Sound Bites

Lights! Camel! Action!

I'm off my game. Hammy, gun-loving actor Charlton Heston died a week ago and this fitting tribute only hit me now.

Stump were one of the stranger bands signed to a major label in the late-'80s.  Lumped in the with the C86 scene (they were on the cassette), this quartet from Cork, Ireland had more in common with Captain Beefheart than anything else. We played a lot of kooky stuff at my college radio but I remember Stump's album, A Fierce Pancake, as one of the most hated records in rotation at the time. (Absolutely most hated during my tenure was Get Out of School by pre-tween punks Old Skull.) And that time was dominated by R.E.M., the Replacements, Morrissey, the Mighty Lemon Drops, Love & Rockets, etc.

But I always kind of liked it. Not the whole thing, mainly two songs. The first was "Buffalo," their UK indie chart "hit" that was on the C86 cassette and then rerecorded twice (on their EP Quirk, then for the album) in hopes of a bonafide hit. The song's chorus was frontman Mick Lynch shouting "How much is the fish! How much is the chips! How much is the fish! Does the fish have chips!" It was the 80s. Anything seemed possible.

The other song was an ode to the making of The Ten Commandments that featured sampled frogs as the main percussive element. It also rhymed "Charlton Heston" with "put his vest on" which I thought was totally brilliant. The video, directed by Tim Pope and featuring 1000 live frogs, was pretty good too:

MP3: Stump - Charlton Heston

MP3: Stump - Buffalo

Weirdly, while doing some research for this post, I learned that A Fierce Pancake has just been reissued as a three-disc deluxe edition, including their first two EPs (never before on CD) and a bunch of tracks recorded for Pancake's follow-up that never happened.

I'm by no means an expert on Stump, though I figure I'm one of about 100 people in America who owns original A Fierce Pancake CD. If you're interested in learning more, bassist Kev Hopper's website has an informative and entertaining biography of the band full of the sad and rediculous stuff labels do to bands in an attempt to score a hit.

As for Chuck Heston, the Onion really said it best.

Adiós Matamoros

After 18 months of having a For Sale sign in their window, looks like Matamoros Puebla Grocery has finally given up the ghost. I headed there yesterday for some lunch and they were gutting the place. I was gutted too. They might've been merely renovating, I couldn't bring myself to inquire, but I'm guessing not. The shutters were down when I walked by around 11am this morning.

Matamoros was one of the few places on Bedford that was still around from when I first moved to Williamsburg ten years ago. It was there that I first had "authentic" Mexican food and it's cheap and delicious tacos, sopes and tortas got me through some lean years and continued to eat there probably twice a week. It was also my source for perfect avocados, crema, cotija cheese, dried chiles and bizarre tamarind candy. Mostly I will miss their amazing sopes, pictured above. I've had better tacos elsewhere in the city, but nobody did sopes as good as Matamoros. I am very sad.

So it Goes: Tony Wilson R.I.P.

Too many of these lately. Tony Wilson was a know-it-all prat but that certainly doesn't mean I didn't respect him. The way he ran Factory records -- split the money 50/50 with the band, artist freedom, amazing sleeves, etc -- didn't make him much money but it came from the right place and even when his tastes were questionable (there was a lot of crap on Factory) you could never say he wasn't passionate about all of his bands and music in general. Can you be a total genius and a total knob? Tony Wilson was living proof.

The Guardian has many tributes, from the likes of Paul Morley, Alan McGee and more.

Here's a two-part memoriam the BBC aired last night, including interviews with New Order's Steven Morris and legendary sleeve designer Peter Saville:

Factory Records output was spotty at best, with about four truly great bands (two of which were pretty much the same band), many bands with one or two great singles, and a lot of other groups that sounded exactly like their moneymakers. Here are a few of them whose names aren't Joy Division, New Order or Happy Mondays. I'm not saying it's all good...

MP3: The Durutti Column - Sketch for Summer (from Return of the Durutti Column [FAC 14])

MP3: Tunnelvision - Watching the Hydroplanes (FAC 39)

MP3: A Certain Ratio - Knife Slits Water (FAC 62)

MP3: Section 25 - Looking from a Hilltop (FAC 108)

MP3: Shark Vegas - You Hurt Me (FAC 111; MySpace download, sorry about the quality)

MP3: The Wake - Of the Matter (FAC 113)

MP3: Abecedarians - Smiling Monarchs (FAC 117)

MP3: Quando Quango - Genius (FAC 137)

MP3: The Railway Children - Brighter (FAC 167)

MP3: Miaow - When it All Comes Down (FAC 179)

MP3: The Wendys - Pulling My Fingers Off (FAC 297)

MP3: The Northside - Take 5 (FAC 308)

MP3: The Adventure Babies - Camper Van (FAC 319; Factory's last signing before going belly-up)

The ultimate tribute to Anthony H. Wilson's genius and knobbery is Michael Winterbottom's fantastic 24 Hour Party People, featuring a brilliant performance by Steve Coogan as the man himself. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and remedy that soon.

