Shelter: Shelter

The Dexateens: Shelter
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I seem to be writing about my song selection process a lot lately, which may mean that I’m trying to fill space because I’m running out of songs that have particular meaning for me. I hope not, because that would be bad for a blogger who mostly responds to theme prompts, but we’ll see—and maybe I need to take another short sabbatical to recharge. I’m spending a good deal of time these days working on projects directly or indirectly related to my 40th college reunion in May, which I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to write about down the road, and that also explains why I’ve been writing once per theme more often than twice these days. Also, there’s work and family. And good TV. 

So, when I heard the theme, my first thought was a King Crimson song, but seriously, who really wants me to write about another King Crimson song, and an instrumental, at that? (The volume of my Crimson-related posts surprises even me, considering that they are not my favorite band. What is my favorite band? I really don’t know.) My second thought was to pick the obvious Rolling Stones song, but I’ve written about that before. There’s also a Dylan classic, but writing about Dylan can be heavy lifting, and I don’t have the patience for that right now. 

Which inevitably led me to an iTunes library search, where I landed upon today’s feature song, “Shelter,” by The Dexateens. Is it a great song? No. Is it a good song by an underappreciated band in the vaguely Americana genre? Yes. Which means that it’s a good one for me to write about. (Although having finished this post, I realize that I mentioned the band a few years ago).

The Dexateens were formed in the late 1990s in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, featuring singer-songwriters and guitarists Elliott McPherson and John Smith, with drummer Craig "Sweet Dog" Pickering and bassist Matt Patton. If that last name seems familiar, we’ll get there. Their name came not from the same source as Dexys Midnight Runners, but instead from a guitar pick that Smith’s brother had gotten signed by Dex Romweber, a musician that you might have heard of. Or not. Although he’s pretty good and it is a memorable name. Mixing punk with southern rock, The Dexateens’ self-titled debut album from 2004 is excellent—raw and rocking, and “Shelter” is a Stonesy-stomp. 

I’m not sure when I first heard about The Dexateens, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was in 2007, when their fine album Hardwire Healing was released, and it was co-produced by Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers and David Barbe, who has worked with the Truckers (as well as playing bass in Sugar). I suspect that this was the hook that got me to check out the band, which has de-emphasized punk over the years. After some personnel changes, the band broke up in 2010. Patton joined the Truckers on bass (and as the occasional Ramones cover singer), and also plays with The Dexateens, which re-formed in 2013. And, he co-owns a recording studio in Mississippi (where part of the Ramones cover video in the link was shot). Busy man. 

 So, check out The Dexateens if you aren’t familiar with them.

Boss: Little Johnny Jewel

Television: Little Johnny Jewel
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I scanned my list of potential subjects for this theme (read my last post if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and decided again to write about a band that I hadn’t discussed before—Television. I’ve written about small-t television many, many times, here and elsewhere (not going to link, since there are too many), because watching TV is probably how I spend more of my leisure time than anything else, but I’ve never written about the band. While Todd Rundgren’s failure to ever be discussed in this space was very surprising, it is almost as surprising that Television has only been discussed twice—back in 2008 and 2009—and both times about the same song, “Marquee Moon.” Which happens to be an excellent song, but we’re going back to Television’s first release, “Little Johnny Jewel,” a single on their manager’s label, released in 1975. 

Although Television came up out of the same C.B.G.B. scene as the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and the Heartbreakers, among others, who I often played on the radio back in the 1979-1982 period when I was doing college radio, I had trouble connecting with the band then. As someone who grew up on classic rock and prog, I (eventually) came to understand the hard, fast ethos of punk that those other bands followed (although for some, that changed over time) as a rejection of the older forms of rock.  While I still loved what I grew up on, I also learned to love punk (and new wave). But Television’s meandering jams and guitar solos and stream of consciousness lyrics, sung by Tom Verlaine in a yelping voice that, to my ears at least, made David Byrne sound great in comparison, somehow didn’t fit in to the slots that I had in my head at the time. I couldn’t understand how they were in the same category as the Ramones, whose simple two-minute songs done at breakneck speed were nothing like the long songs that Television produced. 

Because of their timing, and their identification with the downtown NYC music scene, and because of the rough sound of their music, Television is usually lumped in with the punks, but interestingly, I’ve seen them referred to as both proto-punk and post-punk, which seems impossible without some sort of time machine. And yet, it makes sense, when you look closely. Television presaged punk both temporally and in their attitude, but their sound was not “punk” in the way that word is commonly used, so like “post-punk” bands, they embraced the brashness of punk, but not all of the sound. 

