The Walking Rock Alphabet: I

Since today's walk included a local band, my write-up appears on my Argus blog, Too Many Notes. Please go there to check it out!

Live Ledge #113: Covers

I haven't done a covers show in quite some time, so after my friends at KRRO invited me to be a part of their holiday covers broadcast, I decided to carry it over onto Live Ledge. Tonight's show features a ton of recently-acquired remakes of the Stones, Who, Iggy, Bowie, and so much more. There's a little tribute in memory of Doors' keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who died earlier this week, a mini-set of Sioux Falls bands remaking their favorite songs, and even a double-cover challenge pitting two versions of "Louie Louie" against each other.
I had so much material that I even went a bit past the two-hour mark. It's a fun little show, so grab it from your usual online spots, or...

DIRECTLY STREAM/DOWNLOAD BY CLICKING HERE!!!


1. Paul Westerberg, Another Girl Another Planet
2. The Replacements, Roadhouse Blues
3. The Replacements, Light My Fire
4. X, Soul Kitchen
5. Siouxsie and the Banshees, You're Lost Little Girl
6. Ramones, Take It as It Comes
7. Milkshakes, Hippy Hippy Shake
8. Robyn Hitchcock/Peter Buck/Glenn Tilbrook/Billy Bragg, Rain
9. Brinsley Schwarz, Day Tripper
10. Guitar Wolf, Slow Down
11. The Crawdaddys, There She Goes Again
12. Wreckless Eric, Sweet Jane
13. David Bowie/Mott The Hoople with Lou Reed, Shakin' All Over
14. Garbage and Screaming Females, Because The Night
15. Dave Scarbrough, Getting It On With Trudy
16. No Direction, Transmission
17. Violet, Porpoise Song
18. 1313 Mockingbird Lane, The Spider and the Fly
19. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Star
20. The Nelsons, Not Fade Away
21. Messerschmitt, Jumpin Jack Flash
22. The Kords, Boris The Spider
23. The Litter, A Legal Matter
24. The Lubbers, Pictures of Lily
25. Oscar & The Majestics, I Can't Explain
26. The Spoons, Raw Power
27. Dodge Main, I Got A Right
28. The Wildebeests, One Track Mind
29. Chesterfield Kings, Chinese Rocks
30. Pit Ryan & The Beerbones, I Just Want To Have Something To Do
31. Flag, Louie Louie
32. The Clash, Louie Louie
33. Texas Terri & The Stiff Ones, Lifetime Problems
34. The Strypes, Got Love If You Want It
35. Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, Seasons In The Sun
36. Dogs, (I'd Go the) Whole Wide World
37. Zoo, Where Have All The Good Times Gone
38. The Other Half, Mr. Pharmacist
39. The Lyres, Have Love Will Travel
40. Los Punk Rockers, Pretty Vacant

The Walking Rock Alphabet: H

I should have never bothered this afternoon, as it was nothing short of a disaster on almost every level. I had to get out, though, as rain and podcasting had taken away the last couple of walking days, and later this afternoon showers will commence that will carry on for another couple of days.

I just wasn’t in the mood, though. In recent months, Saturday has become my day off. The one day of the week that I had no work, writing, or any other obligations. It’s my day, and nobody can take that away. I can sleep late (I wish), relax at Black Sheep Coffee for as long as I care, and spend the majority of the day emptying the DVR. Hell, maybe even throw in a nap (or two).

So despite the fact that it was hot and muggy, and all I wanted to do was lay around, here I am heading out the door. But even this didn’t work as expected. Noticing there wasn’t anything in the “H” section that I wanted to use as my soundtrack, I set about re-syncing my iPhone to a brand new playlist. 

Unfortunately, that sync was taking FOREVER, and I didn’t have a large window of time before the rain was due to hit the city. So I grabbed the iPad and settled on the new album by The Hillbilly Moon Explosion, Damn Right Honey!

Besides the fact that exercising while carrying an iPad is a bit unwieldy (my version of working with weights), the reality is that this band’s throwback combo of rockabilly, swing, and jump blues just wasn’t the right fit for a cantankerous curmudgeon forcing himself to get a bit of exercise.

Not to say that this isn’t a worthy album. It is a fun little record. How can an album with a song called “Motorhead Girl” not be fantastic? It just didn’t fit in to what was needed to get me motivated. 

The afternoon wasn’t a total waste, though. I got to witness a bit of a Three Stooges routine, as a person with little clue as to what he was doing attempted to chop down a large damaged tree. Would it land on the house, or on top of a passing vehicle? Luckily, for the owner, it hit the road with no incident.

There was also one other major pleasant change. The rising temps and Thursday’s rains have caused everything to bloom, so the walk was accompanied some sweet smells that I hadn’t encountered since last fall. A bit cheesy of an ending for me, sure, but at least something made me smile this afternoon.

