Drugs: Sammy Hagar Weekend

Sammy Hagar, cruisin' and definitely boozin'

Thelonious Monster - Sammy Hagar Weekend [purchase]

"Sammy Hagar Weekend" is autobiography, disguised as satire, and wrapped in parody. Bob Forrest wrote it partly about his experience at a September 1978 über-concert in Anaheim, California ("Summer Fest"), featuring Boston, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, and Sammy Hagar. However, the song also functions as a satire of the Heavy Metal Parking Lot culture. The parody comes at the end of the song, when the Monster transforms into a full-on heavy metal band, with pro gear, pro attitude, sweet licks, and slaytanic backward masking. Enjoy ... but kids, know when to say when.

Well, it's a Sammy Hagar weekend,
It's a Sammy Hagar state of mind,
It's a Sammy Hagar weekend,
It's a Sammy Hagar way of life.

We're gonna drink some beer,
Smoke some pot,
Snort some coke,
And then drive ... drive over 55, yeah.

'Cause it's a Sammy Hagar weekend,
It's a big man's day.

We got a Metallica T-shirt,
Got a little tiny baby mustache,
Got a jacked-up Camaro,
We're sittin' in the parking lot at Anaheim Stadium.

Drinkin' beer,
Smokin' pot,
Snortin' coke,
And then we drive ... drive over 55.

Cuz it's a Sammy Hagar weekend,
Well, it's a big man's day.

[metalriffic solo to finish]

[repeat chorus]

[descent into chaos > back-masking]

[Hagarification complete]

Drugs: Sharing the Stash Edition

Fraternity of Man: Don‘t Bogart Me

[purchase]

I went back and forth with myself over whether to include this song in this post. Susan settled the issue with her last post. Yes, this is Don’t Bogart That Joint, with its original title. The song is an artifact from the sixties, equating drug use with communal experience. Drugs, love, sex, peace, all were things to be shared. Bogarting was “uncool, man”.

Fraternity of Man would themselves be nothing more than the answer to a trivia question, were it not for the inclusion of Don’t Bogart Me in the soundtrack to Easy Rider. The band had no other notable success of their own, and lasted for only two albums. But in that time, former members of The Mothers of Invention, and future members of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band and Little Feat passed through their ranks. Don’t Bogart Me appears on Fraternity of Man’s self-titled debut, while Lowell George did not become a part of the band until their second album, but George most likely performed the song live with them, prompting his cover of the song later as the leader of Little Feet.

Ramblin‘ Jack Elliott: Cocaine Blues

[purchase]

A quick listen to Cocaine Blues shows no sign of anything being shared. But I cannot think of this song without thinking of Jackson Browne’s cover from his album Running on Empty. In that version, it is clear from the multiple laughing voices at the end, and from the song’s placement on the album, that Browne and his bandmates are sharing some coke during some downtime in a hotel room during a tour. Browne calls the song Cocaine, but it is not the Eric Clapton hit. Rather, Cocaine Blues is a cover of a song by the Reverend Gary Davis. Why then have I chosen Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s version over the original? I wanted to reflect the feel of the original as much as possible, but the only version I could find by Davis was an old recording with very poor sound quality. This was the cover that I felt best captured the spirit of the original.

Drugs: Willin'

Little Feat: Willin'
[purchase]

Linda Ronstadt: Willin'
[purchase]

Richard Shindell: Willin'
[purchase] (scroll down to Courier)

"And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
and you show me a sign
I'll be willin', to be movin'..."

Written in 1970, "Willin' " was a mainstay of Little Feat, the band Lowell George had helped to found in 1970 and was a leading member of until his death on June 29, 1979. The song, John Tobler contends in the liner notes of As Time Goes By. The Very Best of Little Feat (1993), "quickly became a favorite among America’s truckdrivers, many of whom continue to regard it as the anthem of their profession . . . although absurdly it never has been a hit."

