Picking up on the discussion from last month, you would think that picking a name for your band (or yourself) would be a most personal choice. Sometimes though, an artist doesn't have a choice – and I am not just talking about a birth name. Lou Christie had hit after hit beginning in the early 1960's and continuing through the early years of the British Invasion; I just loved his muscular falsetto. Actually his real name is Lugee Sacco.
When his first single “The Gypsy Cried” was released on the tiny C&C label, the artist was shown as “Lou Christie” without his knowledge or permission. He has been quoted as saying: "I was pissed off about it for 20 years. I wanted to keep my name and be a one-named performer, just 'Lugee'."
Additionally, Lou Christie wrote most of his own hit songs, along with his songwriting partner Twyla Herbert (and that is quite a story in itself: She was 20 years older than Christie and a classically trained musician who was also a self-proclaimed mystic). As such, he is one of the first singer-songwriters in popular music, a fact that John Lennon has remarked on, among others.
The preceding two paragraphs come from an article which I wrote on Milan that is set to appear (in abridged form) in the Fall/Winter 2012 issue of Ugly Things magazine. Milan is among the most enigmatic figures in 1960's rock music; he recorded under a number of other names – notably the garage rock and psychedelic rock songs he released as the Leather Boy – and also wrote and produced songs for a number of obscure bands. Along the way he worked with several well-known figures in popular music; for instance, he was the songwriter for "How Many Teardrops", Lou Christie's follow-up single to his second hit, "Two Faces Have I". Milan also collaborated with the notorious music mogul Morris Levy of Roulette Records; Artie Kornfeld, the "father of Woodstock"; and Melanie's husband, manager and producer, Peter Schekeryk.
Budd Granoff produced Milan's album, I Am What I Am and also wrote the liner notes. He is best known for his work with Chuck Barris in creating legendary game shows like The Gong Show and The Newlywed Game – not to mention the creation of the first television syndication company to distribute these shows to independent TV stations. Along the way, he put on what has been described as the very first telethon, a marathon 1951 television broadcast to raise money for a cardiac hospital that also happened to showcase two of his clients at the time, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Of course, Jerry Lewis would become the most visible presence in the telethon world over the ensuing six decades.
Not even Bomp! Records founder Greg Shaw – who released several of his songs on the albums in the Pebbles series – was able to find out much of anything about Milan. I took it upon myself to dig up what I could for an article on him for Wikipedia, and once I made contact with his sister Dara Rodell Gould, I was able to get the full scoop. In fact, she is the one who got me to sign up for Facebook. As you might imagine, I am pretty excited about the Ugly Things article – heck, I was plenty stoked when a 2009 retrospective album of Milan's music, Hell Bent for Leather mentioned my Wikipedia artlcle. But enough about me!
John Mellencamp is just John Mellencamp these days; but in the beginning, it wasn't like that at all. Early on, he was signed by David Bowie's manager Tony DeFries, who put out his first album in 1976. Mellencamp was infuriated to find out that the album, Chestnut Street Incident had been released under the name Johnny Cougar (he was already 25 by then and seems a little old to be a "Johnny"). To add insult to injury, his label MCA Records dropped him; and his second album, The Kid Inside stayed on a shelf for several years until he was able to break through. He released another album in 1979 under this name, Johnny Cougar that included a Top 40 song, "I Need a Lover", which Pat Benatar also included on her debut album, In the Heat of the Night. Now that he had a little moxie from his record sales, he set about to reinvent himself, well, back to being himself: Later releases of the album were called John Cougar; and in Australia, the album was called Miami. I still hear "I Need a Lover" on the radio from time to time, though if the DJ said "Johnny Cougar" or even "John Cougar", almost no one would know who he was talking about anymore.
John Mellencamp kept getting better in his work, with subsequent albums Nothin' Matters and What If It Did and American Fool (both released under the name John Cougar) spawning several hit songs: "Ain't Even Done with the Night", "Hurts So Good" (both suggestive of S&M), "Jack and Diane" (a local tattoo parlor took its name from that song, though I'm not really sure why), and "Hand to Hold Onto". The next step was to release his two best albums, Uh Huh and Scarecrow under the name John Cougar Mellencamp; the opening track on Uh Huh, "Crumblin' Down" is the first song of his that I truly loved. By the way, we got to see him in concert right on the front row in Long Beach, NY; quite a treat!
For some reason, the name "Mellencamp" seemed funny to media people, though it was probably the numerous name changes that did it. He was able to shut that crap down for keeps by showing a tombstone with the name in large letters on one of his videos, I believe "Small Town". Mellencamp's name was rightfully a point of pride with him; and it wasn't long before people began to realize how incredibly unfair the whole Johnny Cougar thing was. As far as I know, that has never happened to any other musician since. At length, after 11 years, his eighth album, The Lonesome Jubilee came out under his real name John Mellencamp.
