The Rock Walk is my weekly ritual, in which I carry on the dying tradition of record shopping. The highlight of this week's purchases (which also includes the UK version of the Clash S/T and the 25th Anniversary London Calling, both of which I've long resisted) is the re-issue on the Only Ones first album.
These Londoners (Peter Perrett on vocals/guitar, John Perrett on guitar, Alan Meir on bass and Mike Kelllie on drums) defied the punk orthodoxy, already calcifying by 1978, by not hiding their chops, their songcraft or even their age. These vets used punk as a opening but, like so many musicians of that era, they had no intention of living by its strictures. Their first single, the brilliant power-pop masterpiece, "Another Girl, Another Planet", has led many to label The Only Ones one-hit-wonders. This is stupid. One, "Another Girl, Another Planet" was hardly a chart hit upon its first (U.K.-only) release and two, they have a bucketful of other sterling classics for you to enjoy.
MRML Readers: Please don't forget to add your Only Ones memories, reactions and reviews in the comments section.)
Many readers here will be already be deeply familiar with this song already (even if only through the many covers) but if this perfect classic is all you know about the greatness of the Only Ones then you owe it to yourself to go out and but the real albums, available at Amazon or your local music dealer.
A very grizzled version of the Only Ones returned (as of 2007) having survived heroin and mass indifference. There's new work coming and on-going tour.
The Only One's fourth single, 1979's Trouble in the World, is taken from their final album, Baby's Got a Gun. As the splendid picture sleeve may imply Peter Perrett's now channeling Jim Morrison AND Lou Reed (AND hanging out with Johnny Thunders - Perrett played with his fellow addict, on Thunders' solo album, So Alone. Here's the two of them stumbling through the "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone.")
While "Trouble in the World" contains all those Only Ones trademarks; the gritty vocals, the supple rhythms and those the sneaky guitar solos, it never seems to outshine the better LP tracks, like "The Happy Pilgrim" or "Oh Lucinda". Looking at their measly handful of singles, it almost seems as if their record company sabotaged them after the failure of "Another Girl, Another Planet".
The Only Ones - Trouble in this Life
"Your Chosen Life" is a non-album track and is a little listless.
"I can't understand why anybody should devote their lives to a cause like dope. It's the most boring pastime I can think of. It ranks a close second to TV." Frank Zappa
"Frank Zappa is probably the single most untalented person I've heard in my life. He's two-bit, pretentious, academic and he can't play his way out of anything. He can't play rock n' roll because he's a loser. And that's why he dresses so funny. He's not happy with himself and I think he's right" Lou Reed
After Lou Reed (more here) and all that smack-talk it's time to post this dodgy compilation, which even by Lou's standard has a pretty seedy track list:
1 New York Dolls - Pills 2:55 A fine 1973 demo. 2 Urban Dogs - Cocaine 2:23 UK Subs' Charlie Harper plus the Vibrators' Knox do a bracing version of Dillinger's reggae classic (itself an adaptation of an old blues song).
3 Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers - Chinese Rocks 2:55 Y'all know this onefrom L.A.M.F. - The Lost '77 Mixes. 4 Fallen Angels - Amphetamine Blue 2:32 The Vibrators' Knox plus half of Hanoi Rocks makes for a near perfect pop song.
5 Simpletones - I Like Drugs 2:09 The first band of Jay Lansford of the the Stepmothers (more here) and Channel 3(more here) offers up a classic early SoCal pop-punk song. 6 Chron Gen - L.S.D. 1:55 A UK '82 chant-along rocker. 7 Family Fodder - My Baby Takes Valium 3:26 Tinkly-synth post-punk from their Playing Golf (With My Flesh Crawling) single 8 Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers - One Track Mind 2:35 Thunders once said "I'm addicted to sex, my guitar and White Russians" but with songs like this who would believe him? 9 Urban Dogs - Speed Kills 1:20 Glad someone here said it. 10 UK Subs - Killing Time 2:19 A blazing track from the Harper-Garrat reunionof 1988. 11 Creaming Jesus - Smoke (Skin Up For Jesus) 2:05 (How did this crappily-named tuneless goth-metal band merit inclusion?) 12 Eater - Waiting For The Man 2:26 Eater were close to the bottom of '77's barrel but this Velvet Underground cover is charming. 13 Heroes, The - Too Much Junkie Business 2:24 Former Heartbreaker's Walter Lure and Billy Rath do their former boss's classic. 14 Adicts, The - Get Adicted 2:03 The Adicts drug of choice is stuttering, hooky punk rock as this song from 1982' Songs of Praise attests. 15 UK Subs - DF 118 2:04 Charlie Harper gets four tracks here(!), including this track from Occupied 16 Broken Bones - Secret Agent 2:52 Some more metallic UK hardcore here from the album Dem Bones. 17 Action Pact - Suicide Bag 1:54 Female vocals like fellow Uk 82'ers Vice Squad but lacking the strong personality of Bekki Bondage.From Complete Singles Collection. 18 Newtown Neurotics - The Mess 4:14 "Good pop on a bad budget" is how these eighties UK punks accurately described themselves.From Beggars Can Be Choosers 19 Slits, The - New Town (Live) 3:57 All-female reggae-punk, the Slits were (and are) a genre unto themselves. From In The Beginning 20 Only Ones, The - The Beast (Live) 6:09 The Only Ones (more here) never recorded a bad song. From The Big Sleep.
