"One Meatball"

I was going to write an essay about the first Ry Cooder album and explain why I thought it was a bizarre amalgam of country blues, acid rock (straight from the Performance soundtrack) and vintage Warner Brothers movie soundtracks. The most fully realized track combining these unlikely bedfellows was a cover of the Forties hit One Meatball. Written by Lou Singer and Hy Zaret, it's a vamp blues about a Depression-era man who only has enough money to buy himself a meatball and nothing else.

While some singers put some whimsy into the tune (see below) by interpreting the song as the tale of a sad sack who didn't have enough scratch to feed himself, Cooder and producers Ted Templeman and Van Dyke Parks delivered a Depression-era horrorshow of a man who had no future or present day dreams to get him through his stripped down meal.

The version created on the Cooder album was a dirgey nightmare featuring a wash of atonal strings providing a counterpoint to Cooder's weeping bottleneck guitar. It's a haunting track showing Cooder and Parks at their greatest strengths.

In the course of researching One Meatball I discovered that just about everyone at the time covered it, from Frank Sinatra to The Andrews Sisters to Louis Armstrong to Josh White. The song's like a mood ring; everyone put a very radical take on the song, from The Andrews Sisters doing a slightly amused version to Josh White's very somber performance.

Forties Soundies version

The video above is a Forties soundie version, a Warner Bros. cartoon vibe serving just about everything but a Mel Blanc voice over. The "waitress" singing gives a fairly standard Forties vocal. It's a fun short. but far from Ry Cooder's bleak Depression dirge.

One Meatball - Candy Candido

And now for something completely different: a supper club comedy chanteuse named Candy Candido. He's so odd it's not even funny, he's just downright creepy in a twitchy David Lynch movie way. His bizarre mannerisms are the thing of weird dreams that make you wake up at 3 am and resent eating that Pastrami sandwich with cole slaw and Russian dressing right before bedtime. Ha! As a side note, I think some of the low notes sung are dubbed in by Mel Blanc (yeah, him again). File under "Unfunny and Creepy".

One Meatball - Dave Van Ronk

Every sad story has a happy ending, though, and this one is about the discovery of Dave Van Ronk. His version of One Meatball is nothing short of amazing, Ronk doing a scatting folk singer thing decades before Tom Waits. Discovering Van Ronk was like finding a $1000 dollar bill on the street. What a demon.

Van Ronk sounds like a Robert Crumb caricature of the wild man folkie screaming and scatting while banging the crap out of his acoustic guitar. He puts so much energy into the jazzabilly blues of this song, he invigorates every word with his electric energy. There's some great blues interpretation to be found in his version of One Meatball.

Ry Cooder really hit his stride with his first album, especially the creepy One Meatball, but nothing prepared me for the widely divergent interpretations of the song. This is the sort of thing that makes music so exciting. It's the singer, not the song.

Jack Bruce Forever

I had an epiphany when I listened to “Sunshine Of Your Love” by Cream last night. Ginger Baker’s drumming was amazing, his brilliantly tuned drums accentuating the bizarre staccato melody and Eric Clapton’s lyrical blues guitar with its perfect setting of sustain making the song sound beautiful. But none of it would have amounted to anything without Jack Bruce’s eccentric blues melody and understated yet perfectly rhythmic vocals.

To call Jack Bruce the pulse, the spine and the real heart and soul of Cream would be an understatement. The band simply never would have existed without him. Many bands before Cream played the blues in a reverential manner. What made Cream stand out from the pack was the way Bruce never oversang the blues like too many have before and after him, and his blues melodies were perfect in their respect for tradition while still adding something new and intriguing with each listen.

Bruce was a tireless collaborator who shined no matter who he worked with, a partial list would make any music lover drool: Leslie West, Manfred Mann, John McLaughlin, Public Image Ltd., Carla Bley, John Mayall, Lou Reed (“Berlin”!), Chris Spedding, Graham Bond, and Frank Zappa, to name a few.

Most of Jack Bruce’s lyrics were written by poet Pete Brown and they worked brilliantly with Bruce’s dramatic songs, White Room being a good example. Brown’s lyrics were wild enough to keep up with Cream’s unbridled acid blues, my favorites being like SWLABR, Tales of Brave Ulysses, World of Pain, Deserted Cities of the Heart, and Passing the Time. The genius of his music was the way he balanced traditional blues with surprisingly sensitive flourishes, some viola playing here or some cello added to add a fuller dimension to Cream's sound.

