The Giant Panther

The Giant Panther and I have many bands in common even though I sometimes appears that we don't. One of the bands we both love is Talking Heads. The GP goes above and beyond even following David Byrne's (at times) lackluster solo career. He's an eclectic artist no doubt (David Byrne, not The Giant Panther), but once he left Talking Heads I struggled with his world beat rhythms and, dare I say it, his relative lack of commercial viability. I usually don't make those kinds of pronouncements, but Byrne seems out there to me. I was eating at my friend's brick oven pizza restaurant in the Fenway (Woody's Grill at 58 Hemenway Street in Boston...no web site unfortunately) about five years ago when the bartender broke out David Byrne's Daddy Go Down from his Feelings record. I'll probably catch flak for this from the GP on down, but I hadn't heard a David Byrne song I could get excited about since Talking Heads broke up. I'm sure that's blasphemy in some circles, but it's how I felt. But I rekindled my Byrne's jones with Daddy Go Down. He probably considers it a throwaway track, but I loved it. If you get a chance to snag that one somewhere I highly recommend it, but that's not what I came to talk about (as usual)...

I bought More Songs About Buildings and Food in late 1978 at a Midnight Madness Sale at Strawberries Records here in Boston. I think that franchise went under, but if it hasn't it is surely no longer relevant. I was at a record show in Dedham, MA last week and was pleasantly surprised at all the audiophiles still pouring over albums and equipment. I bought a marbled colored Dave Mason (Alone Together) record from 1970 and an album frame for it. I took it home and without so much as playing it to see if it skipped, I poured it into the frame and hung it up on my wall. Old timers may remember the cover of the record as Dave Mason (ex of Traffic fame by then) in a top hat standing in front of a large rock formation with "Alone Together" written in chalk or neatly spray painted on a rock in the background. Not only is that a great record, but at the time it came in a multi colored vinyl that is no longer produced. It was a mini collector's item and I always had a standard black copy. It was worth the trip out there just to bring home a piece of rock history. I know that sounds ridiculous, but for $7.50 (1/2 price!) it was a no brainer.

I guess my point is record albums were such an amazing concept. You just had true ownership with the artwork and in some cases the lyrics. You cared for the physical property or you wouldn't get to listen to it anymore. Today, I can download the new Kings of Leon, listen to it a couple of times and barely glance at the microscopic artwork attached to the file. No producer information, no studio location, no guest artist information...heck no artist information. I could listen to it twice or three times if I'm lucky and patient and off I go to another artist. I have over 55 thousand songs on my hard drive now and I've barely scratched the surface of what could be there. It wasn't like that with vinyl and I'm not one of those people who pine over the old days at all. I do pine for the days when artists got the full undivided attention of their audience at 20-25 minutes a side. Even if I play one album a year I'm so glad I didn't sell them back in the 80's. It's old school (insert joke here)!

More Songs About Building and Food was Talking Heads second album. I honestly think this is my favorite Heads record. They began to pick up the pace and do a little bit more rocking. It was still wicked art school eclectic, but it was a bit more accessible. They did a cover of Al Green's Take Me To The River and that is the song that the masses would know this record for, but not me. I loved songs like Found a Job and Warning Sign, but the song I always come back to, and frankly might be my very favorite Talking Heads song ever, is The Big Country. It's always on my iPod like device and I never ever get sick of hearing it. I remember it getting cursory airplay on WBCN and WCOZ in here in Boston at the time, but by the time the next record, Fear of Music, was released in 1979 it was all over for The Big Country. I don't think I've heard it on commercial radio in decades. Let's face it; the Talking Heads legacy is monstrous. They owned AOR radio from 1978 to 1984. No need to name the flat awesome individual tracks, but I will say that their "B" cuts are the ones to hone in on. The first three records are loaded with them. They are what makes Talking Heads such a great band. You can only hear the hits so often. Love live the music of Talking Heads!

Today's walk down memory lane takes us back to 1990. This won't take long either. An Irish band called Something Happens flashed across our collective rock radar screen as the century began its last decade. I didn't mention them in my earlier post about Irish rock because they came and went so fast I had forgotten about them. They toured fairly heavily, so I've heard, and got their big break warming up for a 1988 Simple Minds tour when that band still had it going on. They had signed with Virgin Records, but the marriage didn't last and they were dropped when they were unable to replicate the success of Stuck Together With God's Glue.

