We Three Tonys

by Dave the Spazz

Today, on this, the third day of Hanukkah, we once again pay tribute to a very special can of olive oil--one that fueled the consecrated flame in the 2nd Temple of Jerusalem back in 165 BC. Judah Maccabee and his followers, fresh from kicking some Syrian ass in the desert, returned to their temple to find it desecrated and littered with false idols. Only one can of olive oil could be found to light the ceremonial menorah, and while it was a very good brand (blessed by the High Priest of Yochanan, no less) it still was not expected to last more than one night. Judah and his followers naturally were stunned when the olive oil lasted for seven additional nights. Dreidels twirled, latkes sizzled and the "miracle of the container of oil" inspired solidarity and thriftiness amongst the tribes.

Two thousand years later, three exemplary Hebrews rose forth from the land, each one fated to enjoy success way past their own Semitic expiration dates. Each one, as a way to cloak his Jewish identity to better assimilate into society, reinvented himself as a "Tony." There have been other pop culture Jews that dwelt in the Olive Garden of life (think Chico Marx and Jay Black) but none soared as high or lasted as long as this Tony trifecta.

Born Christmas Day, 1912, singer Alvin Morris coasted along the heights of success that spanned the musical tastes of the 20th century. Not long after forming his first band in high school ("The Red Peppers"), Alvin changed his name to Tony Martin, signed with Decca Records and subsequently burned up pop charts nationwide. Tony's fondness for Mediterranean ballads soiled the collective panties of the record buying public and his triumphs in radio, motion pictures and TV proved that his faux-Italian schtick was no flash in the saucepan. Still crooning cantatas as recently as 2009, Tony's career might be considered a twist on the old Italian adage: "Meglio un giorno da Tony che cento da Alvin--Better one day as a Tony than a hundred as an Alvin."




In the summer of 1935, Arthur Rosenberg of Tulsa, Oklahoma removed himself from his place of residence at Northwestern University and traveled to New York City for a complete do-over. Arthur picked up serious chops studying with noted acting teacher Sanford Meisner, who as the creator of the highly regarded Meisner Technique emphasized an emotional realness in his work. Actors were encouraged to "live truthfully under imaginary circumstances" and the newly christened Anthony Randall took that lesson to heart. For the next five decades Mr. Randall channeled his inner fussiness into a lucrative and very funny livelihood that spanned radio, motion pictures and television. His role as Felix Unger in the TV version of The Odd Couple was a master stroke and one which entertainingly defined the second half of his career. Randall's candle burned bright to the end--the acting jobs never dried up and at age 75 he married a woman fifty years his junior who bore him two children. His last film was released one year after his death--2005's It's About Time where he played a character named "Mr. Rosenberg."



In the late 1940s Bronx born Bernard Schwartz had a lot of nothing going for him. Killing time with neighborhood kid Joey Fortgang (the future Joe Franklin) wasn't cutting it, so he slicked back his hair and flew west to destiny land. His good looks brought him some work at the studios and soon bit parts in melodramas led to better roles, eventual matinee idol status, well-deserved critical acclaim and finally a bewigged psychotronic career acting in any piece of crap that was hurled at him. From Spartacus to Lobster Man from Mars, Tony Curtis approached every job with an impassioned gusto that might be described as the Hungarian Jew version of La Dolce Vida. The self-knighted "American Prince" lived hard and fast while his bilious private life kept tabloids and gossipers in business for more than five decades. When Curtis passed away at the age of 85 in September 2010, he took a big chunk of old time Hollywood with him (along with an iphone, an Armani scarf, driving gloves, a Stetson hat and a copy of his favorite novel "Anthony Adverse.")

And so it is, on this, the third day of Hanukkah we pay tribute to three improbable journeys by three Jews named Tony. There's still no explanation as to why that can of Yochanan olive oil lasted so long. Perhaps it was a miracle, a sign from above--one that confirmed that His people were now under His protection. Or maybe there was a Tony Maccabee who passed by the temple to drop off a can of olive oil on his way to getting his chariot tuned up.

Download:

"On Moonlight Bay" mp3
by Tony Martin, date unknown.
available on Harbor Lights & Other Favorites

"You're So Vain" mp3
by Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, 1973.
from The Odd Couple Sings
out of print
can be found at WFMU's Beware of the Blog







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This is the third of eight posts at the Boogie Woogie Flu, in which eight Jewish writers will discuss the works of other Jewish artists for eight consecutive days in celebration of Hanukkah.