Hats off to whoever did the bookings for the Hope & Anchor, a pub in Islington that championed first pub rock in the mid-seventies, then later punk rock as the decade wore on. Judging from the line-up for the pub's Front Line Festival that took place in late 1977, that booker had a deep sense of music's past and its future. Early sixties survivors like The Pirates and Steve Gibbons (and facsimiles of the same like the Pleasers) sit beside their pub rock disciples like Wilko Johnson, Tyla Gang and the Dire Straits, alongside older vets gone punk like the Stranglers, The Only Ones and 999 all of whom jostle with young punk upstarts like XTC, the Saints, X-Ray Spex (and don't forget reggae greats Steel Pulse!)
01 Wilko Johnson Band - Dr Feelgood 02 The Stranglers - Straighten Out 03 Tyla Gang - Styrofoam 04 The Pirates - Don't Munchen It 05 Steve Gibbons Band - Speed Kills 06 XTC - I'm Bugged 07 Suburban Studs - I Hate School 08 The Pleasers - Billy 09 XTC - Science Friction 10 Dire Straits - Eastbound Train 11 X Ray Spex - Let's Submerge 12 999 - Crazy 13 The Saints - Demolition Girl 14 999 - Quite Disappointing 15 The Only Ones - Creatures Of Doom 16 The Pirates - Gibson Martin Fender 17 Steel Pulse - Sound Check 18 Roogalator - Zero Hero 19 Philip Rambow - Underground Romance 20 The Pleasers - Rock & Roll Radio 21 Tyla Gang - On The Street 22 Steve Gibbons Band - Johnny Cool 23 Wilko Johnson Band - Twenty Yards Behind 24 The Stranglers - Hanging Around
True, London Calling and The Clash remain the band's most crucial works. However, as distillation of each Clash man's strengths; Paul Simonon's dubby bass, Mick Jones' spidery riffs, Topper Headon's dense beats and Joe Strummer's malaria-fever dream spiels, the song "Straight to Hell" is unbeatable .
The song was recorded on New Year's Eve 1980 for a planned double album entitled, Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg (later judiciously pruned by legendary rock producer Glynn Johns into the single, if uneven album, Combat Rock). When released as a double A-sided single with "Should I Stay or Should I Go?", that hit completely overshadowed "Straight to Hell". Like a sleeper cell, the song waited, gaining strength, till now, twenty-some years later, when between M.I.A., Lilly Allen, Josh Rouse not to mention Elvis Costello and Jakob Dylan, "Straight to Hell" is ubiquitous.
I came to the song through a T-shirt. In early eighties Winnipeg, a pre-teen heard the Clash in fragments; a radio track here, a stolen cassette there and even that friend's-sister's-husband's L.P. of London Calling with the blessed lyrics sheet! And T-shirts. That skull n' bullets icon and that blunt order, "Straight To Hell" conjured up a raging Clash anthem attacking religious sectarianism. So imagine my shock and disappointment upon discovering that the song was a lengthy, somber Asian-reggae ballad.
I soon saw the error of my snap judgment. The music is hot, sweaty, tense and claustrophobic - The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now transmuted from celluloid to vinyl. Everything's percussive; Mick's playing congas with sticks, Joe's beating a lemonade bottle wrapped in a towel against Topper's bass drum and at one point Joe's panting drowns out everything.
