Barrie Masters, Eddie and the Hot Rods "It may be difficult to hear (or believe) now, but Eddie and the Hot Rods played a crucial role in the birth of English new wave. If the Rods, sons of Southend-on-Sea in Essex, hadn't been out there playing wild and fast rock'n'roll in the clubs at a time when superstar pomposity was the currency of pop music, bands like the Sex Pistols would never have had the opportunity to join, intensify and broaden that rebellious spirit into a national â and international â musical upheaval." Trouser Press, Ira Robbins
That was a great song; I haven't heard it in years. They were a good band - "power pop" before it was called that.
Don't recall this being covered last week when he passed... April Foolsâ Day, 1986. I had just turned seventeen and was on the floor of the Providence Civic Center. The Grateful Dead. Iâd worked my way up to a spot about twenty feet from the lip of the stage and found myself within winking distance of Jerry Garcia, an immensity in a red T-shirt that hung halfway to his knees. (âTrouble ahead, Jerry in red,â the Deadheads liked to say.) Iâd never stood so close. I could see the pearl inlay in the frets of his guitar neck and the ghostly pallor of his skin. Three months later, ravaged by opiates and ill health, he would fall into a diabetic coma, an experience that heâd later recall as being âone of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic, space-ship vehicle with insectoid presences.â But on this night, despite the power of his guitar, and of his growling tenor and still palpable charisma, it seemed that he might die any minute.
He was playing a song called âBlack Peter,â a bluesy dirge from the bandâs 1970 album âWorkingmanâs Dead.â It is a first-person account of a hard-luck pauper on his deathbed: âOne more day I find myself alive / Tomorrow maybe go beneath the ground.â Garcia, though only forty-three, had deteriorated into the title role, so that a song that had once seemed evocative, almost actorlyâan imagined character conveyed by a man of prodigious giftsânow seemed downright real. Jerry was Peter. The song ends by shifting into the point of view of people thronging to watch him die. In Providence, Garcia sang, with some gruff delicacy, in my apparent direction: âTake a look at poor Peter / Heâs lying in pain / Now letâs go run and see.â After moaning the words ârun and seeâ a few times, he turned away from the microphone with something like disgust. So this is what we were doing, all of us whoâd crammed into that arena, antic with chemicals and adulation: weâd run to see poor Peter, to gawk at the pain. This may seem melodramatic to you now, but the moment was more than a callow teen-ager, mostly unacquainted with death or real pain, could bear. I was transfixed, and ashamed.
The songâs lyrics, like those to most of the bandâs original songs (and certainly the best ones), had been written by Robert Hunter, who died last week, at the age of seventy-eight. He never performed with the band but provided it with the universe of images, ideas, and talesâand all the one-liners, couplets, anthems, and puzzlersâthat gave some quicksilver conceptual coherence and old-timey cred to the Deadâs shambling psychedelic Dixieland. He grounded it, if you can say that, in a phantasmagoric reiteration of American folk legend: drifters, thieves, rounders, jailbirds, horndogs, vigilantes, and roustabouts. âTruckinâ,â âRipple,â âFriend of the Devil,â âStella Blue,â âUncle Johnâs Bandââall written by Hunter. There were very few conventional, charting hits but lots of home runs.
Barrie Masters, Eddie and the Hot Rods "It may be difficult to hear (or believe) now, but Eddie and the Hot Rods played a crucial role in the birth of English new wave. If the Rods, sons of Southend-on-Sea in Essex, hadn't been out there playing wild and fast rock'n'roll in the clubs at a time when superstar pomposity was the currency of pop music, bands like the Sex Pistols would never have had the opportunity to join, intensify and broaden that rebellious spirit into a national â and international â musical upheaval." Trouser Press, Ira Robbins
I saw the Cars at the US Festival 1982. Not exactly an intimate venue, but I knew every lyric and was experiencing a pretty significant contact high so it was great
I have a photo somewhere, beautiful Southern California afternoon sky, fluffy clouds, Ric Ocasek on the jumbotron and the Blue Angels doing a flyover that looks like it's coming out of the screen. 19-year-old me might have cried just then.
...rich with artistry. The whole band in fact. ...
Yep. At one time I had at least one solo LP from 4 out of 5. The Greg Hawkes record was pretty far out there, experimental synth stuff. Ben's record was tame but with the Cars you can see he was a huge part of their success. Elliot's Change No Change was very good, and there's a solo Elliot track here at RP, not from that album tho it's on later releases so maybe I'll go get that. Drummer David Robinson was with Jonathan Richman in the early days.
Who always reminded me of Ocasek. Strange synchronicity. Candy O always made my booty shake.
...rich with artistry. The whole band in fact. ...
Yep. At one time I had at least one solo LP from 4 out of 5. The Greg Hawkes record was pretty far out there, experimental synth stuff. Ben's record was tame but with the Cars you can see he was a huge part of their success. Elliot's Change No Change was very good, and there's a solo Elliot track here at RP, not from that album tho it's on later releases so maybe I'll go get that. Drummer David Robinson was with Jonathan Richman in the early days.
I never had the opportunity to see The Cars but man that gift Ric had was rich with artistry. The whole band in fact. He and Ben meeting was meant to be for the music...
I saw the Cars at the US Festival 1982. Not exactly an intimate venue, but I knew every lyric and was experiencing a pretty significant contact high so it was great
I have a photo somewhere, beautiful Southern California afternoon sky, fluffy clouds, Ric Ocasek on the jumbotron and the Blue Angels doing a flyover that looks like it's coming out of the screen. 19-year-old me might have cried just then.
On Touch & Go, the quirky-rhythm single that, when I was in charge of music in the car, I'd say "here's a country song" and when it got to that point in the song all my friends would throw stuff at me and shout, "that's not country!" but anyway I got them to listen. Years later, a friend who's a good drummer decided his band should take on "Touch & Go" but after a few months of trying to nail it, they just gave up. It's a lot tougher than it sounds, apparently.
That is a challenging song to play; it's a polyrhythm. In the verses the rhythm section is playing in 5/4, the vocals and other instruments are in 4/4 time.