Rave On Buddy Holly/Grin

Tatum: Lol, I was catching-up on all the comments, and I really didn't need to know that!

a big bohemian dick-pull

Yep. With an interesting human back-story Susan Orlean did in The New Yorker. And that should have been the end of it.

NRBQ were the Boston misguideds I was trying to remember.

Back when Philosophy Of The World was more rumor than fact--when it was real hard to find--some people used to talk a lot of shitlist about the Shaggs' untamed musical genius--one guy from NRBQ used to compare them to Ornette Coleman. I met a few of these people, one of whom played a minor role in getting the damn thing rereleased, and I'm pretty sure the whole thing was a big bohemian dick-pull; I certainly thought so when I finally heard the record. If Kurt Cobain really thought it was one of the greatest albums of all time (and there was a huge Shaggs coterie at Op Magazine out of Olympia WA back in the day), he was even dumber than I thought.

He had it at #5 on his top 50.

 

Daniel Johnston is halfway between the Shaggs and Jonathan Richman.

Before Rave On Buddy Holly flies off into the sunset, I want to note that it has inspired much more consideration from me than I would have supposed.  Pre-EW I had blown it off as likely to be just as Tom Hull claimed:, “A masterpiece of modern niche marketing, picking over the faintly remembered teen pop genius from Lubbock, auctioning off the songs to the highest bidder -- even if that means Julian Casablancas gets the title cut -- mixing them together with no concern for flow or consistency figuring the latte-buyers will splurge if they find even a single appealing combo. “  After half a dozen times through though I now find that, while he was at least partially right about the way it looks from a marketing standpoint (not sure about the highest bidder part or how to find out), that doesn’t make it a bad record.  In fact there is quite a lot that I enjoy hearing over and over again.

 

Starting with my favorite part – Johnny Badanjek’s drumming on “Heartbeat”.   45 years (45 YEARS!!!) after “Devil With a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly” and the mofo brings it as hard and crisp and fast as ever.  Largely due to the drumming, but also because it’s a fun tune played with genuine rnr enthusiasm, I’m pretty well betting it will be in my Top 25 songs for the year.  The Holly original does not start with a drum intro in case you haven’t checked.  And it makes me wonder for about the 4 millionth time what life would have been like if he had won the audition.  Max Weinberg, do you really know how lucky you were?

 

And then my second favorite part, which pretty well demolishes for me the notion of an album of niche marketing and nothing more – the subtexts that flash through so many songs:  Paul McCartney singing the line “It’s so easy to fall in love” over and over again (you would know, Paulie); Cee Lo Green, who dresses like a peacock, pining for his “square” lover; Karen Elson singing “Crying, waiting, hoping you'll come back to me” while her soon to be ex-husband plays the drums behind her; the Lou and Laurie Velvets tribute snuck into the midst of a Buddy Holly tribute (seriously, how cool is that conceptually); and finally the very presence of Graham Nash.  I completely agree with Hull’s description of “Raining In My Heart” as "dainty".  I would have much preferred Brian Wilson to have gotten the call for that tune, just like I think that John Fogerty would have easily shown Modest Mouse the door on “That’ll Be the Day.”  But in fact Nash is the perfect way to end the album.  After all, he was a Hollie.

Wait a minute...irony died?

Hasil Adkins

Oh, ho-ho -- now you've hit upon a particularly difficult case. Just discard all the overinflated hooey about his vast genius blah-blah-blah. Thing is, the guy's done about a half-dozen or so songs that have an unusual (I can't bring myself to claim "unique") pipeline to the unhinged subconscious. For example, "No More Hot Dogs" is a more convincing psychopath-killer song than the ones recorded by the real deals.

I donno. Those few numbers just sit there. Like the legend of walking by a street performer who changes your life with a searing declarative tune you can't remember the next day. (Or is that Ted Hawkins?)

a committed flouting of those normative skills

In most cases here, I think we are talking about technique rather than skills. All these folks had enormous talents going for them, just not expressed with the accepted chops. The psychedelic Rounders were merely stoned out.

It's a persistent confusion to group performers with an annoying style in with performers who do not have even normative skills.

Understood. Many of my friends and acquaintances do indeed group people like the Shaggs in with the Cocteau Twins with Nancy Sinatra in with underground, out-of-tune R&B, with amateurish folk-rock with Depeche Mode, the Magnetic Fields...etc etc.

JY47NY-- I'm curious about how you obtained such a valuable (at least to the both of us, anyway) shirt. Does it include the actual logo of this blog, or does it just have the words printed in a random font? 

Maybe it has. Ended that is.

Hhmmm. You know, you may be right. Last "new" atrocity I can think of is The Langley Schools Music Project and that was way back right when irony died in 2001. The most significant projects Indefatigable Irwin Chusid has come up with since are books about Jim Flora (shame on you, Irwin -- he's talented in a completely conventional sense).

And "Why Won't the Oldies Get Off the Stage?" is a pervasive problem. Maybe I should relax and take the trash out to the dumpster of the past.