Hoot '12: Steely Dan/ Nick Lowe

This wraps up the Hoot '12 recordings: "Barrytown" b/w "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love & Understanding".   Consider the decks cleared for Hoot '13, which convenes in Harpswell next weekend!

Jerky deal goes down!

"Barrytown" is a weird, old Steely Dan song from the weird, old Steely Dan-- 1974's "Pretzel Logic", which any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you is their best album by far.  Hmmm... Now there's an idea for some future Hooting...  Anyway, Mr. Bonanos carried the weight on this one, taking up the Wurlitzer, singing lead and overdubbing some fine guitar.

Elvis Costello may have made the definitive angry young man version of "...Peace, Love & Understanding" but Nick the Knife wrote it.  Nick's versions are a little slower and a little sweeter and a little more jangly, and that's what you get here.  Few musical turns have warmed my heart so much as Nick Lowe's late-career renaissance.  After starting up in the late '60s, achieving minor-league stardom in the late '70s, and hitting the shoals of major-label downsizing in the '80s (coincident with some stagnant songwriting and period-specific over-production), the Silver Fox commenced to putting out a series of great, low-key, soulful, funny records in '94 and probably hasn't looked back since.  You should hear him or see him if at all possible.  Just sayin'.

jk

"Barrytown":  https://www.box.com/s/ylkqjl5vvrzksvlkrxym


"(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love & Understanding":
https://www.box.com/s/p9ypl7fquvswa9cziwa9

Hoot '12: Simon & Garfunkel/ the Who covers

Hoot '12: "The Only Living Boy in NY" b/w "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand"

We were down for maintenance at the RKBS site but are back up and running... Don't forget to check out the other great Hoot covers posted recently, and we hope you dig these.

My history with Simon & Garfunkel is tangled and, truth be told, I really just never much cared for them.  Being a child of the '70s, I could never really avoid them though, echoing across the airwaves and culture as they were. But listening to their records is tied in my mind to some very specific tedious, bleak, stuffy, precious (in the bad way) moments, such as dissecting "Richard Corey" in Miss Sweeney's afternoon English class,  spring 1983.  Few units of time are as long as the eternity that follows someone putting, say, "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" on the turntable and saying "We'll hit the road right after this side is done....  Uggghhhh...  I get a shiver even now.  Still, every once in a while there's something I really love, whether the Concert in Central Park, or some lyric or musical turn or general vibe in "America" or "The Boxer", or the fraying working relationship on display on the beautiful "Bridge Over Troubled Water" album. And off that  album, "The Only Living Boy in NY" is an an absolute favorite, and a song that says a whole lot while not saying much at all.  It'll jerk a tear to yer eye!  Plus the original version features some of LA's top "Wrecking Crew" hands: the great Joe Osborne (bass), Hal Blaine (drums), Larry Knechtel (organ) and Fred Carter, Jr (guitar)-- men who built a good number of your musical memories, whether you know it or not.  So, yeah, we took a crack at it anyway, and turned Paul C loose on the bass and Paul B on the take-off guitar.

Now, the Who?  I was always on-board for them from the moment I bought my "Hooligans" best-of compilation cassette at Sam Goody or Musicland in the Galleria in White Plains.  We were children of "Who's Next" and "Quadrophenia" primarily,  Dillo and me, and the whole pre-"Tommy" output always confused me a bit.  What was up with the baked beans, giant deodorant, zit cream, leopard skin and general shirtlessness of "The Who Sell Out"?!? As with the Kinks and Stones, this meant that a lot of the early gems went undiscovered for a while.  Among them, "MaryAnne with the Shaky Hand".  That's Paul B on the keys, RK power-popping it on the drums, Dillo on the bass and me on the Rickenbackers.

JK

"The Only Living Boy in NY":            https://www.box.com/s/t65sp35v7r8pp5jvrlih


"Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand":   https://www.box.com/s/uvgui0s9yjujd76hkjcq