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Fricke’s Picks: Everyone Sings Newman

After releasing Randy Newman’s 1968 debut album, Randy Newman, to great acclaim and near-zero sales, the singer-songwriter’s label, Reprise, ran a pair of comically desperate ads in this magazine — first all but apologizing for Newman’s froggy, unsteady singing (”Once you get used to it, his voice is really something”), then offering to send readers a copy for the low, low price of nothing (”Can’t sell ‘em, so we’re giving ‘em away”). Ironically, Newman was already selling a lot of records as one of the most covered songwriters of the Sixties. On Vine Street: The Early Songs of Randy Newman (Ace) collects 26 singles and LP tracks by technically better singers and (at the time) more famous faces, including Dusty Springfield, Gene Pitney, Fats Domino, Scott Walker and even Fifties crooner Frankie Laine. Newman doesn’t sing a note here and contributes only a few arrangements. But his gently sour romanticism, the angular melancholy in his melodies and the Louisiana-boogie roll of his piano figures bloom in these voices and productions: the mod vaudeville of “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear” by ex-Animal Alan Price; the Beau Brummels‘ authentic Southern longing in “Old Kentucky Home”; the torrid hurt in “Love Is Blind,” recorded by Erma Franklin (Aretha’s younger sister) in 1963, when Newman was just 20. The kitsch overfloweth in the Tokens‘ 1965 single of “Just One Smile” (there are better versions by Pitney and Blood, Sweat and Tears), and Eric Burdon should have cut “Mama Told Me Not to Come” with a real band of Animals, not the floppy, falsely billed session cats on this ‘67 take. On Vine includes “So Long Dad,” from Harry Nilsson’s fine full-length salute, Nilsson Sings Newman, released in 1970 — the same year Newman made his classic second LP, 12 Songs, finally proving no

Published: 2008-05-21 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Fricke's Picks

Fricke’s Picks: The Dictators, The Pretty Things and The Wildbirds

Weekend Warriors In August 1973, the Ramones were a year away from their first gigs, sitting around in Queens, looking for something to do, when Bronx-bred bombers the Dictators went into a Columbia Records studio to make the five-song demo that opens Every Day Is Saturday (Norton). It’s a rock-city set of work tapes and outtakes, mostly from the band’s first decade, that doubles as iron-fist proof that the Dictators were punk even before CBGB. The founding triad of singer-bassist Andy Shernoff and guitarists Ross the Boss and Scott “Top Ten” Kempner was deeply glam, too — and truly heavy — in its hooks, slash and crush. With Shernoff’s smart, acerbic songwriting, the Dictators were also arguably America’s funniest and most fearless (if not famous) explorers of the American teenage wasteland. “Sleepin’ With the TV On,” “Faster and Louder,” “Baby Let’s Twist” and “I Stand Tall,” all here in rough, exuberant blueprints of later LP versions, are the equal and more of Killer-era Alice Cooper — atomic pop about fast food, warm beer and salvation noise, sealed with the subway-soul bravado of microphone bruiser Handsome Dick Manitoba. Ironically, the Dictators, who have made only four studio albums since those ‘73 demos, outlived the Ramones, still popping up on singles and stages. “The joke’s on you!” Manitoba crows in “Laughing Out Loud,” cut in 1999. Save your bread for Saturday, and know why he’s right. Also note the radio ad here for the Dictators’ 1977 stand at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles: You could get in for a buck, and some lucky folks got a free copy of the band’s Bloodbrothers album. Those were the days. The Long View For longevity and sheer bloody-mindedness, even the Dictators can’t compete with the Pretty Things, founded in London in 1963 by singer Phil May and guitarist Dick Taylor, an early Rolli

Published: 2008-01-16 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Fricke's Picks, Rock Daily