RobP
Songs You Should Be Listening To
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every fuckin song
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Posts
This came up in blogspot conversation with Jenny, and although she's no longer on Mog this seems a good place to post as well. And yeah, I have a bunch of good 2008 albums, I just keep finding more. With 1978, I'm probably pretty close to set.
oh, and the song included for play here isn't on either of the ubu albums on this list, it's an early single. enjoy.
It takes me awhile to put these lists together, and this is by no means final, but 1978 is to my ears one of the greatest years in rock music, and Jenny was curious so I put it together. God knows what I've left out, I didn't go through my records before doing this, just put it together tonight. Suffice to say, any big name bands left off this list were left off intentionally, but there are other things I need to work on tonight so I'm putting this up pretty quickly. And apparently I have a lot of albums from 1978 - of the zillion things left off, I think Willie Alexander's album would've been # 21. Here goes:
1 Pere Ubu Dub Housing
2 Talking Heads More Songs About Buildings and Food
3 Johnny Thunders So Alone
4 Magazine Real Life
5 David Johansen David Johansen
6 Joe Ely Honky Tonk Masquerade
7 Wire Chairs Missing
8 The Clash Give Em Enough Rope
9 Bob Dylan Street Legal
10 Lou Reed Street Hassle
11 Pere Ubu The Modern Dance
12 The Adverts Crossing the Red Sea With The Adverts
13 Bruce Springsteen Darkness On The Edge of Town
14 Southside Johnny Hearts of Stone
15 NRBQ At Yankee Stadium
16 The Buzzcocks Another Music In A Different Kitchen
17 Siouxsie & The Banshees The Scream
18 Big Star Sister Lovers
19 DMZ DMZ
20 Elvis Costello This Year's Model
Okay, apparently I know where the Jackson Saints are - San Francisco, which is the only place I've seen them. Only it's been 15 or 20 years, and when I was reminded of them tonight while listening to the Dictators (they used to cover a Dictators song - Stay With Me, I'm pretty sure, and I think Chuck Davis was the name of their singer then, and he was great, and I saw him in the crowd at a Dictators reunion show, early 90s, and said to him, "You guys shoulda opened" - and Chuck or whoever their singer was nodded and smiled in agreement, I didn't know him I just thought they were the best band in SF at the time, somewhere on a level approaching Sister Double Happiness, and I don't think a whole lot of bands from <anywhere approach SDH, I mean for a couple of years that was just one of the best bands in the world...)
Rambling on (without the R Plant Tolkien references, as amusing as they might be), I was really surprised upon googling the Jackson Saints tonight to find them apparently still extant, and apparently still based out of SF, and with mostly the same players. Although of course the time my brother came up from Santa Cruz to see them at my insistence they'd changed vocalists without notifying me and they were still damn good but they weren't the same band, they didn't cover the Dictators. And I really liked that earlier singer a lot. Oh, the point being that I don't see any way of contacting the Jackson Saints except via their Myspace page. Which would require me starting a Myspace account. Which I did once, but that guy who greets everyone and becomes your friend seemed suspiciously like a child molester, and I'm too old to do anything with one of those except kill him. I genuinely was concerned several years ago when my young son started a myspace account and this older guy was his "friend." Bizarre premise, "Hi, I'm presumably in my twenties and I like to have a lot of teenage friends." Yeh. One time I was talking to a cop about a convicted child molester who was in our neighborhood, and the cop intimated that I should take care of it myself. Which I had no problem with on certain levels, although I assumed there would be certain lifelong legal and emotional issues involved if I actually killed someone. I did think the guy deserved it though.
So, much as I used to like the Jackson Saints, I do have certain issues with myspace. Which is why I'm posting this, in the hopes that at some point someone who knows some other way of getting in touch with the band can give me a heads up. Of course, if someone actually in the band saw this that would be ideal. But I guess that point would be clear by now, eh?
Comments
LOL, that was one hell of a funny plea, RobP. Unfortunately I got nothin' for ya but a chuckle.
Thanks for the clip, it went well with my Saturday morning coffee. And you even got em with Chuck Davis as the singer, cool. Now, it does seem to me that I found Janis Tanaka visually compelling and she's hard to see in this, but it's a damn fine song and I haven't heard these guys in years.
Driving home tonight, thoroughly enjoying Motorhead but the entire 2 album cd had run its course and after letting the magnificent recorded in a toilet anthem 'Motorhead' play for the second time today, I decided to switch to the Dictators. Who, it occurred to me, I actually prefer to Motorhead. Although whether they have a song as good as 'Motorhead' or 'Ace of Spades' I don't know.
The two cd's I listened to in the car were comparable: the first Motorhead album was followed by the much later 1916 album, with two or three tracks excluded. Similarly, the Dictators cd was their first album, 'Go Girl Crazy,' followed by all but two or three tracks from their 'Bloodbrothers' album.
I know this is a really stupid comparison. Motorhead has many more years of consistently releasing albums, and I don't have enough of those albums to judge accurately but from what I've heard their best stuff made the best of albums. Which are great, of course.
And I love the Dictators. The whole idea that Handsome Dick Manitoba would proclaim himself the best looking man in rock n roll - well, I'd just been thinking yesterday that maybe he'd been comparing himself to Lemmy. Or the singer in the Anti-Nowhere League, have you seen that guy? Anyway...
The Dictators just had a fucking attitude. And it came across in the songwriting, which was pretty much Adny Shernoff, but it was also in the performance - Handsome Dick was absolutely brilliant and also funny as hell. As was Adny. The songs had a cocky sense of humor, a sense of superiority, and they overtly tried to draw inappropriate criticisms - Back To Africa and Master Race Rock are consecutive tracks on their debut album, and neither is remotely offensive and both are damn funny and rock, but those titles sure as hell get your attention.
Motorhead is a different monster altogether, badass from the getgo and with a superior vocalist - much as I like Handsome Dick, Lemmy has one of the great voices in hard rock, a voice where you can't envision the man in another career. He'd clear the block selling ice cream.
And Fast Eddie, when they had him, was the right guy for the job, definitely. A monster guitarist, although of course Ross The Boss for the Dictators left nothing to desire. Fucking perfect fills.
I guess what I really want to do here is rave about two great bands who took different takes on similar turf: punk attitude with more of a metal play. I'm listening to a lot of both bands lately and that part of life is good.
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Hey Jeff, yr a Bay Area rocker - do you know the Jackson Saints? I did a semi-drunken post on blogspot about them, mainly wondering if anyone knew how to contact them other than their myspace page. Screw it, I'll just repost the thing here, this is where it probably belonged in the first place.
i remember the name. the bass player is a friend of a friend. janis tanaka. she was also one of the bass players for L7, and another favorite of mine the hammers of misfortune. now she plays for pink.
MOG Meter
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RIGHT on.
Nice list Rob. In retrospect, 1978 really was a good year. Post-punk was in its infancy, and is well represented here.
I did a quick look through my mp3's and found these other worthy titles that were released that year:
This reminds me of a post idea. Hmm ... off to the lab.
But Michael, you're one of the old farts I was counting on to remind me of what I left out (the tie-breaker was I tried to go by how much I still listen to the albums, and god knows how long the list would be if I combined 77-78-79).