It's 1973, dig. All my dumb friends are listening to New Riders and Steely Dan and the fuckin' Doobie Brothers. Gary the record store clerk, who's always the first to know, puts this album in my face - "Check it aoooouuuut, dude!" I'm, like, "WTF, dude? Who are these guys, if guys they be?" Gary slaps the disc on the turntable, drops the tonearm, and we're staring at each other goggle-eyed, our jaws to the floor, and somehow we're both screaming like girls and he turns the volume right up. "THE NEW YORK DOLLS, MAN! IT'S THE FUCKIN' NEW YORK DOLLS!" and a couple of customers are already out the door, they can't take it, but I have to buy this album, man, it's twanging my genome string into a Day-Glo© cats' cradle and my synapses are popping like firecrackers because I HAVE SEEN ROCK AND ROLL FUTURE!
Swell album. I may lissen to the second.
Who were you into first before your friends got hip?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was eleven, I saw (as many young people did) the iconic TopPop Iggy Lust For Live
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4kl8LNm7hc also Iggy's story 30 years later
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys66r3aG-f8
I did not have hip friends, I, myself, was the strange one, The sole Ramone in the classroom.
Iggy and Joey. They rescued me.
I was always squarer than square, a bumbling misfit tripping over his own clueless timidity. First act I went big on enough to try collecting their catalogue was Electric Light Orchestra. There were a couple of other rather more self-possessed squares in my school-class who dug them too. Disco was a big thing with me - still is. Such stuff appealed to a few smoothies with older brothers. Later I went nuts for Bowie and Kraftwerk after everyone else had already been there a while.
ReplyDeleteAt least the Smurfs single was out of stock the day I tried to buy it.
You are very welcome here, as our tastes are kryptonite and antimatter sparking angrily across the limitless void.
DeleteDid a charity shop crawl this week - came away with 2 Paul Simon, 2 Iarla O'Lionaird, Taj Mahal, Joe Brown, Winifred Atwell and more.
Deletemarlene dietrich! her voice and style in any language. my pals thought of her as an old movie star till i i made them listen. she's right next to my stones and muddy waters albums.
ReplyDeleteThe Monkees. The joke is that my parents were into all sorts of super cool stuff and I was like, blergh. My parents. How embarrassing. And Ronnie J's oldest brother who was appalled by us bouncing around to the Monkees and made us listen to a side of the Velvet Underground...after it finished and he looked at us expectantly, Ronnie put hist hand in his armpit to make a fart noise, his brother departed in disgust, and we went back to screaming out "Stepping Stone."
ReplyDelete"Stepping Stone" is about as good as anything gets. I'd put it up against the Basilica in St. Mark's Square, or Picasso's Guernica, or Fermat's Last Theorem.
DeleteDidn't the Sex Pistols have it in their set, along with 'Substitute'? The Who number, that is - not the Aussie one by Clout(?).
DeleteHey hi howdy! "Forever Changes", to answer the question. Also...!!! the stack o' images to the right, under "FOUR OR FIVE GUYS" has a guy named Snorky. Is he related? Am I a 'Guy"?
ReplyDeletepmac has kindly agreed to be your Help Desk Assist here, Snorky, as I am exhausted. Please address all further enquiries to him.
DeleteDrugs
ReplyDeleteThese days, I can only take a very little alcohol, or some Paracetomol (which I don't think I can even spell). I tried cannabis a while back, when they legalised it, but it made my head feel funny. My drug of choice is birdsong.
DeleteNot now. I do not need something to make me fatter, sleepier, or less attentive. Or to make my blood pressure worse. And I've seen some horrible things I do not wish to recall when flying through the outer reaches of a Jack Kirby-era "Dr Strange" comic. Grass is now too strong, and lacks the CBD to mellow it out. I drink less than I did when I was 14, but thankfully still have sweet, sweet lurve on a Sunday morning with Mrs Grimsdale, who leaves her curlers in and face pack on for my appreciation.
DeleteWhat a heartwarming glimpse into the Life Of The Grimsdales! Reminds me of that story about this bloke, right, and he's servicing the missus, like, and he notices her toes crimping up, regular like, so he says, he says, ee oop luv, why are yer toes crimping up? And she says, I left me tights on ...
DeleteImages of Compo finally having his way with Nora Batty or Stan and Hilda on Saturday night after the bingo.
DeleteAbout this here album. I was surprised, having always thought it would sound, well, like shit, like the Ramones. It sounds pretty damn great. The songs are good enough to carry the musicians from the first beat to the last, which is all they need to do. Jet Boy is nearly memorable, and I like the way it sets itself up to be a two-minute thrash but then throws in some genuine acid freakout guitar and stretches out to twice its natural length, just because it can. That song would have fit on Nuggets. Love the energy, love the production, the whole deal is a welcome surprise. Looking forward to hearing the second.