My one run-in with Mr. Wilson was during a week he agreed to fill in for BBC 6 presenter Andrew Collins weekday show, Tea Time. He was talking about the current state of metal, and I emailed in to say that I'd much rather listen to the Darkness than Alien Ant Farm or System of a Down any day. He read my message on air and then ripped me apart for a good minute, going into an impassioned campaign about how System of a Down were one of the best bands around and that I was a total philistine to say otherwise. I felt about this small at the time, though I'd still rather listen to the Darkness, but to have Tony Wilson eviscerate me on-air was kind of a thrill.

Sooner or Later We All Make the Little Flowers Grow

Lee Hazelwood lost his battle with renal cancer yesterday at age '78. An amazing songwriter with an unforgettable baritone, he was '60s icon and an extremely cool cat. Idolator has a nice obituary, as does the BBC.

He was best known for working with Nancy Sinatra, writing her biggest hit "These Boots are Made for Walkin'," as well as psychedelic classic "Some Velvet Morning" that has been covered countless times by indie/alternative bands over the last 20 years. (Slowdive's version is particularly good.) But my favorite Nancy & Lee song is "Summer Wine," with its wistful, spooky string section.

MP3: Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood - Summer Wine (from 1968's Nancy & Lee)

And here's a fitting song from Lee's 1963 solo debut, a cowboy storyteller album called Trouble is a Lonesome Town:

MP3: Lee Hazelwood - We All Make the Flowers Grow

Stephen Jones (aka Babybird) covered "We All Make the Flowers Grow" on 2002's Total Lee: the Songs of Lee Hazelwood, one of the more listenable tribute albums of recent years. I like his version, which samples Hazelwood's original spoken intro, just as much.

MP3: Stephen "Babybird" Jones - We All Make the Flowers Grow

And that fantastic version of "Some Velvet Morning" by Slowdive:

MP3: Slowdive - Some Velvet Morning (from their 1994 masterwork, Souvlaki)

Youtube clips are somewhat disappointing. Weirdly, I had to go to MySpace to find the clip of Nancy and Lee on horseback singing "Some Velvet Morning" from Nancy Sinatra's 1968 NBC special, Movin' with Nancy. But here it is:

However, YouTube does have most of the clips from Lee's Swedish television special, Cowboy in Sweden (based on his album of the same name), which isn't quite as good as the title might imply. But "No Train to Stockholm" is pretty great:

There's also most of his other Swedish TV special, Love and Other Crimes. which is more of a standard TV variety hour. They really liked him over there. We like him here. RIP, Lee.

Just Hang My Head in Disbelief

Horatio J. Hoodoo, we'll miss you. I much as I love Match Game, when I think of Charles Nelson Reilly, this always pops into my head:

MP3:The Dead Milkmen - Serrated Edge

James Brown: Super Bad News

There are plenty of straight-up James Brown memorials today (here's John Pareles' obit in the Times) so I thought I'd offer up two "tributes" of sorts from 1989, a year after the Godfather of Soul's infamous drug-n-booze fueled run-in with the law that ended in a wild interstate car chase. Both songs poke fun at the incident which had pretty much worn away any goodwill Brown had left. (The '80s were a rough decade for the him.)

Of the two, I think Pop Will Eat Itself's contribution holds up a little better, though I am biased as I hold the album it came from, This is the Day... This Is the Hour... This is This, as an unheralded (and unfairly maligned) classic. Plus they sample "Funky Drummer" as well as some classic JB catchphrases. For whatever reason, Big Audio Dynamite sampled West Side Story for their song "James Brown," the lead single off Megatop Phoenix, the last Big Audio Dynamite album to feature the original lineup. (The band was never as good once Don Letts left, even though they became much more popular.) I think this got picked as a single more for the name recognition that the catchiness of the song, but it's still fun, if a bit dated.

• Pop Will Eat Itself - "Not Now James, We're Busy"

• Big Audio Dynamite - "James Brown"

R.I.P. Arthur Lee

Legendary Love frontman Arthur Lee lost his battle with Leukemia last night (August 3). He was 61. He was pretty much batshit crazy for most of the '80s and '90s but there's no denying his amazing catalog with perhaps the ultimate '60s psych-pop group. It seems especially sad as anyone who saw the Forever Changes concerts from 2002 knew the man still had it.

Read the AP obit here.

Vintage Love from YouTube:

• "My Little Red Book"

• "A Message to Pretty" (on American Bandstand!)

• "Your Mind and We Belong Together"

I figure there will be plenty of Love mp3s posted on blogs today, so I'm offering a couple worthy tributes/homages from other bands:

MP3: Hopkirk and Lee - "Free Arthur Lee"

MP3: Belle & Sebastian - "I'm Waking Up to Us"

I have distinct memories of the Pernice Brothers doing "Alone Again Or" at Bowery Ballroom in 2001. I wonder how many bands performing around the country tonight will be covering  Love songs?

RIP Grant McLennan

Was there a band that had a classier, better second act than The Go-Betweens? As much as I like their '80s output (which is pretty much great), I think they actually got  better since  reforming in 1999, with 2000's comeback The Friends of Rachel Worth being the best thing they ever did. I liked all of McLennan and Forster's solo records, but there was magic when they played together. Maybe because they weren't trying to write songs aimed at the 20-something market, they wrote about what they wanted to, they were able to remain vital. Last year's Ocean's Apart was a great album. I am very sad to think there won't be another.

The Go-Betweens - Going Blind