Random Notes

Our favorite right-wing windbag Mister Fred (pictured, right) recently called our site ""The Emerson, Lake and Palmer of music writing," presumably because of our expansive and self-indulgent riffs fronting as actual content. Well, he's probably right. But I'd like to prove him only half right today by restraining my word count yet still keeping to the spirit of pointlessness. That is, I've got a hodge-podge of songs I'd like to toss out, but nothing much to say. That makes me a bit like "the Wings of music writing." So without further ado, some random notes:

1. The Revelers are part of the obscure Bill Fox family of great 1990s Cleveland pop. Fox's brother Tommy played drums and Bill recorded some of their early singles as Superfoxy Productions. I saw the Revelers reunite last spring and they exploded on stage. The kind and talented frontman Andrej Cuturic later sent me three gorgeous colored vinyl 7-inch singles in the mail and I've coveted them as objets d'art as well as objets d'rock. The Revelers were unfortunately a full decade ahead of the curve on retro rock, but there's a true-of-heart guilelessness to them that's deeper than what came after -- like, you know, it's actual rock and roll. These are great songs.

Meet Me at the Station - The Revelers

Little Kings of Rock and Roll - The Revelers

2. Widely believed it may not be, but true it is: the Bee Gees were the greatest pop band ever. I'm not going to qualify or contextualize that for now. Why bother? The first tune is the best rip-off of CSNY's "Helpless" you'll ever hear, pumped up with orch-pop grandeur and stretched well beyond a reasonable length. It's like the Emerson, Lake and Palmer of the Bee Gees. Then there's "Israel," the best and creepiest Zionist pop anthem ever written by goyim. These are from Trafalgar, circa 1971.

Don't Want to Live Inside Myself - Bee Gees

Israel - Bee Gees

3. I found a pile of 45s in my mother-in-law's attic recently, none in good condition. But these are both nice examples of the Jeff Barry/Don Kirschner sugar pop factory of the late 60s. The first was co-written by Phil Spector and says on the label it's both a "Leiber-Stoller Production" and "Stuyvesant Productions, Inc." So New York! The second pulls a bizarre copyright infringement on Hannah-Barbara, coming out the exact year "Scooby Doo" premiered. Not sure what they were thinking, but all's fair in love and Top 40. In this case, S.K.O.O.B.Y. isn't a slobbering dog detective with a dopey stoner sidekick, but a female teenage love interest. It's actually more wholesome than the cartoon.

Girls Can Tell - The Dixie Cups

Feelin' So Good (S.K.O.O.B.Y-D.O.O.) - The Archies