Lyrically, Strummer is at the summit of his power, channelling the raw voices of Woody Guthrie, Allan Ginsberg and Bob Dylan into a seething and menacing State of the World address that roams from Britain to Vietnam to America.The song's brutal account of the world's indifference to its outcasts, makes it like a modern version of Woody Guthrie's, "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)", which decried American mistreatment of Mexican migrant workers back in the forties. This compassion, melded to to such startlingly original music, is what keeps the song alive; after all, the poor, the homeless and the dispossessed are not only still with us, they're now pounding on our doors.
The Clash - Straight to Hell (Live from New York!)
Now, for the masochistic-obsessive, MRML presents twenty-two different versions of "Straight to Hell". You may listen in the jukebox below if you're really strong enough to endure it as one consecutive onslaught
{MRML READERS: Make sure to leave a comment on "Straight to Hell", the original or one of these covers!}
*A number of these songs are still in print, so if you do download them, for educational purposes only, please remove the files from your computer within forty-eight hours.
1. The Clash
This is edited 7" version - it's too damn short but check out that vinyl picture disc up above!
2. Elvis Costello and Jakob Dylan*
An Elvis and a Dylan (but the not the most iconic ones) make a curious combo that reveals the flexibility of a song, that did not sound so malleable on first listen. (Video here)
(*Thanks to Marky Dread for the nice rip)
3. Amy Loftus and Will Kimbrough
Americana Americans Amy and Will's may not have performed the only alt-country version of the song but it is amongst the most striking covers herein.
4. Steve Ketchen & the Kensington Hillbillies
These Canadians also play the song country-style (or as they describe it "Stan Makita at the Grand Ole Opry") but with more of a bluegrass feel.
5. Lilly Allen (feat. Mick Jones)
Lilly, Joe Strummer's god-daughter, got Mick Jones to sing and play on her cover, which has a few virtues, none of which include having come to any personal understanding of her Godfather's words.
6. M.I.A.
Brit-sensation M.I.A. didn't start the revival of this song but by using the guts of the song and adding a more violent take on the misery Strummer surveyed in his version, she created a 21st century anthem from it ("Paperplanes" video here).
7. Skinnerbox
Of course there's rocksteady version by these first-year Psych lovin' NYC'ers.
8. The Menzingers
While these boys from Scranton, PA pound the shit out of this song to great effect, they also succeed in making the original song seem even stronger.
9. The Pogues (with Joe Strummer)
This legendary Anglo-Irish band did a full-blooded Celtic-punk run-through of the song live (seeing it almost stopped my heart) but none of the recorded versions really capture that intensity.
10. Phil CodySomewhere between Dan Bern and Ani Difranco in the nineties New Dylan sweepstakes was Phil Cody, a performer of singular intensity. (video here) 11.Emm Gryner
Emm must have figured that if Tori Amos had gained fame by tinkling the ivories on an alternative rock anthem (see Tori's version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit") then she could ten-up Tori with an album of alt-rock standards called Girl Versions and so she did.
12. Josh Rouse
American singer-songwriter gives the song a Valium.
13.Bill Janovitz
This former leader of Buffalo Tom does a kinda bare-bones, college-dorm version but with just a hint of malice.
14. Balsam
These Swedish pals of the Hives performed a credible version during what seems like it must've been a pretty burning night of tributes to Joe.
15. Chum
SoCal band make the song instrumental surf-rock.
16. Joe Strummer and Latino Rockabilly WarThis song was a constant in Joe's repertoire and one always senses that he understood that it was one of his crowning achievements. (Mescaleros video here)
17. Red Letter Day
This U.K. band (in 1991, they played the Clash to Mega City Four's Buzzcocks) try to make "Straight to Hell" sound like an outtake from Give 'Em Enough Rope with a little less success than I'd have wished for.
18. Cienfuegos
Argentinean band do a Latin-tinged version partly sung in Spanish, all of which woulda made Joe happier than a pig in shit. 19. Moby feat. Heather Nova
In case you haven't heard enough moody version yet, let a former member of of the Vatican Commandoes and Bermudan-Canadian alterna-chick Heather Nova do one more.
20. Hot Club de Paris
At first this U.K. band's acoustic Brit-pop version is just sorta there but it grows on you...
21. The Great Depression
My fellow Danes (on my father's side anyway) do a quiet, menacing take, which reminds me a bit of the National's version of "Clampdown".
22. The Clash
The whole 6:52 one from Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg, later released on The Clash on Broadway box set.
The Clash - Straight to Hell (live at the US festival, 1983)
Straight to Hell
(The Clash)
If you can play on the fiddle
How's about a British jig and reel?
