THUNDERCLAP NEWMAN, THE THOMPSON TWINS, TILL TUESDAY

How's this for a rock and roll fantasy? Imagine being the chauffeur for The Who in the late 1960s. You get to know Peter, Roger and the gang on an intimate level and eventually hand Peter Townsend the songs you have written. You want to be a rock star. He gets back to you and agrees to produce your first album and play bass on your first single. Such is the story of Thunderclap Newman, a vehicle created by Townsend to produce the songs of his former chauffeur and Who-roadie, John 'Speedy' Keen. Along with Keen on vocals and percussion, Townsend enlisted the aid of Dixieland pianist Andy 'Thunderclap' Newman and 15 year old Glasgowian guitarist Jimmy McCulloch to create the recording band. Their first single, "Something In The Air", (originally titled "Revolution", but retitled when a certain other British band released a single under the same name), with Townsend on bass under the pseudonym Bijou Drains, was a number one hit in England and rose to number 37 on the American charts. The song, an apocalyptic lofty ballad with full orchestra enticing a memorable guitar riff has earned itself a respectable reputation, having been featured in several recent movies and TV shows including "Kingpin", "Almost Famous", and "My Name Is Earl". The subsequent album, the Peter Townsend produced "Hollywood Dream", (1969) their one and only album, was also successful in Britain and developed a cult following in The States. I was introduced to THUNDERCLAP NEWMAN on a cool Autumn night when I was about 13 years old. I took a walk around the neighborhood to see what was shaking and ran into some older guys under a street light talking about music. They were buzzing about Thunderclap Newman and apparently listening to their debut, "Hollywood Dream" in stereo headphones was nothing short of nirvana. I was invited in to one of their homes to sample the album in headphones, and I soon understood their excitement. The music took me immediately. Particularly there was a harmonica piece that crackled brilliantly through headphones as if opening a psychedelic portal in my adolescent brain. For this 13 year old this was some heavy adult stereo shit. Who can explain what happens to what is essentially a one-hit-wonder band? A second single, "Accidents" from "Hollywood Dream" , culled from it's 9 minutes and 40 seconds album length, reached number 46 in England but didn't chart at all in the States, and two more singles made no noise whatsoever. The band broke up in 1971. Keen and Newman each made solo albums, and Keen produced Motorhead's first album. He died in 2002 apparently of complications from arthritis. McCulloch played with Paul McCartney and Wings and died from a heroin overdose at age 26 in 1979. Newman has recently resurrected the band under the title, The Thunderclap Newman Band and has performed some gigs in England.

The original American album cover of Hollywood Dream

Somewhere behind me is a trail of lost and forgotten records where you can find a copy of the American edition of "Hollywood Dream". It's cover, a life-sized cardboard picture of a man (Keen) propped up against the Hollywood Hills, is different than the pic on the British album whose cover now graces the CD. I'm pretty happy with the CD, (1991 PolyGram). It contains the entire album plus alternate versions and a few unreleased songs. Heavily influenced by The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, the nearly 10 minute long "Accidents" cues all things British by Beatles' standards (think a crime ridden Penny Lane) along with jazz piano, guitar solo, harmonica and kazoo interrupted by a steady stream of screeching tires, sirens, and general shattering of glass, leading up to a psychedelia a la "A Day In The Life". There's a sweet post-hippie naivety to "The Reason", a song as pleasant and dreamy as "Something In The Air", and the name has changed but the sentiment is the same in a cover of Dylan's "Open The Door, Homer", which becomes open the door, Richard expressing the point of view of a chauffeur turned rock star. "Look Around" is a 3 minute McCoys like jangle made melodic by an addictive electric piano refrain, and "Stormy Petrel", offers a kazoo solo which, in it's simplicity reaches an uproarious comedic height.

So Jim Stone and Kevin Childs, if you happen across my blog some day - dig this, - I AM STILL LISTENING TO THUNDERCLAP NEWMAN! You can hear and see the band mock playing "Something In The Air" here in a vintage video, and the complete "Accidents" can be heard here.