Live Ledge #112: Love Is The Law

Who would have guessed that an almost-forgotten (but not by me) track by The Suburbs would become an anthem of sorts almost thirty years later? It's pretty amazing that as Minnesota's Marriage Equality bill started to gain traction that this wonderful song received a bit of the spotlight.
Tonight's show celebrates the passing of that bill, with nothing but songs and/or artists that express individuality. There's quite a few songs one would expect in such a show, but there are admittedly others whose connection probably only exists in my mind. Even without the message, it's a fun two hours that jumps around from genre to genre.
Grab this, as always, in the iTunes store, stream it via Stitcher, or...

DIRECTLY DOWNLOAD/STREAM BY CLICKING HERE!!!


1. Suburbs, Love Is The Law
2. Joan Jett, You Don't Own Me
3. The Lemonheads, Big Gay Heart
4. R.E.M., Life And How To Live It (Live in Greensboro 1989)
5. Tommy Keene, Love Is the Only Thing That Matters
6. The Replacements, Androgynous
7. The Queers, Unsatisfied
8. The Chesterfield Kings, I'm Not Like Everybody Else
9. Billy Bragg, Sexuality
10. Tom Robinson, 2-4-6-8 Motorway
11. New York Dolls, Looking For A KIss
12. The Heartbreakers, I Wanna Be Loved (mix 2)
13. Lou Reed, Vicious
14. David Bowie, Watch That Man
15. The Jim Carroll Band, Catholic Boy
16. Bob Mould, See A Little Light
17. Grant Hart, Think It Over Now
18. HÜsker DÜ, Love Is All Around
19. The Phones, Modern Man
20. Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bring Me The Head Of The Preacher Man
21. The Breeders, Do You Love Me Now?
22. The Vaselines, Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam
23. Bikini Kill, Rebel Girl
24. Babes In Toyland, Swamp Pussy
25. Sleater-Kinney, The Ballad Of A Ladyman
26. Vice Squad, Stand Strong Stand Proud
27. Pansy Division, I'm Gonna Be a Slut
28. Against Me!, Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners
29. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Ballad Of The Sin Eater
30. Circle Jerks, Put A Little Love In Your Heart
31. Patti Smith, People Have The Power

The Walking Rock Alphabet: G

A few days after last Thanksgiving, my good buddy Craig called me. “Hey, Graham Parker and the Rumour are playing in the Cities. Are you in?”

It took me about five seconds to contemplate this question before I answered in the affirmative. Mid-December we headed up to see the man perform at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.

This wasn’t an ordinary out of town venture for either of us. Graham Parker was one of our idols from his legendary albums of the late 70’s. He perfected the angry songwriter persona that Elvis Costello copied for bigger fame and fortune. 

He was also the interview that I’m most proud of conducting. Certainly, I interviewed bigger stars in my Tempest days. Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee gave me all the juicy info of his sex tape just days after the footage hit the internet. Two members of Cheap Trick dealt with my fanboy questions during that time period. Frank Black, Bob Mould, Tommy Stinson, Todd Snider...the list goes on.

Graham Parker topped them all, and it was a great conversation as we chatted about his entire career. I’m sure it helped that my first comment to him was that VH1 should have hired him to host their new series, Songwriters. “You should write (producer) Bill Flanagan and tell him that”, was the response. Parker liked the resulting article enough that it had a place on his website for at least a full decade.

So here we are almost twenty years later making that long drive to see Parker. This show was the tour’s last stop with the just-reunited Rumour. That band had broke up way back in the early 80’s, and various articles pointed out that none of the band’s children (and most of their wives) had never seen them play with their most famous bandmates.

The show was as great as expected, with Parker mixing in tracks from all of their albums together, including the just-released reunion record, Three Chords Good. Even better was what happened about two hours after the show concluded.

We had wandered around downtown St. Paul after the concert, unsuccessfully looking for a suitable place to have a few drinks. Finally deciding to just hit the hotel bar, I was the first to notice what a table full of middle-aged men who were clearly not bankers or lawyers.

Yes, we had stumbled upon the post-tour party of Graham and his band! We slyly chose a table far enough away to not be a fanboy pest, but close enough that we could view the festivities. Noticing that they were drinking champagne, we had a bottle sent over. And then another.

The plan worked. Graham wondered who purchased the bubbly, and he ended up spending a half hour or so with us. We talked about my old interview, his Sioux Falls performance, the band’s reunion, and their appearance in the movie “This Is 40”. Later, we met various other members of the band, including keyboardist Bob Andrews, whose post-Rumour career included producing acclaimed released by Ten Pole Tudor, The Bluebells, and The La’s.

All of these memories came back to me this afternoon, as my walking soundtrack for the day was the record that was the reason for that tour. Three Chords Good was released a couple of months before that show, but I must be honest. While Parker’s new songs rank among his best in years, and are every bit as biting, the album needs a couple of blistering rockers. Live, these songs stood up well with the 70’s classics, but the production on the album is a bit languid. It’s a good album that easily could have been great.

Oh well, it’s still great to have them back, even if it is a one-off project. On a day where the overheated temps of yesterday were replaced by sweat-inducing humidity, it was a perfect companion. Isn’t that what matters for this lazy man’s exercise project?