Jewish Soul Sister

by Ariella Stok

My identification and admiration for Laura Nyro, the hugely influential singer songwriter, began almost instantly upon learning about her. But to actually enjoy her music, and to find a place for it in my heart, I had to work for it. My first breakthrough in coming to appreciate (and now love) Laura Nyro's music came after reading her response to a question about her influences in a 1970 Down Beat interview:

When I was 15 years old, I used to drink bottles of cough medicine and … lie down with my jazz records ... put them on, drink cough medicine and dig people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane all night. They’d take me up and they’d bring me down, sweep me up ... [jazz] is very painful music, but it’s not a harsh pain at all, it’s like a little flower, or something.

Her music, challenging in its unusual arrangements, weird chords, abrupt shifts in tempo and dynamics, that make many of her individual songs feel like suites unto themselves, became easier for me to understand, when I began to hear it as jazz seen through the eyes of an odd, yet immensely gifted teenage girl without formal training, tripping on cough syrup, just digging the music’s pain. That experience, combined in the crucible of her singular imagination with other endemic influences from being a Jewish girl from the Bronx growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The cabaret sounds from her summers spent in the Catskills at her musician father’s gigs on the Borscht Belt, Broadway show tunes, Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Brill Building pop, Puerto Rican harmony groups that sang on her Bronx corner, and the R&B and soul music that she heard on the radio, all helped to create her musical vocabulary.

The other revelation that helped me to get Nyro was watching footage of her performing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, only her second live performance ever, in which it was said she was booed off the stage (an erroneous rumor likely propagated by the notoriously performance shy, perfectionist Nyro, herself.) If anything, the audience seems baffled, not sure what to make of the deeply soulful, sophisticated, unconventional music pouring out of this beautifully fragile 19-year old white girl. It’s a spiritual performance. With her dark features receding into the blackness of a dimly lit stage, she seems possessed by the song, clenching her fists, eyes rolling back into her head, with a momentary smile flitting across her face, giving way to a furrowed brow and a pained expression, as though she’s about to burst into tears. The song ends, and drained, she shrugs her shoulders and sheepishly mumbles, “Thank you.”

She's frequently described as exotic. People thought she was Puerto Rican, or maybe Persian. Fellow Jewish songstress Janis Ian, with whom she attended New York City’s High School of Performing Arts, described her classmate as an immensely talented (yet oddly ignorant of musical terminology) girl who resembled Morticia Addams. Those who only heard her voice were often surprised to learn that she wasn’t black. As soon as I saw her, I knew, she was a Jew. That moment of recognition, of perceiving her beguiling otherness (whether it was attributed to her ethnicity or some other inner turbulence), is a key event that hailed her followers, a small, but worshipful cult of fans, whom she called her “tribe.” Scene reports from her rare, but legendary shows at places like New York City’s Bottom Line describe college-age girls camping out on the sidewalk outside the venue, playing her songs on tape decks and lighting candles.

Not least among her supporters were her fellow musicians, those who would go on to have hits recording covers of her songs, and those who were her admirers. Todd Rundgren, who has said that hearing Nyro changed the way he thought about and composed music, wrote a song about her on his 1970 Runt LP, "Baby, Let's Swing." Former lover Jackson Browne, wrote "That Girl Could Sing" about her. Other Nyro disciples included Blood Sweat & Tears (from whom she turned down an offer to take over as lead singer after Al Kooper left the group), Joni Mitchell, and Stevie Wonder. Miles Davis, who in his autobiography manages to talk shit about almost everyone he ever met in his career, has only glowing things to say about Nyro. When she asked him to sit in on some of her songs for New York Tendaberry, he attended the recording sessions, but after hearing the music, told her that she didn't need him - it was already perfect as it was. Future Dreamworks mogul, David Geffen was so moved by her (almost to the point of obsession, calling her the “second coming of Christ”) that he signed on to become her agent and devoted himself to her career, a partnership which yielded his first major success in the music business.

Like many of her fellow Jewish songwriters, she was much more likely to sing about Jesus, and draw from Christian themes, than her own background: “And When I Die” and “Stoney End,” hits respectively for Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Barbra Streisand, recorded when she was just 18 for her 1966 debut More Than A New Discovery, her gospel-inspired third LP, Ely and the 13th Confession, and her fourth album, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat (which features an all-star cast including Duane Allman and Alice Coltrane, the wife of another childhood hero.)

