In the UK Iggy Pop has had one top ten single – “Real Wild Child (Wild One).” It’s a cover of a 1958 single by Australian rocker Johnny O’Keefe. O’Keefe’s version didn’t chart in the US or the UK; however, a remake done by Jerry Allison, one of Buddy Holly’s Crickets, reached #68 in the US.
Pop’s version appears on his album Blah Blah Blah. It didn’t crack the US pop chart, though it did reach #27 on the Album Rock chart.
Today Tunes du Jour celebrates Iggy’s 67th birthday.
“I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.”
– Kurt Cobain
“That kid has heart.”
– Bob Dylan
“He had a touch most guitarists would kill for.”
– Chuck Berry
“His music is powerful, very intense. That sort of power is rare. You hate to lose somebody like that, someone who keeps the music alive and moving ahead. Not many guys like him come along.”
– Bruce Springsteen
“Nobody dies a virgin. Life fucks us all.”
– Kurt Cobain
“I went to see Nirvana at a small club called the Pyramid on Avenue A in New York City. It was hard to hear the guitar, but the guy playing and singing had a vibe; he hopped around like a muppet or an elf or something, hunched over his guitar, hop hop hop, hippety hippety hop. I loved that. When he sang, he put his voice in this really grating place, and it was kind of devilish sounding. At the end of the set he attacked the drum kit and threw the cymbals, other bits and finally himself into the audience. Later I saw the same guy passing the bar. He was little, with stringy blond hair and a Stooges T-shirt. I felt proud.”
– Iggy Pop
“Nirvana was the first band in years that I really loved… They were the band I felt a lot of hope for, for the whole music scene.”
– Patti Smith
“If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of a different color, or women, please do this one favor for us… Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”
– Kurt Cobain
“He really, really inspired me. He was so great. Wonderful. One of the best, but more than that. Kurt was one of the absolute best of all time for me.”
– Neil Young
“Such a beautiful flame never burns very long. The really brilliant flames seem to consume themselves, and then they’re gone. Maybe Kurt was meant to be here long enough to put us on the right path.”
– Tom Petty
“If you’re really a mean person you’re going to come back as a fly and eat poop.”
– Kurt Cobain
“Nirvana made everything else look silly.”
– Bono
“Cobain was very shy, very polite, and obviously enjoyed the fact that I wasn’t awestruck at meeting him. There was something about him, fragile and engagingly lost.”
– William S. Burroughs
“Birds scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth, but sadly we don’t speak bird.”
– Kurt Cobain
“He was an incredible writer and an incredible singer. And when I met him I found him to be a very special person. He was one of those special people. There was a light inside him that you could see. He had a charisma that went beyond his physical presence.”
– PJ Harvey
“I am not gay, though I wish I were, just to piss off homophobes.”
– Kurt Cobain
“The only person I have any respect for as a songwriter over the last 10 years is Kurt Cobain. He was the perfect cross between Lennon and McCartney. He belted it out like Lennon, but his melodies were so Paul McCartney.”
– Noel Gallagher
“Remember Kurt for what he was: caring, generous and sweet.”
– Krist Novoselic
“I still dream about Kurt. Every time I see him in a dream, I’ll be amazed and I get this feeling that everyone else thinks he’s dead. It always feels totally real, probably because I’m a very vivid dreamer. But, in my dreams, Kurt’s usually been hiding – we’ll get together and I’ll end up asking him, “God, where have you been”
– Dave Grohl
“If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I’m not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I’ve got.”
– Kurt Cobain
February 20, 1967 – April 5, 1994
I bought David Bowie’s Young Americans album on cassette on 1975. It was my first Bowie purchase. The album reflected Bowie’s then–obsession with American soul music and was much different than his prior releases, which made him a sensation in the U.K. but not in the U.S.
Most of it was recorded in Philadelphia at Sigma Sound Studios, American’s most successful black-owned music company after Motown. In 1974 alone 24 r&b/pop crossover hits were recorded there.
A 23 year-old pre-fame Luther Vandross sang and arranged the backing vocals.
