Rockabilly

Second 3D Stop

June 29, 2020 by Marty Masters

I’m your Uncle Marty, with our 541st 3D chapter, as we evaluate what STOPs to make during this pandemic thing that is going around. Social distancing can be difficult in both dance and romance, so we’ll consider those sub themes within this halting feature for you this time on The Award Winning RadioActivity!

Download or play here:
https://archive.org/download/The3dRadioactivity/3dradio_20200628-Second3DStop.mp3

We hope you continue to be careful in these isolating times, as we have provided numerous chapters of Quarantine styled STOP, STAY & ALONE themed music along with a few more honoring those who have checked out due to corona cooties. You may recall that we Boogied and Woogied a year ago or so, and believe it or not we’ve played over 125 tunes along those lines, yet there are well over 300 more that have not graced our airwaves and are ready to roll out. For our Summertime Seconds, we could Boogie Woogie our way into Fall, so that is just what we are thinking of doing! If you or your dog have any suggestions, be sure to let me know via email, or with a message on our Facebook page which has links to the archives of all the earlier episodes and graphics in the photo section. Look for us on Denver’s MileHiRadio, Theacidflashback.com, http://www.villageconnectionmagazine.com/ Long Island, New York, TuneIn and InternetFM dot com, because the best FM radio is now on the Internet.

Until we meet again, Keep Rockin’ On!

…Uncle Marty

“It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.”

…Marilyn Monroe

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “State Trooper” by Bruce Springsteen

June 29, 2020 by Eric Berman

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “State Trooper” by Bruce Springsteen

The guttural howls that he lets out at the end of this psychobilly classic mixed with its pleading paranoid lyrics conjures the mood of pure dread…and with Bruce Springsteen’s sixth album, it was all about mood.

Hot on the heels of The River, his biggest album yet from 1980, and after several years on the road with The E Street Band touring to support it, Springsteen found himself back at home in Colts Neck, NJ with some restless free time on his hand and lots of bummer songs rattling around his brain.

A change of work habits was in the air as well. Rather than writing songs in the studio with the band waiting around as he had done up to this point resulting in albums taking years to complete, Springsteen called upon his engineer friend Mike Batlin to set up a primitive home studio so he could create demos of his new set of songs to be presented to the band in the studio. Springsteen worked fast at home and over a period of few days at the end of 1981, he captured fourteen new songs on his very basic Tascam 4-Track cassette recorder including early versions of songs that wouldn’t see the light of day for several years to come including “Born In The USA,” “Pink Cadillac” and “Working On The Highway” (then titled “Child Bride”).

Springsteen proceeded to carry the cassette of his stark new songs around with him for several weeks before making a copy and sending it to his manager, Jon Landau, who was blown away by not only the darkness and depth of the material, but the change of musical direction he heard.

Upon reconvening in the studio with the E Streeters to work up full band versions of the songs, it became evident that the band couldn’t capture the dark, desolate feeling that these songs needed. So a remixed version of the “demo” cassette that Springsteen recorded at home literally became his next record.

Once the bigwigs at Columbia Records got it in their head that they weren’t going to be releasing another blockbuster Springsteen record as the follow-up to The River, they devised a laid-back promotional campaign to suit the material. Springsteen fans were confused with the release of Nebraska in 1982, but the critics were rightfully blown away by its austere grandeur, hailing the record as one of his best…which it, indeed, still is.

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Lemmings Lament” by National Lampoon

June 27, 2020 by Eric Berman

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Lemmings Lament” by National Lampoon

“Welcome to the Woodshuck Memorial Festival: Three Days Of Peace, Love And Death!”

So began one of the funniest and spot-on parodies of the Woodstock generation with this announcement made by none other than John Belushi. Lemmings was performed as a stage show by National Lampoon in 1973, and not only launched the career of Belushi, but also introduced many of us to Chevy Chase, Tony Hendra and Christopher Guest.

The show opened at the Village Gate, in New York City, on January 25, 1973, and ran for 350 performances. It included a then-unknown John Belushi performing a parody of Joe Cocker on the song “Lonely At The Bottom” (with fellow Lampooner Paul Jacobs taking on the part of Leon Russell). Belushi’s Cocker would reach a much wider audience on Saturday Night Live several years later.

