Tag: rock

636. UFO

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(March 2025) Episode 636 is UFO. There’s a category of rock bands that start out with interesting/innovative stuff in the late 60s/early 70s but then descend to decades of boring, rote hard rock. Think Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Status Quo … and UFO. Their first two albums were consummate space rock, followed by two good albums of heavy 70s rock, which was their commercial peak. But then their output flattened out into album after album of the most banal hard rock. I assume this is evidence such pablum sells, but not to me. That part was a slog (I listen so you don’t have to). However, UFO is cited as paving the way for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which is why I did this episode. The only song I recognized from classic rock radio was “Too Hot to Handle,” a cock rock gem.

Favourite album: UFO 2: Flying

Favourite song: Flying

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The first four albums, especially the first two space rock ones.

635. Chad & Jeremy

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(February 2025) Episode 635 is CHAD & JEREMY. Coincident with the first wave of the British Invasion, Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde offered light-pop/folk rock songs. “Yesterday’s Gone” puts them in the Merseybeat mode, while their most famous piece, “A Summer Song,” is in the vein of Simon and Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. This approach characterized their 1963-66 recordings, which is fine, but put them out of step with the emergent R&B bands. Chad & Jeremy regrouped with 2 ½ psychedelic albums, a sound that I personally favor, although not it’s representative of what they were known for.

Favourite album: The Ark

Favourite song: A Summer Song  

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Albums: A best-of is fine. But those who dig 60s psychedelia should check out their baroque-pop stylings on Of Cabbages and Kings and The Ark.

634. Parquet Courts

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(February 2025) Episode 634 is PARQUET COURTS. Take equal parts 80s college rock, 90s indie/alt, 00s angular rock, add a pinch of 60s Velvet Underground, and you have Parquet Courts. They were a very welcome find, running counter to my general disappointment/lack of interest in 21st century ‘rock’ bands. Their music is creatively quirky, with clever or snarky lyrics. Their 2018 album Wide Awake! is their most accessible, but that signaled an incorporation of electronic beats that dominated 2021’s disappointing Sympathy for Life. I prefer the off-kilter simplicity of earlier albums.

Favorite album: Light Up Gold

Favorite song: Stoned and Starving

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Albums: Light Up Gold, Sunbathing Animal, Human Peformance and Wide Awake!

629. The Mops

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(January 2025) Episode 629 is THE MOPS. I recall my parents telling me when they went to Japan in the mid-1960s they heard a bunch of bands singing Beatles songs, aptly reproducing the words even though they likely didn’t know the meaning. I thought of that when I heard The Mops’ first album, Psychedelic Sounds in Japan, which includes a number of covers of classic mid-60s songs. They are known as the “first psychedelic band in Japan,” although it’s more garage rock than hippy. I first heard them via their contribution to the Nuggets II collection, the quirky “I Am Just A Mops.” They recorded through the early 1970s with a similar heavy and fuzzy sound to rock music coming out of the US and UK at the time. They deliver with a manic energy, but overall, the most interesting thing is that they were making this music in Japan and singing mostly in Japanese. On their own the covers are meh and the originals are just OK.

Favorite album: Psychedelic Sounds in Japan

Favorite song: Iijanaika

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: The compilation album The Mops: 1969-1973 isn’t bad.

623. Strawberry Alarm Clock

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(December 2024) Episode 623 is STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK. The ubiquity of their Summer of Love anthem “Incense and Peppermints” might lead you to think they were a one-hit wonder. But they were a real (albeit dysfunctional) band with three good albums of psychedelic-flavored LA-style sunshine pop. There’s a manufactured intentionality to the psychedelia (I mean, look at the album covers) but it’s still a good hippy trip. The fourth album goes into forgettable proto-boogie rock and there was a reunion album decades later.

Favorite album: Incense and Peppermints

Favorite song: Incense and Peppermints

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Any of the first three albums are a fun trip back to the Summer of Love

622. Los Shakers

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(December 2024) Episode 622 is LOS SHAKERS, the Beatles of Latin America. Yes I know that tag is extremely over-used and usually erroneous. But not with Los Shakers; they were the real deal. These were two brothers in Uruguay who saw A Hard Day’s Night and immediate created a band to mimic that sound. And they did it better than almost any group I’ve heard, even in the Anglophone world.  It’s not just covers (there were a few); their original compositions are expertly crafted songs in the 64/65 Beatles mode. And they adapted along the way, with fuzzy guitars and backwards effects for a psychedelic sound. Their apex was the creative album La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar, called their Sgt. Peppers’ (or Pet Sounds, Village Green or Tommy).  While the song titles were in Spanish, most vocals are in accented English.

