“Certain songs,”Craig Finn sang on The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, “they get scratched into our souls.” That’s the basis of our latest feature: a look at the songs that have done just that. These aren’t necessarily our favorite songs or the songs that we think are the best, but rather songs that — every single time we hear them — instantly transport us back to a place and time in which that song is forever intertwined. This is one of the reasons we so hate the RIAA’s attempted stranglehold on the dissemination of music: you never know where that next certain song is going to come from.
It’s around 5:00am on a balmy August morning in 1981, and I’ve not yet been to sleep. I’m in the passenger seat of Larry’s car — a light blue Dodge Colt with a long white CB antenna mounted on the back bumper — and we’re driving back to Fresno from L.A. after a marathon concert by Bruce Springsteen. Tim is asleep in the back, and as we approach Fresno, the sun starts peeking over the Sierra Nevadas.
And the song that’s blaring from the cassette deck: “Ramble Tamble.” I think about this every time I hear that song.
Here’s the other thing: I’m almost positive that this memory is false.
Every single one of those details above absolutely happened in one detail or another, but probably not in the combination I described above. But that’s OK, because it really isn’t about the specific memory, per se, but rather what that memory represents: when I had all of the godsdammed time in the world to take a couple of days just to see someone play music for a couple of hours.
You may not believe it, but in the early 1980s, Fresno, California wasn’t considered a primo concert destination for the biggest acts of the time. Not only were there only a couple of larger concert venues — the venerable Ratcliffe Stadium and the ear-busting Selland Arena, but Fresno apparently had a reputation as a tough place to play.
One story, which may or may not be apocryphal, was that Led Zeppelin came to Fresno after their first album, and was so poorly received that they vowed never to play there again. Bruce Springsteen was scheduled to play the Warner’s Theatre on the Darkness on The Edge of Town tour — which, judging from the bootlegs, was the tour where he became perhaps the greatest live rock performer ever — and sales were so poor that he canceled.
And gods forbid if you were an opening band for Van Halen: I watch both the Fabulous Poodles and The Fools both get treated just brutally as opening acts for David Lee & the boys. Though, in both cases, the opening acts were so mismatched that it’s like Van Halen did it on purpose.
In any event, back in the early 80s, if we really wanted to see anybody, we needed to take a road trip.
Road trip!
Every few months for the first half 1980s, Tim & I (and whomever else was interested) would hop into someone’s beat-up car and head down to Los Angeles or up to San Francisco to see a band that just wasn’t ever coming to Fresno. The Who. Monty Python. Bruce Springsteen. The Jam. Tom Petty. The Rolling Stones. The Grateful Dead. The Kinks. U2. The US Festival, on and on and on. (Including, for some unfathomable reason, REO Speedwagon.)
Who knows how we could afford it? Naturally, in the pre-Tickemaster monopoly days, tickets were cheaper, but in the early 80s, gas really wasn’t in relationship to what we were making, so every one of these trips was done as cheaply as possible. Sharing hotel rooms was one way, but the novelty wore off, so there was a lot of crashing on couches, but the best way, of course, was the high-speed all-nighter road trip. Drive up, watch the show, drive back. I could do that pretty easily in my early 20s, especially when I was amped on caffeine and whatever was playing on the cassette deck.
Which was the key: having good driving music. These road trips would have been unthinkable without the crappy cassette decks that we all had, that played tinny-sounding songs from worn-out tapes at volumes that could never quite compete with the roar from 4×60 AC we used to desperately attempt to keep the car cool.
The rule, of course, was “driver chooses the music,” which was why I drove as much as I could, and when I wasn’t, cajoled and lobbied, always looking for that perfect mix of song and time and place. But naturally, it was usually music that everybody loved, which meant that it was heavy on classic favorites: either mix tapes of artists like The Who or The Rolling Stones, or just straight-out albums where we knew every word to every song: Quadrophenia, Catch a Fire, Let It Bleed, Abbey Road, and of course, Cosmo’s Factory.
Cosmo’s Factory was my favorite of all of the Creedence Clearwater Revival albums — their most consistent record, always defined for me by the moment where you had to turn the record over / flip the tape to get from “Run Through The Jungle” to “Up Around The Bend.” And it led off with “Ramble Tamble.”