However, more than anything she was defined by being a New York City girl. In the title track from New York Tendaberry, a tribute to her home town and named in reference to her Bronx accent, she says of New York, “You look like a city, but you feel like religion.”

Nyro’s powerful voice and feeling astoundingly stands up against the commanding singing of Labelle, with whom she recorded her fifth album, Gonna Take A Miracle, a departure from her previous work in that it features only soul and r&b covers. By the force of its inventiveness, it transcends categorization as mere blue-eyed soul, and is revelatory in demonstrating how the songs she loved, like Major Lance’s “Monkey Time,” became refracted through her peculiar prism into a classic Nyro original like “Stoned Soul Picnic,” which she recorded for Eli and the 13th Confession, later to become a hit for The Fifth Dimension. The opening track of Gonna Take a Miracle, “I Met Him On a Sunday,” features Nyro trading acapella verses with the dynamos of Labelle (Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash) over a backing of their finger snaps, functions as a feminist manifesto, paying tribute and redirecting weight upon the heavy influence that r&b girl and melody groups had on the history of music.

Laura Nyro, in addition to being a profoundly influential songwriter, redefined the sound of the modern pop song and became an unlikely diva. Think of her as a hip Barbra Streisand. There wasn’t a proscribed slot in the pop pantheon for Nyro, the poor little meeskite from the Bronx with the idiosyncratic compositions and black voice, but she made one anyway. Much like Hanukkah itself, sometimes miracles happen.


Download:

"Stoned Soul Picnic" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1968.
available on Eli & The 13th Confession

"Wedding Bell Blues" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1966.
available on More Than A New Discovery

"When I Was Freeport and You Were the Main Drag" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1970.
available on Christmas & Beads of Sweat

"Stoney End" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1966.
available on More Than A New Discovery

"Timer" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1968.
available on Eli & The 13th Confession

"Save The Country" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1969.
available on New York Tendaberry

"New York Tendaberry" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1969.
available on New York Tendaberry

"I Met Him on a Sunday" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1971.
available on Gonna Take a Miracle

"Nowhere to Run" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1971.
available on Gonna Take a Miracle

"And When I Die" mp3
by Laura Nyro, 1966.
available on More Than A New Discovery

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This is the second of eight posts at the Boogie Woogie Flu, in which eight Jewish writers will discuss the works of other Jewish artists for eight consecutive days in celebration of Hanukkah.

Randy Newman

by Ben Greenman

Randy Newman is best known for his satirical character studies. You’ve heard them, of course: “Rednecks,” “My Life is Good,” “Political Science.” They’re portraits of deluded narrators who cling desperately to an outmoded or unpleasant or immoral idea: racism or narcissism or jingoism. Those songs succeed by illustrating how people rationalize their own monstrosity. These are the Randy Newman songs that get the most ink, because they demand the highest level of critical intervention.

And people just love to intervene in those songs. Many years ago, in college, I took a class on vernacular American humor, and I wrote a paper on “Rednecks,” and specifically about how the song shifts in the middle from the redneck perspective (“Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show / With some smart-ass New York Jew”) to a broader social critique that implicates that redneck perspective (Newman lists all the urban ghettos in which African-Americans are “free to be put in a cage”). The teacher was a grad student who had long hair and glasses and cited Lyotard in casual conversation. I don’t remember a tremendous amount about the class, but I do know that it seemed at times labored, if well-intentioned, and that it cured me of thinking too much about Newman’s comic mechanism. As much as I enjoy his most Mephistophelean rhetorical moves (it’s difficult to overestimate the pleasure of a surgical strike like “I Just Want You To Hurt Like I Do,” in which Newman lays bare one of the most basic of human needs), I leave it to others to compare him with Twain and Stephen Foster and Melville’s Confidence Man. I leave it to others to speculate on what it meant for Newman, in 1970, to sing the explicitly racist “Underneath the Harlem Moon” (which posits a sentimental brand of racism, but racism nonetheless) or, for that matter, to release “Yellow Man” during the Vietnam War. I leave it to others to investigate how these songs do or don’t dovetail with Newman’s own (rare) exploration of his own ethnic identity, which is treated most explicitly on the Land of Dreams album. What I’ll do, instead, is list a few reasons I’m thankful for Newman and his talent. I’m thankful that he loves a wide variety of American music, blues and jazz and ragtime and gospel and country. I’m thankful for the way he fuses melodic sophistication and lyrical intelligence, and for the fact that many of his songs are standards in their time thanks to the interpretations of brilliant singers like Dusty Springfield, Harry Nilsson, and Tim O’Brien. I’m thankful that he can be, within the span of a few songs, viciously sarcastic and unapologetically sentimental. And finally, I’m thankful that despite his erudition and eclecticism, he remains a disciple of one of the two or three most beautiful things in rock and roll, the Fats Domino triplet. I picked three songs that span the range of his talent: the epically insecure "Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong," in which he admits that he's not getting the most out of sex (the best line, "sometimes I throw off a good one," also works as a description of songwriting); the driving "Gone Dead Train" (representative in that it's from a soundtrack, unrepresentative in that it'll blow the doors off your car or home); and the lovely "Rollin'" (probably his most beautiful song, though it’s hard to vote against “Louisiana 1927” or “Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield” or even “Sail Away,” which is like the Hope Diamond of cynicism).

