You're Messin' with Murder Incorporated

Another snag from usenet, this time it's Unsatisfied Heart - Remastered Born in the USA Outtakes. This set seems especially cool, in that it's a qualitatively different album that eventually begat Born in the USA. From the text notes that accompanied this set: "By July 1983 Springsteen was in the final stages of mixing and track selection for the album. There was talk of a pre-Christmas release. There was certainly no shortage of outstanding material to pick from. A document exists from mid 1983 revealing Springsteen’s selection for the album, as well his selections for b-sides. (reproduced below)"

Born in the USA never gets as much love or respect as Born to Run or his other 70s albums. I blame MTV and videos in general. You can't help but lose some mystique when you start playing dressup and lip-syncing in front of a camera, not just Bruce, but any of them actually (except, of course, "Bastards of Young"). If you flipped this album back 10 years it might be considered as great as some of the others.

Date: 1982 - April 1984
Location: The Hit Factory / The Power Station, New York City, NY

Disc 1:
01 Born In The U.S.A.
02 Murder Incorporated
03 Downbound Train
04 Glory Days
05 This Hard Land
06 My Love Will Not Let You Down
07 Johnny Bye Bye
08 Frankie
09 I'm Goin' Down
10 Working On The Highway
11 I'm On Fire

b-sides:
12 Sugarland
13 Follow That Dream
14 Dont Back Down
15 One Love
16 Little Girl

Disc 2:
01 None But The Brave
02 Murder Incorporated #2
03 (Drop On Down And) Cover Me
04 Janey Don't You Lose Heart
05 My Love Will Not Let You Down #2
06 Cynthia
07 Darlington County
08 Protection
09 TV Movie
10 County Fair

Solo:
11 Shut Out The Light
12 Richfield Whistle
13 Fugitives Dream
14 Delivery Man
15 The Klansman
16 Unsatisfied Heart

Now You're Gonna Have a Good Time...

Another usenet find from last night is just too great not to share. From the same group that Stones set came from is this Springsteen bootleg A Tear Must Fall - Remastered The River Outtakes. All credit to the guy who remastered and put this together. Quality is fairly good, and it's a generous set at 3 discs. We've got alternate mixes, different takes, demos, song sketches, in short, the whole works. The third disc contain some tracks from the early to mid-70s. I've only listened to this once, so I'd imagine there are further aural nuggets to be gleaned but I think it's a great historical snapshot of an amazing album.


Track List

Disc 1:
01 The Ties That Bind
02 Sherry Darling
03 Restless Nights
04 Cindy
05 Independence Day
06 Hungry Heart
07 Out In The Street
08 Crush On You
09 You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
10 I Wanna Marry You
11 The River
12 Point Blank
13 Cadillac Ranch
14 She's A Rocker
15 Fade Away
16 Stolen Car
17 Ramrod
18 The Price You Pay

Disc 2:
01 Roulette (acoustic)
02 Roulette
03 White Lies
04 Take 'Em As They Come
05 Be True
06 I Wanna Marry You
07 Cindy
08 You Gotta Fight (For What You Want)
09 Mr. Outside (Looking For Number One)
10 Chevrolet Deluxe
11 Stolen Car
12 Ricky Wants A Man Of Her Own
13 From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)
14 Mary Lou
15 Where The Bands Are
16 Held Up Without A Gun
17 Roulette
18 I Wanna Be With You
19 Loose Ends
20 Hungry Heart (instrumental)
21 I Wanna Marry You
22 The Price You Pay

Disc 3:
01 Train Song
02 Goin' Back To Georgia
03 Guilty
04 Song To Orphans
05 Song To Orphans (Live)
06 If I Was The Priest (piano)
07 If I Was The Priest (guitar)
08 Two Hearts In True Waltz Time
09 Winter Song
10 Janey Needs A Shooter
11 Evacuation Of The West
12 Wild Zero & Blind Terry (instrumental)
13 Janey Needs A Shooter

Did Everybody Pay Their Dues?

