Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Creamtastic Happy Birthday, 45 RPM Records (Everybody Needs a Bosom for a Pillow)
Posted by Steve Haruch on Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:06 AM
The 45 RPM single turns 60 today. On March 31, 1949, RCA Victor released "Texarkana Baby" b/w "Bouquet of Roses" by Eddy Arnold. I figure this is as good a time as any to talk 45s, singles or 7-inches or whatever you call them. Something tells me Maloney has an Archers of Loaf single he really likes. How 'bout y'all?
Personally, I've had the misfortune of losing my entire collection of 45s on two different occasions (once to theft and once to mysterious disappearance) so I'm kind of gun shy about them. Not that I've ever been a huge collector, but still. At any rate, I present five notable 45s of mine.
5. Captain Zoom - "Happy Birthday, [Your Name Here]!"
This only makes the list because it's a birthday. (OK, fine, I totally listened to this as a kid.) It's a flexi-disc of a totally goofy birthday song (just for me!) that was sold at Toys "R" Us, among other places, in the late '70s and early '80s. "My name is Zoom / And I live on the moon / But I came down to Earth / Just to sing you this tune / 'Cause Ste-eve / It's your birthday / Today!" Yes, you can get these on CD now, but who wants that? Here's how it sounds when Zoom sings to Matthew. (Hey, gimme a break. If this were about LPs, I'd be talking about E.T. right now.)
4. Metallica - "Eye of the Beholder" b/w "Breadfan" (Elektra)
I was a young lad when this one came out, and it had a number of things going for it. One, it was the new Metallica single, and I was a big Metallica fan, even if the new album as a whole wasn't really doing it for me. Two, cover art by Pushead, which, as a skater kid, I took as "cred," though I had no concept of that term at the time. Beyond that, what held my attention was the B-side: a cover of the Budgie tune "Breadfan." Not that I ever really became a huge Budgie fan, but something about the arrangement of that song fascinated me—as did the fact that Metallica did an obscure (at least to me) cover as their B-side. (Yeah, it took me a while to figure out that "Crash Course in Brain Surgery" was by Budgie, too.) This record was lost in the "mysterious disappearance" and I've never really thought to seek out another copy.
3. The Shins - "Nature Bears a Vacuum" (Omnibus)
So, I'm new to Nashville, have no job, and need some cash. The Shins are "blowing up," in the parlance of our time (this really happened, I swear), so I decide that for once I will make some money off knowing about a band before most other people knew about them. I check eBay every day to see if anyone's got the same idea. Eventually, some jerk puts his copy of "Nature Bears a Vacuum" up for auction and gets $135 for it. (!) I don't waste any time. I've got dollar signs instead of pupils. I've got two copies of this thing! Well, look who glutted the market: I wound up "only" getting $110. Of course, you can just download the thing now, but that's not the same, silly. This is a post about how awesome 45s are—and I still have the other copy. (And if you're a real Shins geek, I've got an incredibly rare CD-R from the band's first tour—before they changed the title of the song "New Slang"—and an even rarer Omnibus cassette with The Shins on one side and the Flake Music song "The Shins" on the other. EXTREMELY RARE NM+++)
2. The Champs - "Second 7" " (Wantage USA)
A friend whose taste I trusted said, "You should check out this band called The Champs." So I did—by buying a 7-inch, not doing a search on YouTube. Go figure. Anyway, I was blown away. "Lee Tom"—are you kidding? All my favorite things about '80s metal (the real stuff) plus a bunch of math-y technical stop-and-start awesomeness courtesy of all the "featuring members of Slint" music I loved at the time. Baby blue vinyl. Sweetness. This band changed their name to The Fucking Champs, since they figured out that the song "Tequila" was by The Champs, and being associated, however obliquely, with Pee Wee Herman is totally not metal.
1. Neutral Milk Hotel - "Everything Is" b/w "Snow Song Pt. 1" (Cher Doll)
Yes, the very first Neural Milk Hotel single is still a prized possession, inasmuch as 45s are prized possessions for me. I probably paid too much for it, back when we all thought Jeff Mangum was, y'know, going to make another album someday. (This was my first eBay purchase. Therefore, I didn't realize that the seller would be a little weirded out when I said, "Hey, since we both live in the same city, why don't I just pick it up from you?") Makes me smile any time I put it on. 