The song I'm posting today is called Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello (Petrol). The title is very irritating, but the song has always been a favorite of mine. There's a line near the end when the lead singer relays a comment a woman made to him about the beer goggle life. She says "I know I've had some when you start to look handsome." You have to laugh at that all around, but rhyming had some with handsome strikes me as pretty funny. Another fun fact I didn't know is that the parenthetic Petrol in the song title is an apparent homage to the band That Petrol Emotion. If the legend is true they stole the guitar riff from that act. I've always kind of liked TPE so that sort of makes sense. You don't often see bands fessing up in print like that. Another great early 90's one hit wonder type song was The Beloved's Hello. They could've added a few hellos to that song title as well since they speak sing the word hello more than Something Happens does. Ironically The Beloved Song came out roughly two months earlier than this one. Maybe I'll post the other song sometime soon, but if you have a chance to grab that one you should. Kind of a comical coincidence, but I would have gone with one Hello and then (Petrol) as my song title if I were a member of Something Happens.

To finish the thought on this Flash and The Pan (I kill myself...why do you suppose they didn't call themselves Flash IN The Pan?...no need to answer that one...I'll have to do some research on those guys, but they were like a four very good hit wonder band), Something Happens had some other claims to fame. I didn't see the film, but apparently they had a song called Burn Clear appear on the soundtrack of an Irish movie called The Courier. Hello was included in the top 50 singles of 1990 by the UK rock magazine New Musical Express (NME). They had a much later song called Forget Georgia that was covered by a Canadian Singer named Emm Gryner in 2005. And lastly a song from Stuck Together With God's Glue called Parachute was a minor hit along with Hello. I would venture to say this song is a rocker, but it definitely stood out as a single. It caught a lot of radio airplay back in the day so of course I had to buy the CD. I've had it on my mixed cut iPod like device for about a year (it can only come up about once every six weeks at best in case you are wondering...at an hour a day seven days a week that is). It's a real project changing the music so I don't do it that often. I'll probably wind up blogging about every song on there until I take the time to rotate them out. Even though it's a labor of love, I can never seem to get psyched up to do it. Every day at the gym I hear another song that I'm happy to hear, but is scheduled to be replaced. It seems to push off the project another month each time. It's crazy. Anyway...Hope you like Hello x 5 (Petrol)!

I was a huge fan of The Temptations as a kid. I STILL have a scratched up copy of the Ball of Confusion (That's What The World is Today) 45 RPM record on Gordy Records (a division of Motown) circa 1970. I don't know how many times I played the flip side, It's Summer, but I can tell you it wasn't many. The Tempations were and are legendary. Not so much for My Girl, Ain't Too Proud To Beg, Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) or The Way You Do The Things You Do, but for songs like (I Know) I'm Losing You, Can't Get Next To You, Psychedelic Shack, Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion and I Wish It Would Rain. They did it all; they danced, they sang, they harmonized, they broke down racial barriers and they rocked. They so belong in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But the biggest baddest granddaddy tune of their whole catalogue, the one that put a stake in the ground for all time, the one that pre-dated songs like Rambling Man and all the others was Papa Was a Rolling Stone. What a masterpiece! Even chopped to bits in 1972 for AM radio, Papa still clocked in around seven minutes. And they still played it! Boy, did they play it. All the way to a 1973 Grammy. Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong had originally written it for a long forgotten Motown act called The Undisputed Truth. You may remember those guys as the band behind the great one hit wonder song Smiling Faces Sometimes. They also recorded Papa later, but it went nowhere. The Temptations grabbed it and ran with it to the tune of nearly 12 minutes on their album.

So much goes on in this song it's just ridiculous. It's a sad story, but man what a story. Papa took off and left some confused children behind and they wanted answers from their mother about why their father wasn't around. Mama just shook her head and said...well you know the rest. I will never get tired of hearing it I have to tell you. Rolling Stone voted it the 168th greatest song of all time recently. As arbitrary as those lists are I devour them every time like the sap that I am. Outraged over this song, scoffing at that one...it's laughable really, but loads of fun. Papa Was a Rolling Stone deserved all of the accolades it received. I thought it was flat brilliant.