In George's lifetime, "Willin' " was recorded in three different versions (though more and more have surfaced). On the band’s debut album, Little Feat (1971), George made do with his own raspy voice and guitar, and the sparse accompaniment of Ry Cooder’s terse steel guitar. On Sailin’ Shoes (1972), the song was done by the whole band, the chorus harmonized by four voices, and the piano solo was added by Bill Payne — "eh bill o' pain," as pronounced by George six years later, on the spectacularly successful live double album, Waiting for Columbus (1978). There, "Willin’" became hymnic, and was followed without interruption by "Don’t Bogart That Joint," another classic tune George had a hand in (he was briefly a member of Fraternity of Man, too).

More here...

I just realized/remembered that Don't Bogart That Joint does *not* appear on my Waiting for Columbus CD... and, upon reading the liner notes, discovered this:

The tracks "Don't Bogart That Joint" and "Apolitical Blues" which appear on the double album and cassette have been omitted so as to facilitate a single specially-priced compact disc" - d*mmit!

Hmmm... I just thought of something - wondering if we can have a Truck Driving Songs theme one of these weeks?... :-)

Drugs: Kid Charlemagne

Steely Dan: Kid Charlemagne

[purchase]

Steely Dan, at the height of their powers, had a way of getting the listener to nod their head and tap their feet, without ever noticing the content of the lyrics. Case in point: Kid Charlemagne. Here is one of Steely Dan’s finest grooves, and here too are those jazz harmonies that Becker and Fagan would sneak past the average pop music fan. And here is a song about another “archetypal counterculture icon”, the chemist.

The chemist was the guy who built a home chemistry lab, and created synthetic hallucinogens, most famously LSD. Kid Charlemagne tells the story of the rise and fall of one such chemist. At the peak of his career, “every apron had your number on the wall”. But, all too soon, his fans and customers “joined the human race”, and his career was over. At that point, there was nothing left for him except running from the law.

Sadly, there are some parallels to what has become of Steely Dan. The band broke up after the release of the album Gaucho, and when they regrouped years later, they seemed to no longer have the pulse of the pop music fan. Popular musical styles had moved on in their absence, but I think something else happened as well. The classic Steely Dan albums were musical collaborations between Walter Becker and Donald Fagan, and were produced by Gary Katz. When they reconvened, Becker and Fagan were still there, but Gary Katz was gone. So now, Steely Dan certainly aren’t running from the law, but their name no longer emboldens nearly as many aprons as it once did.

Drugs: Illegal Smile

John Prine: Illegal Smile
[purchase]

John Prine: Illegal Smile (live '97)
[purchase]

Serena Ryder: Illegal Smile
[purchase]

We've posted plenty of Prine here on Star Maker Machine since our inception, but mere popularity is no reason to ignore the potent works of this prolific singer-songwriter.

Illegal Smile grounds itself in the premise of drugs as escape, much like the previously-posted Prine tune Sam Stone; both originally appeared on his debut self-titled album in 1971. But where Sam Stone's Vietnam vet drowns his future and family in morphine, Illegal Smile is a wry, lighthearted poke at the blues, flavored with more half-baked chagrin than true demons.

It's easy to imagine a man turning to happydrugs for a mere cheerful pick-me-up after losing a staring contest with his oatmeal, and chasing a rainbow into a dead end. Easy to defend, too. Listen to the sing-along he recorded 26 years after releasing the original; you can still hear Prine grinning throughout. And Canadian songstress Serena Ryder's laughing in-studio cover never goes dark, either.

Never heard Prine's "other" drug song? For comparison's sake, check out Ted's take on Sam Stone, including an oddball soul take from Swamp Dogg, Prine's original, and a sweet cover from Laura Cantrell.

Drugs: Not An Addict

k's Choice: Not An Addict

[Purchase]

Months ago I posted another song (link no longer available, sorry) by the Belgian sister-brother fronted rock band k's Choice. "Not An Addict" is their single from that same album, and the song that got me into them when I heard it played on the local alternative rock station back in 1997.

