"Nicky, I Never Knew" b/w "Dominique"

Briefly, a couple more originals are up next, via me and Señor Roadkill.  As with the rest of this batch, the drums were recorded at the Roadkills' Charm City Manor back in autumn '12, in a great-sounding room downstairs, post-tenant and pre-renovation.  There's really not much to say about the songs otherwise.  You decide:

"Nicky, I Never Knew":        https://app.box.com/s/t3cvwg69omdaikb7dpk2

"Dominique":                        https://app.box.com/s/gkrg88p1scqyeaehgita

"To the Moon" b/w "Buckout Road"

First off, to put our cards on the table, this is "fresh" product, rather than "new", these two tunes dating back to the old Honcho days of the roaring late '90s Baltimore.  They've been gussied up a bit and, with any luck, generally given their due.

"To the Moon" is such a blatant Scruffy the Cat/ Charlie Chesterman lift that it barely needs mentioning to anyone familiar with those guys' records.  But do I ever have a soft spot for it.  And the Rickenbackers and cheeseball organ only help....

"Buckout Road" does refer to an actual road--- a mysterious, winding, hilly lane on the ass end of the area we knew as Silver Lake, NY (or East White Plains, though technically West Harrison).  Buckout Road started (still does) behind the quarry and went way up and around, getting darker, curvier and more narrow as you went, eventually emerging lord knows where, behind one of the reservoirs, I think.  It had dark aura of "no return", and was rumored to be the kind of place you'd be likely to find albinos, cast-outs, adulterers, criminals and all that kinda thing.  It's even worse nowadays, and particularly scary if you have a fear of McMansions.  Sad, sad, sad.

JK

"To the Moon":         https://app.box.com/s/nkmcgrsdlbi6epd564ju



"Buckout Road":      https://app.box.com/s/wgw5uu64vdnflmo3yq7r

Stackpole- Keating '12 (5): CCR, in case you needed more

Original RKBS tunes coming next post!  But this one wraps up last year's Stackpole sessions, and just in time for this year's Harpswell Summer Rock Camp....

Fogerty, Fogerty, Cook & Clifford.  What can you say?  It's hard to overstate how good and how productive those guys were over the short blast of time centered on '69-'70.  And how textured and varied they could be.  It's also hard to overstate how little the world needs any more cover versions of Creedence tunes.  But yet again that's what you get here.  For completeness' sake:

Born on the Bayou:         https://www.box.com/s/ow4fvquz6d3mcr1nd9tt



It Came Out of the Sky:  https://www.box.com/s/tn4xwv8f12rm1k31ast0

Stackpole- Cardillo- Keating '12 (4): George Harrison, Led Zeppelin

Hope everybody's Independence Day weekend went swimmingly (perhaps literally), and the summah sweltah didn't weight too heavily on you.  Admittedly, there was some intermittent shelter sought in the cool basement of the Buttsteak manse, but it's summer, after all.

Not much text needed for these posts from last year's Stackpole-Keating band camp.  Both songs come from 1970, and both feature the remote bass-playing contributions of The One and Only 'Dillo.

"Isn't It a Pity" came off of George Harrison's sprawling, world-stunning post-Beatles triumph, "All Things Must Pass".  This was another milestone rekkid that featured all those usual musical suspects of the time (talked about in detail a couple posts back), and we were again shooting for that loosey-goosey, barnstorming feel that we love so much. 

"Hey Hey, What Can I Do" didn't make it onto "Led Zeppelin III", and remains one of the greatest non-LP cuts of the rock era, along with the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" b/w "Rain" single.  It provided good cover for me to bust out the acoustical instruments and try and hybridize them to the rock.  Robert Plant I am not.

JK


Isn't It a Pity:                      https://www.box.com/s/2y0lwkevc6i4fnasvgz8



Hey, Hey What Can I Do:  https://www.box.com/s/ifbviwj6qejeoq6mtke2

Stackpole- Cardillo- Keating '12 (3): Small Faces, Traffic

Happy Canada Day, y'all!  But it's back to the psychedelic '60s, England-style for these two hit cover rekkids from me and John Stackpole (and special guest): 

"Tin Soldier" comes courtesy of the great, great Small Faces, released at the very tail end of 1967.  Jeez, nobody much even knows about the Faces nowadays, and that's with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood on board.  Prior to their drunky, good-time, groovy blooz-rock evolution, and before diminutive Steve Marriott left to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, there were the Small Faces.  They had a sackful of great tunes, from the mod to the psychedelic.  I've covered few songs that are more fun to play than this one, and few that are more vein-popping in their vocal demands. 

