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Aerosmith - Honkin on Bobo


RainyDay

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"Slow Ride" is another one I played at countless weddings. Ugh.

I don't like that kind of rock. Didn't like it then, don't like it now. Lowest common denominator sludge.

Or maybe I just don't like unimaginative drunken weddings, where initial "classiness" inevitably devolves into sloppy crudeness and stays there.

Same thing, though, really.

Not once have I played this at a wedding, and that's too bad,

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Oh, you were a photographer's assistant? One of those guys who could show up to a tux gig in jeans and something resembling a former sports shirt? I know your type!!!! :g:g:g

Hardly ever played "Freebird", actually. Thank god. But when I played with a biker band (called Booster Cable and the Jump Starts, I swear to god), we played that and ALL the "Southern Rock" standards...I came to realize that I must be missing some kind of cultural gene, because none of that stuff triggered anything affectionate in me at all.

In general, I think the early-mid 70s were a shitshow shambles for White Mainstream (now known as "Classic") Rock. So much noise, so little no substance, so much brainwashing that nothing matters except "rocking". R&B and Salsa (the other two pop genres I had a window to) were soaring, this crap was just getting worse and worse, sinking into the tarpits of trappiness - and selling more and more. It took a combination of Punk & Power Pop to restore anything I could feel comfortable staying in the room with.

Ghost, you talk about "Dazed and Confused"...that's not a happy movie. It's a deep tragedy, really. that it does not readily recognize itself as such...there ya' go, QED.

 

 

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14 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I don't know about the 70s, but nobody was listening to Aerosmith in the 80s until Run-DMC resurrected their career in one fell swoop. 

 

If Aerosmith were gentlemen they would have given half of everything they earned after 1986 to Run-DMC, because they certainly owe it to them.

 

And perhaps another quarter to Liv for keeping them relevant in the video age.

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14 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I don't know about the 70s, but nobody was listening to Aerosmith in the 80s until Run-DMC resurrected their career in one fell swoop. 

 

If Aerosmith were gentlemen they would have given half of everything they earned after 1986 to Run-DMC, because they certainly owe it to them.

BTW, I just watched this video for the first time in decades and I'll be damned if it might not be the best video of the 80s.

That cuts both ways here. Run D.M.C. was breaking out Rock Rap but none of the rock fans would have known much about it if it wasn't for this crossover hit. I didn't pay much attention to Run D.M.C. until after this came out. This one song pushed "Raising Hell" into a mega-smash and cemented Run D.M.C. as the leading rap group at the time.

As stated in Wikipedia, "The success of "Raising Hell" is often credited with kick-starting hip hop's golden age, when rap music's visibility, variety, and commercial viability exploded onto the national stage and became a global phenomenon. Their success paved the way for acts like LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys."

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That's funny...Run-DMC was well established long before they did "Rock This Way". I still to this day drop "It's like that - and that's the way that it is" into casual conversation...and all the young people roll their eyes. But there was a "golden age" of "hip hop" predating that one. If you like it REALLY "old school", there's a rich library out there. What made run-DMC stand out in the beginning was how hard they were. They didn't swing, they drove. I had mixed emotions about that then, and still do, really.

Again, "history" doesn't exist until "White People" notice something happening. I say that not to question the validity of the "White Experience" but just to point out how limited it so often is.

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5 hours ago, JSngry said:

 

Not once have I played this at a wedding, and that's too bad,

The Ramones!  The first album of theirs I bought was Leave Home in 1977, when I was 11 years old.  Rocket To Russia came out that fall and I snapped that up too, along with the debut LP.  God, I loved them!  Still listen to them sometimes... they were my Beach Boys, or Chuck Berry, or some such.  Fuck it, they were simply my Ramones.  (Probably going to pass on the humongous It's Alive box set that just came out, though, and stick with the original CD.  I mean, at a certain point there aren't going to be any more revelations, and with the Ramones that point arrived pretty early. :g But what a revelation!)

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Ghost, you talk about "Dazed and Confused"...that's not a happy movie. It's a deep tragedy, really. that it does not readily recognize itself as such...there ya' go, QED.