ReplyDeleteFriends. What is this thing called friends?
ReplyDeleteActually it was probably the first Dion & The Belmonts LP. Well, liked it anyway.
This seems almost preternaturally hip to me.
DeleteI haven't answered my own question - actually, a lot of stuff (the Dolls aside, I'm making up for that) - but it would be REM, whose first Hibtone single I heard on John Peel, and Chronic Town, which I bought on import. I claim personal responsibility for their celebrity in the Home Counties.
Got into REM fairly early, too - their IRS label years. The 2 I would have to pick would be artists that got famous once they sort of left behind the genre that they were in when I started to listen to them: Boz Scaggs and Steve Miller. Miller's first 4 lps were fantastic. He went all pop about the time of The Joker. Scaggs was heavy blues before he went sort of disco with Silk Degrees, but I guess you have to pay the bills somehow.
DeleteBlowing my own trumpet here, but I was more hip to music that most of, if not all my friends. I was a bit of a music nerd because I joined the record library, so borrowed all genres of music, and REM crossed my path. I was into Fables, Pageant and Document (borrowed from library and I think slightly edited my me to fit on a C90 cassette). When they became huge in the UK the snob in me lost interest a bit. I must revisit those albums soon.
DeleteThe one occasion I was almost hip was seeing Jeff Buckley live in March 1995. Having heard a few live tracks on the radio I went to see him play in a small club without hearing his album, it was a wonderful gig including Kick Out The Jams as an encore. He died two years later leaving just the one album released in his lifetime.
Jeff's stupid pointless trivial death was a tragic waste. At least his rotten father got to make a few more albums than we saw from the estranged son.
DeleteOh I say.
DeleteStumbled across R.E.M.--almost literally--early in New Orleans and was smitten, but by then I was, ahem, hip in musical terms. Loved them, loved their covers, loved Buck's guitar work.
ReplyDeleteFarq, all I can say about da brudders is that they were loud, so loud. At a moment seemingly awash in the Eagles and Dan Fogelberg (sp?) and Jackson Browne, it was ear opening.
Off to teach or at least pretend to...more and more surreal. Under the pavement, the beach
I think you're underselling the Dolls. I'm sure that, in the context of the times, they made an incredible impact, but they left behind a really entertaining first album, which was a blow to a long-held prejudice of mine. It's not definitively punk, glam (thank the merciful heavens) or just plain meat n' potatoes rock: it's a strange mixture which sounds totally complete, and still excites. Anyone who hasn't heard it and wants to - speak up!
DeleteI'd be up for that. My old NME Encyclopedia of Rock (1977) cast them as the Rolling Stones of 1963 with the image of same ten years on.
DeleteLet me know if you like it, and I'll start hating it again:
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/ZvekV7DkbWd
Farq, Eric's reference to 'da brudders' is a reference to the mighty Ramones, and I'd argue no one needs justify their love for them. Along with Jimmie Rodgers (the singing' brakeman), the Jesus & Mary Chain, and the series of sides Red Foley made with Ernest Tubb in the 1950s, the Ramones are in a select group of artists that make me smile as soon as I hear 'em.
DeleteC in California
Thanks for guysplaining that, C! And nobody has to justify their love for anything on th' Isle O' Foam©! Not even Fanny Blancmange! Well, perhaps Fanny Blancmange ...
DeleteWell, o'course I hadda guysplain it, on accounta me being one o' the 4 or 5 Guys!
DeleteC in California
I re-listened to The Dictators first album ("Go Girl Crazy!") which I actually bought at the time because the sleeve made me laugh, although the music didn't. I couldn't really work out who they were for - a straight cover of "I Got You, Babe?" - and the songs were mostly too slow. That's still my reaction. That album is sometimes lauded as a punk cornerstone, too.
ReplyDeleteHandsome Dick Manitoba--good gawd, y'all. Awful. And the Dolls are legit--I undersell them not at all--and my obsession was to play like Johnny Thunders. And they were funny.
ReplyDeleteI wus jes' yankin' yer chain!
DeleteThe Dictators, looked at from the conventional viewpoint of what "rock music" should sound like, were awful. But looked at in the context of "smart dumbness" and cultural zeitgeist, they were even worse.
Let me just commend you on recognising the importance of "smart dumbness" (Ramones, Iggy, Alice, Slade, NYD, The Rezillos), as compared to "dumb smartness". The latter always makes me think of Dream Theatre, who take all the laudable tropes of metal and progressive rock and elaborates the worst of it.
DeleteAin't no flies on Mr. Grimsdale
DeleteHe makes a strong point. Just ask his wife.
Delete