Hard Again: from the opening notes of Mannish Boy, this is a great album. Sounds very 'Live' for a studio album, and also gives the impression lots of fun was had in the recording of the songs. Johnny Winter does a great job as producer and overall contributor.

Looked it up, Muddy was around 62-64 years old when he recorded this, but these blues guys seemed 'always old'.

Lots of these songs have been covered by other bands I like, testament to Muddy's songwriting prowess: The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock And Roll covered by Dr Feelgood for example.

 

PatReilly wrote:

When Bowie released 'Low', Nick Lowe responded with this, the first ever Stiff Records issue:

​

Very good.

Even looks a bit like Bowie.
 

Day 379.
Steely Dan...................................Aja   (1977)











As an album, Aja has little of Pretzel Logic's playful pastiche, or the cynicism of Royal Scam. Instead Fagen and Becker crafted a polished, jazz inflected opus that went on to sell more than five million copies.


With superlative production and performances from 30 of the best session musicians of the day, Aja is a genuine landmark in jazz rock.


I forgot to mention I'm oot the toon just now, and will get back late Friday/early Saturday so will have to catch up then, I'm shite at trying to write anything on the phone, this has taken me over half an hour   my fingers need to go on a diet!

DAY 376.
The Stranglers...........................Rattus Norvegicus or The Stranglers lV   (1977)












This is an album I bought back in '77, absolutely loved it from start to finish, not as raw as some of their conteporaries, but not exactly over polished either. This album sets out it's stall pretty early with "Sometimes" which is one of my favourite tracks, then takes you on a wondrous ride all the way through to "Down in the Sewer" at 7:30 minutes a tad long but gets away with it as it's divided into four sections.

As I said "Sometimes" was probably my favourite track closely followed by (Get A) Grip (On Yourself), but all the tracks are well worth listening to, tin hat on here but always thought "Peaches" was a bit overrated, I had the single but mainly played  "Go Buddy Go" a far superior song in my humbles.

As an aside, I thought I'd tell you a wee story from back in the mid eighty's that has a very tenuous link to this album, on the track "Hanging Around" are these lyrics;


"I'm moving in the Coleherne

With the leather all around me

And the sweat is getting steamyBut their eyes are on the ground

They're just hanging around"


"The Coleherne" was a well known gay pub in Brompton Road, West London, I lived in West London for quite a while but never went there, but in my regular watering hole there were two guys probably in their mid 40's who did. 
These two were funny as fuck, when they started slagging each other, or anyone else for that matter, you couldn't help but laugh, they both hated anything PC, didn't go on any marches, but the stories they came out with were hilarious.

This is one, for the life of me I can't remember their names, but anyways they had been together twenty odd years, and lived together for most of that time, but they had what they called an "open relationship" which basically meant, they could screw who they liked but not in their home, and they couldn't talk about their dalliances.


So to the story, this Monday night I walked in the pub and just for ease let's call him Walter was sitting at the bar, I approached him my usual greeting to him which was "how's it going you old tart,don't often see you on a Monday" "oh what a weekend I've had" he said smiling," "up to no good I bet?" then he related this sory;


"Well I'll tell you, it was a funny one all right, Sunday night I'm in The Colherne chancing my luck but I couldn't get a nod from a donkey, so cheesed off to say the least I left and started walking home, as I was walking home I gets to just outside Brompton Road Cemetary (well known as a popular gay cruising area) when these two handsome guys dressed in tight leather stopped me and asked if I fancy a threesome, and I thought "there is a god,"  and it didn't take e long to say yes I can tell you. So in we go and we find a dark spot not to far into the park, still in absolute dreamland I gets on my knees and start to unzip one of the guys, when all of a sudden he pulls out his badge and says "you're busted sweetie" the bastard!

"So I'm locked up for the night and up before the beak in the morning, and I'm shiittin' myself as I've got quite a bit of previous, so this morning I get taking up to the court room and sitting there quaking it, then the judge comes in and I looked up, and I started chuckling to myself, I'd only had him the week before, he looked guiltier than me when he saw who was in front of him, I must have been good that night, as all I got was a £10 fine"

Anyways back to the album, if you haven't listened to this please give it a listen, this album will definitely be going into my collection.



Bits & Bobs;



 
The inspiration behind The Stranglers' first hit single, ",Peaches" was from when the band lent their PA to a "sound system" event in London. The reggae music they heard that day proved to be infectious, which led to JJ Burnel coming up with the song's trademark bass line.



 Along with Ian Dury and the Blockheads, The Stranglers were one of the few UK punk rock/new wave bands to regularly incorporate electric organ into their tunes.


 
Although Punk Rock was largely associated with youth, The Stranglers' drummer, Jet Black, was 38 years old at the time of the release of their debut album, 1977's Rattus Norvegicus.


 
In a 1978 article for NME, Cornwell didn't seem too satisfied with this scholastic experience, when he remarked, "Greatest thing I discovered at university was marijuana."


 
In August 1990, Cornwell left the band. His last album with the band was 10, which spawned two UK hit singles, a cover of ? & the Mysterians' "96 Tears" and the original composition, "Sweet Smell of Success."



 
JJ Burnel  admitted The Stranglers weren't exactly chummy with the majority of their peers early on. "We weren't friends with anyone! But we made friends with individuals, like Joe Strummer was a mate for a short while. And Dr. Feelgood, they were a band who very much were admired by The Stranglers. But we weren't befriended by many."


 
The Stranglers' current singer/guitarist, Baz Warne, was previously a member of another English Punk band, Toy Dolls, for which he supplied bass.


 
Hugh Cornwall has a bachelor's degree in biochemistry.



Dark, edgy, angular, masculine and very confrontational.



The Stranglers were always outsiders in the UK punk scene; this was mainly attributed to the members age and use of a keyboard (an instrument considered highly unfashionable in the late 70s). Their reputation was hardly positive; accusations of chauvinism, heavy drug use, violent behaviour towards other bands and journalists and sexual deviancy. Many of theses points were embellished, many were factual. However, their debut album is one that demonstrates, unlike many of their peers in 1977, the Stranglers were skilled musicians and songwriters. Keyboard aside they had more of a punk attitude then many other acts. Even if a lot of the hype was fictional they were a band that made great music.




Rattus Norvegicus, (the Latin name for the rats responsible for the plague) is an outstanding album. It has aged well and the dexterity of all four band mates is clear through out. If it comes in the form of Hugh Cornwell’s psychedelic guitar licks, which shows prominence in ‘Down In The Sewer’. JJ Burnel’s fantastically deep and pumping bass lines and Dave Greenfield’s swirling keyboard. The band is a tight unit throughout. Evidently clear in ‘Hanging Around’. The bands song writing ability also puts them above the verse-chorus-verse-chorus ilk of their peers. For example ‘Down In The Sewer’ has more in common with the song structure of a progressive rock composition, rather than your average punk song. The song writing is angular on many other numbers, focusing on crescendos and a healthy use of dynamics.




The whole album bristles with a menacing aura that suggests violence. The first line on opener ‘Sometimes’ is ‘Sometimes I want to smack your face’, for God sake. This is repeated in ‘Ugly’ with the protagonist regretting strangling his girlfriend to death. This song also features the classic one liner ‘An ugly fart gets a good looking chick if he’s got money’ (insert Hugh Hefner or Peter Stringfellow joke here).




‘Peaches’, arguably their most famous anthem, has one of the most recognisable bass lines in history and showcases the bands skill for mixing controversy with humour. This song was the reason they were branded chauvinists, due to its theme of admiring bronzed female figures on summer beaches. Spurious libel, as what straight man does not look at women on the beach" Calling a band chauvinistic for this is pretty crass. However, it added to the hype and gave the band a healthy dose of publicity. Especially as the song entered the top 10 in the UK single charts.




Like many other punk bands of the time the Stranglers were also great at reflecting angst. Whether it’s in ‘London Lady’ which emulates the falseness and superficial attitude of music journalists. ‘Sometimes’ and ‘Ugly’; relationship problems and sexual self consciousness or ‘Hanging Around’ a sideways look at adolescent hood in big cities.




This album is perhaps one of the Stranglers greatest in that it reflected their malevolent attitude towards life. The songs are much rawer than their later polished and poppier material. It cleverly fits in the punk ethos of doing things for yourself and showing no concern of what others thought. How many other punk acts would have been brave enough to have a keyboard or experiment with different song structures" In a time that was made of two minute long, amphetamine fuelled numbers the Stranglers clearly stood above the rest with attitude, nous and a fantastic aptitude for musicianship.


"Sometimes"


Written by Hugh Cornwell, describes a violent argument with a girlfriend. The same girlfriend is the subject of "Strange Little Girl"



"Goodbye Toulouse"


Describes the destruction of Toulouse predicted by Nostradamus



"London Lady"


Loosely based on a contemporary female journalist



"Princess of the Streets"



Written in 6/8 time, music and lyrics by Burnel. Penned 'pre-Stranglers'




"Hanging Around" (4:25)




Music by Burnel, lyrics by Cornwell. Describes the characters found in the London pubs that the band played live at.Was covered by Hazel O'Conner on her third album, Cover Plus, and released by her as a single that same year (1981).



"Peaches"

The Allman Brothers released an album in 1972 called Eat A Peach, which makes sense considering their home state of Georgia is "The Peach State." The title is also a slang term for cunnilingus, but that's up for interpretation, as are The Stranglers' peaches. This song finds a man hanging out on a lovely beach, looking at the beautiful women. The peaches are either a fond term for the girls he spots, or a more lascivious reference to their vaginas.


 
This was the second single released by The Stranglers (not counting promo releases). JJ Burnel explained how the song came together: "In the very early days, in order to earn a bit of money, we had a little PA, and one day we were signed to a black label called Safari, which was more or less a Reggae label. We hadn't released anything. But the owner phoned us up one day and said, 'Look, do you want a few pounds to augment your PA to a sound system?' Well, we didn't know what 'sound system' was.


