Music For Nimrods 28 August

It was quite a few years ago when I first heard of the mad daddy, aka Pete Myers. it was a wee boxout in Uncut magazine, probably between articles about Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd. Or the Who and the Stones. or, well you get the idea. A diamond in the rough is essentially what I mean.

Pete Myers was a DJ in the late 1950s, and broadcast on WHK in Cleveland. He created a persona for himself, The Mad Daddy, a good natured ghoul with his own far out rhyming patter.

The Mad Daddy show was one wild ride, with Daddy riffing his way through sound effects, distortion and the craziest music of the day. Daddy played the kind of Rock n Roll seldom heard by white ears and this helped him tap into the Ohioan teenage psyche. His off the cuff riffs and rhymes and advertising ad libs are what I think of when I think of American Rock n Roll Radio. Crazy shit done at 100mph, and with a real enthusiasm that few in the UK seem to have done (As far as I know anyway) And Pete was pretty mad away from the studio too, whilst on a contractually enforced 2 week sabbatical he was worried that Cleveland’s throttle jammers and mellow muffins may lose interest, so he arranged a publicity stunt; parachuting into a harbour full of Jello whilst dressed as Zorro, flinging records out on his descent. Lets forget the costume, records and dessertification of a working harbour were kyboshed by the authorities, Pete actually did the jump. His first ever! Mad? you better believe it…

Like all the best stories, this one has a tragic ending. Pete got the chance of going out on a New York station, and jumped at it. However those east coast morons just didn’t get Daddy, and the gig was cancelled after one show. The Mad Daddy flitted about a few other stations after that, and even transmogrified back into plain old Pete, but it seems he became depressed and disillusioned by his New York experience. Pete Myers committed suicide on October 4th 1968.

So long, Daddy. Let me pay a small salute by airing his 2nd last show on WHK ( I think), and lastly how about The Cramps own tribute. Lux Interior was one of Oobladi’s most fervent Mad Minions

squareamerica.com

Click on the pic, cats and kittens!

bob regan – tarantula
bobby bare – vampire
bracey everett – the lovers curse
the champs – experiment in terror
colin cook – heeby jeebies
jackie cannon – chill bumps
jerry dallman – the bug
ralph nielson & the chancellors – scream
the reekers – dont call me bug face
ronnie dawson – rockin bones
tommy bell – midnite dreams
trini lopez – fever
wild tones – martian band
jackie morningstar – rockin in the graveyard
rod willis – the cat
joe wallace – leopard man
tommy roe – caveman
phantom five – graveyard
round robin – i’m the wolfman
randy luck – i was a teenage caveman
bobby please – the monster
terry teen – the hearse

About 4 years ago a friend handed me ‘Post to Wire’ and told me to have a listen. The cover looked promising; a beat up caravan, sorry trailer, with the legend THIS IS THE LAND OF BROKEN DREAMS writ large on the siding and providing a major hint to the content. I don’t need to tell you this is a great album, and the one which broke Richmond Fontaine to the UK. Songs of heartbreak and loneliness interspersed with the inventive ‘Postcard From…’ vignettes set to a modern western sound; I played it nonstop and was hooked.

Post to Wire was the 5th release by the Fontaine, so I dug back a bit to hear the older stuff and was surprised to find a different sound. In amongst the rootsy tunes on Lost Son, Miles From and Safety there is a beating guitar heart borne from the likes of Hüsker Dü and Green on Red. Some real gems amongst these first outings too, check out Pinkerton, Cascade, Blinding Sight and Safety. The 4th album, Winnemucca, is a stone fucking classic. Northline, 5 Degrees below Zero and Western Skyline are 3 of the finest contemporary Americana songs you’ll ever hear. Whatever happened between Lost Son and Winnemucca changed the sound of the band for good. Winnemuca is an album forged from desert desperation. With the (relative) success of Post to Wire you may think RF would have continued to mine the same seam on their next release The Fitzgerald but in a courageous move they went for a stripped down Nebraska style sound. I’ll admit this was a slow burner for me, but perseverance brings reward, Mabel. The craft behind the songs on The Fitzgerald is incredible. If you can listen to The Janitor without feeling a lump in the throat then you truly are a cold, heartless bastard. One of the things I love about the Fontaine is the ever changing sound and Thirteen Cities (plus the subsequent $87… EP) stayed true to form. Guests such as Howe Gelb and Calexico’s Jacob Valenzuela fleshed out a mariachi vibe to the record. There was something of a more accessible sound in a few of the tracks like Capsized and the astonishing Four Walls, they would sit well in any radio playlist… but needless to say don’t. If Chris Martin wrote Four Walls Radio 1 would fucking wet themselves.

