Medialoper

Certain Songs #1941: River Roses – “Dark Stroll”

October 23, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

. . .

Album: Each and All
Year: 1988

. . .

And sometimes I just don’t remember. That’s always part of the fun in a project like this: trying to remember exactly how you came across a song that you’ve loved for decades and decades. Especially when it’s the only song you remember by that artist. And it’s an obscure artist, to boot.

And so, I’m going to do a lot of guesswork here, and say that River Roses played Fresno at some point during the dark summer of 1988. Perhaps at Manchester Mall. I have a weird memory of seeing shows there, but for the life of me, I don’t remember where or when.

Certain Songs #1940: Ritchie Valens – “La Bamba”

October 22, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Single, 1958

. . .

There’s this great podcast that I just discovered during the lockdown called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs by a droll Englishman named Andrew Hickey. He’s already done 100 episodes, so I’ve been grazing to catch up, but one of the things that I learned recently was that “La Bamba” might have been around for centuries as a Mexican folk song.

Which makes sense, because it’s one of those songs that feels like it was written in our DNA, that was always out there hanging around, waiting patiently until the technology to actually record it existed.

Certain Songs #1939: Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow – “Kill The King”

October 21, 2020 by Jim Connelly 1 Comment

Album: Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll
Year: 1978

. . .

Yeah, I know it’s officially “Rainbow,” but for some reason — maybe their first album — I always thought of them as “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, which is where I had them on my master playlist, so this is both in and out of alphabetical order.

Ritchie Blackmore was probably my first guitar hero: the guy whose tone and general mastery of hard rock guitar spoke to me in my early teens. And so, even after he split from Deep Purple and started making records with a tiny necromancer named Ronnie James Dio, I was at least marginally curious, and “Man on The Silver Mountain” was enough of simulacrum of Purple to sound good to me when it was on the radio.

That said, the only one of his albums I bought was 1978’s Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll. I don’t remember why, though it probably had something to do with hearing the title track on Rock 96 FM, and generally agreeing with the sentiment. :: Flashes Devil Horns ::

Certain Songs #1938: Ringo Starr – “Photograph”

October 20, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Ringo
Year: 1973

. . .

1973 was the year when whatever made me a music fanatic finally completely broke loose in my brain, and I spent that year utterly immersed in the glories of AM Top 40 radio, often hearing songs three or four times a day — I mean, when I wasn’t in school or some stupid shit like that.

And, of course, the ones I loved to pieces I started buying as singles — “Daniel” and “Cisco Kid” were the first two of many — but even the ones I just liked a lot I memorized completely.

Certain Songs #1937: Ringo Starr – “It Don’t Come Easy”

October 19, 2020 by Jim Connelly 1 Comment

Single, 1971

Recorded a full year before it was released as a single, “It Don’t Come Easy” was the first of a ridiculous run of Ringo Starr singles.

And I do mean ridiculous: from 1971 – 1975, every single single Ringo released made the the top ten, two of them peaking at #1. That’s a better five-year run than — to pull some random names out of a hat — John Lennon, George Harrison or Paul McCartney ever had. Though Macca ended up with more, eventually.

Certain Songs #1936: Van Halen – “Unchained”

October 16, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Fair Warning
Year: 1981

. . .

The third and final time I saw Van Halen was on June 18, 1981, which capper of a two month spree where Tim & I saw nearly a dozen shows from artists ranging from, well Van Halen to the long-forgotten DB Cooper, who actually released a couple of albums on Warner Bros. (So I just went down a DB Cooper rabbit hole on Discogs, AllMusic and YouTube and it turns out he was like an Elvis Costello / Graham Parker guy and I even recognized his “Forever Rock ‘n’ Roll”).

Of course, that 1981 show was the fourth time Van Halen had played Fresno. For whatever reason, I’d missed their 1980 jaunt, and all of the other ones after that. And once again, I witnessed a Fresno crowd totally decimate an opening act for Van Halen. This time, it was The Fools, whose Talking Heads parody “Psycho Chicken” was half-funny the first time, and whose album Heavy Mental, I had no use for. Maybe it was good. In any event, it was yet another mismatch.

Certain Songs #1935: Van Halen – “In A Simple Rhyme”

October 15, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Women and Children First
Year: 1980

. . .

One of the reasons that Women and Children First is my favorite Van Halen album is that it was a complete mish-mosh of styles. You never knew what you were gonna get next. And so after the opening salvo of “And The Cradle Will Rock…” and “Everybody Wants Some!” they did big electric blues, punky metal, metallic punk and acoustic folk, in an order that seemed like it was chosen via dartboard.

And indeed, that was kinda reflected on the original back cover of the LP, which had a completely different tracklisting than ended up on the album, showing just how much they didn’t give a shit how you heard the album, as long as you heard it.

Certain Songs #1934: Van Halen – “Everybody Wants Some!”

October 14, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Women and Children First
Year: 1980

In was 1985, and I was seeing a matinee (probably ditching class) of Better Off Dead, a teen comedy starring John Cusak as a guy who was suicidal after a breakup, and who kept failing to kill himself in a variety of funny ways, the impetus for a film that was an hour of dark comic genius followed by a half-hour of Hollywood ending. (And spawned the “I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS” meme that probably nobody remembered until I just now reminded them of it.)

There were two things I remember from that actual showing: 1) that the audience laughed hardest a a joke that had been in the trailer (“Now that’s a real shame when folks be throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that.”) and 2) the sequence involving Cusak’s character imagining a claymation hamburger playing an Eddie Van Halen guitar to what is Van Halen’s horniest, thirstiest song, “Everybody Wants Some!”

It was silly as fuck, of course, but it reminded me in the deepest part of my lizard brain that even while I was at my alt-rockiest, I just love this dumb-ass song. And I’ve never stopped.

Certain Songs #1933: Van Halen – “And The Cradle Will Rock…”

October 13, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Women and Children First
Year: 1980

. . .

Welcome to my favorite Van Halen album.

Yeah, I know that their debut changed everything, and 1984 contains some of their most beloved songs, but for me, Women and Children First — the album where they pretty much eschewed the pop influences that dominated the first two records and started completely fucking with their song structures — that’s the one I love the most.

Certain Songs #1932: Van Halen – “Dance The Night Away”

October 12, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Van Halen II
Year: 1979

. . .

I guess one good analogy to Van Halen’s popularity would be a TV show like Breaking Bad, which wasn’t initially popular, but at some point, a switch seemed to be flipped, and suddenly it was on everybody’s minds.

For Van Halen, that switch seemed to be flipped sometime in late 1978, so when Van Halen II came out in March of 1979, everybody was ready. How ready? Here’s one measurement: as I mentioned before, the first time I saw Van Halen was at Selland Arena in Fresno, September, 1978, and they were the opening act. The second time I saw Van Halen was at the same venue a scant six months later, and they were the headliners.