Who da daddy of rap?
Who da grandaddy?
176: Chuck Berry, ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ (Bob Dylan, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’)
Rock and Roll
070: Buddy Holly, ‘That’ll Be the Day’
Buddy Holly’s great song and the night The Grateful Dead backed me singing it. Yeah, for real.
Continue reading...042: Leiber & Stoller, ‘Yakety Yak’ (The Coasters)
“Just tell your hoodlum friends outside you ain’t got time to take a ride.”
The great L&S and their incredible shaggy hound dog story.
031: The Beach Boys, ‘Little Saint Nick’
I live in the only non-Christian country in the Western world, where Yuletide is quite conspicuous in its absence. But who can resist the greatest hot-rod carol ever?
Continue reading...054: Mickey & Sylvia, ‘Love is Strange’
‘Sylvia, how you call your lover boy?’ ‘Lover boy!’
Mickey & Sylvia, Everything But the Girl, 3 bejillion viewers of ‘Dirty Dancing’, even you and I once upon a time– we have all been testifying and sleazing for 60 years on now–love is very strange indeed .
062: Martha and The Vandellas, ‘Heat Wave’
Ok, hotshot–what group of musicians played on more number one hits than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis, and the Beatles combined?
Continue reading...SoTW 28: Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, ‘The Tracks of My Tears’
Go on, take a teenage trip. Listen to this song like a 17-year old burger-flipping cretin overdosing on hormones, cruising down the boulevard, looking for the heart of Saturday night, bouncing in the driver’s seat, pounding the steering wheel in time, shouting out “Take a goo-ood look at my face!” Nobody will know, and you’ll feel better than you have in a long time.
Continue reading...002: Buddy Holly, ‘Learning the Game’
Written and sung at 22 and a half, a month before he died. At that age, Lennon was recording ‘Love Me Do’ and Dylan had just finished his first album of original material.
Continue reading...