Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty (1978)

Ok, This is sort of a retroactive post, (the first of a couple) Baker Street was firmly stuck in my head about a year ago, as it has been at many points of my life.
Last year at this time I was in far northern England in Weardale, St Johns Chapel, specifically, which is in County Durham, bordering Scotland. While there I managed to try out just about every pub in the county, and the (neighboring counties), as well as all two pubs in Saint Johns Chapel, and let me tell you, as far as I can tell, ALL pubs in the north of England (and Presumably Scotland) have the song “Baker Street” on The Jukebox. I remember When this song came out that it got stuck in my head, so it has been a recurring theme. At the time it was everywhere on the radio, in every store you went into etc, I remember it all rather nostalgically. The name Baker Street is confusing to some, as most in the English speaking world associate the name “Baker Street” With famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, but listening to the song it doesn’t exactly seem to be about him. Perhaps it is San Francisco’s Baker Street in The Haight Ashbury… It turns out It is the famous London street, where Gerry stayed with a friend while going through a protracted legal divorce from the legal obligations of his first band Stealers Wheel according to the Wikipediia page: here Giving context to the album name “City To City”.

I love that Moog Bass line (noticing a theme here?) that follows the bass and the chorus starting at the line “you used to think it was so easy” and a great little flourish after the line “you’re trying now”.
Download the song here and get it stuck in your head today!

Les Yper-Sound – Stereolab

From Emperor Tomato Ketchup 1996.
So, This one actually was stuck there over a month ago, but then I got musically distracted by my new internet radio show on Pirate Cat Radio Thursday Nights at 10 (pst) Check it out here: http://www.piratecatradio.com/shows/thursday/sonic-subversion
Now the song is back stuck there. Check out this totally wonderful live version on The Jools Holland Show:
Moogs galore and Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum) lurking in the back on a VCS3(?)… Totally infectious analog synth-pop meets psychedelic socialist-pop. Stereolab perhaps at their peak.

Buy it on iTunes Stereolab – Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Here is another great youtube video of “early” stereolab doing French Disko on Chanel 4′s “The Word”.

I love that audience! It reminds me of the first time I saw them play when they had a more “ravey” audience and not so “indie rock”. Fewer Moogs on stage, but listen with headphones to hear that Rogue Moog cut in at 1:04…La resistance! indeed…
Ok so now i actually have French Disko Stuck in my head instead of Les Yper Sound, gotta fight fire with fire.

“Gloria” – Patti Smith

“Gloria” – by Van Morison as performed by Patti Smith on the album “Horses” – 1975
Went to The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park all last weekend. Exactly one week ago I was watching Patti Smith and being absolutely amazed. I had always known I was suposed to be “into her”, many friends over the years loved her, I read all about her in the excellent book “Please Kill Me: An Oral History Of Punk” but was almost unprepared for how much it would get to me. From the moment she took the stage, the audience was in transfixed and rapt attention. It was utterly mesmerizing. She seemed to be transferring positive energy into the audience through some sort of shamanistic ritualistic way. her words seemed alive in front of her. All last week i have had much of the set going through my mind. Her version of the rolling stones “Play With Fire” was totally amazing:

The hair on my arms was standing up for that one. She makes it her own similarly to her version of Gloria, (available here on iTunes) the first track of her first lp “Horses”.
The only comparison I can draw in my mind is the way The Doors also did “Gloria” in live performance, if only Jim Morrison were a more mature poet, not to disparage The Doors, mind you, I love them, but you know what I mean… Her Stage presence reminded me of a later day female Jim Morison as well, in that hypnotic mesmerizing poet sort of way. Her band was in top form for the HSB performance, with Lenny Kaye a legend in his own right on guitar.