So we turned up in part of London and we were the only white guys there. We stuck our PA to their sound system, and there was an awful lot of grass going about. We were kind of excluded from the line of grass. And lo and behold, I discovered sound systems, which were I suppose an early form of rap. You'd have a toaster: a black guy talking sort of stream of consciousness over mainly a bass and drums backing rhythm. Reggae. It was all reggae. What you might know as 'dub.' So you have a delay on the snare or something, there'd be a lot of separation and mainly bass speakers throughout the total.


So we stayed there for the whole gig. And at the end of it, I was hooked on the idea that the bass should be the most dominant feature. So I went back to where we were living and that night, came up with the three notes which constitute 'Peaches.' And of course, I wanted to make a reggae song out of it. But we didn't quite get the snare in the right beat. But never mind. We Strangle-fied it. We interpreted a reggae theme in The Stranglers way, which became 'Peaches.'"




"(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)"



Based on band life in their Chiddingfold squat; featured Eric Clarke a Welsh coal miner, on saxophone




"Ugly"



Music and lyrics by Burnel. Described as 'abstract psychedelia' by Cornwell, the poem Ozymandias is featured.



"Down in the Sewer"




Has four sections: "Falling"/"Down in the Sewer"/"Trying To Get Out Again"/"Rat's Rally". Music by Burnel, lyrics by Cornwell. The 'sewer' refers to London. Lyrically the song references an episode of the 1975 post-apocalyptic drama "Survivors" titled "Lights of London", where the protagonists leave the safety of a farming community to head for the city, which they find can only be entered through a rat infested sewer.
 


 

Last edited by arabchanter (25/8/2018 1:27 pm)

I was a wee bit confused by the first part of your review, A/C: thought it was a copy and paste but on re-reading, it's your text. 

When Rattus Norvegicis came out, I was in a band, and thought that The Stranglers were exactly what I wanted that band to sound like. Hugh Cornwell was/is some songwriter. Yet, today, many of the lyrics wouldn't be deemed acceptable.

Another thing about The Stranglers: I thought myself 'old' when the punk era took off, and looked at the members of The Stranglers, the youngest of which was 4 years older than me (Jet Black was 18 years older), and it felt comfortable.

Anyway, a totally different sound, heralding a new era for me, I even painted a white rat on my leather jacket in appreciation. 

Did i miss the review of The Clash - The Clash?

DAY 377.
The Clash....................................The Clash   (1977)











This is another album I bought back in the 70s, I make The Clash one of my favourite bands and this album , because it's the debut album and sees them at their rawest, is more than likely my favourite Clash album, but that can change from week to week to be fair.


This album always without fail, gets me up and ready, I had this on vinyl and cassette in fact I used to play this in the dressing room before games on a Sony Walkman roundabout the late 70s/early eighties to get the adrenaline pumping before I went out.


The tracks on this album are all superb, but if pushed "Police and Thieves" has always been a favourite of mine in their outstanding repertoire, although every track on the album has it's own virtue, this album will be going into my collection, and if you haven't listened to it, I would highly recommend that you do.




Bits & Bobs;


Strummer was born in Ankara, Turkey because his father was a British diplomat. His original name was John Mellor.


 
The name "Strummer" was bestowed upon Strummer because he was known to strum "Johnny B. Goode" on a ukulele in London subway stations.


 
In 1974, Strummer formed the 101ers, who were named for the address of the West London house Joe Strummer and then-bandmates squatted in pre-Clash (101 Walterton Road).


 
Jones' band, the London SS, at various times included Simonon, Crimes, Headon and future Generation X bassist Tony James. In 1976, Jones and Simonon were looking to start a new band, and they came across Strummer at the welfare office. Strummer thought they were going to rob him, but they actually wanted him to join their band.


 
Simonon suggested the band's name after repeatedly reading the word "Clash" in newspapers.


 
At the first Clash gig, they performed as a quintet (with Levene). They opened for the legendary punk band, the Sex Pistols. Levene eventually joined Public Image Ltd. with Sex Pistols vocalist Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon).


 
The Clash's debut album was not originally released in America. However, it sold 100,000 import copies, making it the largest selling import album of its time.


 
Headon drummed with Pat Travers in Europe before joining the Clash.


 
The band insisted that 1979's London Calling, and all their subsequent albums, sell at lower-than-standard prices. The record company's profit loss was taken out of the band members' royalties.


 
Ian Dury's keyboardist Mickey Gallagher appears on London Calling.


 
Their 1980 album Sandinista! was their first to sell more in the United States then in Britain.


 
Jones went on to form Big Audio Dynamite. Simonon formed Havana 3 A.M. and Strummer enjoyed a solo career. Strummer appears on Big Audio Dynamite's second album.


 
Their early shows could get a little rough. It was the era of Punk, and fans would often throw things at the stage. Instead of clapping, they showed their appreciation by "gobbing," which was spitting at the band.


 
Strummer recorded music for various movies including Sid & Nancy, Straight to Hell, and Permanent Record.


 
The Clash appear in the movie The King Of Comedy as a group of hoodlums. There was also a movie made about a fictional Clash roadie called Rude Boy, which is based on Ray Gange, an ex-porn shop employee who briefly roadied for the Clash


.
Strummer ran three marathons in the early '80s, including the London Marathon twice.


 
In 1977, Strummer and Headon were once charged with robbery - stealing a pillow from a Holiday Inn.


 
Strummer died from a heart attack on December 22, 2002. He was 50.


 
They were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2003. There were rumors that Bruce Springsteen would join them to perform at the ceremony, but the remaining members decided not to play. The ceremonies took place at the fancy Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York and tickets were $1500 each. They felt playing such an event would go against what The Clash stood for, but they did accept their awards.


 
U2 guitarist The Edge told Rolling Stone magazine April 15, 2004: "The Clash, more than any other group, kick-started a thousand garage bands across Ireland and the UK. For U2 and other people of our generation, seeing them perform was a life-changing experience."


 
In 1977, The Clash signed to CBS Records for the then-outrageous sum of 100,000 pounds. An anecdote often repeated is Mark Perry's lament "Punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS." Actually, according to Jon Savage's England's Dreaming, The Clash, like many punk bands of the time, were shockingly naïve about business matters. Joe Strummer recollects there: "We were completely in the dark. We let [manager] Bernie handle everything. We were really the people we were supposed to be. What did we know about record companies and contracts?"


 
In 1982, Joe Strummer was pressured by Clash manager Bernie Rhodes to go into hiding in Texas as a publicity stunt. This was because tickets were selling slowly for the Scottish leg of an upcoming tour. Strummer instead decided to genuinely disappear to France for several months. During his time in Paris, Strummer claimed he ran the Paris Marathon. According to the Clash frontman, his training regime consisted of 10 pints of beer the night before the race.



"Janie Jones"


"Janie Jones" was one of the first ever songs written by The Clash, written not long after singer Joe Strummer had joined to initially form the band in 1976. The tune and chorus apparently came to guitarist Mick Jones whilst riding on the 31 bus from Harrow Road to Chalk Farm in London, with Strummer subsequently helping out with the rest of the lyrics.


 
Musically the song is very simple, with bassist Paul Simonon's one-note bassline in the choruses being very noticeable. It could be speculated that this is a deliberate musical attempt to emphasize the monotony and boredom of the lyrics, but more likely it's because at this stage Simonon was still learning to play bass properly and couldn't physically play anything more complicated!


 
The lyrics concern the average working life, and the struggle to try and find some fun in a boring office job. The protagonist attempts to have some fun by meeting up with a lady friend after hours ("An' he knows when the evening comes, when his job is done he'll be over in his car for you"), and also discusses how the dull job and abusive boss ("An' in the in-tray lots of work, but the boss at the firm always thinks he shirks") is necessary to cut a living ("But he's just like everyone, he's got a Ford Cortina that just won't run without fuel").


It also includes the first of many anti-establishment sentiments in Clash songs ("This time he's gonna really tell the boss, gonna really let him know exactly how he feels").



Period references include the aforementioned Cortina (a popular cheap car of the time), the sitcom Love Thy Neighbour ("Fill 'er up, Jacko!") and the 1950s Payola radio scandal ("There's no payola in his alphabetical file").


 
The title comes from the actual name of a controversial cabaret singer/vice queen from the 1950s and '60s who attracted controversy from being involved in the payola Radio One scandal in the 1960s in a "sex for airplay" scenario. Her other scandals included attending the premiere of a film in 1964 in a topless dress, and being arrested and jailed in 1973 for not just the Payola scandal but also for running a brothel and perverting the course of justice by threatening witnesses. She also had a partial pop career in the 1960s, including a single "Witches' Brew" which peaked at #46 in the UK Singles Chart. According to the band, they used her name because someone like her would seem impossibly glamorous to someone working in a dull office job. She subsequently became friends with the band, and together with The Clash and the Blockheads (credited jointly as The Lash) she released another single in 1982 entitled "House of the Ju-Ju Queen," which was also produced by Joe Strummer.


 
The song is notable in The Clash's canon in that it is the only song of theirs to be played from first show to last. The band played so many shows and had a policy of rotating their setlist night by night, so it's hard to say that it was played at every single show, but it certainly featured in 99% of their shows and tours to all accounts. It was played in their first shows in 1976, and in their farewell shows in 1985.

 
The simple nature of the song means that it is very easy to cover, and many cover versions of the song exist, including versions by the Rockabilly band The Farrell Brothers (for the This Is Rockabilly Clash album), Bush, The Paddingtons, The Slackers (ft. Chris Murray), Songdog, and famously by Pete Doherty's band Babyshambles.

The Babyshambles cover is notable for several reasons - lots of stars of the British indie rock scene feature on the track, including the Kooks, the Gulliemots and the Dirty Pretty Things. This was Carl Barat's first collaboration with Doherty since the breakup of The Libertines, although neither actually met during the recording process. The music video features the original Janie Jones of the title being chauffeured around London in a limousine with original Clash guitarist Mick Jones.



