Kim Carnes “Mistaken Identity”

I was working at Trophy World, downtown Sandusky, Ohio, the first part of 1981, fulltime, and usually it was slow—the last of the watching-the-clock jobs—a clock with hands that didn’t move—I didn’t know any better. The worst thing, though, was the Top 40 radio that “had” to be on while the store was open. I’m sure my boss didn’t care for it any more than I did, but I wasn’t smart enough to—I don’t know—confident enough, to… change the station? Anyway, what I remember from that time is horrible, soul-shriveling, psychically-wounding hit songs, the same dozen or so every hour, day after day. There was only one exception—“Bette Davis Eyes.” I had no idea who this Kim Carnes was, but I wanted to date her. I do remember an annoying video. (But that may have been later? Anyway, I didn’t care for music videos—and like them even less, now.) I think I even bought the single (well, I owned one for a while, don’t possess it now). I recently picked up this $3 LP, curious as to the rest of it. Did I ever see this record? Besides the annoying ransom note graphic (it’s okay), there’s a great photo of Kim Carnes in a creepo setting—but wearing a very pretty dress. Is she in the Witness Protection Program? Behind her, there’s a guy with an unworldly slim waist (or is it a woman?), white shirt and suspenders and shoulder holster—watching out a window. The back cover photo is pure David-Lynch-Land.

As you might expect, nothing else on the record sounds like “Bette Davis Eyes.” It’s really kind of a bummer, in that the songs are okay, for the most part, and I love Kim Carnes’ singing, and the production isn’t particularly bad for an Eighties record—but overall, production and arrangements sound like 1981—which is well along in an era of pop music that I just can’t get into. When looking at records I don’t know anything about, if I see it’s from 1981 (really, 1977 or later), I won’t touch it, because chances are, I won’t be able to listen to it more than once. But I’m trying to give this record more of a chance than I normally would. You could probably fool someone into thinking “Break the Rules Tonite” is a Rod Stewart song—at least right at the beginning—it’s sounds like that later blues rock I can do without—way too coked up. Anyway, he’s the singer that Kim Carnes most sounds like. “When I’m Away from You” is a great song, actually—you could fit it right on the second side of “Every Picture Tells a Story” and (until it goes on for too long) fool someone into thinking it’s always been there.

“Bette Davis Eyes” was written by Donna Weiss and Jackie “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” DeShannon in 1974 (which is a year I particularly like, for music). I had never thought to look up her original recording of that song (until now) and it’s shocking how different it is—the original is a good song, but not particularly exciting (unless you were really concentrating on the lyrics)—the arrangement is pretty mainstream and way too jaunty. It’s pretty cool that Kim Carnes and her band decided to make that song into something else entirely—something unusual, a little weird, and certainly inspired—it’s honestly too good to have become a number one hit song—but there you go. A combination of that distinctive synth sound, the simplicity of the arrangement, Kim Carnes’ excellent singing, and some great lyrics. I particularly always loved that inspired rhyme: “precocious” (and later, “ferocious”)—in the middle of a line— rhymed with “pro blush” at the end of the next line. It’s a not quite a rhyme, and the rhythm is weird, and who would ever say: “what it takes to make a pro blush?” Which makes those lyrics poetry—and me still able to listen to this song—and remember being 21, and this brief reprieve from time standing still.

Bob Kames “Dance Little Bird” / “I’ll Never Get Married Again”

Bob Kames “Dance Little Bird” / “I’ll Never Get Married AgainFull credits: Bob Kames – The Happy Organ – Featuring Dad & The Kids. It’s an instrumental polka organ record. Though, I guess “Dance Little Bird” AKA “The Chicken Dance” is considered oom-pah music—and was massively popular and sold bajillions of records, worldwide. So, I can appreciate this music in the same way I appreciate someone spinning plates—I could never do it, and I’m amazed by the feat—but I’m not staying up past my bedtime watching YouTube videos. Well, just as I write that, I found a video of Bob Kames performing the song, along with some bird-costumed dancers. Probably one of the best things on that channel. Still, the music—it’s a little hard to swallow. It just occurred to me exactly who the audience is for this record. It’s exactly the person who sees the title, “Happy Organ,” and doesn’t immediately think “erect penis.” Those people are out there—and there’s more than you think. And I’m not proud of not being one of them. But I do have a “dirty” mind. You find lots of Bob Kames records in his hometown of Milwaukee—he cranked out the organ and polka records, I guess. I’m not going to include a bio here, because I’ve no doubt got a Bob Kames LP or two to write about, by and by. His Wikipedia page is well-worth checking out. It wasn’t that long ago you could go in person to the Kames Organ store—I remember not long after moving to Milwaukee, “George” Ruschhapt and I found a nice, smaller Hammond organ at a Salvation Army in Sheboygan, for nothing. It had the little oil lubrication cups, so we went out to Kames Music—I think it was out around Forest Home aways somewhere—and we bought official Hammond oil. It was a cool store—the basement filled with amazing organs. When I have a spare evening, I’ll look up some more history—though, the history of The Chicken Dance—watch out for that one!

