The TtU Lyrics Quiz!!!!

As Miz UV has amply demonstrated, you all like these lyrics quizzes! Hers are always very popular, but for me, frustrating. This is not only because I never see them until they're mostly answered, but also because she and I have different tastes in music, and all my encyclopedic knowledge does me not one damn bit of good. So for this one, it doesn't matter what music you normally listen to, because for all of these questions, I've already given you the answers.

You see, all of these lyrics came from songs I've posted on Trolling the Underground. All of you can access those (I did not use any songs posted on the Wordpress blog, although I think there was just one. All of these songs came from here or my main blog.) And no matter your tastes, I'm sure you've been downloading them all and giving them a close listen.

Right?

Here they are:

1 - They bend the facts to fit with their new stories of why we have to send our men to war.

2- "Send back my dream test baby, she's my main feature."

3- Baby, let me check your valves, fix your overdrive. (Trampled Underfoot, Led Zeppelin, Fez)

4- Distant bells, new mown grass smells so sweet. (Fat Old Sun, Pink Floyd, Jodie K.)

5- We asked you what you'd seen. You said you didn't care.

6-She always liked to sing along. She's always handy with a song. (Dixie Chicken, Little Feat, Annie)

7- I'm one of nature's children. (....., Beatles, Fez)

8- When the fish scent fill the air, there'll be snuff juice everywhere. (Wang Dang Doodle, I posted the Ratdog version, Annie)

9- I will now receive my comfort, conjured by the magic power of wine.

10- And if Warhol's a genius, what am I? A speck of lint on the penis of an alien.

11- You're trippin' on a shoe lace - racin' to each new place...

12- But they've turned the nature that I worshiped in from a temple to a robbers den.

13-Give me your lips for just a moment and my imagination will make that moment live. ( A Kiss to Build a Dream On, my post was Louis Armstrong, Jodie K)

14- I talk on the telephone for hours with a pound and a half of cream upon my face! (I Enjoy Being a Girl, Tiny Tim, Miz UV)

15- If silence was golden, you couldn't raise a dime.

16- Eyes are moving but there's no life showing.

17- We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy like the hippies out in San Francisco do. (Okie from Muskogee, I posted a Grateful Dead/Beach Boys version, Annie)

18 - They put a jug beside him and a barrel for his stone.

19- There lies a land I once lived in and she's waiting there for me. (Question, Moody Blues, Miz UV)

20- The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street. (Synchronicity II, The Police, Fez)

Go!

Trolling the Underground : Christmas Under the Bridge

As you can guess, Christmas music is pretty much a find-it-where-you-can proposition where the underground is concerned. While there are a few artists that do special Christmas performances, few of those are likely to be recorded by stealthy means, and those that are broadcast are usually not by artists that people who record by stealthy means would listen to. I've never seen a Perry Como bootleg, for instance, and if I've seen any Anne Murray shows, I didn't take notice.

However, I do know of a few classic Christmas tunes, and searches on my fave boot sites for "Christmas" and "Santa" yielded results from the sublime to the ridiculous. As a result, the very first Trolling the Underground Christmas Collection is going to be a bumpy sleigh ride. There are some very happy songs, and at least one that is really rather sad. There are some funny songs here as well, including one that is funny mostly because it is just so, so bad (and I think you'll be surprised as to which one that is). A few are definitely good for putting that WTF?? look on the faces of friends, neighbors, and unwanted in-laws when mixed into your Christmas tunes! Serious or goofy, happy or poignant, hard or soft, there is something for everyone in this mix.

Two things before we get started. One, I wish I knew more about editing sound files - that way I could have clipped off some extraneous between-song chatter. Some of it may amuse you, though. If you know how to clip it and want to, go ahead. The rest of you can do what I do...... deal with it. Second, if you plan to put these on a disc, as they most certainly deserve, remember that they all come from different sources, and normalize the disc so that they all come out at the same level. Otherwise you're likely to be adjusting the volume a lot.

I put them in what I consider a nice order with a good balance of moods, although some of you may not want to use ALL of them (give them all a listen, though, they're worth it.) Use any or all in your collections as you wish.

Happy, optimistic cheeriness is always a good way to start a Christmas disc, so I'll begin with one of three Beatle-related cuts. This is, in fact, from the very last McCartney & Wings concert, recorded by Paul for a future release that never happened (with the exception of one released cut, Coming Up). Despite what I'm sure was a bittersweet occasion, the song still kicks us off with all requisite McCheesiness. From Glascow on December 17, 1979, this is Wonderful Christmastime.