Speaking King's English in quotation
As railhead towns feel the steel mills rust
water froze
In the generation
Clear as winter ice
This is your paradise
There ain't no need for ya
Go straight to hell boys
Y'wanna join in a chorus
Of the Amerasian blues?
When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh City
Kiddie say papa papa papa papa-san take me home
See me got photo photo
Photograph of you
Mamma Mamma Mamma-san
Of you and Mamma Mamma Mamma-san
Lemme tell ya 'bout your blood bamboo kid
It ain't Coca-Cola it's rice
Straight to hell
Oh Papa-san
Please take me home
Oh Papa-san
Everybody they wanna go home
So Mamma-san says
You wanna play mind-crazed banjo
On the druggy-drag ragtime U.S.A.?
In Parkland International
Hah! Junkiedom U.S.A.
Where procaine proves the purest rock man groove
and rat poison
The volatile Molatov says
PSSST...
HEY CHICO WE GOT A MESSAGE FOR YA...
VAMOS VAMOS MUCHACHO
FROM ALPHABET CITY ALL THE WAY A TO Z, DEAD, HEAD
Go straight to hell
Can you really cough it up loud and strong
The immigrants
They wanna sing all night long
It could be anywhere
Most likely could be any frontier
Any hemisphere
No man's land and there ain't no asylum here
King Solomon he never lived round here
Go straight to hell boys
"Straight to Hell", it should not be forgot, also begat a wretchedly wonderful Alex Cox punk rock spaghetti western (in which Joe stars) - you'll get the idea from this scene.
When Incongito Records began this limited-edition series back in 1993,
they made an honest attempt to contact as many of these late
seventies/early eighties bands as they could to secure rights. That
attention to detail gave this series a reputation as one of the best in
the torrent of punk retrospectives that the nineties unleashed.
Compiler Peter Parzinger tilted this series towards wilder, cruder punk
rock from all over the Western world with bands like Cell 609, Corpse Grinders and Filth but also leaves lots of room for more fun stuff like The Gifted Children, The Numbers and The Notsensibles.
(Incognito INC. 064, Germany, 1994)
1. Re-Pulsion (Cell 609, Belgium, 1978, from only 7")
2. Your Old Man (Cyanide, UK, 1979, from 3.7")
3. I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher (Notsensibles, UK, 1979, from 1.7")
4. Twisted Road (Flesheaters, USA, 1978, from 1.7")
5. Moderne Musik (Hermann's Orgie, Germany, 1979, from only 7")
6. Combat Love (Shrapnel, USA, 1979, from 1.7")
7. Sunset Strip (Numbers, Australia, 1978, from only 7")
8. Rites 4 Whites (Corpse Grinders, USA, 1978, from only 7")
9. Terrorist (Negativ, Switzerland, 1982, from only 7")
10. Learn To Hate In The 80's (Bobby Soxx, USA, 1981, from only 7")
11. Ensaminatt (Ladernunnan, Sweden, 1982, from 1.7")
12. Boring (Martin & The Brownshirts, UK, 1978, from only 7")
13. Painted By Numbers (Gifted Children, UK, 1981, from only 7") [The Television Personalities under a different name]
14. Lab Animal (Powertrip, USA, 1982, from only 7")
15. Sex (Filth, Holland, 1978, from only 7")
16. The Young Ones (Secret, UK, 1977, from 1.7")
17. Du Gor Dom Du Vill (Glo, Sweden, 1979, from 1.7")
18 Oadarn Aufschneiden (Die Boslinge, Austria, 1981, from only 7")
COMMENTS
ARE THE CURRENCY OF THIS BLOG, SO HOPEFULLY YOU'LL COUGH UP A THOUGHT
OR TWO TO ALLOW THIS BRILLIANT LONG-UNAVAILABLE SERIES TO
CONTINUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“It’s all about the sound—you know, making the guitar go aarrrraaaaaarrrgggh.” Frankie Norman Warsaw Stubbs, Leatherface
The idea that the songs of yesterday need a kick in the aarrrraaaaaarrrgggh is a key theme in rock n' roll history - from Elvis Presley to The Rolling Stones to Thin Lizzyto The Ramones to Joan Jett to Redd Kross to Blink 182 and a 100,000 more besides. While there is often bitter division between fans of the original and the cover, there's notoriety and/or filthy lucre to be made as long as the cover strikes a nerve.