The Thompson Twins have said they were living as squatters in an abandoned building in London before becoming a 1980s pop sensation. The Twins, - Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie, and Joe Leeway, not related and certainly not twins, were trimmed to a trio after Bailey, (keyboards, vocals) experimented with several other TT lineups for their first two albums. 1983's "Side Kicks", titled "Quick Step and Side Kick" in England, became a major success in England and a minor one in the U.S. The followup album, 1984's "Into The Gap", became hugely successful on a global scale due greatly to the phenomenal sales of the single, "Hold Me Now". Leeway left the group after the next album, 1985's "Here's To Future Days", leaving The Thompson Twins a duo. Bailey suffered a nervous breakdown during the making of "Here's To Future Days", which proved to be only a moderate success. Bailey and Currie were married in 1989 after publicly revealing their relationship after the birth of their first child the previous year. They had a second child and were divorced in 2003. Sales of subsequent Thompson Twins albums declined sharply in the late 80s and the band disbanded in 1993. Bailey still works in the music business as producer and songwriter. The reason The Thompson Twins are in my collection is their constant appearance in thrift store record bins. At 49 cents a copy how can I resist near-mint copies of a promotion only "Side Kicks", (Arista 6607), and "Into The Gap", (Arista 8-8200). I also have the "Hold Me Now" single, (AS1-9164).



"Side Kicks" introduced The Thompson Twins buoyant new-wave pop to most American audiences although a previous album received little airplay. "Love On You Side" is an infectious new-wave anthem, and "Watching" is truly bizarre with a mock operatic vocal track provided by Grace Jones. "Into The Gap", offers the singles, "Hold Me Now", still as crisp and catchy today as it was in 1984, "Doctor, Doctor", a more desperate love song, "You Take Me Up", a chain gang meets pop meets gospel singalong, and the title track where The Thompson Twins in all their niceness attempt a global political message with middle east musical scenery. The "Hold Me Now" single has an experimental instrumental B-side called "Let Loving Start". Here's the video for "Doctor Doctor".

Another band from the 1980s, TILL TUESDAY made a new-wave glitzy splash with a hit single off their first album. "Voices Carry", an emotionally charged ballad that builds to a canopy of swirling vocals and hook laden orchestration is TILL TUESDAY'S signature song, but it is "Coming Up Close" off their second album; a piano tinged, countrified lament that name drops Bob Dylan that I had to hear again and again. While critics buzzed about singer Aimee Mann's strong songwriting skills, that second album, "Welcome Home", suffers from being a too ordinary example of lightly feathered, heavily produced 80s pop songs. A third critically celebrated album was the swansong for the group and Mann has gone on to a successful solo career in the indie rock vein. I own Till Tuesday's "Welcome Home" CD ((Epic) and the "Voices Carry" single. Here is "Coming Up Close" mock sung by the group in a mock concert. Aimee Mann looks stunning.

3 Films: UP IN THE AIR, SHERLOCK HOLMES, BROKEN EMBRACES (Los abrazos rotos)

I've seen three theatrical films so far in 2010. That's more than I usually see in an entire year. In UP IN THE AIR, George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a jet setting middle-aged man employed by a firm hired by top level executives to do the dirty deed of firing employees. He spends most of his time shuffling credit cards and putting away martinis in airports and planes and flies around the country dropping into cities to deliver the bad news to unwitting working stiffs. His graceful, tactful manner in which he boots them out the door is like a good doctor delivering news of a terminal illness. His home base in contrast is a nondescript small condo that looks unlived in. He'd much rather be on a plane up in the air where he loves his life. You may never see another movie character more pleased with living than Clooney is here as the John Wayne of flight bound executives. If the film was a musical he'd be singing zip-a-dee-do-da in an airport lounge. Enter top rated recent college grad Natalie played by Anna Kendrick. She has this new idea of how to revolutionize the industry of firing. Do everything by computer. Why fly around the country to terminate an employee in Des Moines, Iowa when you can give 'em the bad news via face to face hookup, (it doesn't seem like a particularly genius idea.)? Clooney's boss, (Jason Bateman, yes the former child star), likes the idea, Clooney is livid that a new bee is about to knock him off his high cloud. The boss pairs the two of them up, - she is to fly around with him learning the business of job termination, he is to accept the termination of the old way of doing things. But just when you think the movie is about to launch into a Doris Day - Rock Hudson pillow fight, it takes a few unexpected turns, both modern movie chic and old-fashioned nostalgia, over shoots it's expected results, and ascends to its serio-comic conclusion as assuredly as a jet leaving a runway. It's a film that is hard to classify. A comedy, yes but if tragedy can be deathless, this is it. In its lighter than air theme ( we are to understand we are merely dust particles in the ultimate cosmos), it becomes almost as insignificant as a feature film offered on a continental flight, yet with a life supporting oxygen mask dangling at our side to remind us of our mortality. Most of the poor saps getting the employer axe are played by non-professional actors who answered an ad placed by the movie makers looking for recently fired people to participate in a documentary. Imagine the renegotiation when it was understood the 'documentary' starred George Clooney. Here is a preview of UP IN THE AIR.

As portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., SHERLOCK HOLMES is a bit of a boob in the new Guy Ritchie film. He's a drunken eccentric, the laugh of Baker Street, a real character who joins street boxing bouts to get his ass kicked in because he bloody well likes it. His Baker Street residence is a cross between a mad scientist's laboratory and a squatter zone, his relationship with Dr. Watson is more man-crush than gentlemanly and his deductive reasoning is rattled off as if it's a do-good pledge from a Marvel superhero. He often appears as if he's savoring a lung full of opium although the movie never indulges in that Sherlockian trait, (it may have sent poor Robert right back to rehab). I love Sherlock Holmes. I've read the stories, seen all the old movies, all the TV shows, hell if there was a Sherlock Holmes board game, I'd be playing it, a Sherlock Holmes brand of tuna, I'd be buying it. So with a slight degree of reluctance, (where does Sherlock go for blow and gay sex if not Dr. Watson?), this movie is a rowdy but welcome addition to the Holmes repertoire, somewhere between Basil Rathbone in 1939's "The Hound of The Baskervilles" and Gene Wilder in 1975's "Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother". Downey makes a discomforting yet strangely identifiable Sherlock and Jude Law nails a patient control in what is a difficult role for actors as second fiddle Watson. I can't think of another pulp fiction over 100 years old that still fascinates readers today and this spin on Sherlock is ... well it's elementary my dear Watson.

Basil Rathbone


Pedro Almodovar is one of only a few movie directors whose work can get me into a movie house, and Penelope Cruz starring in his new film, BROKEN EMBRACES makes my attendance a certainty. She plays Lena, a struggling former actress and occasional prostitute working as a secretary to one of the richest business tycoons in South America (huh?). Anywa, Ernesto, (Jose Luis Gomez), the old billionaire has super hots for Lena, and she eventually allows him to help her financially support her oppressed family who are burdened by her father's terminal stomach cancer. Got that? She then becomes mistress to Ernesto living the life of luxury with him in his mansion until boredom and a lack of interest in house hostessing causes her to renew her acting career, (apparently she sucked acting too). She then has an affair with the director of a picture she's to star in. Almodovar puts a suspense spin to all this, as Ernesto has the couple followed and watched on film and the movie becomes a Hitchcock maze with little mystery and groundless heightened intrigue merging with a 1950s soap opera like "Back Street", with artsy comments on film making. The movie resonated cerebrally with me, it's got a visual velvety flow, but I was always expecting the film to suddenly reveal it's true core in a crucial scene but to no avail. It just sort of goes on like this. It's a thick comfy pillow supporting a vague careless dream told in flashback and forth. You can watch a preview of BROKEN EMBRACES here.

TEN YEARS AFTER, THAT PETROL EMOTION, THE THE, THIRD EYE BLIND

Ten Years After's CRICKLEWOOD GREEN, 1970 (Deram 18038) , it's title derived from an unclassified hallucinogenic plant, adorned many a stoned teen bedrooms in my youth, the picture of 70s hard stoner rock, staring back at me through a stoned haze while doing a doobie with a buddie after school while the mom was shopping or working. It's 'green' influenced album cover of stagnant collectible curios including a ponderous characterized military statue and a pair of bronzed miniature boots is as familiar to me as the light prism on Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. But I never owned it until recently. I picked the vinyl album up somewhere cheap and felt as if I had encountered a dear old friend. CRICKLEWOOD GREEN is a revered British blues rock album highlighted by Alvin Lee's fluid guitar expressing heavy blues rock and meticulous finger picking. Opener "Sugar The Road" is a snazzy bit of freewheeling rock that streams like a fast corvette on a winding mountain road, a 'roll down the windows' song if ever there was one with guitar bass drums and vocal effortlessly creating an addictive breeze of blues and rock. "50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain" is a seven minutes plus guitar layered jam that burns like a sizzling dynamite lead about to blow, and "Me and My Baby", apparently an Alvin Lee composition, if not then a blues standard, must have reached that status by now ("Me and my baby never get the blues") - it's air guitar rock heaven like you'd hear in any great blues tavern. CRICKLEWOOD GREEN has a particularly smooth mix and sound, as if the vinyl is a grade better than most, maybe due as stated in the liner notes, the music was recorded in layers of sound rather than absolute separation of instruments. Alvin Lee eventually went on to a solo career but the remaining members, Leo Lynons (bass), Chick Churchill (keyboards), Ric Lee (drums) and new member Joe Gooch (guitar and vocals) still tour and records. In 1969 Ten Years After played Woodstock and were featured in the film and soundtrack, catapulting them to fame. My VERY GOOD copy would fetch about 10 bucks on the market.