Even after Cream’s demise Bruce still managed to keep the jazz/blues sound exploding on his first solo album, “Songs for a Tailor”. Tracks like Ministry of Bag, Rope Ladder To The Moon and Never Tell Your Mother She’s Out of Tune employed horns and keyboards, significantly expanding his musical palette after performing in a trio format for the past several years.

Occasionally he was driven to playing in Cream-style bands in the years to come because the fans demanded it: there was West, Bruce & Laing (aka Mountain pt. 2) and BLT and probably a few more I left out, so he was never remiss in keeping his fans happy. A true showman til the end.

I wish anyone seriously making a go of being a blues singer would study Jack Bruce because he embodies the best of blues in that he never hollered and always managed to sound Scottish even when tackling classics like Born Under A Bad Sign. Bruce never failed to steal the show, as witnessed by his grungy fuzz bass playing on Frank Zappa's raging instrumental "Apostrophe". And nothing was more shocking than hearing him sing lead on the chorus to Public Image Ltd’s song “Ease”. Jack Bruce was a timeless talent whose influence will be felt for a long, long time.

Also RIP to Clive Palmer of The Incredible String Band, Alvin Stardust, Rosetta Hightower, and the incredibly awesome Ian McLagan of The Small Faces and The Rod Stewart-fronted Faces. Music's getting better in heaven that it is down here!

Them Changes

Here we are at the end of 2013, which marks the end of the my seventh year writing “Out Demons Out”, and while it’s been nothing but fun it’s also been a lot of work. In light of that, I have decided to make the following changes effective next year, 2014 to my blog:

1. Serialized novels will no longer be available on Out Demons Out. This month I will post the last two chapters of Every Bitch For Himself online and then the rest of it will be available when the book is published in October of next year. The decision is based as a preventative measure against online plagiarism.

2. Out Demons Out will go bi-weekly. After seven years the task of coming up with fresh new content every week has been exhausting. Writing a new blog every two weeks will allow me more time to do a better job at writing. Besides, a week off will allow me time to finish my current novel.

What else is new? I've been listening to Junior Wells as well as his great guitarist, Earl Hooker (see above). Some people call them blues legends but it sounds pretty rock & roll to me. Call it what you will, there's some great stuff by them you ought to check out.

Before I go I just wanted to post a video of Kid Koala performing a live version of “Drunk Trumpet”. What makes this video so significant is that Drunk Trumpet is a track with some pretty involved scratching, braking and other finger-spinning turntable tricks, so it’s to Kid Koala’s credit that he flawlessly replicates the track perfectly in a live concert environment. If you liked this also check out his version of "Moon River" on You Tube. Check this out and enjoy!

The International Morphine Variations

I have a tendency to connect certain areas to events in my life, so whenever I'm in the Miracle Mile District I think of Morphine. This is due to the unforgettable show they played at the El Rey Theater on Wilshire Blvd.

Supporting their "Like Swimming" album (1995), it was one of their last L.A. performances before band leader Mark Sandman's untimely death. The show was a colossal feast of wild and raucous sounds, hitting every nerve in my body and reminding me why music changed my life forever.

A power trio consisting of an explosive drummer, a fiery baritone saxophonist who literally doubled on tenor sax a la Roland Kirk and a cool singer who looked more like Richard Hell than Hell himself and played a grungy slide bass. Morphine's eccentric musicianship perfectly suited a bizarre repertoire of dark but highly melodic blues songs.

Their sound had a simultaneously urban and rural style that I found uncanny, the slide bass dredging images of murky Southern swamps and the growly sax bursting out cinematic scenes of psychotic detectives shooting guns at brick-lined housing projects.

When I had my band Cockfight I tried to get my bassist to play with a slide in tribute to Mr. Sandman, but the resident jughead couldn't appreciate the concept and refused. Opting instead for a lousy chorus pedal - how Goth - I unplugged it and told him to expand his horizons.