In my old(er) age, I’ve come to appreciate Television more and more. Maybe it is my more mature approach to music that is less interested in putting artists and their music in genre slots, so that I enjoy the connections that artists that seem very different actually have. I know, for example, that the first time that I heard “Impossible Germany,” by Wilco, one of my favorites, I was struck by how the intertwined guitar parts played by Nels Cline and Jeff Tweedy reminded me of Television’s Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. 

As mentioned above. “Little Johnny Jewel” was the first song released by Television, its 7 plus minutes split into two parts on a 45, and it’s an odd one. Opening with a bass line (from Fred Smith, who had replaced Richard Hell), before Billy Ficca’s drums and the guitars enter, the instrumental eventually resolves into a groove before the vocals begin. The song may be about Iggy Pop, whose real name was James Newell Osterberg, Jr., but his middle name is sometimes listed as “Jewel.” There’s a long instrumental guitar section featuring Verlaine soloing in the middle that sounds closer to psychedelia or even jazz than punk before the groove returns, along with the lyrics: 

Oh, Little Johnny Jewel
He's so cool
But if you see him looking lost
You ain't gotta come on so boss

Verlaine recalled in an interview: “Lou Reed asked me, ‘Why’d you put out this song? This is not a hit.’ I said, ‘What band playing a bar in New York, issuing their own single, is gonna have a hit?’” However, the single sold surprisingly well, and arguably kickstarted the New York punk movement.

Lessons: Rock N Roll High School

Ramones, Rock n Roll High School

A lot of songs about high school are delinquent, party songs, or about hating teachers, rebellion and learning pretty much nothing useful. Ever. Alice Cooper's "School's Out" comes to mind, silly as it is. I never bought into the Beach Boy's "Be Cool to Your School"--in fact, I kind of resented the band for singing any kind of praise at all concerning school. Which, for most of my life, was a prison, rather than a place that should be celebrated with drums and guitars. the songs that spoke to me were the ones that reinforced rebellion. Maybe burning books. The best school songs are the ones about how much school sucks. 

Strange how those anthems speak to both the cliches and the realities of a lot of kids. I'm a teacher now, but I hated school from first grade until the moment I graduated from undergrad. Any song that dealt with rebelling against teachers, their dirty looks, all those pencils and books, spoke to me in a distinct, familiar and sympathetic voice

Songs like "Rock n Roll High School", and the eponymous movie (I believe the song came first and the movie was built as a vehicle around it) were perfect. Aggressive enough to feel good, pump the blood up on test days and my inevitable failing grades that followed, rock music was a saving grace in my angst filled teenage daze. The Ramones were silly punks, inspiring horseplay, girl-chasing, and petty vandalism rather than full on burn-it-down rebellion. I got into more hardcore bands as I got older, and Metallica was putting out their best work when I was in high school, so the kind of music that fed into my growing frustrations certainly played a role in my development, and a loud one. (I got pretty fed up with school for a while there, but somehow, stuck it out. The angrier, louder, meaner music that found its way to me helped me through, as well). But the Ramones hold a special place in my heart for providing the soundtrack to my earliest days of discovering music and the saving grace it would give me--a sustaining power, a joyous and continual discovery, and constant companion, music was the part of my life that made sense, and made sense of the parts I didn't understand. Or particularly enjoy. I can't tell you how many times a teacher confiscated my walkman and my cassettes. When I got in trouble at home, restriction meant my stereo and my guitar got confiscated and stored away in my parent's closet. I always managed to sneak my walkman out without them knowing. The lure of music was too great. 

But, the lessons of rock music remain the best ones I ever learned, my idols my best teachers. Rock music was what made sense. What moved me and what pulled me along with a promise of better things to come. It was a great promise. 

It still is, to be honest. I spend an inordinate amount of time in my life on music. I hated school, but I survived it.  And, I have music to thank for getting me through those odd days of my teenage years, and the odd ones that have followed. My high school days never quite lived up to the promise the Ramones made in their songs, but, I think we made up for it in college...but, those are tales best left untold here...

World Tour: It's A Long Way Back To Germany

Ramones: It's A Long Way Back To Germany (link now working)

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As a German living outside Germany, the title of the Ramones song appeals to me. The track turned up as a bonus track on the 2005 remastered edition of the Ramones’ 1977 album Rocket To Russia. It is billed as a UK b-side, without any further information. It seems it was also a b-side elewhere, to 1978’s “Do You Wanna Dance”.