Here's a few from Jim Ridley:
"Be My Baby," The Ronettes
For the duration of a great single, I mean a lifetime-achievement heart-stopping single, no other world exists except the one inside the song. Time stands still for the two-plus minutes of this marvel: it's like riding a Tilt-a-Whirl at night on Coney Island with your girlfriend's hair whipping in the summer wind. All of city life is compressed into that wall of sound, which gets bigger and deeper the more you listen. (Only in the single format could a handheld percussionist emerge as the MVP—this is like a symphony for shakers.) The excitement's all in the dynamics—like the tension between the pleading of the verses and the abandon of the chorus, or the way you forget how epic that arrangement really is until it cuts out near the end, leaving just that cannon-fire drumbeat and the surrounding void. The principle of duration starts with a moment; as soon as the moment is recognized, the moment's over. This manages to keep a moment suspended for two-plus minutes, until that last titanic drum fill—and that's pretty much when I breathe again.
"Right Back Where We Started From," Maxine Nightingale
A single that hurls itself up against a seemingly insurmountable challenge: Can a great song not have one unhappy thought in its head? (See also: "Walking on Sunshine.") Raising the possibility of doubt only to banish it, this is pop euphoria: handclaps, a cheerleader-camp beat, a sugar rush of a chorus, and one of the greatest string arrangements ever—the skittering sound of a heart going haywire at getting everything it wants.
"Stand by Me," Ben E. King
And here's its opposite: a majestically despondent song that uses "Psycho" strings, a steadfast bass line and the singer's heroic voice holding a torch in a cave of ambient space to dramatize the dark night of the soul, thereby showing a way out. I have no doubt that this song has saved lives.
"Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have Fallen in Love With?)," Buzzcocks
A lot of my favorite singles are ticking bombs that explode and reload with every chorus. The verses here light the fuse; the detonating chorus lights up the sky. Deny this single and deny the evidence of your beating heart.
"Uptown Girl," Billy Joel
Seriously—does anybody even wanna challenge the hook-a-bar brilliance of its melody, its dozen or so climaxes, its deployment of the underestimated "ay-yi-yi" extended syllable, or the perfection of its pastiche of front-stoop 1960s Jersey Boys-era pop? I limited myself to just one Billy Joel song, but for about five years the dude's offhand mastery of pop songcraft (especially on the wall-to-wall excellent AN INNOCENT MAN) was close to untoppable. Here, the pleasure per second ratio is something like 1.85:1.
And from Jack Silverman:
Ides of March, "Vehicle"
The Foundations, "Build Me Up Buttercup"
Zager and Evans, "In the Year 2525"
Shocking Blue, "Venus"
Strawberry Alarm Clock, "Incense and Peppermints"
Royal Guardsmen, "Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron"
Comments (28)
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Ha! My very first band in high school was called My Name is Zoom. We were as awful as you would expect.
Here's my current top 5 45s (and by "top 5" I mean the five on top of the pile next to my turntable right now.)
Gladys Knight & The Pips "Got Myself a Good Man" b/w "The Nitty Gritty"
Etta James "Tell Mama" b/w "I'd Rather go Blind"
Lowell Fulsom "Do You Feel It?" b/w "Don't Destroy Me"
The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band "Do Your Thing" b/w "A Dance A Kiss A Song"
Funkadelic "I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everybody's Got A Thing" b/w "Fish, chips and Sweat"
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We Just finished recording our first release which will be a 45. Look for it in the coming weeks!
(Also check us out at Bongo, Friday)
Hey Sean, I should have known.... (BTW, what's a cooklechoo?)
I also was going to mention that the album version of "Brimful of Asha" completely lords over that "Fatboy Slim remix" (glad we don't have to say those words very often anymore), mostly because it doesn't have those stupid "Mmmbop" scratches in it.
ps. I wish I had the Caustic Resin 'Yeah, Right' 7". AFAIK the song isn't otherwise available. Its kinda my musical holy grail to find it on MP3/CD.
I've got Caustic Resin's "Fly Me To The Moon" double lp, but that's it.
And I have no idea what a cooklechoo is.
My first 45: "Rappin' Rodney" b/w "Funiculì, Funiculà" by Rodney Dangerfield. The same day, my sister got "Cum On Feel The Noize" b/w "Metal Health" by Quiet Riot. I'd say my musical sensibilities still land somewhere squarely in the middle of those two records.
Beck - "Whiskey Can-Can" - K Records
Has "Feather in Your Cap," which eventually showed up on the soundtrack to Suburbia. I checked up on it recently and it's actually made on brown vinyl. Allegedly less than 200 made it into circulation even though Beck wanted them destroyed.
Guided By Voices - "I am a Scientist" ep - Matador
The redone version of the title song truly has to be their best recorded moment as a band for me. Andy Shernoff from the Dictators produces!
Sic Alps - "Strawberry Guillotine" - Woodsist
My favorite band at the moment. The earlier guitar haze experiments have given way into a band capable of making a Nuggets comp out of each record they put out. A beautiful mess.