Below is a slide show of Patti Smith at HSB October 3, 2010

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“House at Pooneil Corners” – Jefferson Airplane

(c)1968 From the album “Crown of Creation”
Since last night I was thinking of going to Swan Oyster Depot on Polk Street in San Francisco. Around 1:45 this afternoon while working on an electronic music remix project and not making any progress, I thought it might just be the right time. I was going to get some chowder to go if there was still a line, but when i walked up there was only one couple waiting to be seated, and the guy saw me walk up and before i decided if I was still going to be getting something to go said to me “one?” and ushered me to a single opening at the bar, as there is only a bar to sit at in the tiny place, the original cool to the touch white marble oyster bar installed when they opened in 1911. So this place for one just happened to be right next to Jack Casady of the Jefferson Airplane. He was there by himself too having a cup of chowder and then some oysters on the half shell. I had a bowl of chowder some bread and butter and a pint of Anchor Steam, the Giants were playing on the radio. I thought it was him sitting next to me, but i am always so bad at recognizing people out and about that i doubted myself until he told the oyster man he was playing in Golden Gate Park on Saturday at 12:30, and I realized it was him because I was already planning on seeing him and Jorma in Hot Tuna Electric at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. I leaned over and said “You’re Jack Casady, right?” and he said “guilty as charged”…
I said something about how I love his work, and “that early Jefferson Airplane stuff is…wow, you know…” and he said knowingly a long drawn out “yes”… He cleaned his hand to shake hands with me and then gave me the personal plug like anyone in a band big or small does and told me he is playing with Hot Tuna Electric at 12:30 on Saturday at HSBGF in the park, I said I was already planning on it, and he said “Maybe I will see you there”. I left him alone to eat in our close elbow to elbow quarters, and all I could think of was the devastating bass line to the song “House at Pooneil Corners” from the album “Crown Of Creation”. He seemed amiable enough to converse further, but I could only think of “dun dun dun dun- DA da dun dun dun dun da da”.
Here is a film shot by Jean Luc-Godard in 1968 in New York City:
(Nice Hat!)

Get the original on iTunes:
House at Pooneil Corners (track 11)

Here are two more Jefferson airplane videos I really like:

This next one should be an entry unto itself, as it was stuck in my head for a long time once:

“If You Were here” by The Thompson Twins

(c)1983 from the album Quick Step and Sidekick(UK) and Sidekicks (US)
I almost don’t want to start with this one. Most people who know me would find it an odd choice, but that is just it, it’s not a choice. I am going to be honest and post whatever song it is that happens to get stuck in my head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_Twins

Buy “If You Were Here” by The Thompson Twins on iTunes

Here it is live in Liverpool 1983

Ok How did this on get stuck there? It’s what you might expect. Last Sunday the 1984 film “16 Candles” was playing on tv while i was working, and i have to admit I have always really liked it, and although not being an “80′s music guy”, I have always really liked the music in this film, and how music is used in this and other John Hughes films. This song famously ends the film at the moment where the girl gets the guy over the birthday cake and fades to credits as the song is just getting going. Sort of an odd choice when you listen to the lyrics really, but its the mood and atmosphere of the song that works. I just had to buy it from itunes and listen to it a bunch of times to attempt to really dislodge it from the psyche, which only lodged it deeper. Upon repeated listen I couldn’t help but notice what a nice piece of almost pure electronic music it is, like many songs of the “techno-pop” era. Like the various forms of what we now call electronica, “If you were here” sounds like it was assembled layer upon layer starting with a subtle ambient background of backwards tape, one of the oldest tricks in electronic or as they sometimes call it “tape music”, then analog synths including a Sequential Circuits Pro-One and a drum machine, come in, much in the the same way electronica is assembled today with computer software instead of the multi-track tape of 1983. All in all a great little nugget of emotive, infectious electronic-pop. The Thompson Twins were one of those bands that I rather strongly remember for their visual look from the early MTV era, back when they used to show music videos, but I never thought much of it at the time, it was just pop music you heard everywhere, back when there was actual pop music. It resonates more with me now. Is it nostalgia? perhaps, but I pronounce this “good music”.