One of my favorite "girl groups" of the early 1960's was the Orlons; to me, their hit songs "The Wah-Watusi", "Don't Hang Up" and "South Street" – all three million-selling hits that made the Top 5 – sound every bit as fresh today as they did 50 years ago. They had a couple of secret weapons: Baritone singer Stephen Caldwell would throw in an unexpected male vocal from time to time, and they had a great saxophone player also. Their name was adopted in a nod to the friendly rivalry with a group in their high school called the Cashmeres. However, I wonder how many people remember orlon anymore. If I were writing articles on Under-Appreciated Artificial Fibers, this would be one of the first: Unlike rayon and nylon, Wikipedia sends the link for "orlon" directly to the generic "acrylic fiber".
Basically, all I remember about the 1980's band Steel Breeze is their name; I just found their biggest hit from 1982 on YouTube, "You Don't Want Me Anymore", and I didn't know the song at all. The name is taken from a lyric in a Pink Floyd song, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". (The song and the album from which it is taken, Wish You Were Here are dedicated to their troubled original bandleader Syd Barrett). But I do remember an interview with Steel Breeze one time (it must have been on MTV) where they were asked about their name, and they rather sheepishly said that they were really enamored with Pink Floyd at the time, making it clear that by then, they wish they had chosen another name.
On the second volume of the Pebbles LP's is a song by a band called the Satans – yes, it's true – and the song is called "Makin' Deals", so the name carried over into their music as well. The song is quite remarkable in anticipating the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" by several years; one of the lyrics is even: "Can you guess my name?" They only released the one single (no big surprise there). The parents of the bandmembers in the legendary Iowa garage-rock band GONN were not keen on their original name the Pagans; I can only imagine what this band's parents must have thought.
But for sheer "what-were-they-thinking" wonderment, it is hard to top the name the Cretones; who knows how much more success they could have had with a less cringe-worthy name. Mark Goldenberg (guitar), Peter Bernstein (bass) and Steve Beers (drums) were the core of the backing band for past UARA Wendy Waldman on what for my money is her strongest album, Strange Company (1978). The Cretones were born after the three added Steve Leonard (keyboards). They shortly got a recording contract with Planet Records and released a very good debut album, Thin Red Line in 1980. Linda Ronstadt was so impressed with the album that she covered three of their songs: the title cut for her 1980 new-wave album, Mad Love plus "Justine" and "Cost of Love". Mark Goldenberg was the guitarist on several songs on the album as well. He later served as the lead guitarist for Jackson Browne for more than a decade.
Talking about "death" in the name is a good way to make it clear your band means business, and there have been several over the years. The Grateful Dead is the best known of course; even today, when you mention "the Dead", I think most everyone knows who you mean. I was living in San Francisco when Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995, and that was a sad day that also spelled the end of the band. The Grateful Dead have a host of musical influences (it might be easier to name musical styles that they haven't borrowed from), and they were renowned for long improvisational passages during their concerts. Unlike most artists – Bob Dylan, for one – the Dead openly welcomed bootleg recordings of their concerts, and they would set aside a section of the stage for bootleggers to place their microphones to ensure good quality. No Dead concert is quite the same as any other; I once saw an advertisement for an album consisting of an amalgamation of dozens of live versions of a single song ("Dark Star") into an extended set that went on for something like 90 minutes. And the legions of fans called "Dead Heads" that followed the band in caravans around the country is a story that itself approaches legendary status.
In certain circles at least, Dead Kennedys are as well known as the Dead. They are the founders of hardcore punk in the San Francisco Bay area, though most of that action was in Los Angeles. Their 1980 debut album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables is one of the landmark punk rock albums of all time and includes most of their well-known songs, such as "California Über Alles", "Holiday in Cambodia", "Kill the Poor", and a cover of "Viva Las Vegas".
As is common in the punk rock community, many of the bandmembers picked their own names; the name of front man Jello Biafra still has a certain ring to it I suppose, though hardly anyone remembers the breakaway African state Biafra (1967-1970), the once and future province of Nigeria. Other bandmembers were East Bay Ray, Klaus Fluoride and 6025; the latter gentleman left the band in 1979, probably because they weren't hardcore enough: One song of his that is included on their debut album is "Forward to Death" (as in: "I'm looking . . .") and features the lyric: "I don't need this f--king world".
Dead Kennedys is certainly among the most outrageous band names of all time, though Jello Biafra insists that they were not trying to insult the Kennedy family but were trying "to bring attention to the end of the American Dream".
