Yeah, I haven't been posting updates to the blog lately, and especially haven't been posting the radio show here. Life has just been a little hectic, working on a ZZ Top story that will run after Xmas in The Austin Chronicle. But here I am today, freshly awakened by my neighbors, who seem to find loud hip hop and "motherfuckers" appropriate at 9 AM on a Sunday. (Well, they do that any day. But....)
Thankfully, we begin this week's "RADIO NAPALM" with METAL URBAIN and "Hysterie Connective" to blast those heathens into submission. And the punk rock comes thick and fast after: BILLY CHILDISH AND CTMF, THE OBLIVIANS, KING TUFF, REV. NORB AND THE ONIONS, THE CLASH, THE MUMMIES, and so much more. And plenty of echo and vintage ads to warm your cockles.
We got Red Hot Ball and Big Saucy Bangers galore this week in The Garage! So, press play and join us!
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: And, of course, Ray actually ended up passing on for real on Monday. Here's the memorial I wrote for The Austin Chronicle: Click here.
UPDATE: A second Gannett newspaper, USA TODAY, just added the following to their obituary."UPDATE: Reports that Country Music Hall of Famer Ray Price has died appear to be in error. Price's son Cliff Price wrote of his death on Facebook, but was not at Price's bedside in Mount Pleasant, Texas, when he posted. Price's wife, Janie Price, is with her husband and says he is alive. 'Our lovable Ray Price is still with us,' reads a post on her Facebook page. 'When it is the time, there will be an official statement.'" Sounds like Ray's son needs to check in at home more often....
A lot of people are going to be remembering today, in future years, as the day Peter O'Toole died. For this dutiful son of Texas, however, it will be the day Ray Price died.
I could write a full-bore obituary for Ray, certainly. Those hard-shufflin' '50s hits of his created a fresh honky tonk sound, one that resonated greatly with me, and many others. I mean, give a listen to his signature tune, "Crazy Arms," and tell me you aren't affected:
Instead, I will dip into my own back catalog. In August 1996, I interviewed Ray Price aboard his tour bus, prior to playing Austin's AquaFest. The Austin Chronicle would publish is August 23, 1996, as Fiddles Not Violins: The Secret To Ray Price And San Antonio Rose.
"You got that thing on? I hope you don't print it like I'm sayin' it!" Seventy-year-old Ray Price ("going on 71 with a bullet") of Perryville, Texas, son of Walter and Clara Bradley Price, has just looked up from the glass of sippin' whiskey and accompanying glass of orange soda in his hands, having seen that the recorder was switched on when he least expected it. All the better to get some honest answers, see?
"You will clean it up, won't you?" he presses. Price turns to the entourage of sidemen and tour crew and notes slyly, "Boy, I know that when a reporter tells you that, it's juuusst right!"
What Price has to fear, outside the printing of some off-guard raw language or an occasional bawdy aside, is mysterious. Certainly he doesn't seem too worried about the publication of tart observations like, "Well, Nashville is Israeli-occupied territory," but maybe Price is feeling fearless now that he knows he'll finally be entering the Country Music Hall of Fame this year, alongside Patsy Montana and Buck Owens.
"I was beginning to wonder if they was gonna wait until I died!" says Price before muttering about problems with at least one member of the nominating committee. Price's nomination is timely, though, coming as it does in a year which has seen Koch International reissuing two of his Sixties landmark albums; the Bob Wills tribute, San Antonio Rose, and the similar vintage Nightlife album. Anal-retentive-to-the-extreme German reissue house Bear Family has also compiled one of their notorious billion-CD box sets on Price containing every hiccup the artist committed to tape during his heyday.
Then again, even without such retrospective interest, Price should've been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame years ago. His contribution is undisputed. One listen to his landmark 1956 recording of "Crazy Arms" tells the entire tale: There had been honky tonk music before, but not like this. Claiming the sound was a fluke of instant studio inspiration, Price's secret was the use of massed, double-stop fiddles (not violins -- fiddles!) and a toughened rhythm section. Because of this, "Crazy Arms" created a groove that kicked as hard as the nascent rock & roll sound which was then kicking traditional country music, and remained on the charts 45 weeks.
Yes, Price had hits prior to that, chiefly the now-standard "Release Me," but he had no identifiable sound. Instead, he was mostly notable as Hank Williams' protege. Price had met Williams while attending what would later become the University of Texas at Arlington where he studied veterinary medicine, and recorded a few singles for the tiny Bullet label. When Price joined Dallas' Big D Jamboree, he was introduced to Williams, who took a shine to the young country neophyte and convinced him to move to Nashville.
