Category: Episodes

564. The Turtles + Flo & Eddie

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(April 2024) Episode 564 is THE TURTLES and FLO & EDDIE. As a Frank Zappa enjoyer I always thought of the Turtles as the band Flo & Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman) were in before they joined the second version of the Mothers of Invention, rather than the reverse. It turns out they provided a lot more enjoyable 60s LA pop/rock beyond “Happy Together,” “Elenore” and “You Showed Me.” Five good albums worth, augmented by their characteristic humor (the line “you’re my pride and joy etc.” from “Elenore” get me every time). After the Turtles folded, Flo & Eddie reached the prurient zenith of their humor with the Mothers (e.g. “Bwana Dik”) and recorded several quirky albums on their own.

Favorite album: The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands

Favorite song: Happy Together

Favorite Flo & Eddie album: Fillmore East – June 1971 (with the Mothers)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Any of the albums are good; I like Battle of the Bands because of its intentional variety, although Happy Together scores higher.

563. The Dave Clark Five

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(April 2024) Episode 563 is THE DAVE CLARK FIVE. Of all the contemporaries, the Dave Clark Five looked and sounded the most similar to the Beatles. They even knocked “I Want To Hold Your Hand” off the #1 slot. Their hit “Because” would fit nicely on the Hard Days Night soundtrack. They had success in the U.S. too and were the second British band to appear on the Ed Sullivan show. And like Lennon-McCartney and unlike other peers, Clark and Smith wrote many of their best songs, like “Glad All Over,” “Bits and Pieces,” “Any Way You Want It,” “Catch Us If You Can.” They defied trends by not having a psychedelic period and folded as the 60s ended. As was the custom, they released separate US and UK albums and there’s a lot of filler on them, so choosing a favorite album is a bit hollow.

Favourite album: Glad All Over

Favourite song: Because

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: A greatest hits album is all you need and worth having.

562. Muddy Waters

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(April 2024) Episode 562 is MUDDY WATERS. As the “father of the Chicago blues,” it’s hard to measure his impact. He helped make Chicago a capital of blues music, fronting and fostering many famous musicians and songwriters of the genre. Any listener of classic rock will immediately recognize his influence there, as so many rock groups covered and adapted his songs. Personally, I like best his 1940s-early 1950s recordings, which accords with my preference among blues music for the earlier generation of acoustic guitar performers (Johnson, Jefferson, Patton, Cotton, etc.). However, I must admit that the electric blues style, the one he is most famous for, tends to lose my attention fairly quickly. And I have idiosyncratic taste for his 1968 album “Electric Mud,” considered the nadir of his career by critics, but for me it’s Muddy deliciously awash in fuzzed up psychedelic guitar.

Favorite album: Folk Singer

Favorite song: Feel Like Goin’ Home

Guilty pleasure album: Electric Mud

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: There are lots of compilation albums, but I suggest “His Best: 1947 to 1955”

561. Pavement

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(April 2024) Episode 561 is PAVEMENT. I’m too old to have had 90s bands be a formative part of my youth, but still close enough in age to those for whom they were. So I get that Pavement’s slacker rock fit the zeitgeist of the time. And why they gained an indie cult following. But listening to it at a remove, it doesn’t work for me. Kinda boring, gotta say. It wasn’t all bad. But too much strum-beat in here and I can’t stand strum-beat.

Favorite album: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Favorite song: Trigger Cut / Wounded-Kite at :17

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: If this gives you an emotional jolt of nostalgia, sure. But I can’t recommend coming into this fresh other than as a pop culture historian.

560. The Nice

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(April 2024) Episode 560 is THE NICE. There are some bands only worth knowing as the launching pad for a famous artist. The Nice is one of those. This is where Keith Emerson got his start performing wizardry and violence on his Hammond organ before doing the same with Lake and Palmer. Mixing rock, classical and jazz themes, the Nice helped introduced prog rock, so there is some historical interest. Apparently they got a cult following as a wild live act, although the appeal doesn’t transfer to the recordings, which suffer from weak vocals. Fun fact: Emerson’s trick of sticking a knife between keys to sustain the notes came from roadie Lemmy (yes, him) who gave him a Hitler Youth knife for that purpose. Also, they started out as the backing band for P.P. Arnold, a former back-up singer for Ike and Tina Turner who moved to London for a solo career.