Even at the time, the brand name "Jell-O" didn't seem cool enough for a punk rock artiste, though the name turned up once again in the comic-punk band Green Jellö. After the band had an unexpected hit on MTV with a retelling of "Three Little Pigs" (despite bargain-basement production values), General Foods threatened a copyright infringement lawsuit, so the band changed its name to Green Jellÿ (though they kept the umlaut and maintained that the pronunciation is the same).
I was first exposed unknowingly to Dead Kennedys when someone scrawled the lyrics to one of their songs, "Let's Lynch the Landlord" in the basement of the apartment building where our real estate office in Raleigh was located for many years. Until I got my own copy of Fresh Fruit several years later, I didn't realize where those lyrics came from, but they did seem too professional for just anyone to have come up with.
An even better punk rock band that I have written about several times comes from the Heartland (Cleveland to be precise): the Dead Boys, led by front man Stiv Bators. I might be repeating myself here (about time I did, with more than 30 of these posts out there now), but what Greg Shaw has said of the Dead Boys is worthy of repetition, so here is the full quote this time:
“The first time I saw them . . . was in New York where I was stopping at some point in 1976, after a trip to London in which I’d seen one of the Sex Pistols’ first gigs, and checked out the Damned and whatever other bands were breaking out. I knew the Pistols were revolutionary . . . but meanwhile discovered there was a band right here in America doing it a whole lot better. For what it’s worth, the Dead Boys were far and away the best 'punk' band I ever saw — and I saw them all. Sure, it was largely theatrics. When Stiv [Bators] cut himself open with a broken bottle and had to be rushed to a hospital in the middle of his set (but made it back in time for the second show) he wasn’t doing anything Iggy [and the Stooges] hadn’t done before, and with less premeditation. But it was also somehow a lot more immediate, out of control, and indefinably REAL than anything English has ever been. . . . It takes an American to really pull off the 'I don't give a f--k' pose, and not give in to the temptation to make a political statement out of it.”
Well, somebody had to introduce some comic relief into all of this grimness, and the Dead Milkmen certainly fit the bill. Unlike, say, Green Jellö, this band was quite accomplished, if good-naturedly goofy; and they released several good albums – three of them earned four stars or better on allmusic. They also managed to come up with a hit song on college radio, "Punk Rock Girl"; the video on MTV was filled with bloopers and out-takes and shots of a green Mohawk waving back and forth. There was even an "answer song" by an all-female band called the Excessories called "Punk Rock Boy" that, if anything, was even better; it was included on one of my all-time favorite compilation albums (by a Spanish record label), Muga 16 Años.
I have read that the Dead Milkmen were treated dismissively when they started trying to be a more serious band – there's that name problem again! – but I suppose they are still at it anyway, because I notice that they released an album last year called The King in Yellow. The name is taken from one of my favorite collections of stories; it is by Robert W. Chambers and includes one of the best 19th Century weird-fiction stories (it has been widely anthologized), "The Yellow Sign". Besides being the title of the collection, the King in Yellow is also said to be a hauntingly beautiful play that is referenced in several stories in the book. The play has the ability to drive its readers insane, particularly those who peruse Act 2; with only a handful of quotations and limited details on the story line, the play stays in the background but gives the stories a truly sinister air. The King in Yellow (the imaginary play that is) is the direct antecedent of the forbidden book that was invented by H. P. Lovecraft called the Necronomicon, and Lovecraft handled it in much the same way in his stories. (I also read that one of the bandmembers in the Dead Milkmen took the name H. P. Hovercraft for a time).
I had gotten into the habit of Googling rock band names as I came to the albums that I had cleaned up after Katrina. Somewhat to my surprise, as I recall I found nothing at all on DEAD HIPPIE. There was nothing in allmusic or Wikipedia, and that wasn't too surprising; but there were no hits anywhere else either (which is not to say that "dead hippie" didn't come up at all – it just wasn't a rock group). This was also one of the first albums I came across where I couldn't come up with a front cover shot to put on the blank record cover where I was storing the album; it wasn't the very first, but there hadn't been many.
Eventually I came upon a little information, but the tribute page that I remember from several years ago has disappeared; the MySpace page that I did find has some videos and photos but not much else. Lead singer Simon Smallwood is the frontman for Dead Hippie. When they were profiled in Spin magazine about the time their album came out in 1983, a photo on the MySpace page shows the other bandmembers as Mike Hagen, Paul Mars (aka Paul Black) and Bob Mann. Jackie Fritz and Debra Exit also show up in photos with the band. A later photo from 1985 shows Simon Smallwood, Bob Mann, Robert Williams and Mike Dewey. I guess that is the same man as Big Mike D., who also has a MySpace page where he mentions his Dead Hippie pedigree. Bob Friedman also has posts on the Internet saying that he had played with the band.