The Naked Skinnies “All My Life” / “This is the Beautiful Night”

This is a single, but 33 1/3 RPM, with a little hole, and there’s a nice, black and white, paper cover, with some arty photos of abstracted light fixtures. My copy still has the price tag from my store, Garbage Inc., ($2.00)—where it was probably on consignment. I think I got 5 or 10 copies from Tim Anstaett (TKA) of The Offense zine—along with The Cowboys single, which I think he released. It says “Naked House Records”—I suppose the band’s label, and I read that Ron House put up some of the money for it—maybe TKA did, as well. There’s a Columbus, Ohio, High Street address, so I looked at a map—it’s all different now, but it brought back memories—I think it was where the Magnolia Thunderpussy record store was, where I spent some time in the years around 1980. This record is from 1981.

The first side, “All My Life,” initially has a Joy Division sound, though more basic and low-fi—but as the melody progresses and the singer, Mark Eitzel, starts wailing, it sounds like a Mark Eitzel song. If you never heard this, but were an Eitzel or American Music Club fan, you’d know who it was singing in no time. The second side, “This is the Beautiful Night,” sounds even more Joy Division-like, but very quiet, low-key, controlled, and haunting. I think forty years ago, I liked the more pop, emotional A side better, and now I prefer the more subtle B side. That’s progress.

Besides singer and guitarist, Mark Eitzel, the other members of the band are Greg Bonnell, drums, Nancy Kangas, organ, and John Hricko, bass (and engineering). There is a photo of them on back, sitting in a bar, Rolling Rock on the table. Just behind them is a woman—and it always cracked me up—there’s a pasted on, typed strip that says, “this is our friend, Mary.” I hope she got a copy of the record. They moved out to San Francisco not long after this release (perhaps Hricko didn’t move), eventually broke up, and Nancy and Greg started a band called The Dave, who I liked a lot. I wrote to Nancy Kangas for years, trading zines—she made one of the best zines of all time, called Nancy’s Magazine. I first saw Mark Eitzel play solo, with an acoustic guitar, in Columbus, maybe around 1980 when I was in school there. He may have been playing as Billy Lee Buckeye, and he also wrote really funny stuff for The Offense fanzine under that name. In the early Eighties, in San Francisco, he started American Music Club, who became one of my all-time favorite bands. I unfortunately lost the AMC vinyl records with the rest of the records I lost. I’ll get them back someday. He’s still one of my favorite songwriters.

Bobby and the Midnites

This record, which either someone gave me, or I bought because of the cover, might have the distinction, at this point in time, of being my least favorite record that I own. Not for long. But at least it’s interesting to listen to it to try to figure out why it’s so disagreeable to me. They’re a hot band, they can play. Even so, I really don’t think any of the songs would grow on me if, say, I forced myself to listen to it every Friday night while I start the weekend with a fatty and a six-pack. One of these songs—I swear—kind of transported me to a bloated rock arena, normally used for sports, with several thousand rock fans, drunk, high, screaming, old, cobwebs—and stale, spilled beer, cigarette permeated garments, a light show, terrible sound, ear-numbing volume. I mean, there are worse places in the world—like minefields and jobs, but not many. I just watched a documentary about Bob Weir, and he’s still a young guy—I enjoyed it, I liked him. I’m one of those people who keep trying—because people I respect are fanatics—to come around to the Grateful Dead—and I keep failing, for the most part. This record, however, while I can certainly understand why some people might like it, is exactly around the other side of the Earth from what I like. I do like the album cover, a drawing of a black cat with one eye missing. It’s a cute cat. I love black cats. Or maybe it’s winking—though cat’s don’t wink. They also don’t play bass, so who knows.

The Cramps “Psychedelic Jungle”

I use a random number generator to pick what record to write about next, and today it landed on this one, which is highly appropriate for Halloween! (I don’t make this stuff up, as much as it might sound like it. Alphabetical, right there between Crabby Appleton and David Crosby.) Actually, I was surprised I hadn’t written about it yet—well, I have, but not on this site. It is one of my 10 favorite records of all time, and I don’t mean the 100 that I say are my top 10. It’s definitely the best LP to come out in the wasteland of the Eighties (1981). The album cover is just a fisheye photograph of the band in a spooky attic (or your mind) but it’s just kind of the perfect album cover. The first time I saw The Cramps (can’t remember the year or where!) is one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. As a band, they’re basic and inevitable, as if they have always existed, generation after generation after generation. It’s hard to describe the position they occupy in my brain. It’s like they are extreme at the edges, and there’s no middle ground. On a scale from 1 to 10 (1 and 10 being both the best and worst) they get all 1’s and 10’s. Not for the squares.