"Remote Control"

Written after the disastrous Anarchy Tour (where in the aftermath of the Sex Pistols' "The Filth and the Fury" scandal, most of the gigs on the tour were canceled at the last minute), "Remote Control" was a rant against oppression and conformity (standard Punk song topics) and was treated with some excitement when it first arrived in The Clash LP sessions due to it's time-signature changes and more ambitious musical ideas, including an intro/outro riff taken from a traditional football terrace chant: "You're Gonna Get Your F--kin' Head Kicked In." Original drummer Terry Chimes remembered, "Joe said 'Mick's written a mini-opera!'"


 
The song is a stinging attack on people in senior positions of power, a theme that would be revisited many times in The Clash's canon, most notably with "Clampdown." The main inspiration was the withdrawal of support and cancellation of gigs on the Anarchy tour; the lyric "They had a meeting in Mayfair" refers to a specific meeting of EMI label shareholders in December 1976 where all financial support for the tour was pulled.



 
This was one of the first songs to mention the Punk scene by name: "They think you're useless, an' so you are - puuuuuuunnnnnk!"


The song contains heavy science-fiction references, including nods to BBC TV show Doctor Who ("Repression, gonna be a Dalek!").


 
Although The Clash initially were very proud of "Remote Control," they swiftly disowned the song when it was released without their permission as a single in May 1977. The dispute appears to be that it wasn't that The Clash didn't want another single off the album to follow "White Riot" - it was that they didn't want "Remote Control" to be the next single.


In an interview just a few weeks before with Melody Maker magazine, the band confirmed (so they thought) that the next single would be "Janie Jones." "Remote Control" is one of the softer, less aggressive songs on The Clash album, which explains the record company's decision to release it without the band's consent. Rumor has it that the band actually went round to record shops in London and pulled the record from the shelves, such was their anger at it being released.


What was perennially a live favorite with the band became an also-ran after 1977, only being played once more in July 1979 (a demo version also appears on the Vanilla Tapes package with the 25th anniversary of London Calling album). It has also been completely ignored on compilations, and is the only first-album track not to appear on the Clash on Broadway compilation.




"I'm So Bored With The USA"


Originally the song was called "I'm So Bored With You", and was one that guitarist Mick Jones had written before he joined The Clash. In the first meeting of Jones with singer Joe Strummer after the latter joined the band, Jones played Strummer several of his songs, and when he played him "I'm So Bored With You," Strummer apparently misheard the lyrics as "I'm So Bored with the USA."

Thinking that this would form a great song about the social ills of America, Strummer started coming up with new lyrics before Jones could explain that actually it was about his then-current on-off relationship.

It appears that the song was a work in progress, as in their earlier shows in August and September 1976, the song was in it's original "You" form as a song about the end of a relationship, but by October it had fully transformed into "I'm So Bored with the USA."


 
The lyrics are a stinging diatribe about the exporting of American culture around the world either by force ("Yankee dollar talk to the dictators of the world, in fact it's giving orders an' they can't afford to miss a word"), or through media or subterfuge ("Yankee detectives are always on the TV, 'cause killers in America work seven days a week"), and advocate an attempt to reclaim culture from US dominance ("Never mind the stars and stripes, let's print the Watergate Tapes, I'll salute the New Wave, and I hope nobody escapes").


The reference to "New Wave" is the first time anyone had used the alternative term to describe punk rock in a song, and made more sense in an earlier lyrical draft where a previous verse referenced the West Coast surfing scene. In the closing lyrical improvisations Strummer also mentions US detective shows Starsky and Hutch and Kojak, which the group professed to like.



 
Musically, the song owes a debt to "Pretty Vacant" by their contemporaries the Sex Pistols - or does it? Both songs were written and released around the same time, and both bands have speculated that the other may have ripped off their riff.


 
"I'm So Bored with the USA" was used in an interesting way when played live by The Clash. In Britain it was a concert staple from 1976 to 1978, with occasional revisits thereafter. On American tours however, it was used regularly as a set opener, to in Strummer's words "find out if they had a sense of humor." On the first tour in 1979 it was often booed by the more conservative elements of the crowd, but most people did indeed get the joke and thereafter it was often sung back at the band with gusto from the American audiences - seeming to suggest that they too were tired with America's cultural exports and oppressive cultural dominance worldwide.



"White Riot"

In this song, Clash frontman Joe Strummer is expressing his view that young white people should be outraged over their oppressive government just as blacks were, and should demonstrate through direct action and protest. He made it clear that the song - and the group - in no way advocated violence, and that it was certainly not racist.


Strummer explained to NME: "The only thing we're saying about the blacks is that they've got their problems and they're prepared to deal with them. But white men, they just ain't prepared to deal with them - everything's too cozy. They've got stereos, drugs, hi-fis, cars. The poor blacks and the poor whites are in the same boat."


 
This song was inspired by the Notting Hill riots in west London on August 30, 1976. The carnival was a celebration of Caribbean culture, but it turned violent when police were attacked after arresting a pickpocket. Over 100 police officers were hospitalized along with about 60 crowd members. A lot of the tension was along racial lines, with black youths clashing with white officers, although gangs of white youth were also involved. Clash members Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, and their manager Bernie Rhodes were at the event and got caught up in the riots, which led to this song. They included a photo of the Notting Hill riots on the back cover of the album.


 
Released in the UK on CBS Records March 26, 1977, "White Riot" was The Clash's first single. It became one of their signature songs and was an indication of things to come. The Clash spent the next eight years speaking out for the lower class and against the establishment. Targets of their scorn included the British government and their record company.


 
Predictably, this song caused some problems during Clash concerts at times when audience members - often political punks - would use it as an excuse to cause trouble. Whether they should play it or not was sometimes a source of tension in the band.


At a gig in 1979, Joe Strummer was determined to play the song as an encore but Mick Jones vehemently disagreed, saying he was sick of the song and wanted to leave it behind. The argument became heated and Strummer for the only time in the band's career punched Jones, leading to an odd situation during the encore where Jones had a bandage around his eye and nose whilst playing on stage - he gave up playing it halfway through and left the rest of the band to play on. Other tales abound of promoters requesting the band not to play the song for fear of wrecking the venue. Naturally, The Clash being the troublemakers that they were, would play it anyway.


 
Clash members Mick Jones and Joe Strummer played this together for the last time in November 2002. Jones was in the audience for one of Strummer's solo shows and came onstage to join him. Strummer usually didn't like to play this, but he turned to Jones and said, "This one's in 'A', you know it." Strummer died of a heart attack a month later.


 
The album wasn't released in the US until 1979. Over 100,000 copies were sold there as an import in 1977.



"Hate And War"

Singer Joe Strummer noted in a 2002 interview with Uncut magazine that the title "Hate and War" was a direct reversal of the hippy phrase "Love and Peace," done to illustrate the contrast between the optimism and hope of the late 1960s and the grim reality of Britain in the '70s. "It was a good punk rock blast to have a song called that" he said.


 
In a 1991 interview, Strummer remembered that he "wrote the lyrics in a disused ice cream factory I'd broken into. It was just behind the Harrow Road in Foscote Mews. I wrote it in the dark by candlelight and the next day took it to Rehearsals and Mick put a tune to it."


The lyrics in question are an angry indictment of everyday working class life in London, and a rallying call to toughen up if you want to survive in the mean streets ("I have the will to survive, I cheat if I can't win. If someone locks me out, I kick my back in, an' if I get aggression, I give it to them two time back").


It also controversially uses racist terms such as "wops" and "Kebab Greeks." The lyrics are ambiguous as to their usage, although it would appear the song uses these terms to add to the gritty realistic feel of urban London at the time where such language may well have unfortunately been commonplace.



 "Hate and War" was first introduced into The Clash's live set on the Anarchy tour of 1977, and was dropped by 1978, but after that would reappear every so often on tours - the Pearl Harbour tour in 1979 (and on their appearance on the Alright Now TV show), occasionally in Europe in 1980, once in Newcastle in 1982, all of their 1983 US Festival warm-up shows (and the festival itself), and their last festival shows in the summer of 1985 with Strummer handling all lead vocals after original singer on the song Mick Jones had been fired.



"What's My Name"

This is the one writing credit that original guitarist Keith Levene got from The Clash on the first album. He claimed to "have a hand" in every song on the first album, but this is disputed by the rest of the band. Joe Strummer always claimed that Levene was too busy doing drugs (heroin and speed, allegedly) to rehearse and hence his subsequent sacking from the band.


Levene claims to have written most of the song with his fellow guitarist Mick Jones in May 1976, and showed it to Sex Pistols singer John Lydon (with whom he would later form the post-punk band Public Image Ltd.). Strummer however remembers that "the only parts the song had when it came was, 'What's my name?' That's all the song was. I put in a few verses to keep the choruses apart."


Judging by early live bootlegs from 1976 to mid 1977, the lyrics were still being worked out (an early version featured a chilling coda about breaking into a house with a flick-knife).


 
The final lyrics to "What's My Name" are a brutal look at rejection and domestic violence ("Dad got pissed, so I got clocked") and depersonalisation to such an extent that the narrator is literally asking "what's my name?" - he can't even join a ping-pong club ("I went to join the ping-pong club, sign on the door said 'all full up'").




The version on the From Here to Eternity live compilation is taken from a Camden show in July 1978 and is the same one as seen in the Rude Boy movie, featuring extensive overdubs from the original scratchy sound take.




"Deny"

The song was originally written by guitarist Mick Jones for the London SS, the band which existed just before Joe Strummer joined to form The Clash. It seems to originally have been about denial in all its forms, and could have been aimed at Jones' then-girlfriend whom he had a fractious relationship with; she also inspired "I'm So Bored With You," the original version of the song that would become "I'm So Bored With The USA."


Early Clash guitarist Keith Levene, who left before the group recorded their first album, offered the opinion that "Deny" referred to him, although this is unlikely as it was written and played live while he was still in the group. However it is obvious that the song's subject is a drug addict and the narrator has a severe problem with this.


