Archives for December 2020

Certain Songs #1995: Rockpile – “Heart”

December 31, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Seconds of Pleasure
Year: 1980

. . .

It’s hard to convey the kind of anticipation there was in certain rock ‘n’ roll circles for Rockpile’s 1980 debut, Seconds of Pleasure. After all, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Terry William had been playing together in various configurations going back to Edmunds 1976 Get It album (which was just missing Bremner), and in 1979 recorded two all-time classics back-to-back: Nick Lowe’s Labour of Lust and Dave Edmunds’ Repeat When Necessary.

Certain Songs #1994: Rockford – “Many Things”

December 30, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Experiments in Electricity & Light
Year: 2017

. . .

It was September, 2018, and we were in a backyard in Eagle Rock, CA, getting ready to see a benefit show featuring Steve Wynn. Can you even imagine such a thing right now? We’d gone to a couple of other shows in this space, but we were hardly regulars.

In any event, Tim had gone to get a beer or something, and when he came back to our seats, he told me that he’d met a guy who knew me. Apparently Tim was wearing a Tower District Records T-shirt, and they got into a conversation about Fresno.

Certain Songs #1993: The Rockets – “Oh Well”

December 29, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rockets
Year: 1979

. . .

Here’s my guess: most of you know “Oh Well” as a song from the earliest incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, a weird conglomeration of acoustic guitars, blues solos and the airtight playing of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, who navigate the song’s everchanging groove.

And that’s all incredibly true, even if the second half is a stone bore — Green sabotaging his own work by pretending he’s the guy who found the acoustic guitar in “2112,” — it’s weird and great in all the right ways.

Certain Songs #1992: Rocket From The Crypt – “On a Rope”

December 28, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Scream, Dracula, Scream!
Year: 1995

. . .

In the 1990s, the San Diego band Rocket From The Crypt made a small alt-rock splash by asking a relatively simple question: what if Punk Rock, but with a horn section?

Obviously, it wasn’t a new question: there were horns all over London Calling and the later Jam singles, but usually those horns weren’t sitting on top of their garage-punk ravers. Before Rocket From The Crypt broke up — to the extent that anybody breaks up these days — they made a few albums in this vein, though I only ever came across 1995’s Scream, Dracula, Scream! and 1998’s RFTC.

Certain Songs #1991: Robyn Hitchcock – “Time Coast”

December 23, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Robyn Hitchcock
Year: 2017

. . .

The fourth (or sixth, if you count the Tower Records in-store and the song from Big Star’s Third) time I saw Robyn Hitchcock in concert was on May 3, 2017 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.

Starting off with five acoustic songs and then bringing out his touring band, The L.A. Squires, his set covered his entire career, featuring as many songs (four) from Underwater Moonlight as it did from Robyn Hitchcock.

Certain Songs #1990: Robyn Hitchcock – “Raymond and The Wires”

December 22, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Robyn Hitchcock
Year: 2017

. . .

Robyn Hitchcock’s father, Raymond, was a screenwriter, cartoonist and novelist who nearly had his leg amputated following the invasion of Normandy. Other than siring one of my all-time favorite musicians, his first novel, Percy, was the catalyst for one of the Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, British Invasion Divison, “All God’s Children” by The Kinks.

However, Raymond himself was the catalyst for one of the Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Robyn Hitchcock Division — and a top 5 Robyn Hitchcock song — “Raymond and The Wires.”

Certain Songs #1989: Robyn Hitchcock – “1970 In Aspic”

December 21, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Robyn Hitchcock
Year: 2017

. . .

Robyn Hitchcock was recorded in Nashville, where Robyn Hitchcock had moved with his partner, Emma Swift, in 2015. And it showed: not so much with the country, though “I Pray When I’m Drunk” is definitely the most country thing he had since since “Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus” way back in 1984, but because the pedal steel guitar, as played by Russ Pahl, was a pretty big part of the sound.

And nowhere was it a bigger part of the sound than “1970 In Aspic,” where it rings and comments from the start.

Certain Songs #1988: Robyn Hitchcock – “Mad Shelley’s Letterbox”

December 20, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Robyn Hitchcock
Year: 2017

. . .

After Love From London, Robyn Hitchcock put out an acoustic album half-full of covers called The Man Upstairs, which didn’t quite cohere for me, and after that, relative silence for a couple of years, though we did get to see him when Big Star’s Third hit Glendale in 2016.

Certain Songs #1987: Robyn Hitchcock – “End of Time”

December 19, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Love From London
Year: 2013

. . .

And so if you’re Robyn Hitchcock and your previous album was entitled Goodnight Oslo, then obviously your next move is to go to Norway and record and release an album there. Obviously. Which is exactly what Robyn did in 2011, with the relatively weak Tromsø, Kaptein, which mostly stood out for a remake of “Raining Twilight Coast” and the closing “Godnatt Oslo”, which, of course, was “Goodnight Oslo” sung in Norwegian. Of course.

Certain Songs #1986: Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 – “The Afterlight”

December 18, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Propellor Time
Year: 2010

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Robyn Hitchcock’s third straight album with the Venus 3, Propellor Time, came out only a year after Goodnight Oslo, but it was pretty different from that record, in that it was more acoustic-oriented than the previous two. Which is a weird parallel to the final Egyptians album, Respect, 17 years prior.

Recorded with the same cast of characters plus guest ringers John Paul Jones, Johnny Marr and Nick Lowe, Propellor Time was a much more relaxed affair than either of its predecessors, as was born out by its best track, “The Afterlife,” which had originally gotten its first go-round in a live version on a 2007 EP Sex, Food, Death … And Tarantulas.