The Miracles

The Miracles, “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me”

1962, baby!

McKinley Dixon, “Chain Sooo Heavy”

I really enjoy the sax blowing while he’s rhyming, it really sets things off, and makes my ears kind of ping back and forth between what sounds like competing leads. That tension really provides a lot interest in the tune.

The Dead Milkmen, “Big Lizard (Live)”

Chaos Rules: Live at the Trocadero is sort of a live career retrospective by the Dead Milkmen, but I gotta say, it’s hard to recommend it. The live renditions don’t add a ton, and the sound quality isn’t great. Uh, as you can hear.

The Miracles, “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me”

Even over the course of just a few years (this is from 1962), the Motown sound evolved very rapidly. That’s not to say anything wrong with this, it’s delightful, but Motown moved really fast, and by 1965 they would be in a pretty different place. I mean, “Nowhere to Run” is from 1965.

The Beatles, “Good Day Sunshine”

Man, Revolver was really revolutionary! (For the record, this is from 1966, after that Martha & the Vandellas ripper.)

Joe Lally, “Day Is Born”

The first track to Lally’s second record, giving a good idea of what sort of bass-forward tunes you can expect to hear from him. If you’ve listened to Fugazi’s instrumentals, you’ll have a decent picture in mind also, even though Lally does sing.

House of Lightning, “James Brown”

Part of the Floor family tree, House of Lightning shares members with Floor and, as you can hear, aesthetics. If you’re looking for more stuff in that vein, of really big riffs and melodies and some clean singing, you’re in the right spot.

The Miracles, “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”

The vocal R&B band the Miracles are mostly known for launching the career of Smokey Robinson, but they had a long string of hits in their own right as well. I mean, this is basically irresistable.

Hammerhead, “Once Again…With Feeling”

Can I just re-iterate how delighted I am that Hammerhead got back together and recorded a bunch of new material? Coming across multiple Hammerhead records that I’d never heard before at once was such a delight. Listen to this! The urgency of the rhythm, the noisy grumbling of all the guitar and bass, the spacey breakdown, I’m just so happy.

Here’s today!

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, “Born Bad”

Freedom Tower: No Wave Dance Party 2015 was a throwback for the Blues Explosion, bringing back the stripped down sound that they had really moved away from after Now I Got Worry. It’s pretty much just back to two guitars, Jon’s strange yelping/posturing, and of course Russel Simins wrecking it on the drums. What’s nice about it is that it doesn’t really sound like a throwback, it mostly sounds like a lost recording from that time. Which is great!

Today’s tunes.

The Nation of Ulysses, “Maniac Dragstrip”

There’s a search for authenticity in rock music that goes back decades, where bands are judged to be real or poseurs based on a variety of markers, many of which make no sense at all. And in this view of music, artifice is usually heavily discouraged. A band that is self-consciously trying to be different, to make art as opposed to just blasting raw emotion is seen as inauthentic. I get it, the drive for the visceral, particularly in rock. But clinging to this structure leaves out so much interesting experimentation, and ultimately can be so limiting, that you just want to sometimes embrace artiness.