The song is a passionate first person song about addiction denial. It takes on the "coolness" of drug culture by taking that first person approach so that you're hearing what it sounds like to hear someone talk about how other people may have addictions, but they don't because they only do it because it feels good and makes them more creative. It's a beautifully powerful rock ballad.

Drugs: Down to Seeds and Stems Again Blues

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen: Down to Seeds & Stems Again Blues (live)

[purchase]

Gotta love the blues: Memphis... Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock... Statesboro... Me and the Devil... Subterranean Homesick... Folsom Prison... Summertime... Bell Bottom... Steamroller...

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen take the blues to a whole new low... or high, depending on one's perspective...

Well, my dog died just yesterday and left me all alone
The finance company dropped by today and repossessed my home
That's just a drop in the bucket compared to losing you
And I'm down to seeds and stems again, too

Drugs: Henry

New Riders of the Purple Sage: Henry

[purchase]

Do they still use the term “counterculture”?

At some point, in academia, and soon after in the press, someone decided that it was undignified to write about “hippies”. So they came up with the term counterculture. You could read about things like “archetypal countercultural icons”. But, in plain language, surely the dope runner was one of these. This heroic soul dodged narcs and border agents to bring high quality weed from Mexico to the masses. He braved treacherous roads and uncertain weather in his noble quest. And he did all of this after liberally sampling his wares to assure quality.

New Riders of the Purple Sage came up with the best celebration of the noble dope runner I have ever heard. New Riders, or NRPS, as they were known in their heyday, came to modest fame by opening for the Grateful Dead. Perhaps their talent could have carried them farther if they had not been in the Dead’s shadow; certainly, they sang better. But Jerry Garcia in particular championed them, and so they became known as a sort of “Dead lite”. To my ears, they fit right in with the country rock of the mid-70s, and they might have been better off had they been marketed as such.

Henry comes from New Riders’ first album. The vinyl version of the album had a 30 second bit of weirdness on it called House of Wax. As far as I can tell, House of Wax never appeared on any CD version of the album. If anybody has an mp3 of this, please get in touch; I’d love to have it. Thanks.

Drugs: Dock Ellis

SF Seals: Dock Ellis

[purchase]

While reading Susan´s post (see below) on Dock Ellis and his unbelievable baseball exploits while tripping on acid, it dawned on me I had another song about that legendary pitcher somewhere. A little research in my many shoeboxes of vinyl singles turned up this tasty psychedelic indie-rocker by Barbara Manning´s SF Seals, from their ´93 Baseball Trilogy ep. The ball is gone in a flash indeed...

Drugs: Codine

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Codine

[purchase]

In 1963, Canadian Cree folksinger Buffy Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine while recovering from throat surgery. The song she produced from that experience may put the shakes of withdrawal in the voice of a male protagonist, but the avid, apt description of the enslavement and relief the drug produces are a roadmap to her own recovery, and fair warning for a nation of sixties countercultural folkfans playing with chemical fire as they tested the limits of their minds and bodies.

I find much of Buffy Sainte-Marie's music overwrought, but this is a perfect match of subject and slow, raw soul-baring folk blues. No wonder Codine would go on to become one of Sainte-Marie's most covered songs, picked up by the likes of Donovan, Gram Parsons, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Here's an early, oddly poppy example from the psycho'lectric end of the spectrum:

The Charlatans: Codine

[purchase]

Drugs : Junco Partner

James Booker : Junco Partner

[purchase]

Drug songs are older than the music industry. Leadbelly sang Take A Whiff On Me when he was recorded for the first time by John Lomax in Angola in 1933.
In Mexico, of course, they've got La Cucaracha. A great idea for a post by the way, and it goes back to 1818.
And In New Orleans, of course, they've got Junco Partner. It's the first song that came to my mind when I heard about this week's theme.
The first version, Junker Blues, by Champion Jack Dupree (1940) is probably the most explicit lyrically.