I have interviewed him a few times, and his songwriting style translates perfectly to conversation: bookish, laconic, careful with big thoughts and quick with one-liners. He’s been self-deprecating and also slyly dismissive of Bono, and it’s hard to argue with either of those stances. One of the things he said the first time I spoke with him has stuck with me over the years: he said that no one really gets better as they get older, but that if your work stays at the same level, more or less, that’s a victory. I think he’s right, and right about himself: even though his last album, Harps and Angels, was at times too clangorous for me and at other times too theatrical, there are still instantly canonical songs like “Only a Girl,” a little confection about a May-December romance that ends with a thud as the narrator realizes that his girlfriend might love him for his money. What Newman is in that song, and what he’s always been to me, is a
light. Sometimes it’s a winking light. Sometimes it’s a cold light. Sometimes it’s a sad light at the dying of the day. But everything he makes has candlepower. Not that there's anything wrong with your Loudon Wainwrights and your Lyle Lovetts and your Christine Lavins and your John Prines and your Stephin Merritts and your Eminems. But humor in music—not simply comedy, but humor, the kind that cuts deep and saves the blood that comes out of the wound—has only one shamash.

Download:

"Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong" mp3
by Randy Newman, 1972.
available on Sail Away

"Gone Dead Train" mp3
by Randy Newman, 1970.
available on Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman

"Rollin'" mp3
by Randy Newman, 1974.
available on Good Old Boys


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This is the first of eight posts at the Boogie Woogie Flu, in which eight Jewish writers will discuss the works of other Jewish artists for eight consecutive days in celebration of Hanukkah.

Fop

by James Marshall

Kristian Hoffman has had a long and quite fabulous, almost Zelig-like career, beginning in the early 70’s, where as a high school student in Santa Barbara, California, he hooked up with a young Lance Loud, often appearing as Loud’s best pal on the first ever reality TV show - An American Family. I remember the first episode I saw, he was playing keyboards, and rocking out on "Brown Sugar" in a garage band that featured Lance as the lead singer. Kristian moved to NYC with Lance in the early 70’s to form the Mumps, for whom he played keyboards and wrote most of the songs. The Mumps were a Kinks/Move/Sparks inspired group that also included future Iggy Pop guitarist Rob DuPrey and (briefly) Patti Smith Group drummer J.D. Dougherty. Although these days the Mumps seem practically written out of NYC rock’n’roll history, the Mumps were the fourth group to ever appear at CBGB (after Television, Patti Smith, and the Ramones). They had a good size following, and played on bills with just about every group of the era. They would eventually cut two singles - "Crocodile Tears" b/w "I Like To Clean" (Bomp, 1977) and "Rock & Roll This, Rock & Roll That" b/w "Muscle Boys" and "That Fatal Charm" (Perfect, 1978) - but were never signed to a real label and the bulk of their 70’s recordings wouldn’t be released until 1997 when the Eggbert label released That Fatal Charm. A 25 song CD (also featuring an eleven song live DVD) was issued in 2005 by Sympathy For The Record Industry under the title How I Saved The World.