Anyway, posted here for your entertainment are a few covers of Morphine songs from various bands. Whether you like the way they're covered or not doesn't matter; the point is that Mark Sandman wrote a lot of songs that people to this day love listening and playing, the mark of a truly great artist.

Night Shark are a Morphine tribute band from Amsterdam, Holland and play a pretty faithful version of "Thursday" complete with slide bass and growly bari sax. Good work.

Indie & The Jones do a damned wicked hard rock cover of "Honey White" with a wah-wah pedal guitar doing all the sax lines. The harmonies on the chorus sound surprisingly cool and add to the song. I think they added a good spin to the original. Very acid rock and audacious enough to be fun.

Then we have a Morphine cover band from Bulgaria (!) doing "Super Sex" and playing it with an almost wholesome Gerry & The Pacemakers luvvability. Dig those mad Bulgar boho chicks mouthing the lyrics to Super Sex. Weird! As weird as that scary Italian cover of Sonic Youth's "Starpower" that sounded just like Journey!

The last video on this blog comes from post-Morphine band Twinemen featuring Dana Colley and Billy Conway playing with bassist/singer Laurie Sargeant. "Spinner" is a great song and compliments Mark Sandman's oeuvre just fine. Long live the Sandman.

The World Isn't Coming To An End Just Because You Want It To

This will probably go down in Los Angeles history as one of the worst summers ever. Here we are in early August, and while the rest of the country is sweltering and sweating here in LA every morning has been cloudy, gloomy and downright cold. If it ever gets warm at all it doesn’t last long, and there’s always a glacial wind to cut down on the warmth. In other words, it’s Springtime In July and Springtime In August. Who knows what’s going to happen in September?

Because of this shit weather the general disposition of LA natives is pissy and angry – an equally shit economy and a rapidly decaying grasp of patience/attention span doesn’t help, either. People are angrier than ever.

Negativity seems to work for a lot of people. There’s no concept of perhaps making the most of a bad situation, and Heaven help you if you try to say something positive or you’ll get shot down, so I won’t. I’ll just post this great video from Supergrass.

Supergrass are not only one of the best bands to come out of England in the past 20 years, I think they’re heirs to the throne once inhabited by The Kinks, The Who and The Small Faces. Their output of perfectly crafted British pop songs is considerable, the first three albums in particular, I Should Coco, In It For The Money, and Supergrass, are flawless, brilliant rock albums and have more balls and spirit than the rest of their overrated contemporaries. Plus they look totally cool!

If Supergrass doesn’t cheer you up then check out this amazing video from Mississippi Fred McDowell. Not only is this song amazing, but the video of “Shake ‘Em On Down” is ultra-cool, giving us an uninterrupted look at his flashy fingerwork across the fretboard. If this isn’t one of the best guitar lessons you’ve ever seen, then you’re not a serious player. Really.

I wonder what guys like Son House would say to these spoiled brats crying about not making their first million or realizing their projected plans for world domination? Idiots like Kanye West could learn a lot from House’s “Death Letter Blues”. Maybe not. Kanye West is retarded, and his fans are even more retarded than him. Look at me, I’m starting to sound pretty angry myself. Maybe I ought to listen to some Les Paul and Mary Ford.

Now that’s better. Les Paul and Mary Ford played music for the sheer love of it, just like Memphis Minnie and Howlin’ Wolf. Maybe if I post their insanely sunny take on that hoary old Gay ‘90s standard “In The Good Old Summertime” that motherfucking sun will finally show its face. Or maybe El Sol is busy nursing his big hole, like the ones in everybody’s empty skull these days.

Painting: Ol' Black and Blue Eyes Is Back by Rebecca Seven

"Then Play On" - Fleetwood Mac (1969)

There has never been a blues album like Fleetwood Mac’s “Then Play On” as it effortlessly transcends the blues genre while committing to its cardinal rules at the same time. It would be the last album group figurehead Peter Green would record with the band amidst a firestorm of controversy in the British music scene. The third album by the band and released in 1969, it was also their breakaway from Blue Horizon Records and the beginning of a very unique genre that wasn’t and still isn’t so easily defined.

The original Fleetwood Mac sound was that of a scruffy garage band bashing out classic Elmore James-styled 12-bar blues with a lethal dose of fuzz on the guitars courtesy of Green and Jeremy Spencer, whose incendiary slide guitar style hinted at more of an abrasive acid rock sound than simply adhering to trad blues conventions. Mick Fleetwood’s explosive drum attack was also more hard rock than South Side shuffle. All that would change by the time of “Then Play On”.