"Hank got me on the Grand Ole Opry," Price recalls, "and then I lived with him about a year before he died. I lived upstairs, he lived downstairs. Hank only had one problem: It was only with drinkin'. It wasn't with drugs.
"We was big buddies. But he was working an awful lot, and I was really looking after him more than anything else, 'cuz he was a bad alcoholic. But not like most people think. He never would work when he went to drinkin'. He'd stay in the hotel room. Then the promoter would have so many people there and would lose so much money, they would go and drag him down there drunk. And that's when he would make drunk appearances. In other words, he was a human, like anybody else."
Price's first records under his Columbia contract featured the backing of Williams' Drifting Cowboys, and despite their quality, they cut a little too close to Hank's groove for notability. Price also "made one tour with Hank in '52. We played some dates in Virginia and South Carolina, New Year's Eve and everything. He didn't make the first two dates," Price laughs.
"Hank Williams," he continues, "was the hottest damned thing in the world, as far as country music, and they put me out there to fill in for him -- in front of about 10,000 people in Norfolk. So, I didn't know what I was gonna do. I was scared to death. I started doing this song -- I had to use his band -- and I didn't know what key I did anything in. Went out there cold, and I told 'em the key on the song, and hell! It must've been two keys too high! The name of the song was `I Made a Mistake, and I'm Sorry.' And I got up to the `I Made a Mistake' part, then I sang, `...and I'm too damn High!'" he laughs.
"I stopped, and the people went ape. I could've done anything after that. Anything! It didn't make no difference. They was with me, God love 'em."
Quickly sobering up, Price adds, "But yeah, I guess I was Hank's best friend. Everywhere he'd play, he'd tell everybody about me and to look out for me, that I was gonna be Number One someday. I didn't even know he was doing it until after he died."
It took awhile. It took Price's hiring the Western Cherokees, a hard-driving Texas honky tonk/Western swing outfit, away from Lefty Frizzell in 1954 and renaming them the Cherokee Cowboys. It also took "Crazy Arms," with its hardened bass-and-drum pulse wed to a walking bass line. With further hits like "Heartaches by the Number" and "My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You," the Ray Price Sound caught on quickly. In fact, the sound became so inescapable, it even crept its way into the pop mainstream via a Nashville-cut: Elvis Presley's early Sixties hit, "She's Not You."
"Elvis and I was buddies!" Ray yelps. "I used to play... I believe it was the Lakeside Ballroom in Memphis every Friday night, years ago. And at intermission, Elvis would play, just him and his guitar. He was a nice kid, a really nice kid. But what he went through," Price adds, suddenly grim, "for what he got, I wouldn't have done it. Shit, he was locked up all his life. I don't believe in that."
Sam Phillips once said that if Presley had been allowed to walk the streets of his own hometown without being bothered, he'd still be alive today.
"That's right. But that's the way it was. He had a big fight with Tom Parker. He wanted to go to town and get him some ice cream, then go to a movie. Tom Parker said, `You do, and when you get back, our deal's up. I'm gone. You agreed that you would stay hid all the time out of public as long as we're in the business.' Now, that actually come about. And [Presley] believed him. 'Course Tom Parker was nobody without Presley, know what I mean? He was a smart man in the business, because he'd handled Eddy Arnold, and I think Hank Snow. But I'm talking about the big money way. Tom Parker was nothing 'til Presley."
Price pauses, then allows himself a slight bit of swaggering: "But we knocked `Heartbreak Hotel' off the Number One spot (on the country charts) with `Crazy Arms.'"
The hits kept coming and Price gained a reputation for having an ear for budding songwriters. Among those he gave breaks to: Harlan Howard ("Heartaches by the Number"), Mel Tillis ("One More Time" and "Heart Over Mind"), and Bill Anderson ("City Lights"). With "Invitation to the Blues," Price put royalties in the pocket of his drummer, an upstart songsmith by the name of Roger Miller. The Cherokee Cowboys, in fact, became as much a breeding ground for future country stars as Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours, whipping into shape a number of young bucks, such as steel legend (and now occasional Don Walser sideman) Jimmy Day. When Donnie Young abandoned the bass guitar slot in the Cherokee Cowboys to become Johnny Paycheck, his replacement was a recent arrival in Nashville named Willie Hugh Nelson. It's Nelson's rhythm guitar which graces San Antonio Rose.