Hoffman also put in a brief appearance playing slide guitar in the Contortions, dueting with Anya Phillips on an amazing version of "(Tropical) Heat Wave" that appeared on their second album which was issued under the name of James White and the Blacks. Around the same time Kristian recorded a mind boggling version of Janis Ian’s "Society’s Child" for Charles Ball’s Lust/Unlust label which went unreleased (where is that tape today?). He also wrote songs for and produced discs by pastry chef turned new wave kook Klaus Nomi, and played in Lydia Lunch’s blues band the Devil Dogs. With the demise of the Mumps, Hoffman stepped into the role of lead singer in his next band-- the Swinging Madisons (which also featured guitarist Robert Mache, later of the Continental Drifters), an ahead of their time group that mixed swinging Louis Prima type arrangements with hard guitar rock. The Madisons released one five song EP in 1981 before packing it in. Hoffman also worked on several projects with actress/performance artist Ann Magnuson, starting with the folk revival spoof the Bleecker Street Incident (which also included Robert Mache), and a pre-Spinal Tap heavy metal parody Vulcan Death Grip.

Relocating to Los Angeles in the early 80’s, Kristian Hoffman formed Congo Norvell with ex-Cramps/Gun Club/Bad Seeds guitarist Kid Congo Powers and actress/singer Sally Norvell, appearing on all four of their albums, and also recorded two solo LP’s-- the Donovan inspired I Don’t Love My Guru Anymore (1993) and more guitar rock oriented Earthquake Weather (1996). Never one to sit around for long, Hoffman also put in time playing keyboards in Dave Davies band (who were great both times I saw them, much better than Ray Davies goofy “The Storyteller” shows), backed up El Vez and more recently worked as Rufus Wainwright’s musical director and keyboard player. I’m sure I’m leaving out a half dozen other bands and “projects” he’s been involved with over the years, but that’s the short version, although I guess I can also mention that Hoffman is also a talented graphic artist who designed the famed New York Dolls logo (their name written in lipstick under a bend over nubile, goth girl) that appeared on the inner sleeve of their debut LP and millions of t-shirts ever since, as well as illustrating books by Lydia Lunch and Iris Berry.

Which brings us to today's subject.

Kristian Hoffman’s latest album-- the lavishly produced and packaged Fop (Kayo) is a full fledged, over the top, pop masterpiece. For fans of 60’s pop and early 70’s UK pomp, Kristian Hoffman’s Fop (Kayo) is an embarrassment of riches. With soaring guitars, swelling strings and choruses, layered keyboards, and perfectly crafted tunes, Fop mines the territory somewhere between Scott Walker, early Bowie, Pet Sounds era Beach Boys, the Kinks from Face to Face through Arthur, T. Rex, Sparks, the pre-disco Bee Gees, the Elton John of Madman Across The Water, and, while you’re at it, throw in some Procol Harum and Van Dyke Parks.

Opening with (sorry readers if I indulge in a spew of rock crit 101 cliches, try not lose your lunch, this is a hard record to describe simply because there’s so much to describe) what can only be called an opus (any pop song over seven minutes that isn’t a jam qualifies as an opus in my book), full of Pet Sounds like orchestral swells, elaborate harmonies, and musical mood swings, it carries that melancholy feeling of Brian Wilson with the covers pulled over his head. "I Can’t Go There" begins with a similar Heroes & Villains type keyboard part, although it quickly turns into a rocker of no little majesty (I’m no Queen fan, but I do hear a lot of Brian May parodies in guitarist William Bongiovanni’s playing on Fop). Fop, which with no less than seventeen tunes and running nearly seventy five minutes is a record that really throws the kitchen sink at the listener.

"Imaginary Friend" begins with a melody that you can see Fred Astaire tap dancing across the screen to, until the change up, where it turns into a completely different movie, one where Joan Crawford looks at herself in the mirror and shatters it with her whiskey glass.

"Mediocre Dream," a tune that began life in the Swinging Madison days, has a full on British guitar hero riff that follows the string intro, could fit into Alice Cooper’s Killer or Love It To Death. There’s a few novelty style rockers, including "Hey Little Jesus," which turns the riff to "Money" into a heavy rock workout (most of Fop’s guitar work comes courtesy of David Bongiovanni, from El Vez’s band, his brother William is on bass). The video features Prince Poppycock the glam rock contestant from America’s Got Talent TV show. Little Brother sits proudly on the same shelf as the Kinks's "Harry Rag".

"Mockingbird', on which Hoffman plays all the guitars, tremolo on full, is another rocker, this one asks the musical question “what becomes a bird brain/when his song is just a lie?" Kristian Hoffman certainly has a way with words. The finale "Strange Seed", where he announces “It’s a strange seed I’m sowing/It’s still growing”, is a good summation of Fop, both musically and lyrically, each heavy rock guitar and thundering drum build up cuts off to silence, then turns back in on itself as a witty, pop ditty.