The 7" I listen to most often: "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty b/w "Living Together Alone"
I also have "Time to Bum Again" by Waylon Jennings with his cover of "Norwegian Wood" on the flip side.
Cattle Decapitation's first release: Ten Torments of the Damned. Ten songs on clear green vinyl.
That Black Dice 7" from back when they were a hardcore band
Most Ebay-able: An unlistenable Carcass bootleg called The Power of Blood. It's a recording of one of their rehearsals back in 1985, three years before the release of Reek of Putrefaction. Maybe one other metalhead nerd reads this blog and is impressed by this.
Favorite 7" in my collection:
Drive Like Jehu
"Hand Over Fist" b/w "Bullet Train To Vegas"
That thing rocks my lame ass.
And I have no idea what a cooklechoo is.
Isn't it something from "I Am the Walrus"? Or maybe it's "Mrs. Robinson."
"Brimful of Asha" is awesome. Ditto "Tell Mama," even if my favorite EJ single might be her flabbergasting version of "You Can Leave Your Hat On"—maybe the raunchiest, most salacious vocal performance ever recorded. Next to this, Millie Jackson is Millie Vanilla. Miss Etta makes an orgasm sound like Mt. Vesuvius imploding.
My first 45s were inherited from my mother, and as a kid, I always loved to play Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons" and The Tokens' "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."
Later, in the summer of 1980, a local record store was having a Star Wars event after the release of The Empire Strikes Back. I had my mother drive me there in my ghetto-Luke Skywalker outfit of khaki pants and an unbottoned white button-up shirt, crossed over and fastened with a belt. Since I'd come dressed up, the employees let me pick out a free 45. Influenced by another hit of that summer, I picked out the 45 of Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright (Theme From Caddyshack." Don't nobody worry 'bout me.
my ghetto-Luke Skywalker outfit of khaki pants and an unbottoned white button-up shirt, crossed over and fastened with a belt.
Casual Friday is comin' up. Just sayin'.
This band changed their name to The Fucking Champs, since they figured out that the song "Tequila" was by The Champs, and being associated, however obliquely, with Pee Wee Herman is totally not metal.
Don't be dissing Pee Wee. Pee Wee's Big Adventure is a thing of joy and beauty forever. If Pee Wee Herman changed his name to The Fucking Champ, it would be an understatement.
I'm just getting warmed up:
"Photograph," Ringo Starr
My vote for the greatest wall-of-sound single not produced by Phil Spector: an edifice erected around the shakiest of foundations, the homely vocals of Richard Starkey. Instead of swallowing Ringo's croaky warble, the cathedral bells, soaring strings and depth-charge drums provide a platform for the ache in his voice. The result is a snapshot that doesn't fade.
"The Cold Hard Facts of Life," Porter Wagoner
Beneath all those rhinestones, cold blood coursed through a heart that had been ripped out of its chest a dozen times or more and put back crooked. Here's proof.
"Eight Miles High," Husker Du
A cathartic tornado of primal-scream noise that would be ineffective at a shorter time and unbearable for longer.
"Girl on the Billboard," Del Reeves
In the glorious genre of truck-driving singles, this may have the most awesome motormouth hook of all time. The first time it comes around, you can't believe what you're hearing; the second time, you want to hear it again to find out what the hell he said; by the third time, you hope there's a fourth so you can start memorizing it. See also: Bobby Braddock's "Gear Bustin' Sort of a Feller."
"Head Over Heels," The Go-Gos
What can I say, other than its spilling suitcase of pop tricks never fails to cheer me up: the alarm-sounding piano intro, the hopscotch bass line, the whipcrack power chords, the unpredicta(WHACK)ble handclaps, the headbanging guitar surge before the instrumental break.
Others: ABBA, "S.O.S."; Blondie, "Heart of Glass"; Patsy Cline, "Sweet Dreams"; Elvis Costello, "Pump It Up"; Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, "Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!)"; The Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang"; The Kinks, "Lola"; Hank Williams, "Weary Blues from Waiting"; James Carr, "The Dark End of the Street"; Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama"; The Clash, "Rock the Casbah"; George Jones, "The Grand Tour"; Sleater-Kinney, "Dig Me Out"; Frank Sinatra, "Summer Wind"; Stevie Wonder, "Livin' for the City"; Menace, "G.L.C."; Bob Seger, "Night Moves"; The Pixies, "Here Comes Your Man"; U2, "Pride (In the Name of Love)"; Roy Orbison, "It's Over"; Prince, "Kiss"; Squeeze, "Up the Junction"; The Beatles, "She Loves You"; Carly Simon, "You're So Vain"
childhood 45 rockin:
"Theme From the Dukes of Hazard" Jennings. wore that shit OUT.