 
Mick Jones has said in interviews that Pretenders guitarist Chrissie Hynde "probably helped with the end bit." It is also speculated that Jones took influence from the Sex Pistols' similar song of the time, "Liar," which he would've heard from Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.



"Deny" was recorded in a semi-live style at the Whitfield studios, the same sessions that produced the single version of "White Riot." It uses the studio trick of fade-in, not commonly used by Rock groups but used by The Beatles on "Eight Days A Week." The rhythm guitar riff is also a distant relative to the Who's "The Kid's ARe Alright"

"Deny" didn't survive for long in the Clash's live set - it was played from their very first gigs in 1976, often as the opening song, and survived up till the White Riot tour in June 1977 before being replaced by newer material.


 
On the recording Joe Strummer can be heard ad-libbing a reference to a "12p comic," which was the price of a Marvel or DC comic in 1977.





"London's Burning"


"London's Burning" (named after the popular nursery rhyme) is mainly about the punk scene's main choice of drug at the time: amphetamine sulphate, AKA speed ("I can't think of a better way to spend the night, than speeding around underneath the yellow lights").


"I decided quite quickly that the up wasn't worth the down," noted singer Joe Strummer.


It is also one of The Clash's most overt songs about urban alienation, and while they and other first-generation Punk bands became stereotyped for writing songs about tower blocks and inner-city wastelands, this is actually the only Clash song on their first album to reference tower blocks directly ("The wind howls through the empty blocks looking for a home, I run through the empty stone 'cos I'm all alone").


 
Fellow punk band The Ruts would later go on to have a minor hit with the 1979 single "Babylon's Burning," and were quick to acknowledge the influence "London's Burning" had on that song.


 
First recorded at CBS Studios London for the sessions for their debut album, Mick Jones' improvised guitar solo near the end of the song was fiercely at odds with punk rock's minimalist attitude (which often opposed guitar solos at all, let alone complex ones). An alternative version, taken from the 'live' session in Dunstable for the "White Riot" promo film in April 1977 (live in that they were playing in a studio to a small assembled audience of journalists) was released as the B-side to the controversial "Remote Control" single in May 1977.


 
This song became a hugely popular live favorite, and remained in their set pretty much from its first ever performance at Screen on the Green in April 1976 (their third ever show). A common trend would involve Strummer changing the lyrics to match the town where they were performing; for example, the first time this occurred at a show in Birmingham in late 1976, the song became "Birmingham's Burning." This improvisation reached a peak at a show in Paris in 1977, where the song became "Paris Is Singing" and almost the entire original lyrics were disregarded in favor of new stream-of-consciousness ones, including a popular reference to local Punk band The Stinky Toys.


A hugely energetic version recorded at the Rock Against Racism show in April 1977 would later feature (with some studio overdubs) in the Rude Boy movie and on the From Here to Eternity live compilation album.




"Career Opportunities"



The lyrics to the song criticize the culture of demonizing the unemployed and assuming that taking a low-level, dead-end job is better than being unemployed at all ('The offered me the office, offered me the shop/They said I'd better take anything they'd got', and 'Career opportunities are the ones that never knock/Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock'). It is about unemployment and the culture of no-hope for those stuck in menial jobs, like that is the best they will ever get in life.


In an interview with Caroline Coon in 1976, guitarist Mick Jones baulked at the suggestion that someone had to do the dirty and menial jobs, noting that technology and machines had advanced to the point where a lot of manual labor jobs in factories could be done with machinery now, before adding, "There's a social stigma attached to being unemployed. Like Social Security Scroungers every day in The Sun (a British newspaper)...go up North and the kids are ashamed that they can't get a job." Clash bass player Paul Simonon said that this song is about the lack of jobs and how kids had the same old, nearly identical lives. Most of Paul's friends from school went to work at a factory around the corner because the school didn't give them any other opportunities or decisions.


 
The title of Career Opportunities came from taking a headline in the Evening Standard newspaper - the same method the band (and bassist Paul Simonon in particular) used to name the band.


 
Part of the lyrics (largely the line 'I won't open letterbombs for you') could have been inspired by Mick Jones' experiences in a part-time job he held a few years before forming The Clash, where he worked as a clerical assistant at a DHSS Benefit Office. At the time, government buildings were on a high terrorist alert, with the IRA terrorist organization using letterbombs as weapons. So with no one wanting to open the mail at the benefit office, his senior co-workers made Jones, as the most junior staff member, open and check all the mail. He mentioned in a 1977 interview to Tony Parsons about his experiences, saying "Most of the letters the social security get are from people saying their neighbors don't need the money. The whole thing works on spite."


 
According to Mick Jones, the whole song was written in half an hour at their rehearsal space, and that included an argument about a section of the lyrics concerning pensions, which Paul Simonon refused to sing and were eventually dropped from the final song.


 
The song was one of many early tracks The Clash recorded for their early demos before signing to CBS (including a version recorded for Polydor featuring production from future London Calling producer Guy Stevens, which is included on the compilation package Clash on Broadway), before being recorded again at Whitfield Studio 3 for their debut self-titled album.


 
An unusual remix of the song, totally different from the original, is featured on 1980 triple album Sandinista! On it, pianos replace the guitar riff, and session musician Micky Gallagher's two sons, Luke and Ben, sing vocals featuring amended lyrics ("civil service rules" is changed to "my school's rules," for example).


Nobody quite knows why it exists, perhaps as a band in-joke, and many critics who panned Sandinista! for being overly long cite this track as one of the many which could've been cut from the LP to trim the run time.


 
As The Clash became more famous and popular (and as a result more wealthy), there were issues amongst the band members as to whether they could still play "Career Opportunities" live, considering its subject matter. Nevertheless, it was first introduced into The Clash's set in October 1976, and stayed there for the rest of their career as a firm staple of their set, along with other first album tracks like "White Riot" and "Janie Jones." Along the way it was played in such massive venues as Shea Stadium in the US, prompting singer Joe Strummer to quote in a 1999 interview, "Who'd have thought five years previously when we'd written it in Camden Town that we'd play 'Career Opportunities' at Shea Stadium? These are the things that make the world interesting."




"Cheat"


Many US fans of The Clash didn't get the chance to hear this song at all - when the Clash's self-titled first album was re-released in America in 1979, the tracklisting was edited, and "Cheat" was one of the songs dropped for the re-release.


 
The lyrics are very much a celebration of the burgeoning punk aesthetic the Clash were a pioneering part of: celebrating non-conformity and breaking the rules -

"I don't know what can be done about it
If you play the game you get nothing out of it
Find out for yourself try bein' a goody goody")


The lyrics were apparently inspired by the King Mob, a Situationalist splinter group active in London in the 1970s.


 
The first verse relates to drug use, and speed in particular - the giveaway is the line "I get silent when I'm drugged up," a common side effect of speed usage.


 
Singer Joe Strummer regarded the song as a filler track, and wrote it just before the band went into the studio to record the album. Despite this, some effort has gone into recording it - note the usage of phasing effects on the guitars. "Simon Humphrey (the Clash's recording engineer) came up with that, someone said something about phasing and he said 'let's put some on and see what it sounds like,'" noted original drummer Terry Chimes in a 2002 interview.


 
This is incorrectly assumed to be the only song on the Clash's first album that the band never played live. The song was regularly played on their White Riot and Get Out of Control tours in 1977/78.




"Protex Blue"


One of the handful of songs written just before Joe Strummer joined The Clash (back when the formative group was known as the London SS), guitarist Mick Jones had the song written even before bassist Paul Simonon met him. "It (Protex) was the brand in all the pub condom machines, it was a valid subject for a song" Jones noted wryly.



The song is laced with sniggery innuendo and is about a gent getting a condom in a pub toilet ("Money in my pocket gonna put it in the slot, open up the pack see what type I got") and pondering what exactly to use it for - the implication in the final verse being that it may be for his own purposes and not for use with a woman ("I don't need no skin flicks, I want to be alone").


 
"Protex Blue" holds a notable position in The Clash's canon as being the opening song at their first ever show. After this it was never consistently in the band's live set, and appeared sporadically down the years, including with a dramatic return to their set in the 16 Tons tour in 1980 with a radical rearrangement including a new middle section.



"Police and Thieves"

This was written by the reggae artist Junior Murvin, who recorded it in his falsetto style . The Clash, who were huge reggae fans, covered the song. It's the first example of The Clash incorporating reggae into their repertoire, something that can be heard in original songs like "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" and "Guns of Brixton." At the time, reggae was the music of Britain's oppressed Jamaican population.



 
The album was The Clash's first, and it was released only in the UK. As the band gained popularity in the US, there became a huge demand for it there, and about 100,000 copies were sold in the States as an import. A greatly altered version was finally released in the US in 1979.



"48 Hours"


Guitarist Mick Jones joked in the Westway to the World documentary that "48 Hours" only took about 24 minutes to write. This was obviously a tongue-in-cheek comment, but it is true that a lot of songs on their debut album were written very quickly, and judging by the simplicity of the song's structure, it's probably the case that it was written very quickly.


 
The "48 Hours" in the title refers to the 48 hours of the weekend (Saturday and Sunday), and describes the feeling amongst many young people of desperation to have as much fun as possible in the short space of time before Monday and the working week comes around again - or as it's described in the song, the "Jail on Wheels."


Lyrically, it's possible that Joe Strummer was taking inspiration from the 1966 song "Friday On My Mind" by the Easybeats, which he covered many times in the 101ers, the band he was in before he joined The Clash.


 
"48 Hours" was quite an inspirational song in the Punk community - the popular punk fanzine 48 Thrills took its name from the chorus lyrics of this song, unsurprising seeing as the editor Adrian Thrills toured extensively with The Clash throughout 1977. He would later take it professional and turn it into a weekly column in the NME magazine. The song also inspired the Jam's "Here Comes The Weekend" and Sham 69's "Hurry Up Harry (Come On)."