Punk rock, and especially it's ever-Green Offspring, pop-punk, has always made use of the nerve-striking cover. Punk bands often throw out a cover, usually a roughed-up radio hit, as the last song of the album or set, which establishes both the band's slightly ironic love of silly pop songs and their unwavering intention to Play Like Hell. (Alternately, some call this trick a shameless play for either college radio or the ladies.)
Leatherface (more HERE) are invariably described as a punk band. Since they are accurately, if citationlessly, described in Wikipedia as a "cröss between Hüsker Dü and Motörhead" and they do indeed Play Like Hell, that's probably a fair description. But for Leatherface, UK veterans of over twenty year's in punk's fetid trenches, covers aren't just crowd-pleasers, they're possibility-openers. Stubb's unholy growl of a voice, his gear-grinding guitar sound and his idiosyncratic lyrics, which manage to be both elliptical and imagistic, are the essence of Leatherface but they can also be limiting. So, the band's eclectic covers list, featuring a jumble of styles, eras and familiarity offset the band's superficial consistency, ensuring they can't simply be pigeonholed.
So now, MRML presents a career-spanning (but surely incomplete) set of Leatherface covers that illustrate some of the different ends to which Stubbs & co. use the words and music of others. For ease of listening and brevity of explanation, we have grouped these songs into four and 1/4 crude but manageable categories, which necessitated the inclusion of a 'one-of-these-things-is-not-(quite)-like-the-other' song in each sub-set. (Sorry about that.)
A. Standards There's not a lot of Hollywood-sized romance in the words and music of Leatherface but what Stubbs won't often say himself, he'll sometimes quote from others, albeit in a voice all his own. While not all part of any one genre, these songs associated with Elvis Presley, Henry Mancini, Jimmie Davis and Bob Dylan (the only one on this list who actually wrote the song in question) show the band dealing in much grander scale emotional territory then they usually tread.
"I Can't Help Falling in Love With You" "Moon River" "You Are My Sunshine" "In the Ghetto" "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" 1
B. Punk Rock/New Wave Of course a good cover also shows a band's dedication to it's roots, to its heritage. In this set, we find Leatherface reaching back to the past to show from whence they came. Whether it's the proto-punk of The Stooges, the class of '77 punk bands like The Damned and the Angelic Upstarts or those famous faux-punk, new wavers, The Police, Leatherface give these already aggressive songs an extra shot of vehemence. "I Got A Right" "Melody Lee" "Teenage Warning" "Message in a Bottle" 2
C. Eighties Pop Quite often the same adolescents who feign a distaste for the popular music of their time will later, from the safety of nostalgia, end up singing those same songs in karaoke bars. Unlike your high school friends, whose embrace of bygone days reveals mostly their own limitations, when Leatherface shake-up over-worn classics (like these ones by Cyndi Lauper, Tracy Chapman, Elton John and The Christians) they can reveal possibly ignored depths therein. That can be quite a feat with the often tinkly and shallow hits of the eighties. "True Colours" "Talkin 'Bout a Revolution" 3 "Candle in the Wind" "Ideal World"
D. Contemporaries Our final set does demonstrates how the band has kept its ear open to "newer" songs. The band has done so by covering not only bands who they began playing alongside like Snuff and Wat Tyler (not to mention morbid Australian post-punk lounge lizards like Nick Cave, whose "Ship Song" gets an aching full band reading here) but also by doing songs by bands they influenced like China Drum and Dillinger Four. "Win Some, Lose Some" "Hops and Barley" "Doublewhiskeycokenoice" "Meaning" "The Ship Song" 4
E. WTF? I know you've all forgiven ABBA, like you forgave The Monkees and like you will forgive N'SYNC soon enough but I harbour that grudge still... (Of course this version does gives the song a good goring.) "The Eagle"
COMMENTS are good
Well there you have a quick tour of the borrowed items in Leatherface's repertoire, those songs new and old that they chose for a wide variety of reasons, to give a full dose of aarrrraaaaaarrrgggh.
1 While "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is a standard it is, admittedly, of a different sort than the others listed.
2 "Message in a Bottle" is not a 'punk' song and, considering the epic romanticism of its lyrics, it might almost fit in the 'standards' category.
3 While "Talkin' Bout a Revolution has a layer of 80's gloss sprayed on it, the song itself is tough-as-nails and without tinkliness or shallowness.
4 While Nick Cave, who wrote and recorded "The Ship Song" in 1990, came to prominence well ahead of Mr. Stubbs, I'm sure they've covered some common ground.
