Odds and Sods
XTC, two incredible music videos and a coupla other things
Greetings, Jagged Time Lapsers!
I’d like to thank everyone who shared and commented on last week’s “Steve Albini talks baseball” interview, and all the new folks here who subscribed to this Substack after reading it. Part Two of that interview will be posted in a few days.
I’d also like to thank everyone who has kept this Substack afloat since August 2022 not just with your enthusiasm, but with your paid subscriptions. Free subscriptions put the gas in my tank on a figurative level, but paid subscriptions quite literally do that, and I am immensely appreciative for it. So if you’re a free subscriber and Jagged Time Lapse’s free posts bring you joy on a regular basis, I hope you’ll consider ponying up for a paid monthly or annual subscription, either of which will run you less per month than the cost of a single beer at most watering holes these days.
A paid subscription will get you access to everything in the JTL archive, as well as any new “paid only” posts and every episode of CROSSED CHANNELS, the US vs. UK music podcast I do every month with my pal and fellow writer
.
And as always, there are no ads at JTL, no AI-generated gibberish, and no lowest-common-denominator shitposts — just honest, heartfelt writing about the transportive and transformative powers of music. So if that kinda thing is right in your wheelhouse, please help me keep this thing going… either with a paid subscription, or telling a friend about JTL, or better yet both!
I generally try to keep JTL posts focused on one particular subject, but sometimes there are a few unrelated things bouncing around together in my mind that I’d like to share, and this happens to be one of those times.
Fr’instance: What do you think of when you think of RSO Records? I think of blockbuster late-seventies soundtracks like Saturday Night Fever and (yecch) Grease, Eric Clapton’s snoozy seventies catalog, and Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman’s easy-rolling 1979 pop hit “Stumblin’ In”. What I don’t think of, however, is quirky, hard-edged, satirically humorous new wave music like the kind made by XTC in their four-piece prime.
But over the weekend, when I pulled out my copy of XTC’s brilliant 1980 LP Black Sea, I was reminded that — due to a short-lived alliance between Robert Stigwood and Richard Branson — the album was originally released in the US via RSO and Virgin Records. I find it both jarring and hilarious to see that RSO cow on the label of an XTC album. Even with the knowledge that Arthur Lee released an album on RSO with a latter-day incarnation of Love (1974’s not-so-hot Reel to Real), Black Sea strikes me as far and away the most un-RSO album ever released on RSO. But if you have other nominations for that non-coveted title, please holler…
Also: It was Stevie Wonder’s birthday last Monday. I didn’t have time to write up an expansive testimonial on one of the true musical geniuses of our era; but hey, it’s not like most JTL readers aren’t already hip to the enduring brilliance of his work. However, you may not be familiar with this incredible live clip from 1971 — I know I wasn’t until I stumbled across it last week — where he totally kicks out the jams on drums with two members of the Italian progressive rock trio Formula 3. Watching it is like cracking open a window into an alternate universe where Stevie reigns supreme as a stoner rock deity, a universe I definitely wouldn’t mind residing in for much longer than the two and a half minutes this clip runs for.
And speaking of birthdays and incredible live music clips: I’ve posted the legendary “MC5 at Wayne State” clip a couple of times here over the last few months, most recently in conjunction with this Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson-inspired memory. I always say that it’s my second most-favorite live rock footage of all time, and I am immeasurably sad that the guys featured in it are no longer walking (or rocking) the planet.
However, my all-time favorite live rock clip features two individuals who are thankfully still very much alive, including one who turned 79 yesterday — Mr. Pete Townshend. It’s The Who’s mighty performance of “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” filmed in December 1968 for The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.
I will never, ever forget the first time I saw it, at Chicago’s Parkway Theater during a 1980 screening of The Kids Are Alright (which was double-billed with Quadrophenia, of course). My Who knowledge was pretty cursory at that point, and I wasn’t even totally sure that I was a Who fan; while I liked some of their songs that I’d heard on the radio (especially riffier numbers like “I Can’t Explain,” “I Can See For Miles,” and “Baba O’ Riley,” a song I was pretty certain was by Bob Seger until some WLUP DJ set me straight with a well-timed back-announcement), I was pretty put off at the time by how many of their tunes (“Slip Kid,” “Bell Boy,” “Substitute” and “Who Are You,” to name but a few) seemed to be obsessed with aging and not fitting in. These subjects would come to resonate pretty strongly with me a few years later; but at the age of 14, I wanted my rocker heroes to be unrepentantly badass like Bon Scott, not painfully self-reflective like Pete Townshend.