"Garageland"



This song was inspired by a very specific piece of journalism: a review of The Clash's third ever live show at Screen on the Green in August 1976. The respected NME critic Charles Shaar Murray reviewed the show, and noted that The Clash were "the sort of garage band who should be speedily returned to the garage, preferably with the motor running."


Singer Joe Strummer appeared to take these comments very personally, and in many interviews afterwards was fiercely critical of music journalists in general. In 1999 he explained to Gavin Martin: "He was saying that our whole work of art was so piss-poor we should be executed immediately, which is pretty severe criticism, don't you think? At least it was clear-cut. There was no f--king around with poncy intellectual bollocks. He said what he meant. But so did we."


The biggest irony is that two years later Shaar Murray would undergo a massive U-turn and declare The Clash "the greatest rock band in the world" - although NME journalists suddenly changing their mind about a band when they become popular is hardly a rare phenomenon!


 
The lyrics are not just a celebration of the garage band culture as the chorus would suggest, but are in fact a mournful reflection on how the Punk scene was exploding, and bands were no longer playing in small squats and garages; record companies were arriving with contracts to record in big studios and throw aside the DIY origins that built Punk rock in the first place:


"People ringing up making offers for my life, but I just want to stay in the garage all night"
"Meanwhile things are hotting up in the West End alright, contracts in the offices, groups in the night, My bummin' slummin' friends have all got new boots, An' someone just asked me if the group would wear suits."


It was The Clash's way of acknowledging that even they themselves are moving away from their Punk origins, and as the scene grows bigger, this loss of the DIY origins is an inescapable consequence.


 
Musically this song is very different from the raw Punk Rock of the rest of The Clash's first record, taking a slower Classic Rock sound reminiscent of Mott the Hoople in places (the main riff is very much influenced by the Hoople's "All The Way From Memphis"), and featuring plaintive harmonica played by guitarist Mick Jones as well as Pop vocal harmonies. All of this explains the decision to place it at the very end of the record as the last track on both the UK and US versions. Guitarist Mick Jones explained to Kris Needs upon the album's release that it had to be the last song on the album because "it indicated where we're moving to next."



 
The Clash first played this song live in March 1977, and it remained in the band's setlist for the rest of their career right up until 1985. It was one of the few songs to survive from their very first album (alongside "Janie Jones") and regularly used as an encore. A slower, bluesy version of the song was performed as a mock practice session in the film Rude Boy.


 
According to bassist Paul Simonon, the line, "Complaints! Complaints! Wot an old bag" was inspired by an elderly woman who lived near to the Davies Road squat where the band started out practicing in their early days. As you would expect, she would constantly complain about the noise.
 



 

 


 

DAY 378.
David Bowie.......................................................Low   (1977)











Never listened to this one before, I've probably been a bit too apathetic about Bowie's offerings post Aladin Sane"so listening to this has really taken me by surprise. I thoroughly enjoyed that for the most part, some of it reminded a bit of early Roxy Music, which can't ever be a bad sign.


I've now listened to it twice, and liking it better with every play, it wont be going into my collection as yet, but can see it going in at a later date.




Bits & Bobs;





Low was a 1977 breakthrough album by David Bowie, which contained avant-garde tracks rich with experimental synthesizers and unique compositional approaches. The album was co-produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti and is considered the first of Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” along with Heroes later in 1977 and Lodger in 1979. All three of these albums were collaborations with composer Brian Eno. Much of the album’s second side grew from music Bowie had developed for a soundtrack in 1975 but was rejected by the film’s director. The later-written first side contains a balance of art-rock experimentalism and rock n’ roll tradition, in a mix of instrumentals and uniquely arranged pop/rock fragments of songs.

The songwriting on Low tended to deal with difficult issues.  Bowie was attempting to kick a cocaine habit which was an agonizing experieince for him. The title was partly a reference to Bowie’s “low” moods during the album’s writing and recording. Also influencing the album’s darker themes was the hopelessness of people beyond the Iron Curtain, as symbolized by the Berlin Wall. Bowie had moved to Berlin when he decided to get clean from drugs, bringing him within close geographic contact to the European population without freedom or opportunity in East Germany and other Soviet bloc nations.



  Bowie was a rock pioneer during the early days of rock’s glam era. In the mid seventies he tried to find his place with different styles, including a bit of avant-garde with 1976’s Station to Station. With Low put Bowie back at rock’s cutting edge by exploring the new frontier of analog synthesizers and electronic effects. The result would be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of Bowie’s long career.





Although Low was Bowie’s eleventh studio album, none of the previous ten had included a pure instrumental. That streak is broken  with the album’s opener, “Speed of Life.”  Even though the pattern is rather simple and repetitive, the ambiance of sound lets the listener know from the jump that this is no ordinary rock n’ roll album by making immediate implications about the content of the album and its heavy use of synthesizers as both effects and instruments. “Breaking Glass” follows clocking in at under two minutes, which is really a shame because this fragment is very entertaining and could be tolerated for another minute or two. The funk-influenced track features great bass by Rick Murray.

“What in the World” employs a very 1980s sound well before that decade commenced, with a cool “digital blipping” effect and and other heavy use of synthesizer by Eno. The song also features Iggy Pop on backing vocals. “Sound and Vision” is a funky jazz piece with long intro and small doses of vocals doled out before the actual verses begin about 2/3 through the song. This song was the one singled out by RCA when they warned that the release of Low was tantamount to commercial and artistic suicide, citing the extremely long instrumental intro of “Sound and Vision.” Ironically, “Sound and Vision” became Bowie’s biggest U.K. hit in several years and was adapted by the BBC as background music for its program announcements.



 “Always Crashing in the Same Car” may be the song that best personifies this album, with sparse (albeit profound) lyrics and vocals and direct and interesting instrumentals, especially the outtro guitar lead by Carlos Alomar. The lyrics express the frustration of making the same mistake over again and are backed up by more inventive synths and interesting, metallic-tinged guitars by Ricky Gardiner.




“Be My Wife” is almost like two alternating songs in one – the Beatle-esque “sometimes it gets so lonely” part, and the more traditional Bowie style of the “Be My Wife” section. The overall electronic feel is toned down a bit for a heavier, guitar-driven rock arrangement decorated by sharp “ragtime” piano notes. The first side ends with another instrumental called “A New Career in a New Town”, which breaks from a decidedly new-age intro into an interesting fusion of New Wave and Blues. The song features a harmonica solo by Bowie, giving it a whole new dimension.



 As odd as the seven-song first side is, it pales in comparison to the quartet of dramatic pieces which make up side two. “Warszawa” is a collaboration between Bowie and Eno, which sounds like something off Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother or Obscured By Clouds. It contains long, trance-like chord progressions and vocal motifs of nonsensical lyrics, revealing its original intent to be part of a film score. Visconti’s four-year-old son actually played a part in developing this piece by playing A, B, C in a constant loop at the studio piano while Eno worked out the synth parts. “Warszawa” was titled for the Polish city which Bowie visited during 1976 and its bleak mood was inspired by the the feeling he got from the city itself. “Art Decade” is a pun on ‘art decayed’ and reflects Bowie’s concern over his own artistic inspiration. The core melody is performed on heavily produced keyboards and was influenced by the German band Kraftwerk.



 “Weeping Wall” refers to the Berlin Wall, with the melody being an adaptation of the traditional song “Scarborough Fair”. On this track, Bowie played all instruments including several percussion and synthesizers. The album concludes with “Subterraneans”, which Bowie says was also influenced by the misery in East Berlin. Unfortunately, this piece is really an uninspired ending to an otherwise interesting album.



 Although critical reaction to Low was tepid upon its release, it has come to be acclaimed for its originality and is universally considered ahead of its time for 1977.




"Breaking Glass"

 
According to Paul Trynka, the author of David Bowie's biography Starman, this short, one-verse song was inspired by a row Bowie had with his wife Angie's friend, Roy Martin. They were visiting him in the studio and an argument started which developed into glasses being thrown. Co-producer Tony Visconti and Bowie's friend Iggy Pop had to run in and pull Bowie away from Martin. Bowie later penned the track with his bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis.


 
A reworked, longer version was a regular on Bowie's 1978 tour and the singer's performance of the song at the Philadelphia Spectrum was used as the lead track on a 7" EP to promote Bowie's live album, Stage in the UK. The EP reached #54 on the UK Singles Chart in December 1978.


 
Just before this album was recorded, Bowie became interested in Aleister Crowley and the Qabalah and the lyric "Don't look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it" reportedly refers to Bowie's practice of drawing the Tree of Life on the floor.



 
The version on Low runs just 1:51. A 3:28 version was issued in some European countries, but didn't come to America until 2017 when it was included on Bowie's boxed set, A New Career In A New Town.



Nick Lowe's 1978 track, "(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass," is a parody of this song.
 Lowe had previously poked fun at Bowie in 1977, when he released an EP titled Bowi, in humorous response to Bowie releasing an album titled Low, which lacked the final 'e' of Lowe's surname.


 
Steve Goulding, Andy Bodnar and Bob Andrews – Lowe's session musicians – helped to compose this song. Lowe said: "That was a song which was sort of made up in the studio. I had the vague idea of the tune, and that's why in the writing credits, I cut the bass player and the drummer in on the song, because they made it, really. The drums and bass are really great on that song. Steve Goulding and Andy Bodnar used to play with Graham Parker And The Rumour, whose records I produced, and they played bass and drums on '(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass.' Their contribution was so great, I gave them a third each. In fact, I should have actually given Bob Andrews, who played piano on it, a taste of the record. The piano is so great."


 
Lowe told KLRU that he no longer feels comfortable performing this song live: "If I played it with just an acoustic guitar, I think the audience would give it a clap, but after about a minute, they would start looking around and waiting for the next tune."


 
This was Lowe's highest charting hit in the UK, where it peaked at #7.

