Showing posts with label 1966. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1966. Show all posts

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Remains : Don't Look Back

The RemainsA ton of great rock music came out in the late 60's, as everybody and their brother (and sometimes their sister) wanted to be the next Beatles. And like today's interwebs, which lets everybody and their laptop write, record and distribute their own magnum opus, there were a slew of little garage bands recording actual 45's for local labels. These labels would push the tunes out to local radio and sometimes they would become regional hits.

"Don't Look Back" is a one of these garage rockers from '66. It's got a driving beat and rocks as hard as anything Green Day's released in the past ten years. It's got a hammered three-on-two stuttering stop-start chorus with excellent harmonies and a wild freakbeat breakdown smack in the middle of the tune. And the lyrics are a curious mix of hippie/punk anarchist seize-the-day attitude. It's a fantastic tune.

Cover for the Remains' 1966 eponymous release.In the late 70's and early 80's some collectors gathered up some of these garage and psychedelic songs and pumped out a bunch of compilations dedicated to this stuff, primarily the Nuggets and Pebbles series. This one comes from the fantastic Nuggets box set on Rhino records. If you like this stuff, you can't go wrong with it. You can also find it on the re-release of the Remains' eponymous only album.

[You can listen to The Remains' "Don't Look Back" by navigating to the post "Song035" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

David Bowie : Good Morning Girl

Well, well, well. Originally I thought this would be a stumper, since I thought this tune had been issued under Bowie's real name, David Jones. Turns out I was wrong. A couple of early singles were issued under variations of his birthname, but by the time this one arrived, he was officially David Bowie, and so began his stellar career.

"Good Morning Girl" finds Bowie at his swingin'est. Brian Eno once called him a musical chameleon, in that he could sing in any style you please. Here, he seems to be channeling Georgie Fame, another Brit swinger from the mid-to-late sixties, or maybe one of the more frenetic Dolenz-penned-and-sung Monkees singles, like "Randy Scouse Git", although they didn't really crest until '67.

The song pops along with an upbeat rock swing and a great hook. Bowie's delivery is quick, almost manic (for him anyway), but the best part is when Bowie drops in some passages of groovy scat. It's a gas, baby!

"Good Morning Girl" is the B-side of the 1966 Pye single "Do Anything You Say", which I've never had the pleasure of hearing, and is available on several Early Bowie packages.

[You can listen to David Bowie's "Good Morning Girl" by navigating to the post "Song013" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]