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Genrepalooza Presents: FG Radio - Tons of Lithium but very little Chill (3 Viewers)

Pip's Invitation said:
Perhaps something that's held against them is that they didn't write their own songs and pop/rock acts were "supposed" to do that after the advent of the Beatles. (This was never held against R&B/soul acts.) Linda Ronstadt was also in this category and didn't get in until 2014, when it should have been much earlier. 
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3DN made some of the best pop/rock/soul records of the early 70s. They also made some really talented songwriters a crapload of money. Their Greatest Hits is one of the best bang-for-your-buck LPs of its time, but all of their albums were really solid with no clunkers. And they hold up much better today than some of Wenner's pet projects.

 
Thanks to @rockaction for letting me choose his Beatles channel picks today.  Today we hit the top 50 of my solo-era Beatles countdown, and I'm going to choose solo works that have been well-received in the thread so far but that many people hadn't previously heard.  I'm not choosing any of my top 50, since that would spoil the "excitement."  :lol:   

I'm going to start today with a "Paul rocks" song.  One album that it seems most people hadn't spent time with but have now enjoyed a lot was his 1999 Run Devil Run.  Paulie was workin' himself out some demons after Linda's death, and he returned to his roots with an album of mostly obscure covers, plus three original compositions.  In my thread, I've been trying to give the context of the lads' works at any particular time, and here was my write-up before I made my first selection from this album:

---INTERLUDE – Linda McCartney (September 24, 1941 – April 17, 1998) and Run Devil Run (1999)---

It’s our third and final “mostly covers” album from Paul, and my favorite of the bunch.  Let’s back up first, though.

Linda McCartney was born in 1941 as Linda Louise Eastman into an affluent family in Scarsdale, New York.  She studied fine art and history at the University of Arizona and married in 1962, the same year her mom died tragically in a plane crash.  She and her first husband had a daughter, Heather, before divorcing in 1965.  

Linda had become interested in photography while in college, and took a job as a receptionist at Town and Country magazine.  One day an invite arrived for a launch party for a Rolling Stones album, and since no one else wanted to go, Linda grabbed her camera and attended the party.  The photos she took there ended up launching her photography career.  Shortly thereafter, in May 1967, she met Paul at a club in London while she was in town on a photo shoot, and after dating off and on they married in 1969.   Linda and Paul had three more children together – Mary, Stella and James.  In the early 1970s, Linda and Paul both embraced vegetarianism, and Linda was involved with a number of related organizations, including PETA and Friends of the Earth, as well as launching a line of vegetarian cookbooks and frozen meals.

In 1995, Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and despite having surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, the cancer spread to her liver and took her life on April 17, 1998.  She died at the family ranch in Tucson, Arizona, with Paul by her side; his final words to her were, “You’re up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It’s a fine spring day. We’re riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear blue”.  Linda was cremated and her ashes scattered at their farm in Sussex.   George and Ringo attended the memorial service in London that I mentioned previously.  Paul has reported that he “cried for about a year, on and off.  You expect to see them walk in, this person you love, because you are so used to them.  I cried a lot. It was almost embarrassing except it seemed the only thing to do.”

After his year of seclusion, Paul emerged and began work on the album that became Run Devil Run, which was inspired by Linda.  He and Linda had been talking about this project, because she loved the old-style rock and roll (“a major league rocker,” according to Paul) and wanted him to visit some songs that they both loved that hadn’t been performed by the Beatles, as opposed to many of those on the prior covers album, Choba B CCCP.  Paul chose some lesser-known tracks and assembled an impressive band that included David Gilmour, Mick Green, Ian Paice, and Dave Mattacks.  The songs are mostly live jams, with Paul having simply gone through the song once with the band and then let them at it, and the album was completed in less than a week.  He loved getting back to this way of working, as the Beatles had done.

In addition to the covers, Paul wrote and recorded three new songs for the record, all of them in the old-school style that would fit within the rest of the album (and two of which I’ll have on my countdown).  Paul heavily promoted this album, even playing a show at the Beatles-favorite Cavern Club, which caused a huge media stir.    In the end, this album did very well, reaching Gold status and #27 on the US charts and receiving extremely favorable reviews from critics.  It also provided the catharsis Paul needed, taking him out of his mourning period with this tribute to Linda.

This is an outstanding album, and I’ll happily listen to each song on it.  Paul’s emotion in making the record is clear, as he brings powerful, committed vocals to each song.  The top-notch band he assembled supports him well, too.

The title of this album came from a line of bath salts Paul purchased at Miller’s Rexall Drugs, a hoodoo and herbal medicine shop in Atlanta.  The cover art is a photo of the shop, but with the name “Earl’s” in place of “Miller’s.”