 
This was the first ever single to be released by Radar Records, a UK label formed by the entrepreneurs, Martin Davis and Andrew Lauder. The single was lifted from Lowe's debut solo album, Jesus of Cool, which was also the first album to be released by Radar Records. So to not offend Christians, Jesus of Cool was renamed Pure Pop for Now People in the US.




"Sound and Vision"

This song was Bowie's initial response at retreating from America in an attempt to get away from his drug addiction. Bowie said this song was about "wanting to be put in a little cold room with omnipotent blue on the walls and blinds on the windows."


 
Backing vocals on this track are provided by Mary Hopkin who was the wife of the producer Tony Visconti.


 
An unusual song to be released as a single, it was recorded at first as an instrumental with Mary Hopkin's backing vocals before Bowie recorded his own vocals. He then trimmed some of them, leaving the opening instrumental section as longer than the main vocal part.


 
This was a hit in the UK despite Bowie doing nothing to promote the song himself. It reached the top end of the charts mainly as a result of the BBC using it as background music to its programme announcements at the time.


 
RCA, David Bowie's then record label, had little faith in Low, but it has been subsequently recognized as one of the most innovative, influential albums of the 1970s. The website Pitchfork voted it the best album of the '70s. Bowie described the album as "A new way of looking at life."



 
Whilst Bowie's backing band worked at the instrumentation, the "Thin White Duke" sat in the control room listening. Guitarist Ricky Gardener recalled to Mojo magazine January 2012, then, "he just went into the studio and sang it straight off, words and all. He listened to the playback once, adjusted something in his head and did it again. And that was that."




"Always Crashing In The Same Car"


This song is a metaphor for making the same mistakes over and over again. Bowie wrote this around the time he retreated from the USA to Europe in order to recover from his cocaine addiction.


 
Former member of the prog rock band, Beggars Opera, Ricky Gardiner recalled to Uncut magazine about recording the guitar solo at the end of the song. He said: "I wasn't instructed in any way at all regarding modes of approach or specific techniques. When it came to overdubbing the solo in 'Always Crashing,' David hummed the first few notes and I took it from there. These things don't evolve as such. They happen spontaneously and the engineer has to catch them. I believe it was generally well received at the time. People do ask me about that solo so it must mean something out there!"


 
According to Paul Trynka, the author of Bowie's biography Starman, the song's title had a certain black humour of its own, because David was attempting to sell his Mercedes at the time. The car was dented, and half the time wouldn't start.


 
Rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar told Mojo magazine the song was the hardest one on Low to get right. He recalled: "It had this kind of gloomy thing to it, so we kind of understood that. But it also had this chordal thing I was trying to get… the chorus is a bit different to the verse, and I felt it was a bit disjointed."


Eventually Gardener unlocked the song. "Not so much with a riff," said Alomar, "as a signature sound and a signature guitar - which gives an essence."


 
This song had a third verse which Bowie sang in the style of Bob Dylan, but Bowie asked the producer, Tony Visconti, to delete it. Bowie did not feel it was appropriate, considering Dylan had a motorcycle accident in 1966. Indeed, Visconti said the verse was "spooky, not funny."


"Warszawa"

Bowie crossed through Warsaw (the capital of Poland) twice - first, in 1973, whilst traveling from Moscow to West Berlin (Bowie reportedly told his wife, Angie, that he had "never been so damned scared in my life"), and secondly in 1976, whilst traveling from Zurich to Moscow (this time alongside Iggy Pop). Inspired by the desolation that he saw, Bowie wrote "Warszawa."


 


This song was first formed when Bowie's producer Tony Visconti's son was playing the notes A-B-C repeatedly on the piano. Brian Eno, who collaborated on the song with Bowie, sat next to him and finished the sequence of notes that would form the intro to the song.


 
The lyrics in the middle part of this are based upon a song by the Polish folk choir, Slask.


 
This song supplied the influential Manchester alternative rock band Joy Division's original name, Warsaw. Front man, Ian Curtis, was reportedly obsessed with the track.


 
Bowie played this as the opening number on his 1978 and 2002 tours.




"Art Decade"
The pun of the title – art decayed – reflects David Bowie’s own concern with his artistic inspiration needing some rejuicing, as could be seen on another song from the Low album, Sound and Vision.

 But like that other track Art Decade was actually a sign that Bowie was well back on track, being another of his fine instrumental collaborations with Brian Eno.




"Weeping Wall"


 The dreary tenth track to Bowie’s art-rock masterclass: Low.
 The track, the last to be recorded for the album, was created entirely by Bowie, who played every instrument, and assembled in a sort of musical version of his "cut up" technique.
 Bowie said in 1977 that the song is “about the Berlin Wall, the misery of it.” Others, however, have suggested that it was originally developed for use in The Man Who Fell To Earth



"Subterraneans"



Subterraneans sounds like a cold, creepy classical piece reinvented through claustrophobic synthesizers and eerie choirs.




 

Day 379.
Steely Dan...................................Aja   (1977)










Not gonna spend an affy lot of time on this one, I've always found their music to pretty samey, it doesn't seem to vary much, but if that appeals, and obviously it does for a lot of people "fill your boots."


To be fair they have found their own distinct sound, and for me flogged it for all it's worth, they seem to be very good musicians, but I do feel the vocals must be an acquired taste, as I haven't really taken to them and this is the fourth album of theirs I've had to listen to.


Reading about this album, I notice three words that keep on cropping up in relation to this band, they are; intellectual, smooth and classy, these three words are not ones that could easily be associated with me, so I'll use that as the reason this album wont be going into my collection.




Bits & Bobs;




Aja Is The Third Steely Dan album since songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen discarded a fixed-band format in late 1974. Since then they have declined to venture beyond the insular comfort of L.A. studios, recording their compositions with a loose network of session musicians. As a result, the conceptual framework of their music has shifted from the pretext of rock & roll toward a smoother, awesomely clean and calculated mutation of various rock, pop and jazz idioms. Their lyrics remain as pleasantly obtuse and cynical as ever.

Aja will continue to fuel the argument by rock purists that Steely Dan’s music is soulless, and by its calculated nature antithetical to what rock should be. But this is in many ways irrelevant to a final evaluation of this band, the only group around with no conceptual antecedent from the Sixties. Steely Dan’s six albums contain some of the few important stylistic innovations in pop music in the past decade. By returning to swing and early be-bop for inspiration — before jazz diverged totally from established conventions of pop-song structure — Fagen and Becker have overcome the amorphous quality that has plagued most other jazz-rock fusion attempts.



 “Peg” and “Josie” illustrate this perfectly: tight, modal tunes with good hooks in the choruses, solid beats with intricate counterrhythms and brilliantly concise guitar solos. Like most of the rest of Aja. these songs are filled out with complex horn charts, synthesizers and lush background vocals that flirt with schmaltzy L.A. jazz riffs. When topped by Fagen’s singing, they sound like production numbers from an absurdist musical comedy.



 Music this sophisticated wouldn’t work if it weren’t for the consistently tasteful employment of top studio musicians. Aja features two Miles Davis alumni (Wayne Shorter and Victor Feldman), Bernard Purdie, Tom Scott and a slew of others. In particular, Becker and Fagen have showcased a number of crack guitarists (Becker included), many of whose recent efforts elsewhere have been fairly bland (Elliott Randall’s New York. Larry Carlton on recent Crusaders’ albums, most of Rick Derringer’s material). But with Steely Dan they are given strong melody lines with original chord changes, resulting in some of the finest guitar solos ever recorded — try Katy Lied’s “Gold Teeth II,” “Kid Charlemagne” on The Royal Scam or “Peg.”





The title cut is the one song on Aja that shows real growth in Becker’s and Fagen’s songwriting capabilities and departs from their previous work. It is the longest song they’ve recorded, but it fragilely holds our attention with vaguely Oriental instrumental flourishes and lyric references interwoven with an opiated jazz flux. “Aja” may prove to be the farthest Becker and Fagen can take certain elements of their musical ambition.



 Lyrically, these guys still seem to savor the role they must have acquired as stoned-out, hyperintelligent pariahs at a small Jewish college on the Hudson. Their imagery can become unintelligibly weird (Frank Zappa calls it “downer surrealism”); it’s occasionally accessible but more often (as on the title song) it elicits a sort of deja vu tease that becomes hopelessly nonsensical the more you think about it. Focus your attention on the imagery of a specific phrase, then let it fade out. Well, at least it beats rereading the dildo sequence in Naked Lunch.




 The last album, The Royal Scam. was the closest thing to a “concept” album Steely Dan has done, an attempt to return musically to New York City, with both a raunchier production quality and a fascination with grim social realism. The farthest Aja strays from the minor joys and tribulations of the good life in L.A. are the dreamy title cut and “Josie,” which hints ominously about a friendly welcome-home gang-bang. The melodramatic “Black Cow” is about love replaced by repulsion for a woman who starts getting too strung out on downers and messing around with other men. “Deacon Blues” (a thematic continuation of “Fire in the Hole” and “Any World”) exemplifies this album’s mood: resignation to the L.A. musician’s lifestyle, in which one must “crawl like a viper through these suburban streets” yet “make it my home sweet home.” The title and first lines of “Home at Last” (presumably a clever interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey — I don’t get it) put it right up front: “I know this superhighway This bright familiar sun I guess that I’m the lucky one.”




More than any of Steely Dan’s previous albums (with the possible exception of Katy Lied), Aja exhibits a carefully manipulated isolation from its audience, with no pretense of embracing it. What underlies Steely Dan’s music — and may, with this album, be showing its limitations — is its extreme intellectual self-consciousness, both in music and lyrics. Given the nature of these times, this may be precisely the quality that makes Walter Becker and Donald Fagen the perfect musical antiheroes for the Seventies.




"Black Cow"


"Black Cow" was written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the co-front, core members of the band Steely Dan. It was released as the B-side of the single version of "Josie," which reached #26 on the US Hot 100. Two other singles released from the same album charted even better.



