In The Past: Garage Rock Podcast

This one's as garage as it gets: 5 Versions of "I Need You"! - The Kinks, The Zakary Thaks, The Rationals, and two (!) versions by The Ascots. 

This week the genre is baroque proto-power pop and the song is "She May Call You Up Tonight" by The Left Banke, Great melodies by Michael Brown, a killer chorus, velvet vocals by Steve Martin Caro ... but what's it all about?! A band called California Spectrum produced a faithful cover in '68 and added some cool fuzz ... but why does the singer sound like they're 12?! Who cares, it's garage! Canadian ICON Anne Murray tried her voice out on the song, which got retitled "He May Call." A sweet but sensible performance, with a crazy, period-apropo brass section and some woody woodblock - this one's as wacky as Anne gets!  Ex-Fairport Conventioneer Ian Matthews made the song into the powerpop gem it was meant to be in the bleak year of 1980. And finally, Linda Thompson stripped the song back in the early 80s, making it folky and campfire smoky. Come back, Anne!!!!!

The Byrds had a bad time in England, and wrote a curiously grey-mood tune that many consider "the first psychedelic song of all time" - "Eight Miles High." It's known for its sound, but we take a deep dive into the lyrics, too. Succulent, truculent. The next flight was piloted by the semi-legendary obscuros, Index. Some nice warm guitar strummin' & lotsa negative space. Less negative space on Leo Kottke's version - he's a king of fingerpickin' geetar and he has a nice deep baritone and he fills up the space with both. Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü also has a baritone voice, but he spends mosrt of his band's version screaming and wailing about the hippie sellouts!! Finally, Robyn Hitchcock brings the song back to earth with a faithful rendition that has a nicely unprofound spoken word middle section. All this, and David Crosby's cape!!

This week, we manage to talk about 7 songs in just over 2 hours - appropriately, all are versions of "Train Kept a Rollin'"! The original is by Tiny Bradshaw, a 1951 jump blues number that contains a rock n roll instro break that clearly caught the ears of  the next crew, namely Johnny Burnette & The Rock n Roll Trio. They take Tiny B's joyous number and inject it with some wild hillfolk hiccupin' and hollerin'.' The train somehow made it to England by 1965, and Screamin' Lord Sutch (with Ritchie Blackmore) left the station at a fevered pace, but later that same year, The Yardbirds caught up. Keith Relf and the boys even did a follow-up rendition for the movie Blow Up which they titled "Stroll On," but the lyrics are super stoopid! We close off the episode with two garage versions that take passengers to places far off the usual route - dig The Rogues (these ones from Buffalo) and Steve Walker and The Bold and their hyperspeeds! Real gone!!!



Screamin' Lord Sutch

The Yardbirds (TKAR and "Stroll On")

The Rogues

Steve Walker and the Bold

Stop! and check out the new episode, featuring The Supremes. who were on a run of consecutive #1 hits in 1965. "Stop! In the Name of Love" is the one with the iconic choreography, but we dig even deeper to explain the charms of this arresting song. The first cover we discuss is a very busy garage version from 1969 by Crosstown Switch. Beverly Kelley, the lead singer on this tune, sounds like she's been beamed in from 1962! Next up is an epic soul version by Margie Joseph which has to be heard to be believed. In 1979, new-wavers Blotto essayed the song with very expressive vocals and a disco pulse. Finally, the next year, Yukihiro Takahashi presented us with a faithful version, but with loungey and bossa-y vocals. Haven't we been good to you?

After our wild celebration of Episode 200, we woke up a little hungover ... so the perfect prescription to get us back in the saddle for this Canadian Holiday Weekend is "Double Shot of My Baby's Love"! by Dick Holler & The Holidays. Despite the band name, you gotta wait for the third version for true frat rock shenanigans. The first cover version is a weird swamp-pop duet by Dale & Grace, we'll leave it up to you to decide if it's BDA-worthy. The third and most famous rendition is by The Swingin' Medallions, who turn the song into a raging kegger! Alabama's K-Otics give the Swingin' M's a run for their money with their fuzz-laden interpretation, also from '66. Finally, we go Down Under to uncover the Cockroaches 1987 version, which we try to exterminate with some textbook slams. You'll be walking on a cloud all week after this episode!

We just passed go and collected 200 ... episodes!! We celebrate this achievement with a bunch of "party" songs, including discussions of The Sundowners, The Gallows, The B-52's & Jonathan Richman. Crack open a cold one and celebrate with us!! Yay yay!

This episode: all THREE versions of "I Met Him on a Sunday" by The Shirelles: the 1958 snap 'n' clap original (when they were in high school!!), the '64 re-do, and the '66 Wall of Sound version (with FUZZ!)! But that's not all - 3 boffo renditions by The Orlons (1962), Reparata & the Delrons (1970), and Laura Nyro & Labelle (1971). The only thing we don't talk about is what happened to Lew Conetta!!!!!

Hey! The Gruesomes twosome - Bobby Beaton & John Davis - join us once again and they wanna talk about Nederbeat this week! Both songs are by The Outsiders - but we have cover versions, too! First up is "That's Your Problem," the original, then the 1984 renditions by The Tell-Tale Hearts. Second song is "Touch", the weirdly tense folk-garage masterpiece, with versions by The Bristols & The Thanes. If you don't like ... that's YOUR problem!!!!

Sometime in the early 90s, a record store owner asked Weldon the question: "Have you heard Gruntruck?" And until recently, the answer was no. But the memory of this exchange leads us to this bonus episode, where we listen to "Crazy Love" by Seattle's  Gruntruck and dismantle the semiotics of grunge. A little pain feels good!