The song was brillantly covered by Dr John, Professor Longhair, The Clash, among others, but my favorite rendition is this live solo performance by James Booker from 1976. The lyrics are reduced to a few stanzas, but the essential is said.

I want a whiskey, when i'm thirsty
I want a little water when I'm dry
I want my lover when I'm lonely
And just a little heroin just before I die
And gimme a little cocaine baby on the side

And Booker knows what he's talking about when singing that line about time in Angola : that's exactly what he did for a year in 1967, for possession...
There's nothing sad, nothing plaintive, nothing gloomy in this drug song. It's not a suicidal trip à la Cobain. It's just about burning life while we can.
And Booker's piano playing is just fantastic. What an incredible left hand! There's a legend which says that Rubinstein met Booker when he was 18, heard him playing and said "I could never play THAT, not at that tempo!".

Drugs: America's Favorite Pastime

Todd Snider: America's Favorite Pastime

[purchase]

From Snopes.com

Claim: Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis hurled a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD.

Status: True.

The rest of the story can be found here...

As noted above, the song appears and can be purchased now on The Homerun EP, featuring various artists performing "five songs to get you back in the baseball spirit"... and the tale is also immortalized on Todd's soon-to-be released (June 9) CD, The Excitement Plan, available for pre-order - in his words, this song "combines the use of hallucenogenic drugs with athleticism, which I wish people would do more in folk music"...

Rediscovered: Mrs. Robinson

Simon & Garfunkel: Mrs. Robinson

[purchase]

We've all probably heard this song hundreds of times. I know I have. My parents were fans. I've seen the The Graduate. I've had vinyl copies of Bookends and the Greatest Hits laying around in my LP collection since before CDs were invented. If asked, I'd happily admit that Mrs. Robinson is a "great" song, but it usually just flowed in one ear and out the other.

Until I heard it anew.

One night I uploaded a Simon & Garfunkel record to help me fall asleep. The next afternoon, while I was out walking my dog around the neighborhood, Mrs. Robinson shuffled to the surface. I don't know why, but for some reason it was like hearing the song for the first time. And it sounded...great.

What struck me was how many fantastic lyrics Paul Simon had crammed into one song. There were take-away lines hiding in every nook. While I'd heard them all before, and knew them by heart, I hadn't really listened in years.

Without even getting into the iconic chorus, here are some of the lyrics taken from the verses that really stood out to me as being clever, evocative, or especially nice sounding:

• We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files. We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.

• Look around you. All you see are sympathetic eyes. (Classic line.)

• Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home. (Nice internal rhyme.)
  

• Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes. (Nobody talks in such a redundant way, but it sounds great in the song.)

• It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair. Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids.

• Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon. (Nice alliteration.)

• Going to the candidates' debate. (Nice internal alliteration and rhyme.)

• Laugh about it, shout about it, when you've got to choose, every way you look at this, you lose.

Any one of these lines is a keeper. The fact that Paul Simon put all of them in one short song, not to mention Jesus and Joe DiMaggio, is pretty amazing stuff.

Rediscovered: Something So Strong

Crowded House: Something So Strong

[Purchase]

There was a six month period in my youth where Crowded House's "Something So Strong" was my favorite song. It hit the top 10 rock charts in 1987, which means I was about 8 years old. I thought it was perfect. I loved singing along to it, I remember turning up the volume whenever the video was on Mtv, and I genuinely thought it was brilliant.

Skip ahead ten or twelve years to me in college. I was taking a sociology class and the professor was giving the students extra credit if they wrote a short paper talking about their favorite song and what made it a favorite. Another girl in the class chose a Finn Brothers song. At the time I had never heard of the band and when she read the paper to the class I was surprised to hear it was formed by Neil Finn, the lead singer of Crowded House, whom I hadn't thought of in years. Later that same week their hit song "Don't Dream It's Over" was playing at the grocery store as I was shopping and it was like the album was calling me back to it. All of the sudden "Something So Strong" was back in my consciousness and I had to hear it again.

