A deep dive into the hard drive, plenty of interesting suggestions and a little help from my friends meant that I finally managed to come up with three GG's to feature today.
Apart from the obvious one who of course was never going to appear there was the other obvious one with Lynchie being the first to suggest Gloria Gaynor. However I'm not posting the obvious one. Rather you are getting Honeybee an album track from her 1975 album Never Can Say Goodbye ( the title track of which might have been another obvious one).
George was the first of you to come up with the Go-Go's. Their website proclaims them as The most successful all female band of all time. That may be so but they don't appear on the shelves.I did find something on the hard drive though. The band who gave us Belinda Carlisle. Calm down there Jez
Marie cleverly ensured that one of her choices got a mention by forwarding me a track.It is the first I have heard from 50's Rockabilly artist the splendidly named Glen Glenn and it is rather good.
Like Rol I have a couple of solo covers by Glenn Gregory which I don't recall having listened to. I give his version of Wichita Lineman a listen. You may notice that it does not feature. That is because I've taken one for the team. Sacrilege is all that I will say
HH next week.Another pretty tricky one but I think I can come up with a couple
Oh and if you are in the vicinity of Aachen and you see a house with a lovely garden pop in and say hello to Dirk
Given it is the end of the working week I figure its time for some bad ass Blues.
And who better to provide such fayre than Fat Possum Records out of Oxford, Mississippi?
A label who made their reputation by discovering ageing but previously unknown Bluesmen more often than not with something of a chequered past.. Sadly they have all gone now.
Perhaps the most famous horse in their stable was R.L.Burnside who had been convicted of killing a man over a game of dice. He quit touring at the age of 72
Junior Kimburgh died of a heart attack following a stroke at the age of 67 in 1998 and apparently he was survived by 36 children. Looks like he was too busy to get up to no good
T-Model Ford made it til 90 albeit he only began his musical career in his early 70's He also had a conviction for murder and a good few run ins with the law. I missed an opportunity to see him at King Tuts something I regret to this day.
Still going through the G's . Today I've gone for the Americana shelves and have plucked out Down to the Well a 2000 album from Kevin Gordon on the Shanachie label.
The blurb on the back of the CD reads East Nashville roots-rocking renegade Kevin Gordon delivers haunting story-songs about extraordinary people living in the margins of American life
That description might tempt you to part from your hard earned cash. Except in my case it didn't as it is a burn.
A high quality burn in that whoever did it took the trouble to copy all the lyrics and include them as a booklet.
I've no idea who I got it from, Perhaps it was from my now sadly departed pal Harry. I also can't recall having played it before but I suspect I must have at least one.
Perfectly pleasant if hardly earth shattering rootsy Americana with the first track benefiting from a contribution by the great Lucinda Williams
George writes: That magnificent beastie is, as some may know, the Colorado Hairstreak Butterfly, the official insect of today’s state, Colorado. Which is Spanish for red. So here’s another piece where I supply a couple of songs about a state of which I know nothing, apart from knowing that Denver is in Colorado (and the official insect is the above butterfly). Warren Zevon does not, unfortunately, supply a nice long list of things to do in the state capital apart from suggesting finding a motel with unseemly cleaning habits. But he did give us a splendid song. Here we go:
That sounds like some Flaco flourishes on that track.
Unlike Arkansas, Colorado and it’s cities have a plethora of good songs:
Emmylou Harris - Boulder to Birmingham
That Townes van Zandt song
…….John Denver - I guess he’d rather be in Colorado
John Denver changed his name to Denver from Deutschendorf, and dropped his first name, Henry. He was not born in Denver. But he wrote songs about the state of Colorado, the one above, a song about Aspen, and Rocky Mountain High. And he lived there.
I wanted to include a song about Telluride, because of its link to the element tellurium. And I wanted to do that because tellurium, is in the same group of the periodic table as oxygen, sulphur and selenium (it lies directly below selenium). And given the nature of these groups, tellurium-related breath of humans is even stinkier than that due to sulphur and selenium. And you know how smelly hydrogen sulphide is: that rotten egg, stink bomb smell. So if tellurium gets in your body you will smell so bad you will have to stay indoors on your own (honestly, it’s that bad). But the Tim McGraw song is unfortunately one of those 1980s style country-music-by-numbers songs.