 
Note the deceptively simple disco-era instrumental starting out with a bass line and drums, then sneaking in layers of complexity with saxophone accompaniment and an electric piano solo. Steely Dan made a name for themselves for having highly polished productions. It was considered nothing special for them to take a year and dozens of session musicians to produce an album of less than ten songs.


Speaking extra praise for Aja's perfectionism, it won the 1978 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording. Not only was Aja certified platinum, it was also one of the first to go platinum.


 
Theories as to what this song means: Take your pick of a troubled relationship, an ode to self-doubt, a commentary on nightlife, a reference to Hindu culture (cows are sacred), or it could be about Thelonious Monk, the American jazz composer who is often regarded as the father of bebop.


 
Do you have the multitrack masters for "Black Cow"? If so, Donald Fagen will give you a $600 reward, since their copy went missing. For this reason, remastering the album as a Super Audio CD has been put on hold indefinitely.



"Aja"

The song is pronounced "Asia," and was inspired by the continent. Steely Dan have several songs with a Far East influence, since Donald Fagen believes it is a symbol of sensuality. He told Rolling Stone magazine that the title came from a high school friend whose brother was in the army and came back with a Korean wife named Aja, although he wasn't sure how she spelled it.


 
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen used a variety of musicians on the Aja album, choosing them to suit the individual tracks. On this one, Fagen sang lead and played synthesizer, while Becker, Denny Dias and Larry Carlton handled guitars. On backing vocals is Timothy B Schmit, who joined the Eagles that same year. Other musicians on the track are:


Bass: Chuck Rainey
Drums: Steve Gadd
Electric Piano: Joe Sample
Percussion: Victor Feldman
Piano: Michael Omartian
Tenor Saxophone: Wayne Shorter


 
Aja Pecknold is the sister of Fleet Foxes' frontman Robin Pecknold and the manager of her brother's band. Her musician father and teacher mother named her after this song.


 
This is the very last song that original band member Denny Dias played on, before fading into the background of session musicians. He eventually left the music business altogether for a career in... computer programming.



"Deacon Blues"

This song has the curious chorus line of:

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues



At the time, the University Of Alabama was a football powerhouse, winning the National Championship in 1973 and losing just one game in each of their next two seasons under the direction of their famous coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. Alabama is known as "The Crimson Tide," a grandiose name that Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen found amusing.



The "Deacon" is often thought to be the Wake Forest University "Demon Deacons," whose football team struggled for much of the '70s, winning just seven games from 1972-1975. According to Fagen, however, that name came from Deacon Jones, a star football player with the Rams and Chargers who got a lot of attention in the media because of his aggressive play and outsized personality. The name fit well into the song, with "Deacon" matching up sonically with "Crimson."

 
The song is about a guy who Becker describes as a "Triple-L loser." He told The Wall Street Journal: It's not so much about a guy who achieves his dream but about a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life."



Fagen added: "Many people have assumed the song is about a guy in the suburbs who ditches his life to become a musician. In truth, I'm not sure the guy actually achieves his dream. He might not even play the horn. It's the fantasy life of a suburban guy from a certain subculture. Many of our songs are journalistic. But this one was more autobiographical, about our own dreams when we were growing up in different suburban communities - me in New Jersey and Walter in Westchester County."


 
When asked about the line, "They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon Blues," Donald Fagen told Rolling Stone magazine: "Walter and I had been working on that song at a house in Malibu. I played him that line, and he said, 'You mean it's like, 'They call these cracker a--holes this grandiose name like the Crimson Tide, and I'm this loser, so they call me this other grandiose name, Deacon Blues?' and I said 'Yeah!' He said, 'Cool, let's finish it.'"


 
The Scottish rock group Deacon Blue, who enjoyed seven Top 20 UK hits between 1988 and 1994, took their name from this song.


 
Regarding the opening line, "This is the day of the expanding man," Donald Fagen cites the 1953 sci-fi novel The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, as an influence. The book finds the main character "expanding" his mind and thinking of all the possibilities in his life.


 
When our hero is "ready to cross that fine line" in this song, that's the line between being a loser and being a winner, a line that according to Becker he has tried to cross before, but without success.



 
The 12-second intro on this track is one of the most distinctive openings in rock. It was created by having guitarist Larry Carlton and piano player Victor Feldman play the same chords, which were layered together with drummer Bernard Purdie's cymbals.


 
When this song was near completion, Becker and Fagen decided they wanted a sax solo, and they had a very specific sound in mind: the tenor sax that played going to commercial on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. They tracked down the sax player in the Tonight Show band, Pete Christlieb, who recorded his part after a taping of the show. There are many tales of musicians being asked to do take after take during a Steely Dan session, but Christlieb was done in 30 minutes, and it was his second take they used. His part, and the rest of the horns, were arranged by Tom Scott.



 
 

DAY 381.
John Martyn...........................................One World   (1977)











This wont take long, this is an album for me that reminds of the 70s music I really didn't take to, very dated in my humbles, not one of the tracks was worth revisiting, so this album wont be being purchased.


Bits & Bobs;


Have written about this bloke earlier  (if interested)

John Martyn seems fated to inspire madness and mayhem, no matter how utterly shambolic the circumstances he finds himself in. (And they usually are).


 Maybe it’s simply the unique foggy voice, at its most hoarsely suggestive on “Dealer”, one of his new album’s many compelling tracks; or just the man’s awesome ability to trick out what are invariably simple songs with ravishing detail – as witness here “Dancing,” unfeignedly joyous and wrapped around a few brief guitar phrases.


 Whatever, Martyn’s concern for change and renewal sees him in the company of old cohort John Stevens, drummer in jazz and other musics and whose name is criminally misspelt in the sleeve credits, Steve Winwood of the superb soul voice (denied us here, unfortunately) and the catholic range of instruments, reggae trombonist Rico and folkie Bob Pegg on bass, plus Martyn’s long-standing partner bassist Danny Thompson, whose background in jazz, blues and folk approximates pretty much to Martyn’s own enduring interests.


 For though no traditional material is included, as on his last studio album (“Spencer The Rover” and “Satisfied Mind”) and speculators may be fooled by tracks like “Big Muff”, Smiling Stranger” and “Dealer” into thinking Martyn has more or less completely rocked out – not to mention funked out – nevertheless, long-time sources are tacitly acknowledged again and again..


 The most musicianly track on the album is the title song, “One World,” sung in secretive, incantatory fashion as if in a private dream and accompanied by crazy febrile guitar and uncanny sinuous walking bass.  Far from embracing an utopian ideology as one critic has suggested (though this can be very much Martyn’s bag), the bleak lyrics are almost daintily cruel at times:  “If you ain’t got two words to say/I can’t talk to you/ No use crying, there’s been no crime/ I say it’s just the way the wind blows…”


 Sometimes Martyn’s lyrics recall Leonard Cohen (“Standing at the airport with the smile of a savoir/Selling off a piece of my favourite flavour”).  Other times Ray Davies (“Standing at the welfare, with the pay off in my hand/ Waiting for the gimme from the much obliged man”).


 Both quotes are from “Smiling Stranger”, after “One World” and “Big Muff” (replete with conga-line bass drum rhythms and ghostly cymbal shots) probably the mist interesting track on the album, featuring as it does a brief modal solo from George Lee’s sax, just to unsettle the shifting melody lines, and some of Martyn’s creamiest vocals ever.  Guaranteed to chill your spine.


 

Funny, I should probably be a Clash fan, but although I bought some of their stuff, and still listen to the London Calling album and like a few singles including White Riot off the featured album, I was never a big Clash follower. Still the same after re-listening to this first LP by them.

Off the Low album, 'Always Crashing in the same Car" always sticks in my head, strange how particular songs resonate. 'Breaking Glass' is a favourite too, due to the broken structure of the music. Good that Low is in the 1001, but being honest it wouldn't be an album which I'd reach for in a hurry at a party, or even for solitary listening.

Steely Dan, less said the better.

I had never heard Pink Flag before, Wire passed me by in the 'seventies. So I've listened now (downloaded the Japanese version, which is twice as long, but only listened to the first 21 tracks). On first listen, it's ok, but will give it another go. Good cover on that LP, it has to be said.

arabchanter wrote:

DAY 385.
Dennis Wilson...................................Ocean Pacific Blue   (1977)











Dennis Wilson was The Beach Boy's resident drummer, stud, actor, Charles Manson acolyte, and the first to die (he drowned after a vodka binge) He also released the only solo album of real note by a Beach Boy.

Love this album!  Have it on vinyl, the opening track, "River Song" sounds great blasting oot the speakers and high volume.

DAY 382.
Talking Heads.....................................Talking Heads:77











Have to admit have never listened to any Talking Heads music and came away disappointed, this one also didn't fail to deliver, lyrically there's an awful lot of humour going on, musically a whole lotta funky rhythms going on, and vocally, an unusual but mesmerising offering from the Dumbarton boy David Byrne.


For a debut album this has to be one of the best I've listened to, Talking Heads...........when happiness meets cool. Every track is worth the entrance fee, just slap the needle down and get transported into your happy zone, without question this album will be going into my collection.




Bits & Bobs;




David Byrne is a Scottish singer/songwriter best known as the frontman of the art-rock musical group the Talking Heads.



Born in Dumbarton, Scotland, on May 14, 1952, David Byrne co-founded the new wave band the Talking Heads in the 1970s. With releases like Remain in Light, Byrne's work with the group and as a solo artist has reflected his interest in experimental pop and African rhythms. He founded his own musical label Luaka Bop and has worked with a wide range of artists, including Brian Eno and St. Vincent.



Singer, songwriter, composer and guitarist David Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland, on May 14, 1952. When he was two, his family moved to Canada, and then six years later to a suburb outside of Baltimore, Maryland. In September 1970, while attending the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, he met future bandmates Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, and there they formed the five-member band the Artistics.




In early 1974, Byrne moved to New York to pursue his songwriting career. Frantz and Weymouth soon followed. They played their first performance as the Talking Heads—a name that Byrne said a friend saw in a TV Guide advertisement for a science-fiction movie—on June 20, 1975, when they opened for the Ramones at the new Bowery club CBGB. The Talking Heads quickly gained popularity and eventually signed with the New York independent label Sire in 1977.



