The beginning of a new month means that you can vote again for the Vinyl Podcast at PodcastAlley.com. Using the form on the home page will only take you a couple of seconds, and I’d really appreciate it.
I’ve still got plenty of Yahoo!360 and Gmail invites. If you’d like one, put in a vote and then send me an email at vinylpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks!
P.S. May Day in Minnesota? It snowed.
On this show I play a cover of The Beatles’ “Hey Bulldog” by Fanny. This is an absolutely raucous version of the track, with fantastic drum work and some really raw guitar sounds. Fanny is often referred to as the first all-female rock and roll groups signed to a major label. That title is certainly open for debate, but Fanny played their own instruments, wrote the vast majority of their own songs, and rocked really, really hard. This track was recorded in 1971, and still sounds urgent and powerful today, I have to imagine that it blew minds when it was originally released.
The core of Fanny were the Millington sisters, June and Jean. Born in Manila, Phillipines to a U.S. serviceman, the girls moved to California at 10 or 11. In high school they started playing gigs together, soon after forming a quartet called The Svelts. The Svelts played Motown and other contemporary hits, and worked clubs in California extensively for a couple of years. In 1968 the sisters Millington decided to do music full-time, and changed the name of the group to Wild Honey. The next year they auditioned for producer Richard Perry, who secured a deal for them with Reprise Records.
“Hey Bulldog” is from Fanny’s third album, Fanny Hill, which features a great range of songs, from tender, piano-driven ballads to raunchy rock. This track represents a bit of a diversion from my typical format, in that it is currently commercially available. None of Fanny’s five albums are available on their own, but Rhino Records recently collected them all, plus other exclusive tracks in one of their limited-edition handmade box sets. It’s a bit of an investment, but it’s a great collection of an oft-overlooked group who deserves as much attention for their musicianship and songwriting as they do for their pioneering role in rock.
I’d like to apologize for my recent unexplained hiatus. I hope to make it up to you with a fantastic song. On this show I’m going to play “I Was Made To Love Magic” by Nick Drake, from his posthumous album Time of No Reply. Nick Drake was a British singer-songwriter who recorded from 1968 until his untimely death in 1974. You may recall that on an earlier show I played a cover of Drake’s “Pink Moon” by local band Walt Mink. If you’re unfamiliar with Nick Drake, you probably know his original version of that song, which was featured on a Volkswagen commercial a year or so ago.
You can file this particular song next to my Bonnie Dobson podcast under “haunting folk.” On this song, as in most of his music, Nick Drake seems to act out the story of his career as a painfully shy, tortured, doomed artist. He portrays himself as uniquely gifted to see the magic in the world, to use his eyes, and to live in a land of forever. In contrast, the rest of us have lost our sense of wonder and possibility. It’s not a cheery song, and of course it’s more poignant knowing that a few short years after recording it, Drake succumbed to an overdose of antidepressants which may or may not have been intentional.
Nick is backed up by a small ensemble on this track, in a really interesting arrangement by Richard Hewson. This track has recently been reissued on an album of the same name, however, the new release attempts to rewrite history by adding different orchestration, written in the late ’60s by Nick Drake’s friend Robert Kirby, but not recorded. I haven’t heard it, and I’m a little reluctant, because I like this track just the way it is.
I still have plenty of Yahoo!360 invites. As before, if you’d like one, use the form on my home page to vote for Vinyl Podcast at PodcastAlley.com, then send me an email at vinylpodcast@gmail.com. And speaking of gmail, if you want a gmail invite, the process is the same. Thanks!
On this show I play “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band, from their 1973 album Bongo Rock. The Incredible Bongo Band was a vanity project of Michael Viner, an executive at MGM records and head of its Pride subsidiary. Viner was a bongo player, and he got various session musicians together to record in spare studio time purchased by the label. None of the players are credited on this particular album, but it’s been assumed that one of the percussionists is King Erisson, in addition to Michael Viner, and there’s a rumored cameo by Ringo Starr.
As you might imagine, this lp features eight percussion-heavy tracks, mostly covers. At its worst, the group sounds like a cross between a marching band and a cheesy big band, but at its best, the percussion breaks are rock solid and funky. My general feeling is that Apache, the Incredible Bongo Band’s cover of the Shadows song, often veers toward the cheesy, but I long ago ceased to be a reliable critic of this song. It all sounds good to me, because I know what’s coming a little more than two minutes into the song, one of the funkiest and most iconic drum breaks I’ve ever heard. These drums were a staple of early hip hop, played in the parks by Afrika Bambaata, covered by Sugar Hill Gang, and sampled over and over again, and I just love them. So, do me a favor, bear with this track for a couple of minutes, or, if it’s just too much to bear, fast forward a little.