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08/27/2004 Archived Entry: "Friday Listening"
Friday Listening:
"Bring It On Home To Me" by The Animals. This sounds like it was recorded at the Holiday Inn outside of Ocala. Is the stage covered in red fur? Do they have one of those set ups like Murph and the Magic Tones? Someone is no doubt spilling a badly made martini on the hotel carpet as the band plays to a crowd of seven. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" is probably the best Animals tune, but it was nothing until Elvis Costello turned it into a heart wrenching appeal for relationship understanding.
Sometimes I lie awake long regretting
Some foolish thing, some sinful thing I've done
When The Animals cover '60s blues classics like this tune, they fall flat on their face. Who would have thunk, however, that it was the bassist who discovered Hendrix?
"Maiysha" by Miles Davis. From the creepy Miles Davis years. I can't imagine being in the audience for any of the tunes on the Get Up With It album. The music is uncomfortable. It gets under your skin. It makes you want to hide somewhere. When folks speak of jazz, they aren’t speaking of this bizarre mix of static sounds beeping and popping at will. When I lived in Bloomington, my then girl friend would never let me play In a Silent Way. "It scares me," she said.
"Freddie's Dead" by The Derek Trucks Band. WDET loves these guys. They are constantly in rotation. They’re like the Allman Brothers clones. The announcer says they'll be opening for an Allman Brothers concert in the Metro Detroit area. How will the audience know who is who? Why do people try and cover Curtis Mayfield songs anyway? The best line about Curtis Mayfield is in Robert Palmer's book Rock and Roll: An Unruly History. I'm paraphrasing here, but Robbie Roberston is explaining Dylan's and Mayfield's music. To Dylan he says: "You say so much, but I don't understand it." About Mayfield: "He says so little, but it just moves me."
"Dis Dat or Da Other" by Dr. John. Give it a rest WDET. The title alone gives the song away: crap.
"Insane Asylum" by The Detroit Cobras. The best band nobody has heard of. The Cobras find the obscure, the brief moments in r & b history, the forgotten songs that were never meant to be forgotten, and then reimagine them for the hard beats and heavy guitar sound only Detroit can generate. This is Walter Benjamin Arcades music. This is the kind of music that should have been in American Graffiti. If it had been, maybe Jameson would have changed his mind about pastiche. Maybe Milner would have been a better bad-ass and not a cartoonish character who can't even do the Harrison Ford character in completely in the drag race and who gets all sentimental when Dreyfuss' character goes off to college. “Oh boo hoo. You take care of yourself.” Listening to the Cobras, Milner would have said: "To hell with it. I’m getting a beer."