Ah, “Ramble Tamble,” now that’s a song. Along with “Born on the Bayou,” the best thing they ever did. Two light-speed choogles bookending a Beatles-meet-Velvet Underground mid-section that to this day doesn’t really sound much like anything before or after. And lyrically prescient, as well: John Fogerty was decrying “actors in the White House” a good decade before Reagan took office.
No wonder that Steve Hyden of the A.V. Club called it the most rocking song of all time.
Who know how many times “Ramble Tamble” was played on one of these road trips? But it was just that once that I remember, even if it really didn’t happen that way at all.
I adore this song so very, very much. I have since the first time I heard it. (One of Joe’s records that he left behind in the room he occupied before me at Vic’s, I think?) The Beatles-meet-VU section you describe transfixed me then and still does now.
I’ve always had a special appreciation for those sorts of…frack, I don’t know what to call them. Repetitive instrumental jams? (Ooooh…I’m listening to “Ramble Tamble” right now, and as always, the Terry Riley-esque piano that begins at 3:09 slays me.) That doesn’t seem quite right, somehow, but my knowledge of musical terms is lacking. I don’t enjoy them any less for not knowing the theory and terminology, of course, but it would still be nice to know.
A few examples off the top of my head:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQJO0UVgLqg “Sir Psycho Sexy” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, from 5:36 onwards. That could be the whole song and twenty minutes long and I’d be thrilled.
“Loose Change” by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, from 2:35 onwards. I was at one of the stealth shows in ’96 when they played a seventeen-minute version. Bliss. I need to dig that tape up.
http://www.mystrands.com/track/1472696 “Myopia” by Man or Astro-Man? Short clip, but it gets the point across.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuFSblQkPMY “Dirge” by Death in Vegas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfh_vubfLOg “Looney Tunes B-Side” by Yo La Tengo. (They start playing it about four minutes into the clip.) I prefer the ultra-rare studio version, but this also gets the point across.
Though it’s not an instrumental, Sonic Youth’s cover of “I’m Not There” fits the bill for me–for as much as I dig the vocal, if it was just an instrumental and went on twice as long, I’d be happy, especially with how the feedbacky guitars continue to build up in the background. Which, now I think about it, is an element to most of the rest of these–an increase in the overall noise level and/or intensity.
Oddly enough, the coda to “Layla” fits the technical requirements, but it just doesn’t work for me. Too pretty, perhaps.
Nice piece Jim, it’s been years since I took a concert road trip but I still remember vividly the lengths I used to do to see bands and the importance of good road trip music.
Thanks Will!
Ironically, I now live only minutes away from some of the best places in the world to see shows, but I can’t really be bothered.
I think that this is a function of age, sadly enough.
There was always an equation between pleasure derived from live music and pain in the ass factor involved with seeing that music, and as I’ve gotten older, the latter has mostly outgrown the former.
I’m not as old as Jim, but I don’t go to as many concerts as I would like to either. Or ballgames for that matter. Things like time and money factor in right now. I do know that he went to at least two concerts last year, Wilco and Bruce Springsteen.
The reason we went to go see R.E.O. Speedwagon was…was…um…forgot. I think we must have won free tickets. Or took some females. Or not. Actually, you know how Journey is all kitschy cool right now? I think R.E.O. is due for a reputation retrofit. And speaking of similar abbreviations, I can’t wait to see R.E.M. Speedwagon at the Hollywood Bowl next Thursday. I hope they do Keep On Loving The One I Love.
And by the way, Ramble Tamble is the greatest song ever.
I don’t remember Jim driving all that much on these trips; I’m pretty sure that mostly he called “shotgun” and then insisted on monopolizing the tape deck. But the music was generally good, so nobody complained much.
I think that Larry speaks the truth — I don’t remember driving his car all that often, or at all, really. (Though I can’t believe that I never drove it.) Though as the decade wore on, he was one of the first of us to escape Fresno, and some of the road trips began to involve visiting him as part of the overall plan.
Yo La Tengo has made a career doing these types of things: the instrumental section in “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind,” is a prime example.
I know that on at least one occasion, Ramble Tamble was the FIRST song played on the journey. Road music and all.
One of the reasons that Jim dominated the tape deck is that he was the one who bothered to make the mixed tapes, group tapes, etc. And as we all listened to more or less the same things, all good.
The tendency towards stereo domination runs in the family, I assure you.
would like to know where i can find “Cosmos Factory”
on cd to buy