Other parodies included “Highway Toes” performed by Christopher Guest (This Is Spinal Tap, Best In Show, Waiting For Guffman and A Mighty Wind) taking on James Taylor, “Positively Wall Street” also by Guest, this time as Bob Dylan and “Pizza Man,” a send up of ‘50s Rock and Roll hilariously performed by Alice Playton. Today’s Song Of the Day, “Lemming Lament” was performed by Paul Jacobs, Christopher Guest, Alice Playton and John Belushi, billed as Freud, Marx, Engels and Jung, taking the piss out of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

I’ve been a fan of this album since it came out in 1973, but I never knew of the existence of a filmed performance that was released on VHS many years ago. Of course, it is now out of print on video again, but it turns up in its entirety on YouTube every so often.

The Lemmings album was not National Lampoon’s first foray into musical parody. They released the album Radio Dinner the year before which also featured Christopher Guest and Tony Hendra (who does a great John Lennon on “Magical Misery Tour”), along with SNL alum Michael O’Donoghue and Melissa Manchester. The Lampoon would go to the well again in 1975, with the album Goodbye Pop featuring Christopher Guest, Paul Jacobs, Paul Shaffer, and future SNL alum Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner.

John Belushi as the Woodshuck announcer parodying an actual Woodstock announcement: “There isn’t enough food to go around. There just isn’t enough food. So remember, the man next to you is your dinner.” Classic…all the way!

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “He’s My Baby” by Jean Shepard

June 21, 2020 by Eric Berman

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “He’s My Baby” by Jean Shepard

There was an interesting time during the late 1950s where straight Country and Western music melded with then-burgeoning Rock ‘n’ Roll and Rhythm ‘n’ Blues, giving birth to a new form of music called Rockabilly. Capitol records was a hotbed for Rockabilly recording crossover artists like Ferlin Husky, Faron Young, Wanda Jackson, Hank Thompson, Jerry Reed, Gene Vincent and Skeets McDonald.

Jean Shepard was a member of The Grand Ole Opry who scored her first #1 hit back in 1953 as a duet with Ferlin Husky called “A Dear John Letter” and followed it with the top 10 hit “A Satisfied Mind” a few years later. She went on to become a star of recorded music and TV variety shows during the 1950s and recorded this early Rockabilly gem in 1958.

She married Hawkshaw Hawkins in 1960 who would perish in the same plane crash that took Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas and went on to have country chart hits throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 2011.

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Think” by The 5 Royales

June 20, 2020 by Eric Berman

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Think” by The 5 Royales

If ever a group deserved to be in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, it should be The 5 Royales.

Not only were they a pioneering R’n’B and Doo Wop vocal group, but they had one of the greatest songwriters of the era in Lowman “Pete” Pauling as a member. Pauling wrote most of the Royales’ material and many of their songs went on to be big hits for others.

The 5 Royales were formed in North Carolina in the early 1950s and consisted of Lowman “Pete” Pauling, Jimmy Moore, Obadiah Carter, Otto Jeffries and Johnny Tanner. They recorded for King Records and had chart success with songs like “Monkey Hips And Rice,” “Baby Don’t Do It” and “Somebody Help Me.” But it was the songs that were penned by Pauling and recorded by others that really made them legends.

The group was responsible for introducing today’s Song Of The Day that later went on to be a big soul hit for James Brown. They also recorded the original versions of “Dedicated To The One I Love” made famous by both The Shirelles and The Mamas & The Papas, and “Tell The Truth” which was originally recorded by Ray Charles.

Song of the Day – “The Mercy Seat” by Johnny Cash

June 3, 2020 by Eric Berman

Song of the Day by Eric Berman – “The Mercy Seat” by Johnny Cash

By the year 2000 and the third album in the American series, Johnny Cash had reestablished himself as one of the greatest singers, not just in country music, but in all music. Producer, Rick Rubin, began working with him several years before and allowed Johnny Cash do what he did best in the studio…be JOHNNY CASH!

Cash began working with Rick Rubin in 1994. Rubin was the founder of Def Jam Records, and was responsible for producing seminal recordings by Public Enemy and The Beastie Boys. It must have taken quite a leap of faith for Johnny Cash to, not only work with Rick Rubin who was much younger than him, but to put his career in his hands.