By Price's guess, the 1961 San Antonio Rose was one of the first tribute albums ever released. It certainly predates Merle Haggard's own Wills salute, A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World, by nearly 10 years. Unlike Haggard's record, though, which sought to faithfully recreate the Texas Playboys sound (and in the process helped spearhead the Western Swing revival), Price's record saw him taking Wills' classics like "Roly Poly" and "A Maiden's Prayer" and making Ray Price songs out of them -- treating them all like "Crazy Arms." Price shrugs it off, muttering "That's how we try to do all of them." But this is Price's genius, and the mark of a true artist: Never ape someone else. Create something of your own. Reach inside, find something uniquely yours, rub that all over the material, and leave it standing as 100 proof Price.
After a time, it was hard to find 100 proof Ray Price records anymore. Records like "For the Good Times" found Price going the Eddy Arnold route, testing the MOR market with string-laden ballads that smacked more of a Vegas showroom than a honky tonk. Those weren't fiddles you heard on Ray Price records, anymore. Those were violins.
"I've always done my hit country songs," Price protests. "And we've always done them with the old sound, even when I worked with the symphony. I just leaned a little more toward the old sound later on, when it started getting hard to hear anymore."
It probably began with the duet album Price cut with Willie Nelson in 1980, also titled San Antonio Rose. The following year, a PBS broadcast featuring seminal Fifties honky tonkers showcased a Ray Price who looked as if he was out for blood. There was a lean, hungry look in his eye, and he leaned into Vintage Price standards like "Crazy Arms" and "Heartaches by the Number" and nothing else for 15 minutes, singing with strength, clarity, and the joy of a man freed from a dungeon after 25 years. Price mopped the floor with his contemporaries. The man was back.
Unfortunately, that was 15 years ago, and today times are tough for Price and his ilk -- at least in the eyes of Nashville. Although he still does over 100 dates a year, drawing "as good crowds as we ever have," Price has been without a record deal for some time now. This, however, hasn't stopped him: He's just cut a Spanish language disc in San Antonio with his musical-director of the last 30 years, Blondie Calderon. That it's heavy with ballads of the "Por Los Tiempos Buenos" variety, is neither here nor there.
Price has also begun work on a country album that will most likely be released on an indie label he and Calderon are setting up, though at this point they still need to raise funds for both ventures. Strangely enough, one avenue of fundraising may come in the guise of hot sauce, taken from an old Calderon family recipe and marketed as "Ray Price's Burning Memories." Meanwhile, what spare time isn't eaten by fishing excursions on his land near Mt. Pleasant might find Price writing his memoirs, which the singer jokes he'll title For the Good Times, My Ass!
"Actually, I'll probably title it The Way It Really Was, Price adds, levelly, "because I was there when it happened. I know what went down, and I know what people did. And it ain't gonna be one of them kiss-and-tell jobs."
Depending on the writing skills of either Price or (should he choose that route) his ghost writer, those non-hot-sauce burning memories of his should make fascinating reading. After all, Price has seen a lot of history, and created enough of his own to finally land in the Country Music Hall of Fame. And you can sense in his restlessness, which is odd in a man of 70, that Ray Price is itching to create even more history. So long as he fights the urge to hire violin players rather than fiddle players, that should be no problem.
Man, I love the new Mixcloud widgets for all of us Cloudcasters! I mean, look at the thing below! It even shows the playlist, so I don't have to go retyping it here when I post the shows here to help promote 'em! Man, Mixcloud thinks of EVERYTHING!
But this week's show is up, and it's a humdinger. FAR better than the half-assed Lou Reed Memorial Special I produced and threw up on Mixcloud the day of his death. For one thing, I actually had time to produce this week's show, even though we were moving to new Napalm HQ and a new location for The Garage...and Ed and Scooter didn't lift ONE GODDAMNED FINGER! *ahem!* Lazy bastards....
Anyway. this show sounds pretty tits, to me. It helps when you have so much good music to play: THE YARDBIRDS, MOTORHEAD, THE LAZY COWGIRLS, MUDHONEY, CHEETAH CHROME, THE RONETTES. We even have a German punk band called RAZOR SMILEZ, covering THE HORMONES' "SELL OUT YOUNG!" How can I NOT love a cover of my band and my song? (I also played the original, of course....)
Anyway, before I digress anywhere further than my current new location, just press play below. Enjoy....
Happy Halloween from Austin, TX, which has apparently decided to be Seattle for Trick Or Treating, this year. We are getting lashed with rain, since last night. To the point where, as a photo posted by my pal Metal Dave illustrates, the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue's had to learn to swim....
Texas Flood, indeed....