I was browsing one of the usenet groups the other day and came across a multi-volume set, seven in all, called The Rolling Stones Unsurpassed Masters. One my favourites recently is Unsurpassed Masters Vol 3. Near as I can tell, after doing a bit of poking around, it's compiled and was 'remastered' by someone apparently called JWB in the accompanying notes. Some of the tracks appear on other Stones' bootlegs, such as Black Box, but after reading feedback about the set, some of these songs haven't been heard at all, or at the very least, in a long, long time. The quality is actually quite good and the songs are goddamn remarkable. I'd never heard some of these before and it's like hearing the Stones for the first time on some tracks. "Blood Red Wine" is one of the best I've heard from the Stones, sinister and lovely, I first heard it recently on the bootleg Unplugged (It can also be found on a number of bootlegs listed here). "Still a Fool" appears on the Black Box set and is 10 min of blues heaven; the alternate take of "Memo for Turner" actually improves upon the original. There's an guffaw during that song when Mick utters the words 'faggy little leatherboy' that just makes it. And then of course, 'Did Everybody Pay Their Dues?', which is 'Street Fighting Man' set to a completely different set of lyrics. My buddy Dave over at Egg Noodles and Ketchup thinks Street Fighting is the worst Stones song ever, so I'm curious what he thinks about this one. It's hard to hear this without thinking about 'Street Fighting Man', but this one is starting to work its way in so I'm barely thinking about commm-pro-mize sal-ooo-shunnnn....

All the braves and squaws and the maids and the whores

Did everybody pay their dues?

Thanks, I'll Eat it Here...

Lowell George was the former leader of the band Little Feat. So the proposition of a solo album by this guy might not exactly strike desire into the heart of well, most people I would guess. But there's a special sub-population at whom this music still caters to. You know who you are, so I won't spell it out. But the word 'degenerate' does come to mind. Anyway, he released only one solo album after leaving Little Feat titled Thanks I'll Eat It Here, a rollicking mix of country, blues and just straight rock and roll. Sadly, we only got this one release from this monster before he shuffled off at the age of 34, dead of a massive heart attack in 1979. Oh, and I like this picture a lot.

Whatever Happened to Fun?

Until a short while ago, I only knew Gilby Clarke as (a) the guy who replaced the irreplaceable Izzy Stradlin' in Guns and Roses and (b) the guy in Rock Star: Supernova. Frankly I was never really impressed by his performances in either and thought in the Rock Star show the guy had an attitude not befitting a minor footnote in rock and roll history. Then I came across this album on Usenet by Candy, Whatever Happened to Fun? I looked up the band and lo and behold, on of ol' Gilby Clarke's first bands. And he began as a replacement guitarist here as well.

"Candy were a band featuring the future Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. Original members were lead vocalist Kyle Vincent, bassist Jonathan Daniel, drummer John Schubert, and guitarist Geoff "Rexx" Siegel. Clarke replaced Siegel after 6 months.Their only album, titled Whatever Happened To Fun, was released in 1985, when the band toured the United States opening up for Rick Springfield and later Corey Hart.Later that year, Gilby Clarke replaced Kyle Vincent as lead vocalist, and guitarist Ryan Roxie joined the lineup. After Gilby left, the rest of the guys joined up with new lead vocalist Shane and became the Electric Angels. (More detailed biography here).

I can't speak to the talents of "Rexx" Siegel, so I don't know how Gilby stacks up. But he sounds pretty great on this record. It really is a fun album of guitar pop which probably will sound bloody fantastic in the summertime. Today, the only people who make music like this are from Sweden (Sahara Hotnights, The Sounds). I'd imagine it sounded very out of place around '84-85, and probably today as well. We're only half-way through, but I can't imagine I'll hear a better song than 'American Kix' this week.

"Tomorrow Belongs to Us..."

The Forgotten Rebels were my favourite band in high school, and well, still are one of my faves. I've seen them live a bunch of times and they never disappoint. For whatever reason, in one of my hometowns this band was incredibly popular. They even played the high school. Firstly, how in the fuck did this band get a play to perform at a high school? (Sample lyrics, Surfin' on Heroin: I'm so fucked up I can't remember my name/Tried it once, I'll never feel the same/I'm swimming in a sea of puke/Lend me a quarter, play myself on the juke/Got my kid brother hooked yesterday/Pimping him pays for my habit today). Let's just say god bless the 80s or something because only in an alternate universe would that happen today. But play they did. And they came back and played an outdoor show in '87 where I helped them set up their gear. For that I got to sit on the side of the stage and a t-shirt to boot. Pretty nice for a bunch of degenerate drug addicts. I've still got the t-shirt.