But watching The Kids Are Alright finally made The Who make sense for me — for the first time, I fully grasped their unique mixture of power and playfulness, danger and self-doubt, effete artsiness and barely-bridled chaos. And all of it really came together for me on the clip of “A Quick One,” a song (or “mini-opera”) I had never actually heard (or even heard of) before the moment it flashed to life on the big screen in front of me. A seven-and-a-half minute song strung together from seemingly unrelated bits that featured characters like “Ivor the Engine Driver,” and John Entwistle and Pete Townshend intoning “cello cello cello” into their mics like naughty choirboys? What the hell was this?
I barely had time to process it all, but I knew the song had to mean something, because a cluster of slightly older and extremely cute “burnout chicks” seated behind me were singing along to every word, and greeting each new movement with the excitement of seeing an old friend. And anyway, there was so much else to take in — Entwistle looking like a medieval knight at a leather bar, Townshend jumping and windmilling in a spangly vest (but with an eerie calm in his blue eyes), Roger Daltrey looking like the baby bird version of his subsequent Tommy/rock god incarnation, and Keith Moon being 110 percent Keith Moon. By the time they got to the climactic, pummeling chorus of “You are forgiven!” I was practically weeping with joy; I couldn’t have even told you why, other than that it was simply SO FUCKING GREAT.
Over the next few years, my high school pal Adam (who may actually be reading this — Hi, Adam!) and I developed a ritual around “A Quick One”. Adam was one of my few high school friends with a car, and he lived just a mile or so north of me in Chicago, so he often as not gave me a lift home from whatever weekend school dance, party or concert we’d gone to. The Kids Are Alright cassette was in constant rotation in his car deck, and every time “A Quick One” would come on, we’d sing along together to every word; if we got to my place before the song ended, we had to drive around the block a time or three again until it was finished. It just seemed intrinsically wrong to leave “A Quick One” hanging; to this day, whenever I fire up the RNR Circus clip, I have to watch the whole thing. And once again, my eyes are usually filled with tears of joy by the end of it.
On a less joyful note, the great Barry Goldberg is battling cancer, and could use some assistance and generosity right now. I got to know Barry pretty well a few years back when we worked on a project together, and I can attest that he's both a serious mensch and a tough-as-nails individual… and very much not someone who feels comfortable asking others for help. But even his “Born in Chicago” brand of toughness isn’t gonna be enough to get him through the cancer treatments, mounting medical bills and moving costs that he and his wonderful wife Gail are currently facing.
Barry (the soulful cat above on the far right with Bob Dylan at Newport ‘65) has contributed so much amazing music to the world — including his appearances on records by Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, Charley Musselwhite, Harvey Mandel, Doug Sahm, Percy Sledge, Leonard Cohen, and the Ramones, not to mention his work with the Electric Flag (whom he co-founded), his own solo records, and songs he wrote like “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” a massive hit for Gladys Knight & The Pips — and it would be amazing to see the world give something back in this time of need.
Some of Barry's friends have set up a GoFundMe for him; please give it a look to get the full story, and please contribute (and spread the word) if you can.
And finally, I wanted to give a quick shoutout to a Substack I’ve been really enjoying called Songletter. Like me, its creators really dig music, and don’t restrict themselves to any particular genre or era; unlike me, they serve up their latest finds and current obsessions in bite-sized chunks. They’ve hipped me to some artists I probably would have never discovered on my own, like Ben Böhmer, and I can certainly get behind their recent salutes to some of my favorites, like Air and Isaac Hayes. If that sounds like your cup of groove, by all means check ‘em out.
And that’s all folks, at least for now. Catch you in a couple of days with the second half of that Albini interview. It’ll be worth the wait, I promise.
That performance of "a Quick One (While He's Away)" is absolutely up there among the greatest television live music performances of all time. It's so damn good it's almost impossible not to believe it isn't pre-recorded. At some point since Basilica in Hudson got going in its current format, they hosted a screening with director Michael Lindsay-Hogg there in person talking through the whole process. He confirmed what was long known - that the Stones had been up for so long by the time they finally got to play that they were exhausted, and lacklustre with it (and of course going through the last long drag with Brian Jones). They were also trying to follow The Who, who had performed fresh, and knew they'd been beaten before they started. Cheers!
Speaking of Stevie Wonder, I am working on Mistra Know It All for an upcoming open mic.
Speaking of Arthur Lee, I did House is Not a Motel the other night at an open mic. A pleasure to play these songs to the public.