Next comes a quiet, sweet acoustic tune, one of the first I thought of when I conceived this project, as it is one of the oldest Christmas tunes done by a rocker that I know. This is Greg Lake at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, England on November 6th, 2005. The song is called I Believe in Father Christmas.

Taking a turn toward the serious, I have the first of two duets from Bruce Cockburn's annual Christmas shows, which always seem to have plenty of guest stars. This was from a radio show on December 12, 1993, and features Bruce with Jackson Browne. Not a huge fan of either, I was attracted by the title of the song - Rebel Jesus. Obviously, this is not a deck-the-halls kind of tune, but rather a far more thoughtful song that Browne takes a few pains to keep from being misconstrued. What do you think of it?




Fourth, we go to the WTF? file for a twist on an old favorite. How could I see, and not include, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by Twisted Sister??? 'Twould be a sin. And it seems that, in this version, Ol' Santa was getting more than just a little kiss! Mommy sounds like she'd be worth a trip down the chimney any old night. This comes from Trädgårn', Gothenburg, Sweden, on November 13, 2007.

I was looking to include in this collection a cut from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra show that our very own Nat saw recently with her son. In particular, I wanted to find the song that her son liked the most. Well, as the song says, two out of three ain't bad. While I was not able to find a recording of the show that they saw, I did find several others, including this one from Hershey, Pa. on November 4, 2007, just a few days before the target show. The song is the one I sought, Wizards in Winter, a bombastic instrumental piece that might actually be a little cheesier than the McCartney song, but has a few cool solo passages and definitely swings the pendulum back from the bizarre.

Getting quiet again, we move to a secluded piano somewhere played by an obviously worn-out John Lennon in November 1970. He had finished a grueling writing and recording project for the Plastic Ono Band album, and was kicking back with Yoko and trying to hash out ideas for what would eventually become the Imagine album. The recordings from this show the very rawest, earliest kernels of the ideas he would soon begin working with. There are two versions of a song called Happy Christmas, with neither being fully developed but one more so than the other. This is that version. While I'm sure it will never be a holiday fave, it is a nice snapshot of John Lennon the Songwriter fiddling and farting about with part of an idea.

Once again, how could I resist downloading a Christmas song by Kiss? Even if it was the no-makeup-only-two-original-members Kiss that played at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Ft. Wayne, In. on December 26, 1987. Unlike the Twisted Sister tune, however, I think you'll find this version of White Christmas to be different than you're expecting, considering the source.

I had to go hunting for this next one as well, since I knew it but didn't already have it in my collection. I didn't think I'd be able to get it, either, since the torrent was old and so poorly seeded, but a few extra seeders came out of nowhere to help me get all three discs worth in no time (unlike the Kiss and Twisted Sister tunes, I wanted to get ALL of this)! While it isn't a traditional Christmas song, it has been around long enough to be a traditional rock and roll Christmas song, and it is a short little rocker indeed. From the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park (somewhere in England, presumably, as this is a BBC recording) on December 24, 1977, here's the Kinks with Father Christmas.



Plunging headlong back into the absurd, next is the Beatles, fresh from what must have been one hell of a night of partying, attempting to record their annual Christmas Message for the Beatles Fan Club on November 11, 1965. From what I've read, they would record four or more ten-minute sessions in order for the editors to get one floppy single's worth of Beatle banter to use for the fan club. You can tell that the boys are full of good intentions, with the glaring exception of John, but are stretching for ideas. Some of this was actually used, but I don't know what. I'm betting that it wasn't the bit about babies being sliced, frozen, and packaged. I don't know if they were on drugs when they recorded this, but I certainly hope to God that they were. You'll get some chuckles from it, and its inclusion in any party listening will CERTAINLY derail a conversation or two.



The next song comes next because of the beautiful segue that it starts with. Even though that segue was actually referring to a different song, it works just fine coming from that Beatles clip. It also serves as a fine counterpoint tune in any collection of religion-based Christmas songs. From the Greek Theater in Los Angeles on June (yes, June!) 1, 2001, here is Spinal Tap describing Christmas with the Devil.

The penultimate song goes back to being serious, and to making one think not about sugar plums, but about the serious and sad things that offset the shinier aspects of the season. Then again, what would you expect from Lou Reed, sleigh bells? Not hardly. This is Lou's duet with Bruce Cockburn from Christmas with Cockburn on December 20, 1992. It's called Christmas in February.