David Bowie performing “Young Americans on The Dick Cavett Show, with Luther Vandross singing backup
Bowie didn’t start recording his vocals until 2 or 3 in the morning, as he heard Frank Sinatra didn’t record vocals for his records until after midnight and he is an icon, something Bowie aspired to be.
On his Diamond Dogs tour Bowie performed a song by The Flares called “Foot Stomping.” He rearranged the music from that tune to make it more r&b-sounding. John Lennon, who Bowie met the year before at a party thrown by Elizabeth Taylor, was in the studio and played a riff on the guitar from a then current disco hit by an artist named Shirley (And Company) called “Shame, Shame, Shame.” Bowie changed Shame to Fame and wrote the lyrics. They recorded “Fame” together with Lennon singing the falsetto backup. They also collaborated on a cover of The Beatles’ “Across the Universe,” also on the Young Americans album. A third nod to Lennon is on the song “Young Americans,” which samples a lyric from The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” (“I heard the news today, oh boy”).
Performing “Fame” on Cher’s variety show
After the full album was recorded Bowie played it for invited guests, including Lennon, Paul & Linda McCartney, Bette Midler, Manhattan Transfer and Bob Dylan. Dylan told him he thought it was terrible.
The American public felt differently. In early 1975 the title track hit the US top thirty, something Bowie managed to do only once before with “Space Oddity” in 1973. The next single, “Fame,” went to #1 on the pop charts and hit the top 30 on the soul chart, earning him a guest appearance on Soul Train.
Young Americans was the album that made Bowie a star in America.
Tuesday’s Tunes du Jour playlist is dedicated to David Bowie, who turns 67 the next day. Among the Bowie tracks, collaborations, covers and tributes are Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes,” the hit Bowie wrote for them after they rejected his offer of recording his “Suffragette City,” which Bowie then recorded himself, and Iggy Pop’s version of “China Girl,” a song the two co-wrote and Pop released six years before Bowie did his version.
In the grocery store yesterday I heard the most joyless version of “Joy to the World.” I heard a dull version of “White Christmas” that made me glad it was 77 degrees outside. I heard a rendition “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” so lifeless it would make Kris Kringle say “Fuck this – I’m staying home.”
My fourth and final Christmas playlist for 2013 includes more festive fare. Mostly it consists of Christmas songs that have not been overplayed. Some of the holiday classics are represented – “The Little Drummer Boy” as performed by Iggy Pop and RuPaul’s twist on “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” in which mommy is not the parent doing the kissing.
Enjoy!
The latter half of the eighties was a great time for alternative rock music and its fans. During the years after the new wave boom but before Nirvana penetrated the mainstream, bringing a host of new rock acts with them, we would hear fresh, interesting acts on WLIR/WDRE and see them on MTV’s 120 Minutes.
In early 1988 120 Minutes aired a video from a new Irish singer named Sinéad O’Connor. The song was “Mandinka.” It grabbed me immediately. I bought her LP The Lion and the Cobra. It was (and is) great. I became obsessed. Not in a creepy stalker kind of way. I felt the need to own every note this woman released. I bought the albums, the remixes, the non-LP singles (e.g. “My Special Child”), the singles with non-LP b-sides (the UK CD single of “Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home” with its cover of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” the UK CD single of “This Is a Rebel Song” with its cover of “Redemption Song”), every movie soundtrack album she appeared on (Married to the Mob, In the Name of the Father) and every compilation she appeared on (Red Hot + Blue, Help, A Very Special Christmas 2). I loved her passion, her songs, her intelligence, her tenderness, her individuality and her look. She stood out from the pack.
Today Tunes du Jour celebrates the birthday of Sinéad O’Connor with a playlist inspired by her and the music of the 120 Minutes era.
Raised Jewish, I celebrated Hanukkah. For several years, my family also celebrated Christmas. We didn’t go to midnight mass, we didn’t drink egg nog, we didn’t throw a special type of log in the fireplace. (By the way, I have no idea what makes a Yule log yuley). We put tinsel and candy canes on a large potted plant my mother had in the den and bought each other small but practical gifts. For example, when I was 11 for Christmas my parents got me a salt shaker. The Christmas celebrations stopped after I innocently told Grandpa Mordechai about them. My parents were so angry with me they took away my salt shaker.