 

 

Interestingly enough, Linklater and Wiley Wiggins (who plays Mitch in D & C) were talking at one point in the early 2000s about doing a sequel that would depict several of the main characters in dead-end adulthood, as "hungry ghosts" of their former selves.  But it never came to pass, in part because Linklater didn't bother to change the names of some of the people from his Huntsville, TX days that served as inspirations for the characters in the film, and they threatened to sue if any sequel project went forward.  I don't think D & C is a particularly happy or unhappy movie--it's just Linklater's attempt to create as honest a portrait of what his adolescence was like in Texas circa 1976.  And hell, that's obviously a time and culture that you know and that I don't, though I can tell you that much of the film reminded me of the culture at my high school when I was a freshman in Indiana in 1979.  (Indiana always lags behind the rest of the country, ya know... :g  ... bu that opening scene of the GTO cruising the school parking lot in the morning is primal, direct link to my own memories.)  It's just an account of where these kids all are in their lives on one day in 1976.  There's some brutal stuff in there--the hazing of the incoming freshmen, the macho jackass that fucks with the nerdy journalist student--all straight-up reminiscent to me of my own experiences.  But mostly it's everybody at a point where the road is still wide open and undefined.  I love that ending shot (them driving to get Aerosmith tickets in the morning) precisely because it seems so in a moment of having faith IN the moment, if that makes any sense, because everything is so in-the-moment when you're that young.  And yet that endless road is gonna become a road to nowhere for those characters, pretty much.  I don't think Linklater's sugarcoating anything, but there's definitely something compellingly sweet and real about the film that's kept a number of people coming back to it over and over throughout the years.  

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What I liked about The Ramones was that they recognized and embraced the inherent smallness of the premise that any of it really matters outside of one quick, disposable moment. And of course, there's the delicious irony that they kept that moment mattering for several decades, without ever getting megapopular, no stadium tours or anything like that! But still...no pretense. And tempos, the put the motion back into that music. LOVED them for doing that. The point is to get your ass shaking real good real hard real fast for a quick minute. That's it. If you want something deeper, don't do "rock". And that's where it got fucked up - people though that that's where deeper was, and that's where they stayed. The only thing deeper there was that fucking hole they dug for themselves.

It was pretty funny in real time, though. the Ramones. I distinctly remember being in Peaches when their first LP came out, and the store put it on...and then took it off before the side was over. Customer discomfort was obvious! Then they put on some "rock" crap, some more yayhooholleringguitarheavysludgemusic. Everything returned to normal.

I bought a few of their Sire 45s shortly thereafter (and a great thing about that early Punk was that yes, 45s!!!!), and "normal" people (when I came around them), were all like, yuck, it's too fast, the song's too short, those lyrics are stupid, etc. People were embracing letting the crankcase get all sludged up instead of putting in nice new oil.

Never trust The Popular Masses. Never. Even when they get it right, don't trust them.

 

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56 minutes ago, JSngry said:

What I liked about The Ramones was that they recognized and embraced the inherent smallness of the premise that any of it really matters outside of one quick, disposable moment. And of course, there's the delicious irony that they kept that moment mattering for several decades, without ever getting megapopular, no stadium tours or anything like that! But still...no pretense. And tempos, the put the motion back into that music. LOVED them for doing that. The point is to get your ass shaking real good real hard real fast for a quick minute. That's it. If you want something deeper, don't do "rock". And that's where it got fucked up - people though that that's where deeper was, and that's where they stayed. The only thing deeper there was that fucking hole they dug for themselves.

It was pretty funny in real time, though. the Ramones. I distinctly remember being in Peaches when their first LP came out, and the store put it on...and then took it off before the side was over. Customer discomfort was obvious! Then they put on some "rock" crap, some more yayhooholleringguitarheavysludgemusic. Everything returned to normal.

I bought a few of their Sire 45s shortly thereafter (and a great thing about that early Punk was that yes, 45s!!!!), and "normal" people (when I came around them), were all like, yuck, it's too fast, the song's too short, those lyrics are stupid, etc. People were embracing letting the crankcase get all sludged up instead of putting in nice new oil.

Never trust The Popular Masses. Never. Even when they get it right, don't trust them.

 

I badgered the clerks at the Lyric Record Shop in 1977 on a number of occasions to order me a 45 of "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" (this was a couple of months before Rocket To Russia came out, which included it), but they were never able to get it in for me.  Record stores 1977, yeah, most of the clerks were in CSN & Y land still, but there was a cool guy who worked at the Listening Booth in Washington Square who liked the Ramones too and would talk with me about them.  Karma Records, which was part records, part head shop, actually carried the Ramones' LPs and some of the other punk records as well.  I'm working on a novel set a couple years later and have tried to reinhabit that era in my head--by 1979/80, it was actually a very interesting musical landscape, IMO.  But I was still listening to Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan etc as well. My friends and I were sometimes dragged that we'd missed out on The Sixties (TM).  :lol: 

Edited by ghost of miles
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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Again, "history" doesn't exist until "White People" notice something happening. I say that not to question the validity of the "White Experience" but just to point out how limited it so often is.