I was introduced to Dead Hippie in their performance on New Wave Theatre, the punk rock showcase on late night TV that originated from Los Angeles. Dead Kennedys is about the only band that I had previously heard of which I saw on that show, but most have landed articles in Wikipedia (punk rockers have a lot of fans it seems). To date, the only other UARB from New Wave Theatre that I have included in this series is the Unknowns. I think it is fair to say that Dead Hippie has become one of my favorite punk rock bands. I particularly like the long instrumental passages in their songs that would veer in unexpected directions. Instrumentals, or even long introductions before the singing starts have virtually disappeared from rock music for several decades; in the barebones approach to music that punk rock uses, they were scarcely ever present to start with.
I didn't really remember the Dead Hippie performance on NWT that well (that's what 30 years will do to you); it turned out to be "Blue Red and White" – as with the song in the musical Hair, "Don't Put it Down" that also scrambled "red, white and blue", it is a song about misplaced patriotism. What I do remember was that he is the only guest on the show that ever really got the better of host Peter Ivers, whose annoying interviews after rock performances (including the inevitable question, "What is the meaning of life?") really got to most of the musicians, even for bands that were on their second or third visit to the show. I am reminded of the late Tim Russert of Meet the Press who was always very irritated with guests who didn't have answers ready for his questions – oftentimes he would even send the list of questions in advance.
Well, after Dead Hippie's performance, frontman Simon Smallwood responded to Ivers' first question by saying, "I just want to say this, man" before launching into a prepared monologue for several minutes about what it would take to turn the country around (apropos of the news this week, one specific item was guaranteed health care for all). He then handed the microphone back, and all Ivers could do at that point was scream out: "Dead Hippie!"
Their only album, Living Dead came out in 1983 on the obscure Pulse Records label, and my copy (and maybe all of them from what I can tell) was in clear vinyl. There is a remarkable variety on the songs, in terms of the musical style in particular. A lot of them are political, such as the one that really stands out to me from the album, "Big Train" whose chorus goes:
If we can't stop it, no one can
That big train rolling across this land
If we don't stop it, no one else will
That black smoke is rising over the hill
I wanted to put in the inflection also, because that is their style: Dead Hippie is quite theatrical, and though it is an easy style to mock, like the speeches of Jesse Jackson, we are all still better off for having heard it.
There are a lot of reviews of the album out there now, and most found something that they didn't like; they would like some of the song styles but not others, and they complained that Dead Hippie had pretensions because they were overly dramatic in their performances.
Mostly though, it is Simon Smallwood's singing that the various blogger types don't like: "histrionics" come up a lot, "gallingly awful" is one description, and still another complained that he was trying to copy The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (remember "Fire"?) – like that's a bad thing. I guess it is a personal preference; there are some who consider Sleater-Kinney lead singer Corin Tucker difficult to listen to (not to mention Bob Dylan), but I have never had that problem – far from it.
I think Simon Smallwood has a fascinating voice myself, and I am certainly not the only one. I saw the term "the late, great Simon Smallwood" several times; the caption for the above photograph is: "Simon as we like to remember him, terribly gut-wrenchingly funny."
Dead Hippie didn't make it, sadly, but Simon Smallwood later joined a band called Würm, which does have an article in Wikipedia. The band is described as "sludge metal" and was originally active from 1973 to 1977; Smallwood joined up for a short time in 1983. Bass player Chuck Dukowski was a founding member of Würm and would later join the seminal hardcore punk band Black Flag. There are also a couple of videos out there of Simon Smallwood performing with Tu Tu Band as recently as 1991.
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Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for July 2010 – the Eyes.
This is a first-wave punk rock band with an all-star line-up: Bass player and vocalist Charlotte Caffey later was lead guitarist for the Go-Go's, while DJ Bonebrake became the drummer for X. My earlier article on the Eyes mentioned that members of the Go-Go's had deep roots in the Los Angeles punk rock scene, but I didn't know the half of it. I recently picked up an LP called Germicide (oh, yes, they are still making new LP's – I get them all the time) of the first live concert in June 1977 by the Germs (I also mentioned that band in the article); their single on What? Records, "Forming" b/w "Sex Boy" is regarded as the very first punk rock record that was released in LA. The woman introducing the band at the beginning of the concert was "Belinda"; and sure enough, I was able to pin that down as being Belinda Carlisle, the lead singer of the Go-Go's.
There are some original singles on YouTube, but the real treat for me was a 2007 reunion at the Masque with a live performance of "Don't Talk to Me" (though the vocals are not very clear) by the band's original line-up: Charlotte Caffey, DJ Bonebrake and Joe Ramirez: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6VYFCf54AA . Their best known song, "Disneyland" can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOc2Q42t3k8 .