(Images of "Papa" Stubbs' courtesy of Rock the Cam)
P.S. An anonymous donour went a Longy way towards making this post possible.
The Only Ones actually debuted in 1977 with Lovers of Today, a single on their D.I.Y. label, Vengeance Records.The A-side, "Lovers of Today" is a little more of the times, with it's faux-kinky picture sleeve and the brazen polymorphous perversity of the lyrics. The intermingling of unrestrained lust and opiates certainly manifests Peter Perrett's Lou Reed fixation, but Perrett had moved past imitation and into a melodic space all of his own. The B-side, "Peter and the Pets", is actually an old song by Perrett's Reedy early seventies band, England's Glory.The song's are flush with power, melodically and instrumentally, and should remind you that you need to go out and buy an album to support these survivors,
MRML Readers: Is Peter Perrett a Lou Reed knock-off or did the student surpass the master?)
(If you want to hear Rollins' story about this shot - go here)
“I tell people if they are interested that they should listen to Johnny on his Sun records and reject all that notorious low-grade stuff he did in his later years. It can’t hold a candlelight to the frightening depth of the man that you hear on his early records. That’s the only way he should be remembered.”
Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone 2009
There's a slow-building Johnny Cash backlash coming. After fifteen years of near-unanimous praise for his six American Recordings albums recorded with producer Rick Rubin between 1994 and Cash' s death in 2003, the snark levels are rising.
“I find it horrible they way they’ve made money out of him releasing all these maudlin recordings. Give me early Cash any day.”
Mark E Smith, The Renegade, 2008
To give the snarky their due, most of these albums do contain novelty filler, such as Depeche Mode's near-tuneless "Personal Jesus", most of which can't just be chalked up to Rubin's influence either. In fact, Rubin was just canny at picking elements of the multitudes that Cash contained to emphasize. Not only did Rubin play up Cash's long-standing morbidity, he also encouraged Cash's love of risky covers, songs who by virtue of their authors, their accompanists or the context they were performed in, challenged Cash's own limitations. Sometimes the results ended up sounding forced and awkward but other times they kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile. Whether they all fully paid off or not, these risky covers are a great part of what makes Cash compelling, even from beyond the grave.
So now, in celebration of Cash's 78th birthday and the release of his 'final' album, American VI: Ain't No Grave, here are twenty-three intriguing, unexpected or just plain odd Cash covers. This mixed bag of songs prove that Cash, a skilled song-writer himself, could be a daring interpreter of others' work. It's sometimes said that Cash, over the course of his career, and in particular on his old TV show, helped bridge the gap between left and right, urban and rural, black and white, old and young. If that sounds a bit much, just put on his version of June Carter and Merle Kilgore's "Ring of Fire" in mixed company and watch.
1. In his Sun Records days of the mid-fifties, Cash did a raw version of folk legend Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" with none of the gloss that The Weavers, Frank Sinatra or even Ernest Tubb had slathered on, in fact it sounds not unlike an American Recordings song.
2. In the early sixties Cash championed Dylan in print ("Shut Up and Let Him Sing") and on record, as evidenced repeatedly over the following years but especially on 1963's Orange Blossom Special which included three Dylan songs, including a growling take on "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright".
3. As folk turned to protest music, Cash helped it along by bringing Native American singer and activist Peter Lafarge's brutal, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" to number three on on the ever-conservative country charts in 1964 and, a few years later, to Richard Nixon's White House, even though the President is said to have asked for Merle Haggard's redneck anthem, "Okie From Muskogee".
4. Another folk-jazz poet (oh wait...) that Johnny supported before it seemed like the most country thing to do was the brilliant Shel Silverstein, whom Johnny helped make world-famous with "A Boy Named Sue" four years after he recorded the literally gallows-humoured, "25 Minutes To Go".
5. One of the charming facets of the oft-overbearing film, Walk the Line, was how candidly it dealt with the thorny issue of June Carter's voice, which shows up in all its acquired-taste glory in this brave-but-flawed 1967 version of Ray Charles' R & B masterwork, "I Got A Woman".
6. In 1969, Cash and Dylan recorded a session that, with with the exception of "Girl From the North Country" remains officially unreleased for some valid reasons, despite some highlights such as their takes on Dylan's hard-to-fuck-up, "One Too Many Mornings".