How the heck would I have "noticed" Run D.M.C. back then? Me & my friends, yes, mostly white friends, were big into rock. There was plenty of it around and we were into all of it. I was one of the few that branched out into other genres, mainly classical, but even I never went for hip hop because I didn't like it. I still don't.

Also, I don't know where you grew up, but if me or any other of my white friends showed up at a venue where Run D.M.C. was playing back in 1983, we would not have been welcome and most likely would've been beat up. My "white experience" would've been, "That was stupid", as I lay in a hospital bed.

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I’m about the same age as Kevin and from Quincy and then moved south shore Abington when I was 12. Class of 78, “everyone” was into rock with Aerosmith, Kiss, The Who, Sabbath, Floyd & especially Zeppelin being the biggest names. Then the Cars & Foreigner started happening and things got awful. I was only into Zeppelin & Floyd from the above and then I went more progressive with Yes, Genesis, then Gong, Crimson, Eno, Roxy, etc. 

only liked some Punk, post-punk 15 or 20 years later. Despised Ramones & Pistols, etc. ALL of us hated it. Bullshit musicians playing messy sloppy garbage. I still think that about most of them. Only Wire & The Clash eventually meant something to me.

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19 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

I’m about the same age as Kevin and from Quincy and then moved south shore Abington when I was 12. Class of 78, “everyone” was into rock with Aerosmith, Kiss, The Who, Sabbath, Floyd & especially Zeppelin being the biggest names. Then the Cars & Foreigner started happening and things got awful. I was only into Zeppelin & Floyd from the above and then I went more progressive with Yes, Genesis, then Gong, Crimson, Eno, Roxy, etc. 

only liked some Punk, post-punk 15 or 20 years later. Despised Ramones & Pistols, etc. ALL of us hated it. Bullshit musicians playing messy sloppy garbage. I still think that about most of them. Only Wire & The Clash eventually meant something to me.

Floyd... I remember when they toured for "The Wall" and they only played two US cities - Uniondale, NY & LA. I had a HS classmate who had an extra ticket to see them in New York and my mother wouldn't let me go. I still regret that. :) 

Yeah, I didn't know too many people who were into punk. In fact, it wasn't until I got to UMass circa 1983 that I met someone who was really into it so I started getting a taste. Joe was big into the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys. I just thought it was weird. About the only band he was into that stuck with me was The Clash. I see his FB pictures and see he's come a long way from the leather jacket & chaps, studded dog collar and facial piercings. :) 

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1 hour ago, bresna said:

How the heck would I have "noticed" Run D.M.C. back then?

Uh, the radio? That's how I first heard them. I knew where all the stations were, it wasn't particularly complicated.

Life might be segregated, radio programming certainly was/is, but radios themself never were. The dial moved if you were curious enough to move it.

1 hour ago, bresna said:

Also, I don't know where you grew up, but if me or any other of my white friends showed up at a venue where Run D.M.C. was playing back in 1983, we would not have been welcome and most likely would've been beat up. My "white experience" would've been, "That was stupid", as I lay in a hospital bed.

Dude, I played those places. Never went to the hospital because of it.

Then again, Boston has a reputation of quietly being one of the most racist cities in America, so perhaps your fears were instilled by a system outside of your control.

Still, the radio, dude, the radio.

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

My friends and I were sometimes dragged that we'd missed out on The Sixties (TM).  :lol: 

The biggest drag was starting the 70s expecting the 60s to continue, only to have it turn into the 70s, and then realizing that the 80s were not going to be anything but even worse. Etc.

I have no real nostalgia for the "products" of the 60s, they're old and no longer relevant. Get over it already. But the spirit of curiosity and possibility that enabled them, a lot of that was good, imo, and the f-ing Boomers killed it, stuffed and mounted it, and aren't about to let it come back in a current, relevant iteration unless it can be monetized and 401K-ed (at which point, it's not really THAT, is it?).

Like I said, suicidal.

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Uh, the radio? That's how I first heard them. I knew where all the stations were, it wasn't particularly complicated.