Rounding out these dozen selections is a traditional tune, but not a traditional Christmas tune. Nonetheless, it is a song that fits right in, and lifts the spirit (which will need a little lifting after Lou gets done with it). It's from the only gospel band I have in my collection, and the only one I've seen live. I speak of the legendary vocal group the Blind Boys of Alabama. When I saw them open for Peter Gabriel several years back, I was dumbfounded when, amidst their wonderfully harmonized gospel songs, the music for House of the Rising Sun began to play. What a strange selection for this group, I thought. I was even more dumbfounded when instead of House, they began to sing Amazing Grace! Never before had I seen the obvious - that the two sets of lyrics had exactly the same meter, and were musically interchangeable! Astounding, it was. I've been looking for a recording of that arrangement ever since, and still haven't found it. This arrangement, however, from the Waterfront Blues Festival in Portland, Or. on July 5, 2007, will show you what I mean. Rather than the organ riff of the version I saw them perform, this is a bluesy guitar-backed rendition that ends this collection on a high note both musically and spiritually.

I hope that a lot of you will download and enjoy this collection, and I hope you'll let me know what you think of the songs and the order I put them in. And please, let us know what your mother-in-law thinks of the Twisted Sister tune!

Merry Christmas to all of you.

Trolling the Studio: The Who, vol.1 - Lifehouse

In the last exciting installment of TtS I talked about demo recordings, which are the "test recording" that artists will make of new songs in order to sell them to the record company and show them to other members of the band. These are much more available than unreleased albums, simply by virtue of numbers. In fact, I don't know why I don't see more of them than I do. For every record released, there are a set of demo recordings. You don't get too big to do demos - at least that's what my copy of Pink Floyd's Final Cut demos tells me.

Demos range from raw solo cuts tweaked out on a piano or guitar to fully polished works that might be almost identical to the finished product. The latter are the ones you won't be hearing here. What would be the point?

The Who's songs, unlike many other bands', were never collaborative in the beginning. Pete Townshend laid down the ideas and music for most of their work, especially the operas. Since he was writing the songs, and since he was able to play the guitar and sing well while doing a competent job on bass and drums, he would do the demos, and very fine demos he would do. In fact, no one else has commercially released as many demos as Pete has, to my knowledge. They are, in many cases, legitimate alternative versions of the songs, not just unfinished skeletons. It also seems that few have made as many, also, because while he's released a lot of them, the underground coughs up even more, allowing me to take this album by album.




Who's Next has always been one of my favorite rock albums. I consider it a necessity to a rock collection. Even if you don't think you know the Who, if you've listened to rock radio and you're not too old, you know half of this album. I have long known that it grew from the wreckage of an unrealized project called Lifehouse, but I never knew the story until I looked it up recently while listening to these demos.

Lifehouse was to be the follow up to the very successful Tommy. It was a science fiction story that sounds very much like a popular movie from the 1990s. Pete Townshend had the idea in 1970, however. He got started and did a lot of recording, but the complexity of the project grew, involving film and audience participation over an open-ended period of time. The audience participation part involved the programming of data about a person - physical attributes, personality traits, etc. - into a computer program which would then create a piece of music based on and reflecting that info. The project ultimately failed because it snowballed out of Townshend's control, largely because he couldn't get anyone else to fully grasp his idea. The full story is told pretty well here, and here's a less detailed version that also includes a song list and some interpretations of those songs. It's very interesting reading. Pete was really thinking ahead of his time and outside the box.

At any rate, while the project collapsed, it became more condensed and turned into a conventional rock album, Who's Next, with a couple bits also popping up on the Who Are You album and elsewhere. There are still projects afoot that deal with this concept, and I'll write about that soon.




For now, I'm going to show you a few aspects to this music you've most likely never imagined. First up is the demo version of Baba O'Reilly (If you don't recognize that title, you might think the song is called Teenage Wasteland.) This differs from the FM classic in a few ways. First, it is more than twice as long, clocking in at a little over 13 minutes. It's instrumental. In fact, the length and structure of the piece suggests to me that this was meant to be the overture of the Lifehouse project. While parts of it are identical to what you know, others are completely new (one sounding somewhat like an electronic polka), and others are familiar but different because they are played by Pete instead of the band. Yet despite the vast differences, it begins and ends just like the one you know. I'll be interested to know what you think of it - it's right here.