I think my favorite song is "Blackpool Lights," where consecutive chorus's add a little more with each go around - more voices, more cymbal crashes, more piano and organ flourishes, more everything, until it leaves you breathless. Many of the people I’ve played Fop for have used the word baroque in describing it, but if I remember anything from my college art history classes, I think that’s a bit off the mark. I think the correct term might be rococo. If Ludwig III of Bavaria got to make a rock record, Fop would be it. Could Kristian Hoffman have invented Art Nouveau Rock? I think he just may have.

Download:

"Hey Little Jesus" mp3
by Kristian Hoffman, 2010.
available on Fop

"Strange Seed" mp3
by Kristian Hoffman, 2010.
available on Fop

**************

"Rock & Roll This, Rock & Roll That" mp3
by The Mumps, 1978.
available on How I Saved the World

"(Tropical) Heat Wave" mp3
by James Chance and the Contortions, 1979.
available on Off White

**************

"Ready or Not"


An American Family:

Keep it to Myself

Buddy Guy, who is known mostly as a flashy guitar player of exceptional capabilities--the missing link between Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix, as well as a huge influence on all kinds of rock guitarists--is also a great singer, something that is rarely noted. When he was still a boy, his father took him to see Guitar Slim in Baton Rouge, and it was there that he got his first taste of hot-dog theatrics when he saw Slim make his entrance to the stage through the crowd while playing on the shoulders of his personal 'valet.' This left a lasting impression on the budding musician, who today, still parades through the audience during his stage show. He's also one of my favorite blues singers. This record, which is unusual in that there is no guitar solo, and barely an audible guitar at all, is a soul-blues number driven by Paul Upchurch's funky bass line and punctuating horns worthy of Bobby 'Blue' Bland. Written by producer/arranger Gene Barge, it's a song about a gossiping big mouth woman. This is one of my favorite records and opens with the memorable line, "Baby, you know you ain't nothing but a Frigidaire!"

Dig it, and keep it to yourself...

Download:

"I'm Gonna Keep It To Myself" mp3

by Buddy Guy, 1966.

available on Buddy's Blues

Psychotic Reactions & the Oogum Boogum Man

by Ariella Stok

I want to say a few words to all you young girls out there.
Yeah, you’re too much!
First you try casting your spell on a guy with a little Oogum Boogum Boogum. And if that don’t do. You try a little Ooga-ga-oosay Ooga-ga-oosay Ooga-gapoo.
And if that don’t do it, you give him a Psychotic Reaction.
It goes something like this…

In 1967, the mantle of top breadwinner at LA-based independent record label, Double Shot, was changing hands from The Count Five—the Dracula cape-wearing teenage quintet from San Jose who made it to #5 on the national charts in 1966 with their garage rock rave-up, "Psychotic Reaction"—over to Compton-by-way-of-Louisiana R&B singer and songwriter, Brenton Wood (born Alfred Smith) who was charting with his top-10 hit "Gimme Little Sign," and "The Oogum Boogum Song." Wood had diligently studied the popular hits of the day and approached the craft of songwriting as a code to be cracked, teaching himself what made people want to buy records. His answer, in the form of "The Oogum Boogum Song," was to write a song about "current events." Unlike other topical songwriters of his day, for him, this didn’t mean writing about politics or the war in Vietnam, but rather the news he could see on the street: "There were bell bottom pants coming into view, hot pants, mini skirts, stylish stuff that young people were getting into," he told me in a recent interview. "I just packaged it all and gave it back to them." He made this magic-themed song catchy by replacing words like 'abracadabra' and 'hocus pocus' with his own made-up, African-inspired slang, "oogum boogum" and "ooga-ga-oosay," prefiguring the Michael Jackson-quoted "Soul Makossa" chant by 5 years. That same year of ‘67, the two Double Shot hitmakers would come together, if not in person (Wood says he never met The Count Five), then on wax, when Brenton Wood recorded a remake of "Psychotic Reaction," released as a single and on his LP, The Oogum Boogum Man.