Life might be segregated, radio programming certainly was/is, but radios themself never were. The dial moved if you were curious enough to move it.

Nope. Not in my neck of the woods. There were no hip hop stations back then. Not a one. And yes, I used to spin the dial quite often back then. In the late 70's/early 80's it was mostly Top 40, Oldies and AOR. You still had talk radio. Sports radio. Public radio was mainly big band and classical. Not even many country stations like there are today. Oh, and there was always a few classical stations up & down the dial. But hip hop? Nope.

And again, after Run D.M.C., I listened to some of it. I may even have bought Run D.M.C.'s "Raising Hell", but I was not a fan of most of it.

Having said all this, I still do love Tone Loc's "Wild Thing" but like Run D.M.C.'s "Walk This Way", this (and the follow up, "Funky Cold Medina") got a lot of radio play on rock stations because it sampled rock tunes. :) 

 

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There was no R&B (code for "black") radio in Boston then? Or there was R&B radio in Boston but they were avoiding all Rap/Hip-Hop as late as 1986? Either one sounds weird but not impossible to me. I mean, James Brown saved the city on live TV in 1968, there HAD to be R&B radio?!?!?!?!

The biggest R&B station here (K104) resisted rap initially, but by 1986...resistance was futile. I mean, "Rapper's Delight" was 1979 who DIDN'T hear that one? By 1986, the younger African-American audience was pretty much demanding that programming include this no longer "new" music. There were not yet any dedicated "hip hop" stations, but pretty much any competitive R&B stations was including the biggest rap hits. And the 12"s all were in the better record stores, I still have some Sugar Hill (both label AND Gang) OGs from back then that I treasure almost as much as my OG BNs. So, here, anyway, there was certainly an awareness and an availability, and, obviously, a market. Surely Boston's blackfolk were at least as hip as their DFW counterparts? Boston, quietly racist as it is reputed to be, is still GOTTA be hipper than DFW, right?

True story - our local public access station had a daily noontime(!) show by a guy named Nippy Jones (aka "The Wiki-Wiki Man") that played only hip-hop, a lot of it local (and a lot of it REALLY shitty...bot not all of it, not at all), and pretty soon the ratings spoke for themselves. Next thing you know, he's doing the same show on K104 Fridays at midnight, then soon it was two nights a week, and so forth. Now, he's an institution, and K104 plays hip-hop exclusively. What used to be the other R&B station in town long ago gave up and switched to a "Classic R&B" format which pretty much only covers the years when rap/hip-hop was coming on strong and the "grown folks" didn't want to hear about it (again, The Masses). So if you want to hear some Cherrelle, that's where you go. I still check out both often enough..at this point, I got roots there, not born-in roots, but planted long enough ago that they're not going away roots. Time/Place/Musical Pull/Career Destiny roots. James Brown saved Boston in 1968, James Brown saved me in 1970. Others soon followed suit, John Coltrane AND Al Green, like that. "Rock" so not in the mix, not even a question. And to listen to K104 at the height of the mid-70sP-Funk/EW&F market-conjunction was magical, especially late at night when they played the 12"s instead of the 15s. There was not one bad record got played, not one!

But nowadays, still no radio outlet for First Wave rap, which might well be my favorite of all. That shit swung like a Jackie McLean solo. Maybe the Smithsonian thing will get me yet!

But yeah, let's hear some Cherrelle!

 

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14 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

Not in my neck of the woods either. I grew up in the middle of Illinois and the only -- literally the only -- radio station I could pick up that played rock was WLS-AM out of Chicago, which had a Top 40 format. According to Wikipedia "By the mid-1970s, WLS became conservative about introducing new songs, and many record promoters referred to the station as the "World's Last Station" to add new releases for airplay, usually only after the songs had reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100." :lol:

I used to get WLS after dark all the way down here, that clear-channel thing was intense. This was the late 1960s into 1970, before Top 40 had become so damn controlled, and you could hear a different mix of songs by scanning the dial, and we could get from Denver up to Iowa to Memphis to New Orleans, and, of course, Mexico. That was cool. And getting the temp at Midway in the winter - that was cold.

That was then, and the first post-conversion experience I had going back to WLS was, like, 1973 or so, and yeah, I nearly barfed out loud. But if you would have lived closer to Chicago, you would have had access to at least one R&B station. How - or if - they transitioned to rap/hip-hop, I have no idea.

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