When they first began working together, Cash’s career was pretty much over. He had recorded several ho-hum records for the Mercury label during the mid-to-late 1980s that were nothing special, and even resorted to re-recording some of his older hits for the label. I caught Cash in concert in a small New York City bar back in 1986 when he was touring behind the album Water from the Wells of Home. His career was so far off the mark, that the place was not even half full, although I must say that he was terrific. The performance was marred by his proclivity to allow his son and wife to take precious concert time away from the main attraction, in order for them to perform their own material.

Rubin’s whole modus operandi with Cash was to make bare guitar and voice recordings that would highlight what a great interpreter of material he was. In doing so, Rubin sent Cash tapes of songs he liked, exposing him to material he had never heard by the likes of Tom Petty, Beck, Soundgarden, U2 and Nick Cave, who wrote today’s Song of the Day by Eric Berman.

For American III: Solitary Man, Rubin assembled an all-star list of backing musicians including Norman Blake, Mike Campbell, Randy Scruggs and Marty Stuart on guitar, Tom Petty, Merle Haggard and Shreyl Crow on backing vocals and Bentmont Tench on organ. “The Mercy Seat” is probably Cash’s most harrowing recording, even more so than Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ original from their 1988 album Tender Prey.

Of the five American Recordings albums, not to mention the five CD Cash Unearthed box set with more Rubin/Cash collaborations, the American III: Solitary Man album is one of the most enjoyable on every level mainly because of its superb choice of cover songs by Tom Petty (“I Won’t Back Down”), Neil Diamond (“Solitary Man”) and U2 (“One”). Together, Cash and Rubin formulated a record that kept Johnny Cash not only relevant with the hip cognoscenti, but also true to himself as a recording artist.

And as for what Nick Cave thought about Cash’s cover, his pride oozes out of every word in the following quote… “It doesn’t matter what anyone says, Johnny Cash recorded my song.”

Song Of The Day – “The Uncle Meat Variations” by The Mothers Of Invention

May 28, 2020 by Eric Berman

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “The Uncle Meat Variations” by The Mothers Of Invention

Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Dvorak…the alphabet of classical composers goes on and on…and then you come to “Z.”

May I offer “Zappa?” Yup, Frank Zappa…an artist whose music will be studied by serious composers for generations to come.

You don’t believe me? Then check out today’s Song of the Day by Eric Berman, “The Uncle Meat Variations” from Uncle Meat.

The Uncle Meat album was released in 1969 and was conceived as a soundtrack to a science fiction film that was never finished. The front cover sported the following subtitle: “Most of the music from the Mother’s movie of the same name which we haven’t got enough money to finish yet.”

A finished version of the film was released in the late 1980s bearing many of the scenes filmed for the movie and was rather incoherent. The double album was also planned as part of a suite of albums called No Commercial Potential that included the Mothers’ records Lumpy Gravy, We’re Only In It For The Money and Cruising with Reuben & the Jets.

Frank Zappa: “It’s all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definitely related.” (Zappa: A Biography – Barry Miles)

The Mothers consisted of Frank Zappa, Ray Collins on vocals, Jimmy Carl Black on drums, Roy Estrada on bass, Don Preston on keyboards, Billy Mundi on drums, Bunk Gardner on woodwinds, Ian Underwood on keyboards, Artie Tripp on percussion and Euclid James “Motorhead” Sherwood on saxophone.

The album is one of The Mothers’ and Zappa’s finest, and I opine that it will be studied by serious musicians for years to come.

So, “Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

“Fuzzy dice and bongos”…indeed!

3D Stop QUARANTUNES

May 21, 2020 by Marty Masters

I’m everybody’s Uncle Marty, as The Award Winning 3D RadioActivity hits episode 534, with more of our QUARANTUNES advising all to as they say in London to “Mind The Gap” only in this case it is social distancing, not the underground. That said, the idea is not to halt all the dancing, as this time we are pulling out all the STOPS!