Favorite album: La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar

Favorite song: Rompan Todo (Break It All)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Their recordings are hard to find, but Serie de Oro: Grandes Exitos is available and a decent compilation of their early singles.

614. Gerry Rafferty

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(November 2024) Episode 614 is GERRY RAFFERTY and his bands HUMBLEBUMS and STEALERS WHEEL. This episode exists because of my endless fascination with “Baker Street,” simultaneously a quintessential song of the 70s and one so unique it deserves to exist in a genre of its own. The next song on the City to City album, “Right Down the Line,” was also a deserved hit. A third notable song was “Stuck in the Middle,” recorded with Stealers Wheel in the early 1970s, a Dylan-homage subsequently homaged by Sheryl Crow and made indelible in Reservoir Dogs. He got his start in the late 1960s in a folk-rock duo called Humblebums with future comedian Billy Connolly. In between those two groups came his first solo recording, Can I Have My Money Back?, which best displays his McCartney-esque songwriting talents. Rafferty kept issuing albums through the 80s-90s-00s stocked with not unpleasant but not memorable songs; he had run out of creativity.

Favourite album: City to City

Favourite song: Baker Street

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Try Can I Have My Money Back? with songs that quickly become enjoyable earworms.

606. Suede and Elastica

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(October 2024) Episode 606 is SUEDE (sometimes known in the U.S. as LONDON SUEDE) and ELASTICA. Suede is listed among the “Big Four” of Britpop, and are credited with being the first, but I never knew them. And I learned there’s a reason for that; they took their sound in a different direction and lacked the hooks, snarl, melodicism or cheekiness of Oasis, Blur and Pulp. I find Brett Anderson’s singing pretentious and their music boring. But the real reason I did this episode was to have an excuse to review Elastica (not enough albums to qualify on their own). The connection* is that Justine Frischmann was Suede’s first guitarist. I love “Connection” (hand claps!) and the rest of their stuff is hooky and catchy.

* You see what I did there.

Favourite Suede album: Suede

Favourite Elastica album: Elastica

Favourite Suede song: We Are the Pigs

Favourite Elastica song: Connection

Compared to expectations: Suede ↓, Elastica same

Recommendation: Skip Suede, listen to Elastica’s first album

602. Harry Nilsson

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(September 2024) Episode 602 is HARRY NILSSON. He is an enigma. An immeasurably talented songwriter for whom many of his best-known recordings are covers. Fame despite rarely touring. A Beatle buddy. Having two rock stars die in his apartment. His first albums are first-rate baroque pop (no wonder Paul and John sought him out) but his style (and signing voice) shifted back and forth over the years, from Great American Songbook to childrens, soft rock, Caribbean, piano troubadour and back. “Jump into the Fire” was his only true rocker (he never did anything else like it) but its baseline* is as indelible as that scene in Goodfellas that it helped make famous. Most of all it is his amazing songwriting skills I would keep coming back to.

Favorite album: Nilsson Schmilsson

Favorite song (original): Jump into the Fire

Favorite song (cover): Without You**

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: There’s a lot here depending on your taste. Nilsson Schmilsson is his most well-rounded. The early Pandemonium Shadow Show and Aerial Ballet are peak baroque pop. Some may prefer the troubadour stuff on Nilsson Sings Newman and Little Touch but not me.

* RIP Herbie Flowers

** by Pete Ham and Tony Evans of the perennially underrated Badfinger

597. Bo Diddley

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(August 2024) Episode 597 is BO DIDDLEY. Take just the first eponymous album (a collection of singles); the influence on rock music of those songs is as immeasurable as the number of times they have been covered. There’s the classic “chonk, chonk, chonk… chonk-chonk” rhythm that now bears his name. But also the tremolo, which anticipates the explosion of guitar effects the next decade. His scene was never confined to blues, rock or R&B. He never again had the success of those early records, but he retained fame and recognition. I did enjoy his turn to soul/funk in the early 1970s.

Favorite album: Bo Diddley

Favorite song: Bo Diddley*

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: That first album functions as a greatest hits record..

 * the first trifecta (same artist/album/song) of the Opus Project