girl”, by the way, with another band member, Eddie Brigati.

Saliva Nostalgia

unidentified hairy-armed trumpet player

Ah, saliva nostalgia. My favorite kind. Isn’t it yours?

What? You’ve not heard of that kind of nostalgia? I’m really surprised.

It sounds disgusting? You don’t say.

You question the mental state of anyone professing fondness for it? I’m taking that as an insult.

OK, bear with me for a moment while I pry my tongue out of my cheek — before it gets stuck there — and I’ll explain.

Son #2 recently took up the trumpet. I myself played the trumpet from 4th grade to early in 9th grade, with frequent breaks for sleep, meals, dental appointments, and the like.

Early on in their learning, a neophyte trumpet player is taught the necessity of periodically using their instrument’s water key:

After playing the trumpet for a while, its sound may get “gurgly”! This happens because your breath condenses inside the trumpet, forming drops of water. Pressing the water key opens a hole in the tube, allowing the water to drip out. (The pros still refer to it as “spit” and they sometimes call the water key the “spit valve.”)

Party From Outer Space

The late Dickie Goodman’s “flying saucer” novelty records were a staple of Top 40 radio in the ’60s and ’70s. In a flying saucer record, an interviewer asks questions of “people” and each answer is a sampled line from a hit song of the day.

Many years ago a friend introduced me to comedian Albert Brooks‘ 1975 parody of flying saucer records, “Party From Outer Space” (and its setup track, which until yesterday I thought was not a separate track). My friend dubbed a copy of both tracks on to cassette and gave it to me. When the subject of “Party From Outer Space” came up at Chez QC a couple days ago — I don’t recall the context — I knew I just had to hear it again for the first time in years. I figured finding it online would be easier than digging through unorganized piles of cassettes. My oldest son made it easy for me by doing the online legwork. Thanks, S.

Brooks, best known for his movie writing, directing, and acting, was described by Rex Reed in 1999 as the West Coast Woody Allen. Like Allen, Brooks started his show business career doing standup comedy. I just happened to have recently blogged about Allen’s standup comedy albums.

“Two fat persons, click, click, click.”

The late British musician Ian Dury’s track “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” became an anthem for many of my fellow DJs on college radio in 1977. It would not be until the early ’80s that a friend turned me on to another Dury track, “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”, that I like much more. In fact, it’s one of my favorites.

Game for a live performance? YouTube has one of those too.

“Stick”, on which Dury teams with his band, The Blockheads, was released in late 1978 and topped the UK pop charts in early 1979. It’s turn at the top came between two other noteworthy tracks, “YMCA” by The Village People and another one of my faves, “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. Here in the states, unlike “YMCA” and “Heart of Glass,” which were smashes, “Stick” was not a hit. That might explain why I didn’t even become aware of it until years after its UK chart run.

The lyrical subtext of “Stick”is S & M — a major reason for its appeal to this chronically repressed (well, not really) blogger. According to Dury, however, the message was one of anti-violence. (Wikipedia lacks a cite for this.) In rereading the lyrics, which include the title of this post, I’m not deducing much of a message at all. They seem nonsensical. Maybe I’m too fixated on the stick angle to get it.