“It's A Long Way Back To Germany” was written by Dee Dee Ramone, whose mother was German and who spent much of his formative years in West-Berlin, until he returned to New York City at the age of 15. He also sang a bit in German on “Born To Die In Berlin”, the final track of the final Ramones album in 1996. Dee Dee died six years later, not in Beelin but in LA.

Rocket To Russia featured a song that has been covered twice by German bands. “Rockaway Beach” was first done in 1979 as “Müngersdorfer Stadion” by the Zeltinger Band, a punk rock band fronted by the balding, overweight and often kaftan-wearing Jürgen Zeltinger, one of West Germany’s first openly gay recording artists. Performed in Kölsch, the dialect that is unique to the city of Cologne, the setting of Rockaway Beach in the Ramones song became the public swimming baths adjacent to the football stadium of the same name, and hitching a ride there in the Ramones song became fare-dodging on public transport. (You can get the song HERE.)

In 2005, another German punk band, Die Toten Hosen (from Düsseldorf, just down the road from Zeltinger’s Cologne), covered “Rockaway Beach” in English, as the b-side for their “Alles wird vorübergehen” single.

You might find it quite easy to sing along to “It’s A Long Way Back To Germany”. Just sing this: “You by the phone, you all alone. It’s a long way back to Germany. It’s a long way back to Germany.”

(Image borowed from 45cat.com)

Album Cover Art: Ramones - Ramones

Ramones: Loudmouth

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For their '76 debut, the Ramones were originally looking for an album cover that would be somewhat similar to Meet The Beatles!, but that didn't really pan out. Which proved to be a streak of luck really, as da brudders then decided to use a Roberta Bayley photograph which had already been published in Punk magazine. One look at it and you knew you were dealing with radically different stuff here. What you saw was what you got: Bayley had managed to epitomize the no-frills aesthetic of punk rock in just one shot. Four street kids from New York City - Johnny, Tommy, Joey and Dee Dee, from left to right - in stark black & white, standing in front of a dirty brick wall looking bored but confident in their trademark leathers, jeans, and sneakers. And boy, did they look cool... Anyone still wear that uniform on a regular basis? Thought so.

1979: Sheena Is A Punk Rocker

Ramones: Sheena Is A Punk Rocker

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As I look through my own library of 1979 albums I'm impressed that bands from the UK are disproportionately represented. So far all of our posts here this week have also been UK bands.

But there were some exciting things going on in the US at the time too. For example, who can talk about the late 70's without talking about The Ramones? After all, according to AMG, "The Ramones are the first punk rock band."

I have not listened to It's Alive, The Ramones's 1979 double live album, in at least twenty years, but as I thought about this week's theme I blew the dust off of the proverbial record sleeve and gave it a spin. Man, this show moves. Nearly every song squeals out of the starting gate and goes for broke until it ends abruptly only a couple of minutes later. The pauses between the songs are usually no more than two or three seconds, during which you hear Dee Dee scream off a count for the next song.

This is not Mozart. This is the most fun band in the world playing at the height of their powers.

Now, clear away the afternoon cobwebs and play Sheena Is A Punk Rocker. In a few seconds you'll be reliving every college party you ever went to.

Shorties: The Ramones

The Ramones: Do You Wanna Dance

The Ramones: Teenage Lobotomy

The Ramones: Cretin Hop

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The Ramones might have been a Punk band, but underneath, they secretly were masters of the two minute Pop song. Here's a few examples from their 1977 masterpiece, Rocket To Russia - if you find yourself headbanging along, it's okay, just mind the walls.

The Moon: Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La)

The Ramones: Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La)

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Y' know, every now and then, I think you might like to hear something from us nice and easy. But there's just one thing... you see we never, ever do nothing nice and easy, we always do it nice and rough. Away from the lullabies - Smithers, release The Ramones!

The Sun: California Sun

Ramones: California Sun

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Four archetypical New Yorkers giving praise to the joys of that sunny state on the other side of the continent. This is the version from It´s Alive, recorded at the Rainbow in London on New Year´s Eve 1977 and one of the best live albums ever made. 28 songs in under 55 minutes: unheard of at the time... I wanted to post the original by the Rivieras here too, but couldn´t locate my copy unfortunately. Can someone please help me out here?

Meanwhile, here´s the Dictators´ version of California Sun. It´s from their ´75 debut Go Girl Crazy!, so Da Brudders probably learned the song from Handsome Dick & co, not from the original.

The Dictators: California Sun

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And hey ho, here´s the original (from ´64) by the mighty Rivieras. Thanks Caidaz!

The Rivieras: California Sun

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