The second offering is the other FM mainstay from the Who's Next album, Won't Get Fooled Again. This song is arranged just like the finished version. It still sounds completely different. This cut truly points out what a difference the musicians themselves make, and how the Who weren't just taking orders from Pete. It's very cool to listen to, though. Where the finished cut is raw and hard, this version, while still energetic, has a sound much closer to country rock. In fact, I easily closed my eyes and imagined Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young playing while Pete sang. Not only does Pete's drumming remind me of Dallas Taylor, but the overall approach has that unique blend of pissed-off and laid-back that CSNY can reach on a good live Southern Man. It's right here - you can tell me if you hear that same thing, or if you think I'm nuts.

The third and last cut is the demo of one of their more obscure tunes, and one of my favorites, called Relay. Relay is a powerhouse electronic tune about government control and the inevitable underground it breeds. I think I heard it on Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy originally, but I'm sure it's on a CD as a bonus song by now. The one time I heard it on the radio I was stunned.

Once again, this shows the difference between Pete and The Who. It isn't a lesser song by any means - this could be released. It's just wildly different in a wild way. Rather than reminding me of the Who or CSNY, this version of Relay invokes Dr. John more than anyone else. I mean Pete is really laying down the funk right here, at least as much as a skinny white guy from England is going to. It's an amazing new perspective on this song. Once again- listen here and tell me if you hear something different.


I have demos for several more Who albums, but I'll take my time. There's plenty in the studio for me to troll, believe me. We'll not get bored.

This is now my favorite Who photo. I've never seen one that sums them up better. John Entwistle was a rock.

Trolling the Studio: Talking Heads 1975

I mentioned in my previous Trolling the Studio that the unreleased album is one of the rarer finds. I have only four or five of those. Once an album is invested in, it's usually released eventually.

Much more common is the demo recording. This is an initial recording that a band will do to pitch the music to the record company. The quality will vary; sometimes, it's a rough recording with just the bare bones of a song, other times it can be almost identical to the finished product. They can illuminate a song or album in a few ways, though.

First, it can show you how much the basic musical idea was developed in the studio or onstage, when the entire band was working on it. Many times, the song is written by one member, and the demo is a solo piece not only for the record companies, but also for the rest of the band. Pete Townshend's demos for Who albums are a great example of that. Many were released on the Scoop collections, others will appear here soon. Other times, the band is involved from the beginning, but the song itself evolved, as you'll be hearing in this post.

Secondly, they can show you the tragic, horrible mistakes that were avoided by the above mentioned evolutionary process. It can be as subtle as changing a hook or as major as omitting a song altogether (demos frequently include songs that don't make the cut). You wouldn't believe the original lyrics to Comfortably Numb. You'd thank sweet baby Jesus that Roger Waters re-wrote them.

In this case, they provide a very early glimpse at what would become a great band.





Talking Heads formed in Providence, RI in 1974 and moved to New York the next year, for obvious reasons. The original trio consisted of David Byrne, Chris Franz, and Tina Weymouth. This is the lineup that recorded the demos I present here. Jerry Harrison was added to the fold in 1976 and the first album was cut in 1977.

In the liner notes for Sand in the Vaseline, Tina Weymouth recounts how one record company guy had taken an interest in them, occasionally seeing them perform. He suggested that they could polish their sound if they recorded themselves and listened to the tapes objectively. They got two hours in a studio and ran through two versions each of 15 songs. These were songs that appeared on their first two albums, and a few that got dropped from the repertoire. They didn't have anything to play the tapes on, though, so the exercise was fairly fruitless. A couple of the cuts made it onto the Sand collection, and I have a set of 15. I'm not sure if the ones on Sand are ones I have, though.... even if they're different, I doubt they'd be very much so.

While demos often show a completely different or undeveloped idea of a song, these show that Talking Heads usually have an idea of where they want a song to go from the outset, but may have to do a few tweaks on the way there. I'll start with the first song recorded, Psycho Killer. While most of you may know the electronic version with the whole band and the live acoustic version that Byrne did solo, you'll now hear how the song started... as a combination of those two ideas.

Next I have one of the songs that disappeared. It's a great companion piece to Psycho Killer, since it also comes from the point of view of someone who's about to go over the edge. That similarity is probably why they dropped it, but I think it's a cool song. It's called I Wish You Wouldn't Say That.

Rounding it out is the first version of their first single Love Goes to a Building on Fire, but they hadn't quite settled on that title yet. This version is called Love is Like a Building on Fire.

Talking Heads is one of those bands that I'm very sorry to say I missed in concert. It was their concert film Stop Making Sense that really got me into the band, but that unfortunately chronicled the last tour they would do. Like so many great bands, success and ego tore them apart.

How wonderful that they can still be rediscovered via the Underground.