Papa Was a Rolling Stone has been covered more than a couple of times. Los Lobos did a pretty fair job a couple of years back. George Michael took a half hearted stab at it too. You have to brave to cover this song. This isn't a song you mess with easily. It has The Temptations so embedded in its DNA it's near impossible to strip them out. I don't know how I stumbled on this cover of Papa Was a Rolling Stone by Was (Not Was), but I'm glad I did. This is a great cover. Oh, check that, I do remember now. Local Boston radio station WFNX-FM, back when they were a little more adventurous, was playing a great song called I Feel Better Than James Brown for a short time back in 1990 from the CD Are You Okay? by Was (Not Was). It was kind of a novelty song, but very good (download it now). Of course, since I was buying everything in sight in those days, I went right out and bought the CD. Much to my surprise and delight a cover of The Temptations song was even better than the song about James Brown. This one is an instant classic cover for me and should be on your iPod for the next month during your workouts. You can thank me later. I have successfully turned on several of my friends to this cover song over the years. I hope you like it too. Enjoy.

Was (Not Was) - Papa Was a Rolling Stone.mp3

Was (Not Was) - Papa Was a Rolling Stone.mp3 YSI

I was shuffling along at the gym the other day when Hot Chocolate found it's way into my ears. You may remember Hot Chocolate as a British R&B 70's act that had some modest chart success with songs like You Sexy Thing, Emma and Every 1's a Winner. They were nearly completely forgotten until a run of shows like Ally McBeal and TV commercials sponsored by Burger King kind of resurrected their music. Some would confuse them with the disco era since they were popular about that time, but Hot Chocolate's three big hits as noted above are as good as any R&B group from that era. You Sexy Thing was featured in major motion pictures such as The Full Monty, Boogie Nights, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Rat Race and Bicentennial Man. It's Crafty; it gets around...

I wouldn't normally divulge my list of songs I like, but am afraid to admit it list. The truth is, I just did a Facebook list recently that kind of got me to thinking about this king of thing. I'm going to run a feature called Guilty Pleasures now as well. I'm going to out myself regularly and admit to liking music that might draw disdain from whatever audience we have generated here at The Giant Panther. These are going to be short posts. I promise (as you roll your eyes knowingly)! UK charts and American charts differ wildly. Hot Chocolate was infinitely more popular in the UK for obvious reasons, but I always get a charge out of hearing Hot Chocolate on my iPod like device. I'm leaving you with Every 1's a Winner. It a fun song with a little bit of a different sound. It's catchy. Hope you like it. It seems to have a little Billy Preston, The O'Jays and others from that decade, but it's unique.

Happy Easter everyone. I'm not a religious man, but I can recall my Aunt Irene's famous Easter Egg hunts (actually plastic eggs with quarters in them) when we would come over for Easter dinner back in the 70's. Today I wouldn't know it was Easter if one of the announcers in the baseball game(s) I was watching hadn't mentioned it. I don't know what that says about me, but 2009 is rushing by just like every other year when I stop to give it some thought. Cross Easter off the list of 2009 holidays.

Wire is a long forgotten band that I really loved. A product of the late 70's out of the UK, Wire had several musically interesting records that were off the beaten path. Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 were albums that featured short bursts of post punk energy. The were released between 1977 and 1979. I had never heard of them until I started managing a CD store in the late 80's and we started ordering imports. A friend of mine kept playing them at our store and I started to get the hang of them. I can't help but think Gang of Four was a fan of theirs back in the day. Wire took an unheard of break between 1979 and 1987 as far as the releasing of original studio material is concerned, but when they resurfaced I was right there to buy their records. The Ideal Copy (1987), A Bell is a Cup...Until It's Struck (1988) and It's Beginning To and Back Again (IBTABA) (1989) all featured at least one killer track. At least I thought so at the time...

From early Wire I used to love the Three Girl Rhumba (all 1:23 of it). It was typical of their two minute drill style of releasing music. It was also gold for filling in the end of your ill conceived mixed cassette tapes in those days. Less than two minutes left? Reach for Wire. It'll sound like you planned it all along. Later on though Wire began stretching out their concepts. Two songs that stick with me from their late 80's output were Kidney Bingos and Eardrum Buzz. I know they were quasi college radio hits, but they had this cool sound to them. I wish I could put it into words, but there was something different about their "new" sound I felt was very pleasing. I'm not going to go on long about Wire here. Frankly, there isn't much to tell as far as I can see. They had a drummer named Robert Gotobed who actually fired himself when he decided a drum machine could do the work live with little differential. They tried to go on as "Wir" (pronounced the same) for a time in deference to his departure, but the band never again captured the public's imagination the way it once had. The band is still working according to their web site, but I have to admit to losing track of them.