In the last year, Crowded House has once again emerged in my life as I find friends mentioning them, finding them coming up in music searches, and having heard more of their work elsewhere. All of the sudden I am remembering all the reasons I loved the song and that the band as a whole was a pop band, but singer-songwriters at heart that made really outstanding, fun songs. It was nice that the band found their way back into my collection cosmically.

Rediscovered: One Good Time

Butch Hancock: One Good Time

[purchase]

First of all, welcome to Nicolas, our newest Star Maker Machine contributor - widening the circle lends a fresh perspective and dynamic!

Also, his second post was just the memory jog I needed to transport me right back to the Kerrville Folk Festival in May of 1999 - I attended the long Memorial Day weekend of the 18-day Texas event, discovering so many new-to-me performers...

One of my absolute favorites was Butch Hancock (pre-reunited-Flatlanders), who had the highest per capita heart-hitters for my love-of-language listening ears - I was sitting next to my friend Bob, who remarked that he could always tell when I liked a song (or a line) because "you mmmmm'ed four times during it" (I do admit to having a visceral and involuntary reflex reaction to music... :-)

What's not to adore about this almost-six-minute tour-de-force of a hurts-so-good crash-and-burn?: "she fought a brutal battle with the bottle and it brought a little hardship to her life" and "in the ashes of passion there were splashes of fashion which her witch's broom had brushed" - mmmmmmmmm!

Rediscovered : Tonight I'm Gonna Go Downtown

The Flatlanders : Tonight I'm Gonna Go Downtown

[purchase]

Being French and a fan of country music or country-rock is not an easy thing. The blues, my other passion, is well documented and supported here. My father has a solid collection of jazz and blues records he bought in the '50s and '60s, but he didn't know anything about country music until I bought him a couple of compilations.
In public libraries, not to mention general record stores, there's no way you can find a George Jones, Merle Haggard or John Prine record, and even less cult bands like The Flatlanders. So the Internet was a blessing for me, and helps me catch up.

I first heard about the Flatlanders about one year ago, and More A Legend Than A Band patiently waited on my wish list until I finally heard it for the first time yesterday night and this morning. Well, at least the first two songs. And it was love at first sight (or first listen). "Dallas" and "Go Downtown" are so great I couldn't listen to the others for the moment.

It's funny because I'm preparing a series of posts on River's Invitation about Mexican American border music, and I can really hear a Spanish accent in their brand of country, in the melody, the vocals, the backing instruments and the romantic tone of it all.
How come these guys didn't get enough attention to release a full-length album in 1972 ? Sometimes you just don't meet the right people at the right moment I guess..
So, fellow bloggers, excuse me if this song is already a long-time companion and an obvious pick for some of you, but I guess late is better than never.
Suggestions about their other records (as a group or in solo) are warmly welcome. I heard they released something new recently.

Rediscovered: When the Gates Swing Open

The Mighty Clouds of Joy: When the Gates Swing Open

[purchase]

I‘m working on something for Oliver di Place later this week that reminded me of my onetime exploration of black gospel music. This music is unabashedly Christian, so this was, perhaps, a strange preoccupation for a nice Jewish boy, but I was raised in a non-religious household, and this is music of undeniable power.

In the early 1980s, I found myself living with my father briefly. It was the first time I had ever lived in a city. One of my chores was to walk two blocks every Sunday morning to the nearest bodega, and get the Sunday paper. One block took me to the local black Baptist church. On Sunday mornings, there was this amazing sound coming from the place, and the building fairly shook with it. The whole congregation sang together as one in praise of the Lord, and it was hard to avoid being swept up in it, even from the sidewalk outside.

But my interest goes back further. It was Paul Simon’s fault. When Loves Me Like a Rock came out, I checked the liner notes to see who provided those great background vocals. It was The Dixie Hummingbirds. I was never the sort to stop at checking out just one group. I wanted to know, “Is there any more like this?” So I explored the world of small group black gospel music. And eventually, I found The Mighty Clouds of Joy, among others.

