Chicago -
By Don Jacobson
Band: Funhouse
Song: “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll”
Date Added: June 24, 2008
Shooter: Chicagolandband
Locale: Bradley Fireman’s Fish Fry, Bradley, Ill.
Video quality: Good
Sound quality: Good
Creativity: Strong. Serious panning action for crowd reax, zooming in on band members when they’re soloing.
Difficulty: None. Free concert at at Kankakee County fish fry.
Overall Beachwood Shaky-Cam Rating: 8 (out of 10)
Posted on June 25, 2008
By Don Jacobson
Chicago music guy Perry Bax has a definite winner with his twice-monthly podcast, The Best Radio You Have Never Heard. It’s a very nice mixture of classic and punk rock rarities and remixes mingled with a heavy dose of ’90s alternative rock and some sparkling samples of the newest and coolest of that genre. It lives up to its title – you indeed have never heard this kind of great music on “radio,” by which I believe Bax means the commercial FM outlets in Chicago and elsewhere in this great land.
Posted on June 20, 2008
By The Beachwood Kansas Joe Affairs Desk
Original: 1929 (Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie)
Version You Know: 1971 (Led Zeppelin)
Album: Led Zeppelin IV
Length: 7:08
Joe & Minnie
Wikipedia: “The lines at the end of the song, ‘Going to Chicago; sorry but I can’t take you’, are quoted in ‘Going to Chicago Blues’ by Jimmy Rushing and the Count Basie Orchestra. In the first half of 1927, the Great Mississippi Flood ravaged the state of Mississippi and surrounding areas. It destroyed many homes and ravaged the agricultural economy of the Mississippi Basin. Many people were forced to flee to the cities of the Midwest in search of work, contributing to the ‘Great Migration’ of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century.
“Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin had the original McCoy and Minnie recording in his personal collection. He removed and rearranged lines and line parts from the original song and added new lyrical parts, and combined it with a revamped melody.”
Posted on June 19, 2008
By Don Jacobson
Today we introduce a new feature for The Beachwood Reporter’s all-but invaluable music page. We call it “I Shot the Band.” In this groovy new feature, we’re aiming to create a Chicago music fan’s guide to the seemingly unending stream of local band videos available on YouTube.
Now, we’re not talking about the slick, professionally made kinds of videos done by paid filmmakers who obviously one day hope to be directing $50 million slasher movies. You can see those anywhere. Nah, what we’re talking about here is tracking down, sorting out and ultimately holding up for praise or ridicule the bajillion gigabits-worth of amateur works produced by people who aren’t slinging a camera for the money, or for professional advancement, but for the sheer devotion to the bands they’re filming.
Their works are labors of love, to be sure, so it probably wouldn’t be fair to just totally lambaste them because they’re out of focus or have crappy sound or something. After all, some of these vids are shot on the sly . . . I will give points for such chutzpah. But because their makers are slapping them up there on YouTube for everyone to see, we feel we have the right to apply a little critiquing action to them. After all, there are thousands of these band videos to choose from . . . there needs to be some kind of standards by which to sort them all out. I have volunteered to pore through these videos so you don’t have to. You can thank me later.
I’m going to concentrate on Chicago-area bands to begin with, mainly because I also see “I Shot the Band” as a way to give the local music scene some exposure. It may expand beyond that . . . probably depending on how long I can stand watching video after video of middle-aged white guys dressing up like the Blues Brothers and jumping around to some half-assed Elmore James cover. I promise I’ll weed that kind of shit out.
No, I really promise.
Anyway, on with the first “I Shot the Band,” starring the Chicago buzz band Company of Thieves.
Posted on June 16, 2008
By The Beachwood Wisconsin Dells Affairs Desk
Artist: Gear Daddies
Album Title: Can’t Have Nothin’ Nice
Release Date: 9/13/1994
Length: 02:36
You can hear a brief sound clip here.
Lyrics:
Been saving now for over a year
Let’s pack the kids get outta here
We’ll leave behind our troubles for a week
We’ll borrow the pop-up from Phyllis and Steve
Just tell the boss I gotta leave
Be the best week of our lives as I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation in the Dells
Posted on June 13, 2008
By The Beachwood It’s All About The Children Affairs Desk
This one goes out to Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Chicago City Council. You might want to sing it to these lyrics, though.
Released: 1970
Album: Deja Vu
Length: 2:53
Posted on June 12, 2008
By Don Jacobson
Wow. I didn’t realize how lucky I was when I found a very good vinyl copy of this album at the Reckless Records on Milwaukee Avenue a couple months ago. I bought it just because I’ve always been a big fan of Roger Miller, since I was nine years old, really, when his mid-60s smashes “Dang Me” and “King of the Road” succeeded somehow in pushing the British Invasion off my radar for about five seconds. But now that I check it out, I see that The Return of Roger Miller (1965, Smash Records) has NEVER been released as a CD. Amazing. This was his “King of the Road” album! What gives? It turns out the big songs off it have only been issued on CD in “greatest hits” form.
Posted on June 9, 2008
By Don Jacobson
Reverberations from the death of Bo Diddley are still being felt in the music world, and tributes are pouring from everywhere (including right here at the Beachwood ), all well-deserved. But among the very first tributes to The Gunslinger came way back in 1964, from The Animals, who recorded a truly amazing song called “The Story of Bo Diddley”
The song was not only a funny, informative self-effacing rap by Eric Burdon in which he tells how Bo Diddley supposedly came to England and told him his music was “rubbish,” but also a music history lesson for young Baby Boomers on where their British Invasion rock ‘n’ roll really came from. It begins as a remake of the song “Bo Diddley” but turns into a manifesto declaring allegiance to all things rock ‘n’ roll. (Lyrics below)
*
The Story of Bo Diddley/The Animals
Posted on June 6, 2008
By Don Jacobson
From The Australian: “I DON’T sound like nobody!” was Bo Diddley’s maxim in the 1950s but over the decades dozens have tried to sound like him.
Often imitated but not always acknowledged, the influence of the Bo Diddley beat – driving and relentless like the chant of a chain gang – is heard clearest and most famously on the Rolling Stones’ “Not Fade Away.”
But that sound, which Bo Diddley called his “tradesman’s knock”, is just as discernible on U2’s “Desire,” or versions of the garage classic “I Want Candy” recorded by the Strangeloves and Bow Wow Wow two decades apart, or on George Michael’s “Faith.”
Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry aside, arguably none of the first generation of American rock ‘n’ rollers had a greater impact on the subsequent course of popular music.”
Posted on June 2, 2008
By Don Jacobson
If American radio had ever had a Wolfman Jack and an Alan Freed all rolled up into one person – someone who was also a crucial 1980’s punk rock pioneer as well – that DJ probably would have owned the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and half of Cleveland, to boot. While no one figure in U.S. music history can claim to be all that towering, the Philippines had just such a rock jock: Howlin’ Dave.
Posted on June 2, 2008