The Walking Rock Alphabet: F

The guitar. A simple instrument usually featuring six strings. A member of the chordophone family, and preceded by instruments such as the lute and vihuela, it is easily the most powerful carrier of musical tones. When accompanied by the right words, it can bring down a dictator. It can cause the prettiest girls and boys to swoon. In the right hands, it’s a massive tool for bringing on social change.

It can also cause the walls of any room, from the smallest bedroom to the biggest stadium, to be stripped of its paint. On the coldest winter day, the right chords can create condensation to drip from the ceiling due to the sweat and tears of those within earshot.

The simplest of setups can cause this reaction. Usually, it’s a well-worn piece of crap that’s been torn apart and rebuilt many times, with the paint on the back worn off where it makes contact with the owner’s body. A cable with questionable wiring connects it to pedals or boxes that are lucky to work a third of the time. Another cable runs to an amplifier in even worse condition. There’s a big dent in the front from where the frustrated owner of this setup stabbed it with the guitar head on an especially bad night. Stickers from other bands and clubs are sprinkled on every piece of this sonic equation.

I have no idea what the guitarist from Fidlar looks like, but it’s probably safe to say that everything I just described isn’t too far removed from his setup. I bet I’m also not wrong to predict he doesn’t dress like a preppy Vampire Weekend wannabe either. No, whatever he wears onstage is probably what he wore the day before, the day before that, and probably a few days afterwards. There’s no such thing as laundry day when you have 350 miles to travel before the next night’s show. That also obviously means that poor van that struggles to hit city after city smells like an NBA locker room after a triple-overtime playoff game.

As you may be able to predict from that last couple of paragraphs, today’s walking soundtrack was the full-length debut of L.A.’s Fidlar, which came out around the beginning of the year. Seriously, anybody who thinks that rock ‘n’ roll is dead needs to check these guys out. Yes, it fits into the low-fi surf-ish garage rock sound of bands such as Jeff the Brotherhood, Wavves, Ty Segall, and so many others. There’s one major difference, though, and that’s these fourteen tracks are some of the catchiest tunes this sub-genre has ever seen.

Seriously, if one were to slow down the songs and play them on acoustics, the warbling show puppets on Idol and The Voice could successfully over-sing these tunes. The censors wouldn’t be too pleased, though, as almost all of the tunes deal with cheap drugs and even cheaper beer.

One more interesting tidbit - guitarist Elvis Kuehn and his brother, drummer Max, are the songs of T.S.O.L. keyboardist Greg Kuehn.

A driving, intense album of guitar noise such as this was the perfect pick for today’s walk. All of you motherfuckers that don’t think I’m serious about this project need to understand that just a few days after twenty degree temps, this afternoon’s jaunt was when the thermostat was at 95! That’s right, I said 95! I also inadvertently went way longer than planned, thanks to a wrong turn at the halfway mark. That detour caused me to make it halfway through a second album, Songs We Taught Ourselves by The Future Primitives.

Now that I’m done waxing poetic on the virtues of guitars and Fidlar, it’s time to relax. Same time tomorrow???

The Walking Rock Alphabet: E

Another “no excuse” day for this little project. The temp was over 80. Laying on the couch was not an option. I even opted for shorts, which means that a number of people were blinded by something other than the hot sun.

For today’s selection, one must jump back to the mid-80’s. Although their sales didn’t skyrocket for another five years or so, this was the era where the influence of R.E.M. was at its peak. Every label, major AND indie, was looking for their own jangle-pop kings, and this influence was most felt on our local college station, KAUR. In fact, we used to joke that the with the playlist dominated by bands such as Guadalcanal Diary, Wire Train, and so many others, the station should be called K-REM.

One of the more obscure of these types of bands was E-I-E-I-O, and their big “hit” was “This Time”. Forget about R.E.M., if you want the quintessential jangle-pop track this is the song to go to. If one didn’t know better, it wouldn’t be out of the question to believe it was a long-lost Byrds single slightly speeded up.

Yet little was ever known about this band, which was typical for the era. If you weren’t on a major label, or considered a “major” indie band, band info was hard to come by. In this case, the album that featured “This Time”, suddenly found itself in the new release bin at KAUR, and if you were lucky you could special order it at Ernie’s.

In fact, it wasn’t until earlier this year that I found out more about this band. Somewhere I recall hearing they were from Wisconsin, but this wasn’t confirmed until I interview the BoDeans earlier this year. E-I-E-I-O were contemporaries of tthe BoDeans during an era where live music was thriving, partly thanks to the time’s lower drinking age. After this chat, I knew at some point this album would be a part of my spring walk.

What’s most surprising about the full album is how “This Time” isn’t a true representation of the band. The rest of the record is primarily mid-tempo bar band rock that’s not unlike the early BoDeans material, combined with a bit of Rank and FIle’s twang. It’s probably no surprise that the album was produced by Steve Berlin of the Blasters and Los Lobos.

Truthfully, while there are few true clunkers on the disc, “This Time” is by far the highlight, and will always be the track that ends up on “lost singles” playlists. 

Now that I’m all sweaty, it’s time for some refreshments.