Monday, January 5, 2015

I Hear Dead People--Everywhere

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and welcome to The Broadly Eclectic's salute to dead people, specifically musicians who've passed on in the past year.  There are relatively few that I could find and was willing to play (none of them women!) and, somewhat surprisingly, given the ages of those musicians of my generation, and the "care" they took of themselves, there were no really huge names.  Probably the biggest stars to fade out this year were Pete Seeger (and he was past 90), Joe Cocker and Jack Bruce.  But a number of just slightly lesser lights also moved on, and they're all gonna get recognition this week.

There's Ian McLagan, keyboard player extraordinaire, best known for his work with Small Faces (and later Faces) which he co-founded, the Stones, Billy Bragg--ah, 'most everyone worth playing with.  Another famous sideman, Bobby Keys, also died last year.  He too played with just about everyone, from the Stones to Joe Cocker to Delaney and Bonnie and on and on.  Even if he didn't have some memorable sax passages he deserves to be immortalized for having gotten kicked out of The Rolling Stones for partying too much and ingesting too many substances: The Rolling Stones, for chrissakes.  The final straw purportedly involved a groupie and a bathtub full of Dom Perignon, but it was just one groupie, in fairness.  Well, you can decide if that was fair or not, I guess, based on some archaic and prudish moral code.

Paul Revere (nee Paul Revere Dick, no kidding; I think dropping the "Dick" was a good call) also died in 2014.  I had mostly forgotten him and The Raiders, but they had a few garage-band-ish hits in the 60s, all done up in their Revolutionary War/Sgt. Pepper garb, tri-corner hats and all.  They were also essentially the house band for a Dick Clark show called "Where The Action Is" and which ran daily for nearly two years, telecast in the afternoon, of all times, usually filmed on a beach with no apparent electric connection for instruments or mikes.  Things were different then.

And finally, I have to single out Phil Everly, who virtually invented harmony singing, at least as far as the Rock Era is concerned.  He and his brother Don were maybe also the first of the battling brothers in rock music, followed by the Davies bros. of the Kinks and the Gallaghers of Oasis, siblings who just couldn't get along well enough to keep their respective bands together, often fighting physically and ultimately ending up not speaking to each other.  Oh, I guess you need a pretty healthy ego just to make it in showbiz, and those egos can be tough to keep in check, and boys will be boys, after all (cf. Bobby Keys, above).

Well, after that wicked uninspired (and uninspiring) lead in, here are the tunes I'll spin this week:

Into The Mystic                                                               Joe Cocker
Debris                                                                              Faces/Ian McLagan
Maybe I'm Amazed                                                                  Ditto
Mystifies Me                                                                    Ian McLagan & The Bump Band
Glad And Sorry                                                                          Ditto
Can't You Hear Me Knocking                                           Rolling Stones (Bobby Keys)
Brown Sugar                                                                                    Ditto
I Got The Blues                                                                                Ditto
Live With Me                                                                                   And Again
Theme For An Imaginary Western                                    Jack Bruce
What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted                              Jimmy Ruffin
I Wanna Be Your Dog                                                        The Stooges (Scott Asheton, drums)
Kicks                                                                                  Paul Revere & The Raiders
Hungry                                                                                          Ditto
Just Like Me                                                                                  Ditto
I Wanna Be Sedated                                                           The Ramones (Tommy, the drummer)
Blue Mood                                                                          Johnny Winter
It's All Over Now                                                               Bobby Womack
Rhumba Man                                                                      Jesse Winchester
Zyryab                                                                                Paco De Lucia
Waist Deep In The Big Muddy                                           Pete Seeger
This Land Is Your Land                                                      Pete Seeger
Cathy's Clown                                                                     Everly Bros.
Snowflake Bombardier                                                       Phil Everly
Bye Bye Love                                                                     Everlys
('Til) I Kissed You                                                              Everlys
All I Have To Do Is Dream                                                Everlys
No More Mr. Nice Guy                                                      Alice Cooper(Dick Wagner, guitar)
Only Women Bleed                                                            Alice Cooper (Dick Wagner, guitar)

All this tribute will take place Tuesday, noon till two at the usual spot, 91.5 FM, wool.fm.

Next week:  The worst song in the history of music, of humanity, of the planet, pre- and post-humanity.  And it just came out last year!  I can't wait.

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