But how are they celebrating All Hallow's Eve in Lawrence, KS? Well, as William S. Burroughs illustrates below, they like to indulge in a little pumpkin carving....
Me? I've got boxes to pack, as there's a new apartment across town awaiting my moving in. So, we'll stop off in Detroit ca. 1971, and let the original Alice Cooper band carry us out with one of rock 'n' roll's most truly terrifying tunes, "The Ballad Of Dwight Fry," done completely live. You even get to see them setting up in this clip! Happy Halloween, y'all!
Last night, in a fit of solo recording frenzy, I whipped up a minimalist, lo-fi take on an old standard, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman's "This Magic Moment." I was excited enough by the results, I hastily threw up a Soundcloud page so you can hear it. Hope you enjoy it....
In some ways, the point of this post is moot, the point being to promote a "RADIO NAPALM" podcast that's already well on its way to being the most listened to in the new series. It's already a success, despite the damned thing being hastily assembled in the event of Lou Reed's death Sunday, October 27th, 2013 from complications due to liver disease. That haste means I'm not entirely sure the show's worthy of the audience. Certainly, it marks an occasion where the show for once is not a raving celebration of the punk rock spirit and vintage rock 'n' roll radio it usually is. And how could it be? Lou Reed is fucking dead. Writing those words don't set well with me. Lou was a prickly bastard, for sure, one who communicated best through his songs, even as he oft times seemed to use his solo career to alienate anyone whose life was saved by the rock 'n' roll he created in The Velvet Underground, and used his own public persona to keep everyone away. I'm personally one who felt he made more lousy albums than good. Transformer is the most obvious example of solo Lou at his best. Berlin. Metal Machine Music is a perverse pleasure. But he mostly seemed to take a perverse delight in holding a middle finger up to the world. Lou also was the sort of artist who really needed a good editor. He had that in John Cale, and in David Bowie and Mick Ronson on Transformer. Left to his own devices, he could not tell his own shit from his diamonds. I mean, really: Did Lou Reed really think collaborating with Metallica was a good idea? Yet, why is it I feel like Elvis just died? I don't think it's so much to do with that now-clicheed Brian Eno quote always trotted out in any discussion of the Velvet Underground, about the influence they had being so insanely out of proportion with their pisspoor record sales. I think what really says a lot about Lou's - and the Velvets' - impact is that in the 48 hours since his death, he has inspired so many great writers to write even more brilliantly. These eulogies are instant classics, sure to take pride of place in future anthologies. This is because, ultimately, Lou Reed was a great writer himself. Yes, he inspired everyone who heard his records to become a junkie faggot from New York City in a black leather jacket, solid black clothing, and ever-present sunglasses. Yes, he played some of the sickest rock 'n' roll lead guitar ever. Yes, he was a great singer who could not sing, had a limited range, and sounded flat to the rest of the world while sounding like Edith Piaf to all us faux NYC junkie faggots who heard him. But the key to Lou Reed was he was ultimately Raymond Chandler with a rock 'n' roll heart. Like Buddy Holly, Lou Reed preferred simplicity. He wrote symphonies out of three chords at most. Even as he blew crazed free jazz skronk guitar all over his records, he relied on the simplistic grooves of Moe Tucker's drums and John Cale's three-note bass. And he didn't write lyrics - he wrote stories. Highly literary, poetic stories full of urban gutter journalism, subject matter that was acceptable in novels and movies but is still frowned on in rock 'n' roll or pop music. He wrote of kicks and bad drugs and transvestites and squalor and kinky sex and general bad craziness, in simple, hard-boiled language that was direct and honest. It wasn't celebrating these things. It was simply telling it like it is. He also had a vulnerability, a gentle side that he was not afraid to flash, at least in song. Ferchissakes, one of the best Velvet Underground songs, a B-side called "Jesus," was an honest-to-God hymn. I now wish I'd included it in this show. But there's a lot I left out. This show could have gone on for hours. There was that much great stuff in Lou's canon, despite that pisspoor overall batting average on good releases versus howling dogs. Personally, I didn't get it at first. As a 14-year-old Sex Pistols/punk rock besotted youth, I came to Lou at first via Rock 'n' Roll Animal. I kept reading about Lou and the Velvet Underground in every magazine I picked up. Rock 'n' Roll Animal was availble in the five buck bin in the local Krogers record department, and I took a chance. I hated it on first listen, and still do. What's with this heavy