Download or play here
https://archive.org/download/The3dRadioactivity/3dradio_20200510-3DStopQUARANTUNES.mp3

We hope that our musical selections have provided pause to ponder and help us all to STOP getting too close to each other, as next time up we will review more choice QUARANTUNES for and with you. I was happy to get in ones for Ken, Tom, Susan, Candi, & Sundae this week, as they checked in to let me know what was on their mind. Got any suggestions? Then tell me by sending comments or suggestions via our Facebook page which has links to the archives of all the earlier episodes and graphics in the photo section, or by email . Tell all your circle of best friends and family to look for us on Theacidflashback.com, http://www.villageconnectionmagazine.com/ Long Island, New York; Denver’s MileHiRadio, TuneIn and InternetFM dot com, because the best FM radio is now on the Internet.

Until we meet again, as Al always says, “Rock On!”

…Uncle Marty

“It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.”

…Marilyn Monroe

Stay RadioActive

April 29, 2020 by Marty Masters

I’m your Uncle Marty, this is chapter 532 of The Award Winning 3D RadioActivity, as we continue our QUARANTINE themed music with selections that will compel you, and your dog to STAY.

Download or play here
https://archive.org/download/The3dRadioactivity/3dradio_20200426-StayRadioActive.mp3

That’s almost it for our STAY in QUARANTINE, we will continue the theme ALONE with you on our next adventure in 3D. Got any suggestions? Then tell me by sending comments or suggestions via our Facebook page which has links to the archives of all the earlier episodes and graphics in the photo section, or by email . Tell all your circle of best friends and family to look for us on Theacidflashback.com, http://www.villageconnectionmagazine.com/ Long Island, New York; Denver’s MileHiRadio, TuneIn and InternetFM dot com, because the best FM radio is now on the Internet.

Until we meet again, Always Rock On!

…Uncle Marty

“It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.”

…Marilyn Monroe

Song Of The Day – “He’ll Have To Go” by Jim Reeves

April 18, 2020 by Eric Berman

They called him “Gentleman Jim,” but it wasn’t always that way.

When Jim Reeves began his singing career, he was a reedy-voiced country bumpkin who specialized in novelty songs like “Bimbo” and “Mexican Joe.” A shift came in 1957 during the recording sessions for the song “Four Walls.” Reeves decided he wanted to set the session up differently, leaving pedal steels and fiddles by the wayside in favor of a more uptown sound featuring smooth background vocals by The Jordanaires, tasteful slip-note piano fills courtesy of Floyd Cramer and spare guitar strumming courtesy of Chet Atkins.

But the real change came in Reeves’ approach to his singing. With his mouth up close to the microphone, he sang in a smooth, intimate whisper-deep croon more akin to Perry Como than Hank Williams. The result was a single that topped the charts and sold 750,000 copies. Along with his change in performing style, Reeves left the Nudie styled suits on the hanger, and adopted a new cosmopolitan look complete with business suit and tie.

Today’s Song Of The Day took Reeves’ new approach to even greater heights. “He’ll Have To Go” was written by Joe and Audrey Allison and was first recorded by singer Billy Brown. When Brown’s version failed to make waves, Reeves recorded it using a small studio group featuring Floyd Cramer on piano, Marvin Hughes on the vibraphone, Bob Moore on bass, Buddy Harman on drums, Hank Garland on guitar and the Anita Kerr Singers on the background vocals.

Reeves had his intimate way with the song’s intimate lyrics: “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone/Let’s pretend that we’re together all alone/I’ll tell the man to turn the juke box way down low/And you can tell your friend there with you he’ll have to go,” genuflecting his voice way down low to match the lyrics.

The song was originally released as the B-side of a single with “In a Mansion Stands My Love” on the A-side, however DJs flipped it over resulting in a country hit that stayed at the top of the charts for 14 consecutive weeks! (The song also climbed to the #2 slot on the pop charts and #13 on the R&B charts.) Over the years, it has been covered by the likes of Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Ry Cooder, Elton John, Mark Knopfler and Bryan Ferry, to name but a few.

Unfortunately, Reeves reign on the charts was short-lived; he died, along with his manager and pianist, in a plane that he was piloting in Brentwood, TN on July 31, 1964 at the young age of 40 years old. Reeves widow continued to work with RCA Records to supply a steady stream of recordings through the pipeline and onto a public who couldn’t get enough. Many of the records had re-recorded backing tracks including a few posthumous duets with Patsy Cline, resulting in more than fifteen top-ten hits well into the 1980s and long after his death.