"40,000 Headmen" is 1968 track from Traffic, of Steve Winwood and Dave Mason fame, Jim Capaldi transient quasi-fame and (yuck) Chris Wood non-fame (he of the flute and sax).  Total gibberish, but a fun, moody groove to set, with room for some congas and lead guitar and keys and all that.

And one of the best part of these is that Stack and I had the great idea of using the recording process to virtually reforming our second-earliest high school band, and outsourced the bass duties to the one and only Dillo.  Huzzah!


Tin Soldier:             https://www.box.com/s/rmqla5lxzje32ipnw0y7



40,000 Headmen:  https://www.box.com/s/urrr791kj54hlo8bj1ca

Stackpole- Keating '12 (2): Back yet again to the Velvet Underground

Back in '11 the Stackpole-Keating organization played the obvious choices off the VU's "Loaded": "Sweet Jane" and "Rock n' Roll".  Last year we dug one level deeper for a last-minute addition to the set: "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'".  I haven't heard a version I disliked (and that list includes Phish, so that's saying something, lord save my eternal soul). Certainly it was fun to put this version together.  Anyway, it's a sweet, languid time capsule of a song, and the cut (out of several on the album) that most benefited the from the songwriter (Lou Reed) having turfed it over to the new guy/ part time singer (Doug Yule). 

Oh! Sweet Nuthin':      https://www.box.com/s/84owpqqvsv19m92mj9mx

Stackpole- Keating '12 (1): Covers Clapton(ish) and Cocker(ish)

Hey alls--  The media output stalled out on account of a successful Harpswell Hoot  '13 but we're back and broadcasting.  The hope was to lay off the covers a while and get some new original RKBS goods posted (and we in fact have two batches in the can) but black-hearted technology went and bit us in the ass.  So it's back to the boards for the hit records that never made it back from our Baltimore mixing session earlier this year and it's up on the site with some classic numbers from the Stackpole- Keating session of last summer. 

These numbers both ring a similar turn-of-the-'70s "live at the Fillmore", raggle-taggle rock-meets-R&B bell for me.  They key is the involvement of the musical giants maybe "best known" as Clapton's backing band in Derek and the Dominos: Bobby Whitlock on keys, Carl Radle on bass and Jim Gordon on drums, who carry, respectively, near-tragic, tragic and super-tragic rock n' roll biographies.

It all started with the loose roadshow of Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett and Friends, who really gelled in '69 while the tempestuous American rock/ R&B couple were touring with Clapton and Winwood's kinda crappy supergroup Blind Faith.  D&Bs' "friends" came to include Dave Mason and the horn section of Bobby Keys and Jim Price and even a bit of George Harrison, but most prominently Eric Clapton and the musicians who happily jumped ship with him to record EC's first solo record, form the Dominos and record "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" (ALL in 1970!).  Aaaannyhoo... This is hands-down, no argument, by far the greatest era of Clapton, and his association with the equally flawed Delaney Bramlett was a key part of his evolution at the time, moving generally away from the overdone noodling and pschedelia of the Cream era towards groovier, more interactive ensemble playing and tighter, hookier songs.  "Got To Get Better In a Little While", to me, is that sound in a nutshell.

It's hard to believe how busy these guys were while not nearly killing themselves with lifestyle excess.  In early 1970, between their last D&B tour and their brief time with EC, Gordon, Radle, Keys, Price and a bunch of other players agreed to help out the red-hot-at-the-time Joe Cocker with a contractually obligated US tour.  "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" ended up another pillar of this era.  "Darling Be Home Soon" was written by John Sebastian.  His band the Lovin' Spoonful had a nice version, as did even Brit glam-rockers Slade, but Joe Cocker pretty much owned it, and this version slants towards his.

jk

Got To Get Better In a Little While:

https://www.box.com/s/ox38plbu3ts6o39ow97l


Darling Be Home Soon:

https://www.box.com/s/it0xi54qtxt2qa45hwyt