metal record with the dirty lyrics? It took hearing Ronnie Bonds spin the Velvets' original of "Rock And Roll" on his old Funhouse show on KPFT in Houston to understand: Lou Reed songs make great rock 'n' roll, not great heavy metal. These are different musics, no matter what you may think. This is why that Metallica team-up still is a head-scratcher.... But looking over my own songs I've written? I've said for years I learned all I know about writing songs from Phil Spector. I still stand behind it, but I can see there's as much Lou Reed there as Phil. There are times I've forgotten some of those lessons, but that's par for the course with growing artistically. But having a good groove, a solid-but-simple riff, some vicious guitar, a lyric that tells a tough truth in simple-but-beautiful language? That's all Lou Reed, through-and-through. And now Lou Reed's dead, after a lifetime making me hate him more than love him, but loving what I love to the point of obsession. And all I can offer is this half-assed RADIO SHOW?! This just proves I can never hope to repay my debt to the man.... Yet, you guys are loving this, anyway. Despite there being no comedy, no screaming, no echo, no Ed The Engineer or Scooter, and me sounding as morose, stammering, and amaturish as I've ever sounded, you guys are loving this show. Because it's all about Lou Reed: Some early songs, a lot of Velvet Underground, some solo work, and a few musical tributes from those who got it. I have to thank you for that. R.I.P., Lou. Rest In Peace. Playlist: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - What Goes On THE BEACHNUTS - Cycle Annie THE PRIMITIVES - The Ostrich THE JADES - So Blue (first record, 1957) THE ALL-NIGHT WORKERS - Why Don't You Smile Now DIDJITS - Lou Reed (Full Nelson Reilly, 1991) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Sunday Morning (mono 45) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Run Run Run (acetate, different mix) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - I'm Waiting For My Man (mono LP mix) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Femme Fatale (mono 45) ADAM AND THE ANTS - Lou (Peel Session, 1978) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - White Light, White Heat THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Sister Ray THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Guess I'm Falling In Love (Workout At The Gymnasium bootleg) THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Beginning To See The Light THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Pale Blue Eyes THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Temptation Inside Your Heart THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - I Can't Stand It DAVID BOWIE - White Light, White Heat THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Sweet Jane THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Rock And Roll THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Oh! Sweet Nuthin' LOU REED - Vicious LOU REED - Walk On The Wild THE DREAM SYNDICATE - Tell Me When It's Over JONATHAN RICHMAN - Velvet Underground
"PAT FEAR ROCKS!!" That's what it said on the side of his Flying V. And White Flag mastermind and daredevil punk rock prankster Bill "Pat Fear" Bartell is no longer with us - died in his sleep last Monday, following years of health problems. I knew Bill, but not well - we were both ex-fLiPSiDers, for one. So, of course, I had to at least play four White Flag hits and read a poem Tony of The Adolescents composed, memorializing the friend he knew well.
Among other highlights:
Scooter gets a bigger vocabulary!
We play more of your requests!
Classics from THE LOOTERS (aka that Sex Pistols/Clash band from Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains), THE CRAMPS, BLACK FLAG, and WIRE!
New noise from OFF!, THE STRYPES, BULLET PROOF HEARTS, and more!
THE LOOTERS - Conned Again (1980, unreleased Pistols/Clash hybrid, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS)
ZAKARY THAKS - Face To Face (1967 Corpus Christi garage punk)
THE CRAMPS - Domino (1979)
PINK FAIRIES - City Kids (UK, 1973)
WIRE - I Am The Fly (requested by Rob Cooley, Georgetown, TX, and Jennifer Kerr, Chewelah, Washington)
BLACK FLAG - I've Had It (requested by Sam Rogers, NYC)
THE SCIENTISTS - Last Night (Goose [the Great Dismal Swamis, ex- Phantom Creeps], Friedricksburg, VA)
RUBBER CITY REBELS - "Rubber City Rebels" from the split with the Bizarros (Brian Schickling , Long Beach )
OFF! - What's Next? (Grand Theft Auto V, 2013)
THE STRYPES - Blue Collar Jane (recent single)
10 CENT FUCK FLICKS - Womanaire (Queens sleaze punk on Drug Front Records)
BULLET PROOF HEARTS - American Custom (Omaha punk rock 2013)
PLOWBOY SPOTLIGHT: BOBBY BARE JR. - Make The World Go Away (You Don't Know Me: Rediscovering Eddy Arnold)
WHITE FLAG - Shattered Badge (1984, Mystic Records COPULATION LP)
WHITE FLAG - Suicide King (Wild Kingdom, 1987)
WHITE FLAG - Instant Breakfast (Wild Kingdom, 1987)
WHITE FLAG - I'm Down (Jail Jello split w/Necros, 1986)