We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded like a River is the current release and doing pretty well by all accounts. It builds on the Thirteen Cities vibe, written and played in an accessible way but still retaining the dark undercurrent of Willy Vlautin’s lyrics. When Willy Vlautin writes he writes of the people around him; blue collar guys, waitresses, gamblers and drifters. The Boyfriends is Vlautin’s part nostalgic, part pained look back at the men in his (recently departed) mother’s life.
If my mother was alive I would never have written that song…even though I’m not attacking her in it. All I can say is I can’t remember any of my teachers or half the kids I went to school with, but I remember all of my mom’s boyfriends. And they’re stuck in my head like a fucking hammer. So I had to write this song.
He’s always written that way. On Safety the track White Line Fever has a trucker take centre stage in, for me, one of RF’s greatest moments. Drama, tragedy and human weakness are all played out with a rolling, tumultuous soundtrack. This song resurfaced on ‘obliteration by time’ sounding even better than before. If you check out one song from this post let it be ‘White Line Fever’ Vlautin is also enjoying success as a novelist, his first two novels getting great reviews and his third, Lean on Pete is due out next year. But don’t go away thinking Richmond Fontaine is all Willy Vlautin; it’s a bunch of friends playing together and enjoying what they do. Hopefully the new album will be a success for them, and they can continue making My Favourite Music.

And as wee treat, here’s an exclusive Hooverville rendering of ‘$87 and a conscience….’

In a heart breaking work of staggering originality we present our first rockin’ mix: Trains.

Carefully compiled by our resident 50′s throwback , there are some real gems in amongst the ‘names’. Check out the impish Iberians ‘Los Sirex’ and the fantastically named ‘Bob Ayers & the Secret Agent Men’

Click the pic!

Above these stupid words is the 2nd coolest looking guy on an album cover ever ( I will brawl with anyone who says the boss on darkness on the edge of town isn’t the crown prince of cool)

It is the weather beaten, world weary fizzer of Dennis Wilson. A quick look into those eyes tells you this is a man who has been through a lot. The Inglewood boy was part of the Beach Boys along with his brothers Brian and Carl, but I’m not going to give you a potted history of that most famous of bands…

It was a BBC radio 2 documentary that hipped me to Dennis. The most headline grabbing period of his life was the association with Charles Manson.  The Manson family moved in with a not entirely compliant Dennis and used  his wealth for their own benefit. Not least for curing their rampant Clap. From what I can make out Dennis became increasingly wary of Manson and started to distance himself. Looks like the final straw was when Charlie sent Dennis a bullet…… Understandably Dennis was always affected by his relationship with the guy who turned out be one the most infamous figures of the 60′s.

‘Pacific Ocean Blue’ was his first solo album, released in 1977, and reissued in 2008. Whilst not having the notoriety of Brian’s lost/delayed ‘Smile’ it nonetheless is a fine piece of work. In todays media Brian hogs all the limelight, and perhaps fair enough, but I’m glad I was tuned into the tranny the night Dennis’ story was told. And what became of this bearded wild man? On december 28 1983, Dennis went swimming in the ocean at Marina Del Ray, and didn’t come back out.

They say I live a fast life. Maybe I just like a fast life. I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world. It won’t last forever, either. But the memories will.

So read the sleevenote on a 7” vinyl platter that arrived unannounced in 1977 on Virgin Records. A single by Roky Erickson, Texan psychedelic frontiersman and victim. If you were into music (and particularly if you were a fan of Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation) you knew the story of Roky and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Lysergically charged they blazed through Texas and San Francisco in the sixties until Roky copped a drug charge and pled guilty but insane. Ending up in a state mental hospital all accounts said that if he wasn’t insane when he went in he certainly was when he got out.
So like Barrett and Spence, Erickson was consigned to that bin of burned out acid casualties, never more to be heard from again. It was a bolt from the blue to hear him again, not only on the Virgin single but even more so on a French import single that had four songs that grabbed the listener’s brain in a vicelock. “Bermuda” was a song about the Bermuda triangle that incorporated the devil and had Chinese Alien guitar and electric auro harp backing Roky’s frenzied vocal.
Unhappily, although Roky went on to record several albums he never again caught the feral ferocity of these releases. Subsequent albums found him mining a comic horror vein with songs about zombies and other horror staples. Rerecordings of some of these songs were cool but lacked that killer touch. The eighties and nineties found him continuing to be troubled and it is only in recent years that he has seemed to hopefully put his demons behind him.

Screw that, Claude.

T Model Ford plays filthy scuzz blues meant for drinkin’ dancin’ fuckin’ and fightin’ The 84  year old (or 85, he cant quite remember) ex trucker, ex farm hand and ex con (Murder. 10 years. Out in two, if you’re wondering) didn’t start playing till he turned 58 and started recording at 74, on fat possum records.  By all accounts this hard livin’ pensioner still plays for hours outside his house and on Nelson Street, Greenville Mississippi. “People were rough on Nelson Street. I fought a couple of times up there, but I didn’t get whupped. I win!”

Check out his page at fat possum for details of the 5 releases so far. T Model reckons he’ll keep going till 110 years old, so there’s plenty of life left in the Old Taildragger yet!

Click Play to hear She Asked Me So I Told Her