The last time I saw the band was at Laurentian University in 1992 when they played the Pub Down Under, which I guess is a clever name for a bar located underground. Anyway, I decided since the band was so popular, I better hit the pub early, like noonish. I also decided it would be prudent to start drinking early, like about 9ish, you know to save money, and not have to drink as much all afternoon and early evening until the band came on at 7pm. To take the edge off, right? Well, as far as bright ideas go, it wasn't one of my best. I was pretty well knee walking by mid-afternoon, passed out at in the bar at some point as well. How I didn't get bounced remains a mystery but I think my roomate helped. The entire afternoon was pretty hazy, but things perked up after it seemed there might be Rebel action occurring. And it did happen, and rock and roll did occur.

The show was brilliant, as I remember. I got up and jumped around like an idiot. One of the last coherent thoughts I had was being cracked and seeing my sunglasses flying, looking up and seeing Mickey DeSadist wearing them during 'Time to Run'. Seeing him wearing my shit, I jumped up onstage and grabbed at it. Well, Mickey cracked me good and I ended up with my shades, still present by the way, and on my ass. After that, I ended up getting my ass kicked six ways from whenever with the pogoing. Particularly when the signature closers 'Fuck Me Dead' and 'Surfin' on Heroin' came on. I honestly don't remember much after that. But I've got photographic evidence that will be posted shortly.

All I've got of this band on CD is their debut In Love with the System (1979) and The Pride and Disgrace (1986). Sadly, I lost my LP of This Ain't Hollywood in when my parents initiated the Great Vinyl Purge of '96. Now when I want the latter album, Boys Will Be Boys or Surfin' on Heroin I have to go to a dubbed cassette tape that is literally 22 years old as of this writing. I'm frankly afraid to play it. If anyone has those albums, a vinyl rip would be my holy grail. I'll probably end up buying the LP again on ebay even though I won't be able to play it. After writing this, I'm probably gonna have to go and dig up the dub and play it on my old Walkman.

This version of 'Surfin' on Heroin' isn't as good as the original on This Ain't Hollywood, but it's still pretty great. 'Time to Run' is just nasty. Think a punkier version of 'She's Just 14' by John Philips.

Surfin' on Heroin

Time to Run

There are times when I wonder if I still love this band for purely nostalgic reasons. Then I play the music and it's still pretty awesome.

First post, first song...

Yeah, this is it, my first blog, and the first post on it. My number one has got to have the best song I heard today, which was stolen from another blog, of course. Mind you he probably stole it from where so I guess we're even, or at least nearly balanced. I'm not gonna reference that blog because I don't want to draw undue attention to it via the thousands of folks who will soon descend up White Russians are For Saturday Afternoons.

So the best song I heard today? Probably 'Time Race' by Ray Paul and RPM. It came my way after a malcontent told me about this blog hosting rare power pop albums. On it was this band's 1980 album Go Time. The album cover is as great as the music.


















'Time Race' isn't a a classic by any stretch of the imagination. At 5.03, it's probably at least 2 min too long. It's vaguely Springsteenish with an 'epic tune' feel, and with a beginning that kind of reminds me of 'Thunder Road' and a latter third suggesting they invited Clarence to come on in to make it even more so. But the chorus stayed with all day long and I kept wanting to play it again.

Time Race

I've been working my way through all these albums and some startling realizations began to occur. I really am starting to care less and less about new bands when these forgotten greats still have some life in them. These blogs are like the slogan from The Canadian Blood Service, "Blood. It's in you to give", except it's "Jail rock from 20 and 30 years ago, it's in you to keep it alive and corruptable." By continuing to steal from others with more inspiration and better ideas, I'll try to do so. In addition, I'll also be sharing interesting cooking ideas, non-specific commentary and current science news. And plenty of drinking, of course.