In due time, something else caught me ear, and the next exploration began. And given that I never found anyone else who liked gospel music, it fell by the wayside. But, in thinking about it again, what I remembered was that The Mighty Clouds of Joy best embodied the power of this music, of all the groups I remember. I did not remember any specific songs by them, but I think this one amply shows what I mean.

Rediscovered: Rainy Night Detroit

Denice Franke: Rainy Night Detroit

[purchase] (on the You Don't Know Me CD)

I just presented Texas songwriter Denice Franke in our Labyrinth Cafe concert series this past Saturday night - she was of course amazing and, when she sang the above tune, it brought back vivid memories of the first time I heard it (and her) almost 10 years ago...

I was a preliminary judge for the 2000 South Florida Folk Festival songwriter competition... and it was the job of four of us to listen to two songs each from almost 200 artists and give them a ranking using certain criteria - as one can imagine, in these circumstances, there is more proverbial chaff than wheat...

I will always recall the night one of my fellow judges called me and said: "have you gotten to #72 yet? - this one reminds me why we're doing it". When I did finally get there, I knew immediately what he was talking about - the hair on my arms and neck prickled, a lump in my throat formed and I went straight for the box of tissues...

It was Denice's Rainy Night Detroit - a decade later, the song still wrenches my heart, opens my tear ducts and reminds me how lucky I am, even (or maybe especially) in the dark times...

Rediscovered : Me and Matthew

Martin Stephenson and the Daintees : Me and Matthew

[purchase]

Two years ago, just before moving to the apartment where I live now near Paris, I made a BIG mistake : I listened to my wife and threw away my entire cassette collection. But ever since I've been missing them every now and then. They were all recorded in the eighties and early nineties, especially in 1983-86, the time when I started building a musical world of my own.

I discovered Martin Stephenson when his first album came out in 1986. He played the acoustic guitar. He was romantic. He played every genre that you couldn't hear on the FM stations in France : folk, country, jazzy pop, country-punk. The lyrics were about his friends and family, his lesbian sister, one of his cousin's miscarriage, the sound of a rainstrom outside his window. He was from Northern England, a strange place named Sunderland. He always wore a hat which he said had belonged to James Cagney.

Martin did a handful of albums with Kitchenware records but sales fell short and the group disbanded in 1992 and I lost track of him. Until the other day when I found his second album by chance at the library in my hometown and rediscovered this song, that goes well with the coming of spring and this week's topic. It's about childhood memories, a kid with his grandfather in a greenhouse, there are birds and bees. Bucolic, as we say in France. To be honest, it's probably the only song in the album that I listen to now. The rest hasn't aged very well..

After the band's demise, Martin came back to the Highlands in Scotland and settled there, progressively cutting ties with the record industry, playing in pubs, tiny bars, and still recording solo, often auto- produced albums with a better, rootsy sound. The Daintees came back to life in 2000 and recorded a comback album in 2008, as you will see on Martin's site.

Rediscovered: Mango Time

Tony Bird: Mango Time

[purchase]

A front row seat at the feet of Malawi-born, Zimbabwe-raised singer and songwriter Tony Bird was my very first introduction into the small coffeehouse scene that defines modern folk music performance -- an anomaly, as the music he plays is both decidedly South African, and ranges far wider and broader into rock and blues than the typical american strands of folk which form the contemporary type.

Tony Bird's poorly designed website suggests he's still making the same music he was back then -- indeed, he'll be appearing at Passim, the very same club where I first saw him, in June. And his short, fragmented Wikipedia entry suggests that I saw him during his comeback tour, after a two record emergence in the seventies, and a short tour with Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the eighties.

I wouldn't have known, except a few weeks ago I spent the week in my father's house, helping him recover from surgery. I found this CD in his collection, spun it for the first time in fifteen years, and was pleased to find how quickly the funky, fruity, percussive world beat took me back to that very first folk concert.