This is their second LP, but it was the first one I heard, and I remember when—it was one of those experiences that are rare—when you hear something and can’t believe what you’re hearing—it makes no sense based on previous knowledge. Ron Metz (drummer for The Human Switchboard) played it for us in his apartment in Kent, Ohio, summer of 1981. He found it baffling—this is when punk and new wave was getting faster and poppier and louder—and this was the slowest, most droning, most minimal thing I’d ever heard. Ron put the record on at 45 RPM, just to try it, and at that speed it sounded like normal music. But it’s not normal, and that’s what makes it great. You don’t want to get to know these people. They sound like they might legitimately drink your blood—they must be either a cult, on drugs, or some form of un-human—likely all of those, to some degree. Or maybe it’s all an act, in which case, it’s more fun to just be scared.

There are 14 songs on this record and they’re all excellent. Half originals, and half covers—by people (until I heard this) I’d never heard of. I couldn’t tell which were which, and for years paid no attention to that. It all sound like The Cramps, and no one else. The originals are by Poison Ivy Rorschach and Lux Interior. She chews gum while playing guitar, and I maintain is the coolest person in the history of rock’n’roll. Lux Interior was a local guy, from near Kent, apparently from a normal family, if such a thing exists. He definitely went over to some version of the other side—that shadowy, depraved region of no return. Nick Knox was the most minimally extreme drummer I’ve ever heard. And then, on this record, Kid Congo Powers joined them—the only person to ever play guitar with The Cramps and The Gun Club and Nick Cave (the Rolling Stones probably should have hired him).

“Caveman” and “Can’t Find My Mind” were always my favorites—two of the most druggy extreme songs you’ll ever hear. “The Natives Are Restless” is almost shocking in how upbeat it is—the most danceable song about cannibalism I’ve ever heard. I think ultimately my my favorite part of this record are the first two songs, which—both fit the whole perfectly—and sound like nothing else on the album. It starts with “Green Fuz” (a cover, originally by Green Fuz, naturally). And then “Goo Goo Muck” (Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads—it’s very much worth finding that version!), which has my favorite guitar solo of all time. The way those two songs work together, the atmosphere they create, and the world they introduce you to, and the way it sets up the rest of the record… It’s kind of like reliving, all at once, the first time you did all those bad things that are going to send you straight to hell.

Eddie Schwartz “No Refuge”

This record came out in 1981, in an uncomfortable space between classic rock and new wave—which reminds me of people like Graham Parker and Joe Jackson and Herman Brood & his Wild Romance—nothing wrong with all that stuff, I just can’t listen to it. All I know is when I see any date after the mid-Seventies, the odds grow exponentially greater, the later it is, that it’s going to be unlistenable. The title song does sound like it could have been the title track for a movie with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, thus adding, at least, an element of comic relief. A quick glace at the internet tells me that’s just my imagination, but also that Eddie Schwartz wrote Pat Benatar’s 1980 single “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”—a song that always made me uncomfortable—but it’s catchy, famous, part of the larger culture—so that’s impressive. His voice reminds me of someone, but I can’t place it—it’s an interesting voice. He’s Canadian, and I’m guessing you could have seen some energetic live show back when the record came out—if I was there in the club, in close proximity with a woman I had a crush on, was 21, and drank enough Crown Royal, I might have gotten emotional over songs like, “Spirit of the Night,” “Tonight,” “Heart on Fire,” “Auction Block,” and “All Our Tomorrows.”

Rolly Gray and Sunfire “Be Somebody”

I had to make a few rules for myself when embarking on the internet-less, extended, “north woods” cabin, vinyl exploration, just because there are so many records to choose from in crates and boxes and more crates: I’m ignoring the 45s, just because I don’t have years here; and I’m ignoring 10 inch records, for much the same reason; and I’m also ignoring “EPs” and 12 inch singles. This record would probably fall under the EP category because there seems to be only four songs on it, but I couldn’t resist it because the cover and back photos are so great, with band members posing on what looks like the porch of a stage set of a white house, the inside of which is illuminated totally in red. On the cover, alone, is who I’ll assume is Rolly Gray, sitting in a wooden rocking chair with an electric guitar. What is striking is the photo is taken at knee-level so you really notice that he’s wearing loafers (or slippers) and baggy dark red socks that match his large-sleeved shirt. The back cover is even better, with who I assume is the band with Rolly—just their pose, kind of leaning on the house, is kind of awesome, but would take too many words to describe it properly. One of the guys is particularly stylishly dressed with a kind of tropical jac-shirt, matching shirt and pants, in a kind of earthy pink.

I don’t even know what kind of music this is, but next to each musician in parentheses it says “Trinidad and Tobago” so I’m going to assume that’s where they are from, wherever that is, I think the Caribbean. The music is good, very driving, upbeat and happy sounding. The most striking thing to me is the bass, which is prominent, like a lead instrument, and really reminds me of some early punk band’s bass, but I can’t place it right now—I’ll try again later. (Yeah, right, there is no “later.”)