7. In 1970 Cash recorded the pastoral (and grating to a good many) "If I Was A Carpenter" by singer-songwriter Tim Hardin, which tried to apply some sentimentality to mend the rift between the Woodstock Nation and the Silent Majority.
8. In 1973 Cash recorded a box of tapes he labeled Personal File which was a proto-American Recordings selection of songs featuring just the man and his guitar covering the breadth of American music and including John Prine's inconceivably good,"Paradise (of which Bill Monroe said, "I thought that was a song I overlooked from the 20s") from his 1971 debut.
9. in 1975 Cash covered The Band's monumental historical ballad, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
10. In 1978 Johnny found some sympathy for the country in the Rolling Stones repertoire and did a ripping version of "No Expectations".
11. Nick Lowe, like Dylan he makes the list twice, not only married Cash's step-daughter, Carlene Carter but he showed Cash the country/rockabilly side of new wave by giving him the bright, tuneful "Without Love" in 1979 and introducing him to Elvis Costello.
12. When Johnny finally covered Springsteen in 1983, he chose to do not one but two songs ("Highway Patrolman" is stunning but "Johny 99" is almost as good) from Springsteen's bleak but beautiful solo acoustic album, Nebraska.
13. In 1985, perhaps the height of the Reagan era, Cash collaborated with Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson (himself a possible entry on this list) and Willie Nelson on a leftist legend Woody Guthrie's (and Martin Hoffman's) anti-xenophobic ballad, "Deportees" and they even got Johnny Rodriguez to sing along.
14. While Mercury Records surely saddled him with some Nash-Trash material on his three albums for that label, Cash also got to do versions of Elvis Costello's "The Big Light" in 1987 and "Hidden Shame" in 1990.
15. In 1991 at what may have been the nadir of his career, Cash now without a major label deal, recorded a duet with Texas Christian punk-metal band One Bad Pig (doing his own "Man in Black") - appreciation levels will vary widely but it is proof positive of Cash's utter fearlessness.
16. Cash's re-ascendancy begins with this U2 song from 1993's Zooropa, which Cash smokes despite the band being at a bit of an artistic low themselves.
17. Risky cover sources become legion when Rubin jump-started Cash's career with the bare-bones American Recordings album in 1994 but his brutal take on Nick Lowe's "The Best in Me" is worth highlighting as it helped reinvigorate both men's careers.
18. A few of the grunge-era covers work better then they should (i.e. "Rusty Cage" as rockabilly number) but this Beck song from 1996's American II, with lines like, "Dog food on the floor/And I've been like this before", seems a pretty natural fit.
19. Willie Nelson's "Time of the Preacherman" gets a roughed-up treatment with Cash backed by Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, Nirvana's bassist Krist Novaselic, and Alice in Chains' dummer Sean Kinney from the 1996 compilation, Twisted Wilie.
20. The fact that Rubin and Cash didn't search out more underground (call 'em alt. country if you must) writers like Will Oldham, whose magnificent "I See a Darkness" from 2000's American III makes for a haunting duet, instead of dredging up worn-out standards like, "Bridge over Troubled Water" is one of the nagging deficiencies of their collaboration.
21. Cash had Neil Young on his TV show back in '71 and even duetted with him on a painful version of "The Little Drummer Boy" much later on but you have to dig through the the outtakes compiled on Unearthed boxset to find his covers of Young's "Heart of Gold" and "Pocahontas", the latter of which works well despite Cash's known weakness in handling more abstract lyrics.
22. If AA is to be believed that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results then Rubin and Cash were plumb loco to stick to the somber, minimalist alterna-rock covers for five albums until this indisputably stirring version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" from 2002's American IV blew up.
23. While "Hurt" was, in some senses, Cash's crowning achievement, we'll leave you with a possibly more poignant finale; shortly before they each died, nine months apart, Cash and former Clash frontman Joe Strummer duetted on their own death song, a cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song".
So don't buy into the Cash-lash, all artists are flawed but the greatest ones, the real risk-takers, leave behind a permanent trace of glory.
Now what do you think of these choices for unusual Johnny Cash cover songs?
“There’s no such thing as cow-punk.” Did I say that? Yes, though in my defense I was sixteen, standing in the basement of Wellington’s (a sleazeball bar) after having just witnessed a spectacular set by Soul Asylum and it was 1985. Now Soul Asylum had just finished refusing to play anything from their first e.p. (Say What You Will) and had focussed exclusively on the less thrashy (and perhaps a touch more country) material from the stunning Made to be Broken album. Some earnest fellow-traveler claimed that Soul Asylum and this “this band from Edmonton called Jr. Gone Wild are cow-punk”. I begged to differ since back in the 80’s I, as narrow-minded music fans always have, disavowed all country music.