The song I leave you with, Kidney Bingos, is such a cool tune. Don't ask me what the lyrics mean and I won't tell you no lies, but the melody is great. I hope you like...

I can't recall the exact year, but I'm guessing around 1987 or so, I came across a CD by a band called The Godfathers in a used record store and I bought it. I'm a cover freak, (by the way thank you so much for the non verbal support of my Foo Fighters posting below! That's a lot of traffic for a couple of days. I'm glad you apparently liked it.) so when I noticed The Godfathers made an attempt at John Lennon's Cold Turkey I figured it was worth the $6 or whatever I paid for it. Nobody, let alone me, had heard of The Godfathers in those days. Nice grab! A few of you, and I'm guessing not many, will remember a song called This Damn Nation that kind of put them on the map, if they ever really were on any imaginary map. It had a funky slide to it and it was catchy, but that is not why The Godfathers were eventually relatively popular; they had this great snarl to them. Kind of like Billy Idol, but different. They stomped their way through most of their numbers and I was drawn to them immediately. The truth is though, I didn't expect much from this alternative rock band from London. Lord knows I have 50 CDs just like this buried amongst my stellar collection that I loved but that never got off the ground. I figured I just made a nice find no one else in my circle would ever hear. Wrong. Less than two years later they were all over college radio and touring the states.

The next year, in 1988, The Godfathers surfaced with an all time alternative foot stomping classic called Birth, School, Work, Death. I'm a card carrying pessimist most of the time so this tongue in cheek kind of hopelessness appealed to me. That and the crunching beat. I love it. It was a pretty big hit all around. Wikipedia tells us that this single reached #38 on the U.S. charts. For an alternative song that is ridiculous. Just me and 50,000 college kids were actually listening to that genre in those days. I'm kidding of course, but selling The Godfathers to my Van Halen loving buddies was near impossible. I went to see them play at The Paradise in Boston and they rocked my world. Not Goth rock exactly, but it had enough WTF is the use backbone to appeal to that crowd. It was more rock & roll, but it was clearly alternative. I hate trying to label good music anyway; it's more fun trying to label the folks who show up at the gigs I always felt. What you need to know about the CD Birth, School, Work, Death is that it was a great record. If I Only Had Time (I'd think of the perfect crime) and 'Cause I Said So were hard rocking supplements to the title track. When Am I Coming Down was also a plus on this CD. No self respecting alternative rock junkie from the 80's should be without it as far as I'm concerned. B,S,W,D was an angst ridden sing along anthem the second I heard it and it enjoyed a long run on the local alternative rock station WFNX.

1988 had it's share of great records; The Church - Starfish, The Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll, Julian Cope - My Nation Underground, Big Audio Dynamite - Tighten Up Volume '88, The Feelies - Only Life, The Fine Young Cannibals - The Raw & The Cooked, Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking, Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers - Conscious Party, Midnight Oil - Diesel & Dust, Morrissey - Viva Hate, Peter Murphy - Love Hysteria, Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine, NWA - Straight Outta Compton, Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Grahm Parker - The Mona Lisa's Sister, Iggy Pop - Instinct, Prince - Lovesexy, Lou Reed - New York, R.E.M. - Green, Shriekback - Go Bang!, Siouxsie & The Banshees - Peepshow, Patti Smith - Dream of Life, The Smithereens - Green Thoughts, Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation, The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good, The Talking Heads - Naked, They Might Be Giants - Lincoln, Treat Her Right - Treat Her Right, U2 - Rattle & Hum, UB40 - UB40, Camper Van Beethoven - Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, The Violent Femmes - 3, The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues, Wire - A Bell is a Cup Until It's Struck....are you kidding me? Did 2008, twenty years hence, produce that kind of quality? Call me old & crazy, but I don't think so.

My point in naming those records is to let you know that Birth, School, Work, Death not only held its own among these giant records, it still sounds great and fresh to this day. Of the four stages, I used to be on stage three (Work) until I lost my job, but I'm not giving up just yet. Stage four is kind of final if you know what I mean and where else would you go to track down all these quality tracks if I suddenly expired? OK, don't answer that. Hope all is well out there and please turn one of your friends onto the long forgotten Godfathers if you can. This tune is in your face nasty and I love it! According to their web site they have reunited so maybe we might see some more from them soon.