Track listing:

  1. Blue Jean Bop
  2. She Said Yeah
  3. All Shook Up
  4. Run Devil Run
  5. No Other Baby
  6. Lonesome Town
  7. Try Not To Cry
  8. Movie Magg
  9. Brown Eyed Handsome Man
  10. What It Is
  11. Coquette
  12. I Got Stung
  13. Honey Hush
  14. Shake A Hand
  15. Party
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Hey krista, that's all well and good, but are you choosing a song?  Why yes. 

23rd Round (proxy from rockaction) - Run Devil Run  Spotify  YouTube

This was my 97th choice overall and my #44 Paul song.  Here's what I said about it at the time:

Run Devil Run seems to have shaped up as a thread-favorite album, and this will be my last selection from it.  As you all know, it comprised mostly covers, but there were three Paul originals on the album as well.  “What It Is” checked in at #130 on my list, and “Try Not To Cry” didn’t make the countdown.  The title track is another Chuck Berry-influenced rocker, with a frenetic vocal and a searing guitar part by David Gilmour.  As I mentioned in the album’s ---INTERLUDE---, “run devil run” was the name of a line of bath salts that Paul bought in a “voodoo shop” in Atlanta.  He added the lyrics to the song while out sailing, which seems to be a pattern.  Paul said that he would be taking a bath with the salts, but that he only had a few, not many, demons that he needed to get rid of.  This song is filthy filthy and fantastic. 
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More interestingly, since that was a fairly lame write-up by me, this was wikkid's reaction:

Y'all can have jaunty troubador Paul and wistful wonderer Paul and all that. It belies the fact that this is the best rock & roll singer there ever was. Yeah, there are performers & performances that reach greater heights or get deeper in your guts, but Paul just nails it every time. There's thrill in there, there's skill in there, there's Bungalow Bill in there (get out of there, Bungalow Bill) that screams & pleads & bleeds without ever losing its sense of song. Cuz there's sumn apparently Lord McCartney doesnt even himself know - the blues are the way out & up from pain. The ol-black-dood aspect seems so much more genuine, but it's only cuz the OG circumstances were so dreadful. Them folks would love to soar out dey suffrin' like Sir Paul and would gladly ride his boojy bus eight days a wk. THAT's rock & roll
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23.8 or 12 - The Beatles - I've Got a Feeling (Naked Version) (Beatles)

The release of Let It Be without Phil Spector's embellishments is kind of a mixed bag for me.  The hit ballads on the album do sound kind of naked without the familiar orchestral arrangements and I miss the little snippets of studio chatter from the original mix.  But the unadorned version of "I've Got a Feeling" is an improvement in my opinion.  There's less reverb and Paul's vocals aren't in your face so it sounds a lot more like the boys playing together on the roof.  I especially love Paul and John's contrapuntal vocals on the last chorus.

Krista had this at #50 which seems about right.   The band certainly had greater songs but Let It Be will always be special for me since it's the first Beatles album I bought as a kid.

 
Wow to k4. I never knew Linda was from Scarsdale. A good friend of mine in years prior, David, from college is from Scarsdale, NY. I'll always have a spot for Scarsdale because during my time in Hamilton, NY, we became so close as both compatriots and gambling buddies that on the way to the Jersey Shore from Northern CT, a drive I would do consistently after my senior year, I would pull over on the Hutch, take a few turns and be at his house. One summer, after I broke up with my girlfriend, I would stop, and if he wasn't there (this was during the years we spent before cell phones -- how did we ever exist?) I would leave a picture of my ex-girlfriend inside his door, a girl he had absolutely come to loathe, as had I. Anyway, he graduated a half-year before me, and left behind his own girlfriend that both me and my proxy roommate Dave (I loathed my real roommate who loathed me because of same ex-girlfriend) befriended. The Davids. We used to hang out for hours on end in Dave's room, all of us just having a grand old time watching stupid television shows like Party Of Five and others like it. And the drinking. Woof. I remember walking back from class one day and some fraternity brother started to give me crap about something that had happened a night or two before. Sandy grabbed him by the collar from the front and told him she was going to kick his ### if he persisted. She would have. The look on his face was priceless. He had no idea what to do with this big blonde woman looking to kick his ###. We had a ball. I even wrote a pop punk song on the guitar for her.

So tell me why I'm feeling like a goon
While I'm stuck up in her room
And her boyfriend is home so--ooon...

Another Sandy afternoon

Okay, it's terrible. I was in college. And I like pop punk. It should have sounded like this. (Warning -- if you don't like spotlighting, don't click the links here and again in a moment.)