Though I no longer celebrate Christmas, I still have a major jones for Christmas music. I own many more Christmas records than any atheist Jew probably should. We’re talking in the hundreds.
I eschew Christmas classics performed by well-known middle-of-the-road acts such as Celine Dion, Michael Bublé, Kenny G (sell-out Jew), Neil Diamond (sell-out Jew) or Barbra Streisand (sell-out Jew). Frank Sinatra shows up only in a duet with Cyndi Lauper and Bing Crosby shows up only in his duet with David Bowie.
Including the Crosby/Bowie version, I have 15 renditions of “The Little Drummer Boy” in my iPod, by a diverse list of artists including Johnny Cash, The Temptations, Joan Jett, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop and RuPaul.
I have ten versions of “Winter Wonderland,” and that’s not counting the cross-dressing parody “Walkin’ Round in Women’s Underwear,” not performed by RuPaul.
I have “Christmas in Hollis,” “Christmas in Harlem,” “Christmas in Washington,” “Christmastime in the LBC,” “Christmas in the City,” “Christmas in Heaven,” “Christmastime in Hell” and “Christmas at the Zoo.”
I have Christmas songs by most of my favorite artists of all-time, including The Beatles, Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M., Elvis Presley, The White Stripes, Kanye West, Ike and Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, and Radiohead.
Some Christmas songs aren’t Christmas songs at all. “Frosty the Snowman,” “Let It Snow Let it Snow Let It Snow” and “Winter Wonderland” don’t mention the baby Jesus or Santa Claus or presents or a bullied reindeer with a skin ailment.
Some of the Christmas songs I have are a bit odd. “I Found the Brains of Santa Claus,” a smooth jazz version of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” C3PO and R2D2 singing “Sleigh Ride.” I have Liberace reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” though his version doesn’t hold a candle to Aretha Franklin’s version, in which the Queen of Soul took a few liberties with the words: “A bundle of gifts he had and what did I get? / As I squealed, opening the package, the same old shit!” Her lyrics are downright Disneyesque compared to Snoop Dogg’s reading of the famous poem. If you’re interested, Google the lyrics because I’m not going to print them here.
I have John Denver singing “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas).” Verse one opens with a couplet for the arithmetically-challenged: “Just last year when I was only seven / Now I’m almost eight you can see.” Santa needs to bring John some flashcards. The next two lines create a holiday image that is less Norman Rockwell and more John Waters: “You came home at quarter past eleven / And fell down underneath the Christmas tree.” Someone needs to get him to a 12-step group. He can attend a meeting with the title character of Fishbone’s “Slick Nick, You Devil You,” who came down the chimney with a keg of brew and spilled Jack Daniels all over the drapes.
I have Sarah Silverman singing “Give the Jew Girl Toys,” in which she taunts Santa by singing “You have a list / Well, Schindler did to / Liam Neeson played him / Tim Allen played you.”
Then there’s the classic “Fairtytale of New York” by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, which evokes the holiday spirit with the line “You scumbag, you maggot / You cheap lousy faggot,” something yelled at me every year by those Salvation Army Santas.
Better still is “Macarena Christmas.” I LOVE “Macarena” and I’m betting you do to though you probably won’t admit it. “Macarena Christmas” celebrates the birth of our lord and savior Baby Macarena by taking the chorus from the hit single and uncleverly inserting it repeatedly into a medley of Christmas songs, so it goes “Joy to the world, the Lord has come / Da le a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena, Que tu cuerpo es pa darle alegria y cosa Buena / Da le a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena / Eeeeeh, Macarena – ay / Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way.” Sound effects of what sounds like an infant with the hiccups are thrown in. It makes no sense, y me gusta mucho.
My favorite holiday album and one of the greatest all-time albums period is Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift for You, featuring tracks he produced for The Ronettes, The Crystals, Darlene Love and Bob B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans. Every cut on it is classic and can be enjoyed by the whole family, except Grandpa Mordechai.