By this time the roots-rock sound (one of the more flagrantly critic-created genres) was in full swing. When faced with an enemy as ugly as the soulless and gutless synth-pop a million bands (often older punks) went back in time. Eighties bands exhumed garage rock, folk-rock and psychedelia with glee. Then of course there was country-rock, which almost every single recording artists of the 60’s is credited with having invented (by the way it’s all about Buck Owens, the death-deifying Mr. Parsons aside). The less commercial bands (Jason and the Scorchers etc.) got called cow-punk and the ones who made beer commercials (Del Fuegos etc.) got labeled roots-rock. But they all loved Gram, Bolo ties and that twang and they all got wiped out as the 80‘s bled into the 90’s. However by then Uncle Tupelo managed to steal every ounce of credit leaving Jason and the Scorchers et al cruelly empty-handed.
And there in the midst of the action was Mike McDonald, criminally neglected also-ran and linchpin of Jr. Gone Wild. “They've been called "the Sex Pistols meet Hank Williams." Lead singer and songwriter Mike McDonald once joked that the band had progressed: they were now a cross between the Clash and George Jones” says an article on their excellent (and ten-year old!) web site. The first album Less Art, More Pop has an R.E.M. angle (though they claimed in old interviews that BYO Records made them wear the twee-hippy gear) then they added some Neil Young, maybe a bit of Bob and (if Mike is to be believed) gallons of alcohol. They moved to Canadian indie (and “rootsy”) label Stony Plain for their excellent second album Too Dumb To Quit (nice Ramones reference). Mike sobered up for what may be their strongest album Simple Little Wish (which like it’s predecessor Pull the Goalie is still available from Stony Plain Records). Mike and JGW wrote empathetic, intelligent and ringing songs, such as “Slept all Afternoon" and “In Contempt of Me" which must be heard. Enjoy it, even if cow-punk was just a dumb label.
P.S. C-60 Low Noise has lots of what passed for cow-punk (and especially the thundering Jason and the Scorchers! Maybe more on them later.)
In Canada, almost like some sorta Watchmen parallel universe, roots-rock flourished and became mainstream. In the late 80’s Steve Earle filled stadium in north and bands like The Tragically Hip and Blue Rodeo became staples of Canadian rock and even, to a degree, country radio. Of course under the radar flew the breathtakingly beautiful Lost Durangos and the achingly melodic Skydiggers.
I first heard the Skydiggers (Andy Maize, Josh Finlayson, Peter Cash, Wayne Stokes and Ron Macey) on the floor at a Vancouver record store named A + B Sound. In the early 1990’s mainstream record store employees were not yet anachronisms-waiting-to-happen but we suffered a strict dress and sound code, no loud hair or loud guitars. So before Nirvana gave the hammer blow to those regulations folkish-rock was a Great Escape from the enforced blandness. In that context the second Skydiggers album, Restless, pealed like a great bell: with those sad harmonies and chiming guitars meshing just so. True you can hear that Byrds via R.E.M. sound in songs like Accusation but the aching lyrics of This Old Town has the lope of gut-bucket country plus a perfect accapella break-it down part. Just Listen; there's much to hear.
As per usual, research has revealed that only the current Skydiggers album to be in print. So we will try to salve that injustice with these mp3’s, which will only be available temporarily in the hopes that soon the real thing will come along.
MRML is a blog about the devestating effects of culture: music, politics, comics plus etc. blah blah blah. At times MRML will post fine, unpurchasable three-chord obscurica (punk, pop-punk, new wave, mod, power-pop, gospel, reggae, hardcore, rockabilly, folk, country...whatever.) - - - - - - "The otherwise unavailable files in this blog are posted for a limited time and are intended for educational, non-commercial use. These files were transcribed from what are believed to be out-of-print sources. If you are aware of any of these items being readily available from commercial sources, or if any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us so that we can quickly remove the referenced items immediately." - - - SUPPORT THE ARTISTS - BUY MUSIC!
If you have any questions or music to donate you can contact me at musicruinedmylife (at) gmail (dot) com
Re: Re-Ups
MRML does not plan to restore all of the content lost in The Great Mediafire Gutting of 2012. Polite requests may be made in the appropriate section, regular commenters will get priority.
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