Brenton Wood starts his version of “Psychotic Reaction” by reminding his audience ("all you young girls out there") that he was the one who gave them "The Oogum Boogum Song." But if that self-penned hit just wasn’t enough, he offers this cover of someone else’s hit—a decision that had been imposed on Wood, who had no affinity for the song, by label boss, Steve Winn. Double Shot owned the rights to "Psychotic Reaction," and presumably wanted to milk the known hit at a time when its original artist, The Count Five, was already beginning to fall from view, while padding out a planned long-player compilation of Woods’s singles. "It was just a song they gave me to sing," Wood told me. "I don’t need to sing everybody’s song. Nobody wrote a song for me. I wrote my own songs. When you start giving me songs and asking me to sing them, what do you want me to do with this? I don’t know; I just do what I’m told."

To save costs for the session, the label had Wood add his new vocal and an organ part played by The Candidates’ Maurice Rodgers (who also played Farfisa on "Gimme Little Sign") on top of The Count Five’s original backing track. The distance between the original song’s grungy, fuzzed-out rock sound and Wood’s effortlessly smooth and soulful style was made literal when The Count Five’s backing track was mixed so low under Wood’s overdubs as to sound in the finished product like it was being pumped in from another, far-away room. "I would have preferred to cut it over again," Wood says, "but if you’re gonna do a cheap session, you use what you have in the can."

Despite it not being his choice to record "Psychotic Reaction," Wood did his best to make the song his own. "I didn’t want to just copy the same thing that was already out. So what I did was add a little bit to it to make it my story. I had to consume the story that The Count Five was singing and reproduce it as being me." In addition to personalizing the song’s introduction, Wood also added an impassioned vocal performance over the original’s instrumental centerpiece in which he attempted to fully realize the song’s theme by having a psychotic reaction of his own—a rapid-fire recitation of the opening lyric, which degenerates into a frenzied stream of falsetto pleas: "Gimme gimme gimme gimme!" Of the final result, Wood says, "I love the way it came out. I just did a psychotic reaction on it!"




Download:

"Psychotic Reaction" mp3
by Brenton Wood, 1967.
available on Baby You Got It: 1960's Anthology




"The Oogum Boogum Song" mp3
by Brenton Wood, 1967.
available on Baby You Got It: 1960's Anthology




"Psychotic Reaction" mp3
by Count Five, 1966.
available on Psychotic Reaction

"Interview" (edit)
by Brenton Wood, 2010.

"The Oogum Boogum Song" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 2000.
available on Set

We All Shine On

John Lennon would've been seventy today, but you probably already know that. It's a major media event around the world. He's been dead for nearly thirty years, and that's longer than he was active as a musician and a songwriter. He was only forty when he died from gunshot wounds inflicted on him by a crazed fan, but you probably already know that too. For me and people my age, too young to remember Kennedy's assassination and the ensuing craziness of that very decade that Lennon is most associated with, it's a moment we'll never forget. At least I won't, and I can only speak for myself. He's best known as a member of The Beatles, but in his solo career, as spotty and short as it was (it includes a five year break from recording), he wrote more great songs than most songwriters could hope for in a lifetime. He was prolific and the good far outweighs the bad. Below, are some of his songs performed by other artists, and a few by him. All but one are from his solo career. The exception being "The Ballad of John and Yoko," and although it is a Beatles song, it does mark the beginning of Lennon's departure from the Beatles.

Happy Birthday John Lennon.

Download:

"The Ballad of John and Yoko" mp3
by Teenage Fanclub, 1990.
available on Deep Fried Fanclub

"Nobody Told Me" mp3
by The Flaming Lips, 1995.
available on Working Class Hero: A Tribute to John Lennon

"Jealous Guy" mp3
by Donny Hathaway, 1972.
available on Live

"Mother" mp3
by Shelby Lynne, 2001.
available on Love, Shelby

"Happy Xmas (War is Over)" mp3
by Lorette Velvette, 2000.
available on Rude Angel

"I Found Out" mp3
by Nathaniel Mayer, 2004.
available on I Just Want to Be Held

"Imagine" mp3
by Neil Young, 2001.
available on America: A Tribute To Heroes

"Working Class Hero" mp3
by Marianne Faithfull, 1979.
available on Broken English

"Gimme Some Truth" mp3
by Generation X, 1978.
ripped from vinyl
alternate version available on Generation X

"Instant Karma!" mp3
by Chris Stamey, 1984.
from Instant Excitement
ripped from vinyl
out of print

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"Isolation" mp3
by John Lennon, 1970.
available on Plastic Ono Band

"God" mp3
by John Lennon, 1970.
available on Plastic Ono Band