Often called one of the most creative and versatile groups of the 1970s new-wave movement, Talking Heads members Byrne, Frantz, Weymouth and eventually Harvard grad Jerry Harrison had a style that was funky and edgy, combining punk rock, funk, pop and world music. While other groups strived for wild and unique looks, the Talking Heads often dressed in suits.

The group released their first single, "Love -> Building on Fire," in February 1977, and their debut album was released soon after. Subsequent releases included More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978), Fear of Music (1979) and Remain in Light (1980), with the latter album featuring "Once in a Lifetime."During the band’s success into the ‘80s, Byrne ventured into film, a move that culminated in his co-writing the full-length feature film True Stories (1986) in which he also starred and directed. He composed scores for other stage and screen projects as well.The Talking Heads officially announced their dissolution in 1991. In 2002, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

 After the Talking Heads broke up, Byrne continued to pursue his interest in global music, especially rhythms from Brazil, and launched his own label, Luaka Bop, in 1988. His first solo release was 1989’s Rei Momo.


 During the 1990s Byrne extended his range of activity even further, exhibiting his photographic and design work internationally with art shows and on billboards and subway posters. The first of his published works, the notebook-styled art book Strange Ritual, was published by Chronicle Books in 1995.

 In the early 2000s, Byrne continued recording with the releases Look Into the Eyeball (2001) and Grown Backwards (2004), as well as adding to his list of score credits with Lead Us Not Into Temptation (2003), a soundtrack created for the David MacKenzie film Young Adam.



 Byrne later collaborated with dance music artist Fatboy Slim to produce 2010’s Here Lies Love, an album revolving around the story of Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos and featuring a range of women artists, including Tori Amos, Cyndi Lauper and Florence Welch. The work was transformed into a dance musical staged at New York City’s Public Theater, debuting in April of 2013.

 Byrne also met singer Annie Clark (her stage name is St. Vincent) in 2009, a partnership which resulted in their first album Love This Giant three years later.
 

Byrne, Frantz, and Weymouth all attended the Rhode Island School Of Design, which is where they met. When they graduated in 1974, they moved to New York City, where they formed the band.


 
Frantz and Weymouth started dating in 1972 and got married in 1977.


 
In 1981, the band members took on outside projects: Byrne scored the Twyla Tharp musical The Catherine Wheel, Harrison released a solo album called The Red and the Black, and Weymouth and Frantz formed a group called the Tom Tom Club, which had hits with "Genius Of Love" and "Wordy Rappinghood."




Chris Frantz explained that they weren't planning to start a new band, but were encouraged to do so by their accountant, who told them they were low on cash.


 
"Talking Head" is a television term for a person, usually a newscaster, speaking on camera; a friend suggested it after seeing it in an issue of TV Guide magazine.



The name has another meaning as well: carnivals and other oddities events sometimes set up displays where a person's head appears to be placed on top of a box. These heads would sometimes tell fortunes, and were known as "Talking Heads."


 
There is no "The" in the name of the band. It is simply Talking Heads.


 
The famous Oxford band Radiohead got their name from a Talking Heads' song. They were previously called On A Friday.


 
Harrison graduated from Harvard, where he studied architecture.


 
David Byrne was born in Scotland and has lived in the US since he was eight. However, he only officially became an American in 2012 following an awkward conversation at a polling station. "I'd been occasionally voting before that," he admitted to The Guardian. "I naively thought it was legal and they never cross-checked. Then eventually they looked at my ID and said: 'You can't vote!' So I said OK, I've gotta go through this whole thing now."


 
David Byrne is an keen cyclist and he once designed a range of bike racks installed across New York.




From the late 70's CBGB's scene of punk bands like the Ramones and the Voidoids emerged a different kind of band. They barely sounded like a punk band, though; in fact, they weren't a punk band at all. New wave, art rock, punk-funk, whatever it was, it was great. The debut album from the now legendary Talking Heads is simple, unique, and their most easily accessible to fans of punk rock.



The album opens with "Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town," a 60's-style pop song with a funk bass line and fairly simple drumming. It's a solid song and it gives us our first taste of David Byrne's detached stream-of-consciousness lyrics and wondrfully odd vocals. He's twitchy and nervous, yet confident and powerful. The effortless leaps from baritone grumblings to straining falsetto tick and pop the listner along on an amazing ride. By the second track, the Talking Heads are well into their own territory: punchy tempo shifting, oblique rhythms, unusal guitar tunings, and lyrical and vocal madness. The song is called "New Feeling" and that's what it's about. Byrne's lyrical gems cotinue flying left and right: "I wish I could meet everyone / Meet them all over again / Bring them up to my room / Meet them all over again / Everyone's up in my room." Next comes "Tentative Decisions," chugging along with military drumming and clanging piano. "Happy Day" shifts back and forth from floating and shimmering to straightforward pounding, and the funky "Who Is It?" commands you to dance. "No Compassion" is the weakest track on the album and the only one that is less than great; it's still good though, just a bit too long. "They say compassion is a virtue, but I don't have the time."




To this point it's a really good album, but the blazing finish is makes it great. "The Book I Read" may be the best song on the album. The excitment builds up and down in multiple steps and everything just flows so smoothly. Byrne's vocals soar more noticably here than on any other track and the simple lyrics are also some of his most thought-provoking. "I'm writing 'bout the book I read / I have to sing about the book I read / I'm embarassed to admit it hit the soft spot in my heart / When I found out you wrote the book I read." Is he talking about the Bible? Is he being sarcastic? So many questions to ponder. The catchy "Don't Worry About The Government" comes next. The benefits of modern apartment buildings and importance of civil servants are explained clearly to the listener in a forthright manner. But don't take everything too literally. "First Week / Last Week...Carefree" is my favorite song on the album and that's mainly due to the brilliance of the vocals, especially the improvised scats and sound effects between verses. The single "Psycho Killer" pulses with fierceness and is one of the Talking Heads' most widely appealing songs. "Pulled Up" wraps up the album on one of its highest notes. It's a breathtaking burst of ferocious energy and the spirit of the screaming finish beats nearly every current punk singer.




If you haven't heard them, this should be your first stop. Talking Heads: 77's greatest triumph is its sublte kinetic energy. Each song slowly builds up to a climax or crescendo, drops back down, and returns numerous times. This style, added to the genius of David Byrne, keeps the album from being anything close to boring. This is a stunning debut from one of the greatest bands ever and a perfect introduction for all of you punks who don't like them (yet).
David Byrne once shaved his beard onstage. While at art school in New York, singer David Byrne, in the name of ‘performance art’, once shaved his beard off on stage with only beer for shaving foam and an accordion for accompaniment. This resulted in a great deal of facial bleeding.


 David Byrne initially struggled with writer's block.But he found a way to defeat it, adopting a scattered stream-of-consciousness lyrical style inspired by early rap and academic literature on Africa. Byrne took influence from African-American preachers, one day finding himself shouting, “You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile.” This track was to become the Heads’ anthem ‘Once In A Lifetime.'





 David Byrne provided music and lyrics for New York’s avant-garde dance performances and operas.In the early ‘80s, Byrne was becoming a popular figure among New York's avant-garde artists, sometimes joining them on projects outside the band. He provided music and lyrics for The Catherine Wheel, a dance production by choreographer Twyla Tharp, and later wrote music and texts for The Knee Plays, interludes in an epic opera by experimental dramatist Robert Wilson, with whom he later wrote the 1988 stage performance piece The Forest.


 David Bryne appeared on The SimpsonsIn The Simpsons episode ‘Dude, Where’s My Ranch?’ Homer composes an anti-Flanders song, ‘Everybody Hates Ned Flanders.’ He plays the song at Moe's Tavern, and when David Byrne comes in, he likes the song so much, that he wants to produce and record the song.



Byrne along with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su won the Academy Award for the Best Original Score for the movie ‘The Last Emperor’ in 1987. They also won the Grammy Award for the Best Instrumental Composition Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television for the same movie in 1988.



He plays the guitar right handed even though he is left handed.






"Psycho Killer"
 
This was the result of lead singer David Byrne trying to write an Alice Cooper song, but it came out much more introspective. It ended up being about the thoughts of a murderer.


 
Part of the chorus and the bridge are in French. The verse translates to "What I did, that evening, what she said, that evening fulfilling my hope I throw myself towards glory." The chorus lyric "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" means "What is this?"


 
The lyrics were inspired by the character Norman Bates in the movie Psycho.


 
The "Fa Fa" part comes from an Otis Redding song called "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa- (Sad Song)." Redding and other Soul singers were a big influence on Talking Heads.


 
Byrne wrote this two years before it was recorded. It was Talking Heads' first album.


 
Byrne never thought this would be a hit. He considered it a "silly song" at the time, and was surprised when it took off.


 
The Tom Tom Club, a group led by former Talking Heads Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, often plays this at their concerts with Tina singing the lead vocal.


 
This is the first song played in the Talking Heads movie Stop Making Sense.


 
An acoustic version was the flip side of the single.


 
This appears on the live albums Stop Making Sense and The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads.


 
Artist to cover this song include Barenaked Ladies, Phish, Brand New, Local H and Velvet Revolver.


 
The 2017 Selena Gomez hit "Bad Liar" samples the bassline from this track. David Byrne has no problem with it. "I would have an issue if somebody took, say, 'This Must Be A Place,' which is a very personal love song," he told Rolling Stone. "Other than that, yeah, repurpose the stuff."


 
This was one of the first songs that David Byrne ever wrote; it convinced him that he could write more. He told Mojo: "Chris and Tina helped me with some of the French stuff. I realized, 'That holds up. That's a song.' I may have been inspired by other things when I was writing it, but I hadn't heard anything quite like it before. I was also writing completely from the character's point of view. We played it. People liked it. I thought, 'Oh, I can do more.'"