THAT PETROL EMOTION is an Irish, London based band fronted by an American vocalist, Steve Mack. I picked up the "Detonate My Dreams" CD single (Koogat) somewhere, at some time for some reason. It also includes a remix of "Blue to Black", a funk sort of dance jam, and the demo version of "Big Human Thing", a jangly pop song sounding a bit like Smoking Popes. "Detonate My Dreams" is a cool enough song with That Petrol Emotion's customary guitar onslaught. Here is the video. We're not too delighted with vocalist Steve Mack prancing around the video like a forest fairy, but the song rocks. This CD maxi-single goes for about 5 bucks.

One of the breeziest songs to flow out of the radio airwaves in 1983 was The The's "This Is The Day", from the debut album, SOUL MINING, Epic 39266, (A previously intended debut, "The Pornography of Despair", was shelved with some tracks being later released as B-sides and extras.). Although many members have filtered in and out of the British The The, the title is essentially a one man affair from writer, musician, vocalist Matt Johnson, sometimes using session players, sometimes a traditional band lineup and sometimes Johnson performed all band functions himself. The The have released six albums since their debut, their last being 2000's NAKED SELF. Interestingly, Matt Johnson has recorded several albums that have never been released but are included in all his listings of The The music. SOUL MINING could probably be found in most lists of best music of the '80s. It's industrial pop landscape full of thick synth and genuine musicianship, (Squeeze's Jools Holland lays a few mesmerizing piano runs on "Uncertain Smile", and The New York Doll's David Johanson plays harmonica on "Perfect Day") is a perfect backdrop to Johnson's brooding day-to-day survival 'too stoned to care' angst-ridden vocals. This record in Very Good condition can be bought for about 12 dollars. You can hear "This Is The Day" here -


Here's another oddball CD single in my collection, how it got there I'll never know, but there's no denying Third Eye Blind's HOW'S IT GOING TO BE (Elektra CD Single) is a fine hit song, a singable hook ridden ballad that was a major success in 1997. The unavailable elsewhere 'B' side, "Horror Show" doesn't raise this CD from a nominal market value.

TEMPTATIONS

I can fly like a bird in the sky,

I can buy most anything that money can buy,

I can turn a river into a raging fire

I can live forever if I so desire,

All of this and more I can do

But I can't get next to you

I Can't Get Next To You, (written by Barrett Strong, performed by The Temptations)

At Christmas with my family, after mega-meal and the endless gift parade, (oh a tie, thank you!), I crashed on the couch in front of the TV, visions of gift cards dancing in my head, and happened upon The Temptations television mini-series. I caught the part where drugs were seeping into the group's repertoire, spouses were being cheated on, and egos were butting heads, as the Motown singing group rose to the heights of fame. This all in about 10 minutes. Ironic in that I was pulling out old Temptations records, in my endless quest for the letter 'T', the past two weekends. I have 4 Temptations records in my pile, the singles, AIN'T TOO PROUD TO BEG, Gordy G-7054, I WISH IT WOULD RAIN, Gordy G-7068, PAPPA WAS A ROLLIN' STONE, Gordy 7121F, and one album THE TEMPTATIONS GREATEST HITS II, Gordy GS954. A Wikipedia search on the group's history left my head spinning as the lengthy entry detailed constant line-up changes, and a steady juggle of the group's producers, writers and musical style, verifying my understanding The Temptations, like most pop groups of the era including The Beatles, were a commodity controlled by executives and creative geniuses, in this case represented by five fine vocalists. The price of fame hits this group hard as there is only one surviving original member, Otis Williams, who still sings with the current line-up. No matter, what fine records they were. Like new cars, they were controlled, polished and tweaked for consumption by the mass public. Soul standard AIN'T TOO PROUD TO BEG (1966) has such a great rock and roll rhythm and infectious beat it was later covered by The Rolling Stones. I WISH IT WOULD RAIN (1968) is one of my favorite soul records of all time with a beautiful run on the piano sounding much like Burt Bacharach's '60s work, and bruised by a technically unpolished clap of thunder. PAPPA WAS A ROLLIN' STONE (1972) is The Temptations masterpiece, an 11 or so minute socially conscious opus that had all America humming a ode to absent fathers. The GREATEST HITS II album covers the psychedelic era of The Temptations (Cloud Nine, Ball of Confusion, Psychedelic Shack), in an effort to tap into the rock market The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper cracked open, (and man, it worked-such fine tech craft on these records), along with hits apparently not big enough to make it on Greatest Hits Volume 1; (I Know) I'm Losing You, I Wish It Would Rain. These Temptations singles all go for about $6 in VERY GOOD condition, the GREATEST HITS II, goes for about $16 in VERY GOOD condition.