Favourite album: Nice

Favourite song: Rondo

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: For prog rock enthusiasts only.

559. Redd Kross

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(April 2024) Episode 559 is REDD KROSS. They provided a combination of hard guitars and melodic songcraft that filled the gap between 1970s power pop and the 1990s pop punk and power pop revival. LA-area brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald started out with a punk sound but added the melodies by the late 1980s. By its label I should be all over this, but I found the sum less than the parts. Generally their songs lack the hooks that I look for in power pop songs, although their two 2010s albums did do a better job at that.

Favorite album: Researching the Blues

Favorite song: The Nu Temptations

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: The two 2010s albums, but I suspect that true fans will point to their 1980 EP.

558. The Animals

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(April 2024) Episode 558 is THE ANIMALS. I started to write about them as a second-tier British Invasion band but then realized that’s an American-centric view. In the UK they developed a fiery presence on UK R&B scene. But just as I wrote about how the Searchers music proved the magic of the Beatles within Merseybeat, the Animals demonstrate how superior the Rolling Stones were among the blues-based UK bands. The original Animals played with gusto, but they lacked song-writing chops; their main four hits on U.S. radio (“House of the Rising Sun,” “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place,” “It’s My Life,” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”) were composed by others. They fell apart early, and in 1966 Eric Burdon formed another group with his name up front. To me this is the most interesting period, as the albums have a psychedelic and experimental approach, providing the minor hits “San Francisco Nights” and “Sky Pilot.” Bottom line, Burdon’s voice never appealed to me.

Favourite album: The Twain Shall Meet

Favourite song: House of the Rising Sun

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: A great hits LP is enough.

557. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

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(April 2024) Episode 557 is GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA, one of the most acclaimed composers of the 16th century (and one of the few I’ve ever heard of). He is also the second oldest composer in the project. Not surprisingly, almost all of his hundreds of compositions are religious, and he is most famous for his 100+ masses (this was a looooong episode). Regardless of whether the message speaks to you, this is beautiful polyphonic music that should stir any soul. There are several ways his compositional style influenced those that followed, include Bach more than a century later, but I’m too much of a dummy to understand how. I just like the angelic voices.

Favorite piece: Missa Papae Marcelli

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: TBH it all sounds the same to me, so try the piece above and go from there.

556. Ohio Players

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(March 2024) Episode 556 is OHIO PLAYERS. I first encountered them through their erotic album covers, causing me to linger longer in the “O” section of the record store. But it wasn’t until later that I caught up to the music, although I knew “Love Rollercoaster” from its ubiquity. Their roots go back to the 1950s, but they hit their stride and fame with a series of albums in the mid-1970s of peak funk and sexy soul – music that very much complements those album covers. While I find better funk and more stirring soul elsewhere, the Ohio Players’ combo makes this iconic 1970s music. Comparatively, it’s close to what Earth Wind & Fire were doing at the time minus the mysticism and polyrhythms.

Favorite album: Fire

Favorite song: Fire

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Any of their 1972-75 albums (from “Pleasure” to “Honey”) are a good immersion in sensual 70s funk.

555. The Neville Brothers

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(March 2024) Episode 555 is THE NEVILLE BROTHERS. This logiclly follows my recent episode on The Meters, which featured Art and Cyril Neville. In 1977 they joined Aaron and Charles to form this eponymously named unit. Each brother in this talented family had their own musical careers long before, during and after. But assembled together they created an iconic group with New Orleans-flavored funk, soul and R&B. This episode covers their studio albums, which weren’t many, and a few live performances, but it still feels incomplete given the span of each brother’s work. I’ve always loved Aaron’s fluttering tenor and his classic mid-60s song “Tell It Like It Is.”

Favorite album: Fiyo on the Bayou

Favorite song: Yellow Moon

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Find some of their live concert performances, which show the energy and interaction.