Sunday, December 6, 2009

Live music for a dead Sunday


I chose this one in part because you can see Tina Weymouth playin' her bass. I remember wearing this song out in grad school, late 70s. Very cool, very dark. My fave version is on 1982's live The Name of This Band is Talking Heads.



Well, OK, this isn't "live." It was sung by the now dead Nico (died in '88), during her time with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground in the mid-60s. (Love the Velvets.) Nico was a nihilist and heroin addict. That's obvious, I guess.



Here they are performing, about thirty years after the original recording, and they still sound great. X is considered by many to be the greatest of the LA punk bands, though, really, they were always more than a punk band. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a punk band.) I've always loved the way John Doe and Exene Cervenka's voices mesh on this song. Pretty special.



Bragg first recorded this in the early 80s. He's very smart and just plain wonderful. Saw him at the Coach House a few years ago with Reb and Red. I think those two have gone to dinner with Mr. Bragg. The same politics, I guess. The old union radical crowd: always eating, always plotting and scheming.



This song first appeared on an album (Marquee Moon) in 1977. Television was a part of the New York scene that produced Talking Heads, Blondie, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, et al. They still sound great. The interplay of the two guitars is pretty special. Also check out their song "Marquee Moon."



I've always loved this one. Once again, we get to see Tina Weymouth playin' her bass. At first, she was just the drummer's girlfriend, but the band needed a bassist, so they got her a bass and made her listen to Suzie Quatro albums, and so there you are. (This is pretty much how Maureen Tucker became the drummer for the Velvets. She was somebody's sister, hanging around.)
All of these bands (except perhaps X; not sure about them) were heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground. And no wonder!



I do believe that The Modern Lovers, who hailed from Massachusetts, recorded this version of "She Cracked" in LA in 1972. Clearly, they were way ahead of their time. This doesn't appear to be the version of "She Cracked" that ended up on their one and only album (The Modern Lovers), which wasn't released until 1976 (it comprised the 1972 demos). This recording isn't live, but these guys always sounded like a live band somehow. Singer Jonathan Richman has continued as a solo artist. Jerry Harrison joined Talking Heads. The drummer helped found the Cars, etc.



Evidently, heroin can lower your voice. Here’s Marianne Faithfull (2000) doing her hit from circa 1979—during one of her many comebacks. Did you know that she is none other than the Baroness Sacher-Masoch and that her maternal great-great-uncle, Herr Masoch, wrote Venus in Furs? The latter title served as the title of one of the Velvet’s most celebrated songs, sung by Nico.

If, for some reason, you would like to go insane, take a look at Faithfull lipsyncing to her hit “As Tears Go By” in 1965.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...