Trolling the Studio - The Lost Double Trouble Album

I've given myself a monumental task recently. I'm finally figuring out what's in my collection, and making a list, as I should have done long ago. Well, to be fair, I started long ago, but the project was dropped.

Then came a period when my old burner went through a slow decline. I was hesitant to replace it because I knew that the entire computer needed replacing, and was saving up for that. First, it stopped burning audio discs, but it would still burn data DVDs. Thus I was able to continue downloading things, listening to them on the computer, and storing them for later burning. And oh, I did that a lot.

So now that I'm needing a snow shovel to move the discs out of my way as I negotiate the hallway, it seems like a good time to figure out what's what. And boy, is there a lot of what. Enough to keep me writing these things for the rest of my life. I've found a lot of things I had forgotten downloading, and haven't listened to yet. So I'm sure you can understand how much fun I'm having discovering exactly what I've been sitting on.

While I've been doing this and the collection as a whole has been taking shape before me, I realized that my Trolling the Underground posts have yet to address an entire subsection of my collection. Thinking I should rectify it with a post, I soon realized that I had enough material in this subset to do a few posts. After a while, I saw a new series starting.

You see, a recording doesn't have to be live to be underground. It only has to be commercially unavailable. That opens a couple doors.

First, you have demo recordings. These are simple tapes that artists cobble together to play for the record companies prior to recording an album. It's their "sales pitch" to the label for that material, and everyone does them. These can vary from being almost identical to the finished product to being wildly different, which is when they are the most interesting. Sometimes they are even released, as in the case of Pete Townshend's "Scoop" collection, but not normally. They get out, though, either as the result of some insider action or else some mishap. I recently acquired a small selection of the demos from Peter Gabriel's first solo album that were found on a reel of tape in a box at the bottom of a stack of boxes in the bathroom of an unused warehouse. Imagine what other gems are sitting forgotten in ancient cardboard on rotting tape next to a leaky pipe. It's almost enough to make me run screaming into the night. We'll hear a lot of interesting demos as this new series develops.

Another form of underground studio recording is the "alternate take", which is frequently used as a special bonus on CD re-releases. These will come from the same sources, and be much more in depth than the bonus tracks.

There is a third category, though, that is much rarer. I have, so far, only three examples out of 1150 entries (and still counting). This is the unreleased album.

These are usually big news when the band is already established, and the legal battles can go on forever before we found out that the album was better left unreleased anyway (take that, Boston).This one, however, came about four years before Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble ended up releasing their first studio album, with a different lineup than the one that first recorded.

For this lineup Stevie had Jack Newhouse on bass, Chris Layton on drums, and Lou Ann Barton singing. Since the album was relatively short (remember, the album was recorded with vinyl in mind, the bootleg was made as a CD) it was matched with a 1979 concert tape of the same lineup, with a lot of the same songs. After that, Lou Ann Barton left to go solo, and Stevie began singing for the band. After one or two more personnel changes, they were heard at the Montreaux Jazz & Blues fest by James Taylor and David Bowie. After recording with both and declining to tour with Bowie (although you can hear them rehearse together here) Stevie finally got Texas Flood recorded and released, and the rest was history.

The bootleg's liner notes contain two stories regarding the boot's origin. To quote:

"The one and only surviving test pressing was recently discovered in a cupboard in South Austin, Texas where it had lain for the last 19 years, all other recordings of the project have been destroyed after alleged contractual disputes arose. These recording, notable for their raw energy and rare slide guitar work are essential for all true collectors. Also featuring four early arrangements of songs that later appeared on the Texas Flood album. Due to the brevity of the Nashville '78 session the producers have added a live soundboard recording featuring Lou Ann Barton and three tracks featuring Johnni Reno on saxophone."

Notes: The above paragraph is the supposed story behind this recording as told on the cd inlay. The real story is that the band didn't like the way the album turned out and paid a large sum of money to keep it from being released. As you would expect, someone got their hands on a copy and bootlegged it.

Well, the important thing is that I can haz it, right?

I'll share two songs for two different reasons. One is called Rude Mood, one of four songs that this album has in common with the Texas Flood album. It's for the fans of Stevie's instrumental style, and shows how it grew in the years between this recording and the one that was eventually released. The second is called I Wonder Why and has Lou Ann's vocals as well as that rare slide guitar mentioned above. What do you think, upon listening? Were they ready, or was keeping this under wraps a good move at the time? These are definitely two of the best tracks.

At any rate, I doubt any SRV fan would want to pass it up now. After all, there's only so much to be had, eh?