There’s (yet another) dreadful dreadful syrupy country that I listened to, so you don’t have to, dear reader, called Columbine by C. W. McCall. My research has revealed to me that there seem to be plenty of dreadful songs about this state (Merle Haggard, the Pure Prairie League, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Hank Snow, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, for example), a right load of dreary old tosh. I was on the verge of sticking pins in my eyes………..which would certainly have been preferable to listening to all of the truly execrable Colorado Trail by the Kingston Trio. Speaking of truly execrable songs there’s this, sung by Elton John, dating from ca. 1970. I DARE you to listen all the way through_
Anyway, here’s something that cannot fall to better than that, a track that is also about Denver. And it is not a country song either, but, for the first time in the series, and not the last, let me tell that and tell you no more, a blues song! From our favourite German label Trikont, from the album Blue and Lonely, a track by Tampa Red
Hudson Woodbridge was not born in Tampa but in Smithville, Georgia. He did, though, move there aged 10.
Unfortunately Colorado Kool-Aid by Johnny Paycheck cannot be included, it is set in Houston, in a bar frequented by knife-wielding Mexicans. An ear is sliced off, but the slicer returns it to its owner. And Hank Williams Jr wrote a song about ODing in Denver, which is not a bad song at all, but obviously the drug reference is to be severely frowned at.
And that’s Colorado for you. Another one next week?
CC writes:
When I went with a couple of pals to see Cathryn Craig play in Blackfriars in Glasgow at the end of the show we expressed some polite disappointment that she hadn't sung Colorado. She got out her guitar, sat down and played it for the three of us. Quality
An interesting and welcome by-product of my current Double Initial series is that it has you forensically scouring the shelves of the various genres for the initial concerned,
Next up in the series is G hence the prompt for Goldfapp featuring today.
Regular visitors to these pages will note that there is not very much electronica featured. That is because I am not particularly a fan, I do however like me a bit of Goldfrapp with their first 5 albums having been acquired mainly from charity shops over the years.
I would describe then as electronica lite.
Their second album from 2003 Black Cherry is described as having a glam rock feel to it with Baccara being cited as an inspiration. What's not to love about that?
Clearly something if you are an Austrian given it is the only one of their albums not to chart there
Featuring Freddy Fender on Saturday's Double Initial series had me reaching for the only record I have ever bought in Belgium.
Said album is Son of Kraut by Peel favourite's F.S.K.
As Walter and Dirk will be aware F.S.K. is an abbreviation forFreiwillige Selbstkontrolle which is German for voluntary self control. They can fairly accurately be described as a German Mekons The blurb in the inner sleeve describes Freddy Fender's Sohn as Roman Catholicism and Latin Drugs in stereo. Glad we cleared that up. Germany famously demolished a wall. America is trying to build one. Finally, as I'm sure you are all well aware When in rains in Texas it snows on the Rhine F.S.K. - Freddy Fender's Sohn F.S.K. - The Wall
Another contribution to my occasional and accidental series Soundtracks of Films I've Never Seen.
Form 1972 Superfly was a blaxploitation crime drama starring Ron O'Neal as the fantastically named Youngblood Priest a pimp and drug dealer trying to quit the underworld drug business. No wonder the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were unimpressed.
It crossed my radar recently as it is fairly extensively referenced in Stuart Cosgrove's Harlem 69 The Future of Soul book.
The film was almost exclusively shot in Harlem and Cosgrove points out that the lead appears to be based on a high profile Harlem dealer William Terrell known as Goldfinger.
More importantly and probably more famously the music is by the mighty Curtis Mayfield in one of his early solo projects following his departure from The Impressions
Largely on the back of the success of Freddie's Dead the album was one of the few soundtracks to out gross the film it accompanied.