"Summer in the City" Lovin Spoonful
"Tequila"- yes cuz of Big Adventure!
and boy did I listen to some "Licensed to Ill"???? "Fight... to Party" (Paul Revere bside) and "Brass Monkey" singles. For some strange reason my Mom didn't mind those but actually took offense to Fresh Prince's "Parents Just Don't Understand"???
some beatles and of course kid's books on 45...
currently: I have a CYOD 45 that I wish was a full album.
Also, pick one: "Stayin' Alive," "How Deep Is Your Love" or "Nights on Broadway."
How ironic that your mom would object to "Parents Just Don't Understand." Will Smith: prophet of a generation.
As a kid in fifth grade, I would wear out Dickie Goodman's "Mister Jaws." That's how we rolled at Campus School.
@ familiar sideman: I actually recorded the Dukes of Hazzard theme song off the TV on a portable tape player. (Didn't know about 45s yet at that point.)
@ mr. pink: If Pee Wee Herman changed his name to...ah, why beat a dead horse?
@Mr. Pink Goodman's one-sided "Energy Crisis 74" is one of my all time favorites. He was the first person to get sued for sampling without clearance!
the gems of my collection other than the cristmas split recorded at the palace before ot was the palace (which was the first wax i could ever listen to that featured myself) are every 45 that whitney houston released off her first two records. greatest love of all, saving all my love for you, how will i know, all at once, i wanna dance with somebody, didn't we almost have it all, etc.....
ps...i think eddy arnold is from m'boro and i was BORN in texarkana, tx b/c the maternity ward of my hometown of hope, ar was under renovation. that makes ME a texarkana baby.
pps thats a bob wills song for you afficianados out there
ppps WHITNEY'S BACK BITCHES!!!
pppps naranda michel walden, the drummer who replaced billy cobham in the mahvisnu orchestra wrote the non feelers for whitney. sankara.
i'm not going into great detail on these but they getting a lot of needle these days....
"lets go"- the Routers (no rock and roll high school without this one)
"please don't fight it"- Dino, Desi, and Billy (great bobby fuller cover by
"indian giver"- 1910 fruitgum co. (fuck being p.c.)
"surfin' hootenanny"- al cacey and the KC-ettes (title says it all, written by lee hazelwood)
la bamba- ritchie valens (this ones backed with donna....)
More awesome 45s I just pulled out the stack:
Napoleon XIV "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" b/w "!Aaah-ah, Yawa Em Ekat Ot Gnimoc Er'yeht"
--If they ever make a movie of my life I want it to start with this A-side and end with this B-side.
Desmond Dekker & the Aces "Isrealites" b/w "My Precious World"
-- Best hook ever? Damn close. The Aces are one of Reggae's best harmony groups, by a long shot.
Teenage Fanclub "God Knows It's True" b/w "So Far Gone"
-- Indie Rock used to be good. Just sayin'.
Bob Seger "Heavy Music (Part 1)" b/w "Heavy Music (Part 2)"
-- There was a time when Bob Seger was more than just schmaltzy nostalgia, and that time ws the summer of '67. I know this because the original owner wrote "summer '67" all over the fucking label in a typical tween-girl font.
Boris the Spinkler "Drugs and Masturbation (Extended Pacific Northwest Hit Novelty Single Version) b/w "Yeah Yeah" and "Yeah Yeah No"
-- This is way better than the album version and the mix that ended up on a bunch of mid-90s punk comps. "Yeah Yeah" is a Vibrators cover and "Yeah Yeah No" is the response song. Rev. Norb is a certifiable genius.
My favorite 45s:
The Dirtbombs "Need You Tonight" b/w "Devil Inside"
--Dirtbombs doing INXS? Hellz yeah.
The Go "You Go Bangin' On" b/w "Maribel"
--Sweet, sweet Brit pop straight outta Detroit.
Mountains and Rainbows "Knock Me Out" b/w "Indian"
--I don't even listen to side B anymore. Side A blows my mind too much. This band was the precursor to Tyvek.
Kelley Stoltz "Discount City" b/w"'84 Tigers"
--Side A is a Beefheart-esque jam. Side B is a song entirely about the 1984 Detroit Tigers. It even lists the full starting line-up. B-side DEFINITELY shoulda been the A-side.
Black Mountain "Lucy Brown" b/w "Shelter"
--Black Mountain's addition to the new Sub Pop Singles Club. Much more of a pop sound than their LPs.
Meemaw Glass Elevator 45.
--Yeah. I said it. Meemaw is on my list.
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