Janelle

Well, anyway, I met up with David and Sandy (said girl) for Spring Break in Florida my senior year, and I stayed an extra week beyond our prescribed break time, missing classes and the like. Again, just a grand old time. The drive back was highlighted by a stop in Charleston, SC, and stories of gambling and women alike. David and I lost touch years ago -- he had moved to North Carolina and settled down with Sandy to start a family. Years later, I found out that through Facebook, of all places, that Sandy, now David's wife and mother of at least two, had died tragically and somewhat suddenly from ALS. It was not a slow decline. I was distraught upon hearing the news and bleated out grief to the phone I found out on. In the years since, I've regretted not being in touch and being part of their lives together. We were once so close...and, anyway, here's one for them. This was the band they told me on that trip would be twice as good as Weezer someday. One for the memories. Peace, guys. And much love to Sandy. I miss her.

For Sandy and David

Anyway, that's my contribution for the day. I saw "Scarsdale" and the memories came immediately rushing back.

 
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DEEP TRACKS

24.YM - One Slip - Pink Floyd

Yes, this is post-Waters Floyd, but I always liked the vibe of this album. This is one of my favorites on A Momentary Lapse of Reason. 
 

“Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love?”

 
Oh crap, forgot I'm supposed to post another.  I promise this one won't be as long.  Since I covered what was a lesser-known Paul album that was popular in the thread, I'm going to cover the Paul song that seems to have been much-heralded by first-time listeners to it in the thread.

Round 24 (proxy from rockaction) - The World Tonight  Spotify  YouTube  (Beatles channel)

This was my 70th favorite overall and my Paul #31.  What I wrote about it at the time:

A few posts ago I referred to Paul's changing his vocal style dramatically within the context of a single song; this was one that I had in mind.  I love how Paul sings the verses in a husky lower register, but then skips up an octave and uses his "rock voice" on the bridges.  I think Paul was in as good voice in 1997 as at any time in his life.  This song also features a terrific harder-edged guitar sound, which Paul has said Linda encouraged, inspired by their love of - Pip alert! - Neil Young.  Very cool interlude with that heavily reverbed vocal, too. 

I'm a huge fan of the lyrics to this song.  My favorite line, "I go back so far, I'm in front of me," is one that Paul says John would have loved, too:  "I don’t know where that came from, but if I’d been writing with John he would have gone ‘OK, leave that one in; we don’t know what it means but we do know what it means’."  Love the internal rhyme schemes I've bolded below.

I saw you sitting at the center of a circle
Everybody
Everybody wanted something from you
I saw you sitting there

I saw you swaying to the rhythm of the music
Caught you playing
Caught you praying to the voice inside you
I saw you swaying there

I don't care what you want to be
I go back so far, I'm in front of me
It doesn't matter what they say
They're giving the game away, hey, hey

I can see the world tonight
Look into the future
See it in a different light
I can see the world tonight

I heard you listening to a secret conversation
You were crying
You were trying not to let them hear you
I heard you listening in

Never mind what they want to do
You got a right to your point of view
It doesn't matter what they say
They're giving the game away, hey, hey

I can see the world tonight
Look into the future
See it in a different light
I can see the world tonight

I saw you hiding from a flock of paparazzi
You were hoping
You were hoping that the ground would swallow you  <----Ok, rhyming "hoping" with "hoping" isn't the best
I saw you hiding there

I don't care what you want to be
I go back so far, I'm in front of me
It doesn't matter what they say
They're giving the game away, hey, hey

I can see the world tonight
Look into the future
See it in a different light
I can see the world tonight

&

 
Going to also rock some Beatles.   Been listening to the Krista top 50 playlist a bit, and that has for sure helped me turn the corner even more with an appreciation for them.  Anyway, what might be me my current favorite:

THE BEATLES CHANNEL

DEAR PRUDENCE 

LINK

 
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KarmaPolice said:
Going to also rock some Beatles.   Been listening to the Krista top 50 playlist a bit, and that has for sure helped me turn the corner even more with an appreciation for them.  Any, what might be me my current favorite:

THE BEATLES CHANNEL

DEAR PRUDENCE 

LINK
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Welcome to the cool kids club! And congrats on your big win!!

Coincidence?- I think not!

 
Raging weasel said:
Nice and the mono version too! Never listened to the mono versions of their albums.
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The 2014 mono reissues are very coveted in the vinyl world, they sound fantastic.  I was able to acquire them all over the past 3 years before the prices have really gone bonkers...Sgt Peppers is a standout as is Hard Days Night...

 
Eephus said:
I think Hendrix is ground zero for shoegaze.  Maybe the Velvet Underground as well.  
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Oh yeah lots of big influences- I was going for more hyperbole than anything. It’s rare for any one artist or some to solely create any kind of genre on it own.

 
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