The band changed its approach to a dark, somber surf guitar sound with lyrics that progressed from standard blues issues to a more existential angst, questioning a man’s existence as well as his role in God’s creation. It is almost the blues equivalent to Syd Barrett’s album “The Madcap Laughs” in its vision of despair and loneliness, however, there were signposts up ahead that hinted at this new direction in sound.

Several tracks from past albums hinted at this new departure for them; on the first album there was the spare, bleak cover of Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound On My Trail”, Peter Green singing along to a very quiet piano; there was also “The World Keep On Turning”, Green singing alone to his acoustic guitar: “Nobody saw me crying, nobody knows the way I feel, the way I love that woman, it’s bound to get me killed”, and of course on the second album “Mr. Wonderful” there was “Black Magic Woman” and another quietly sad number with surf guitars, “Man of the World”: “I guess I‘ve got everything I need, I wouldn’t ask for more, And there’s no one I’d rather be, but I just wish I’d never been born”. Not exactly boogie time.

The darkest number in Fleetwood Mac's set up to that point was a live cover of Blue Horizon label mate Duster Bennett’s “Jumping At Shadows”: “Everyone points their hand at me, I know I’m just a picture of what I used to be, I’ve been jumping at shadows, thinking about my life”.

In “Man of the World”, the BBC documentary on Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Mick Fleetwood recall the turning point for the band when they arrived in Germany while on tour and were met by an attractive German jet-set couple who whisked Green and third guitarist Danny Kirwan from the airport to their chateau for an acid-drenched party that marked the two guitarists for life. Fleetwood and Spencer agreed that Green & KIrwan were never the same again.

The original plan for “Then Play On” was to make it a loose jam session as an antidote to the Top 40 singles success of “Albatross”, “Man of the World” and “Black Magic Woman”. The album does indeed have a schizoid relationship between bracing, fiery guitar jams, impeccably played like “Searching For Madge”, “Fighting For Madge” and the more cerebral “Underway” and “My Dream”.

On the other hand there are the dark, moody compositions like “Closing My Eyes”: “Someday I’ll die, and then I’ll be with you/ So I’m closing my eyes to hear the people laugh”, or “Show Biz Blues” with the immortal lines, “Tell me anybody now do you really give a damn for me”. The lightest point on the record for Green is his ode to masturbation, “Rattlesnake Shake”.

Danny Kirwan begins to shine on this album with full-bodied melodic compositions that lighten the mood somewhat, the Everly Brothers-influenced “Like Crying”, the Buddy Holly-sounding “Although The Sun Is Shining” and the pre-Santana influence “Coming Your Way”. His songwriting became even more refined and melodic on the more rocking albums “Kiln House” and “Bare Trees”.

But it’s still the rapidly diminishing shadow of Peter Green that dominates “Then Play On” with “Oh Well”: “Don’t ask me what I think of you/I might not give the answer that you want me to”, or the defeatist sound of “Before The Beginning”: “I’ve got to find a place to sing my words, Is there nobody listening to my song?” Green followed up “Then Play On” with his darkest and most legendary composition, “The Green Manalishi”. Following the release of the single he left the band, dabbled in several religions, released an album titled “End of the Game” and began a downward spiral which sent him in and out of several mental institutions. Although Green eventually bounced back – he still seems a little odd in his documentary – Kirwan never fully recovered from his breakdown and has been homeless for years.

What makes “Then Play On” (taken from the William Shakespeare line, “If music be the food of love then play on”) a legendary work of rock music is the way it stays within blues constraints yet takes it to a place that goes beyond sex, drugs, love, liquor or anything materialistic: it’s the blues of a mere mortal on God’s earth and the utter feeling of powerlessness. The musical palette the band creates on this album completely sets a tone of darkness and isolation that evokes feelings of sadness that the blues are meant to express. And that’s why “Then Play On” is one of the most timeless blues albums ever recorded.

Next month Rhino Records will be releasing an extended version of “Then Play On” with “The Green Manalishi” and its B-side, “World In Harmony”, among other extra tracks.