Leaving like a gypsy queen in a fairy tale: RIP 2017

Date
January 1, 2018

Miracler
Toby Barlow

Location
Detroit

Big Smoochies 
of love and thanks from Your Hostess to Toby for the research, artist/track deciding (what do you MEAN, no Fats Domino?!), track purchasing, sequencing, writing, and all the other shenanigans that go into creating a sweeping 30-song opus for us each year. Can you believe it? To revisit, click on any of these past years: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

If you too love these RIP mixes, please say so in the comment section below—Thanks!

Liner Notes from TB

This one’s dedicated to all the fathers who left this year, including my own. Thanks Dad. You did not have a great record collection but I’ll never forget the time you told me you liked Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

Okay, let’s start out in an alternative universe, a better place. Joseph Fire Crow was a renown Cheyenne flutist. Close your eyes, try and imagine a better world. Or a spa. Also, while you're at it, remember Standing Rock.

Rip Maggie Roche. Speaking of better worlds, when I was a kid the Roches broke out and it was sort of an alternative wide-open landscape, where folk and new wave could blend as purely as their harmonies blend here with Fripp’s guitar.

Meanwhile, this particular world has made me ornery. So, Greg Allman and Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers have both departed. But I chose “Little Martha” because, well, it sounds better in the mix, even though neither Greg or Butch play on it. Honestly, maybe it’s some latent aggression I have towards Greg. When I was a little kid, he was a barbarian invader who swung in on some gnarled swamp vine and kidnapped Cher. I could not figure it out. Seriously. How did this Blonde King Kong come up from the bogs and get his goddamn mitts on her? I was crushed. But earlier this year I passed through Macon, Georgia, and stopped by one of the band’s favorite dives, H&H, and the fried chicken was pretty good.

(Before we really get going too deep, it’s worth mentioning some departed who weren’t musicians. Denis Johnson, Jonathan Demme, Harry Dean Stanton. And Sam Shepard. Christ, that guy. I was tempted to put on  a tune he co-wrote with Dylan, “Brownsville Girl” or the great Joni Mitchell song “Coyote”, which is supposedly about him. But maybe just read our National Hipster Eulogist Patti Smith’s remembrance of him in the New Yorker. And let’s keep going.)

Back to the show! Half Cherokee, half Irish, Keely Smith grew up dirt poor on the wrong side of Norfolk, Virginia. But then she met the Sicilian-American Louis Prima and for a time there, right at the end of the 1950’s, the two of them absolutely ruled Las Vegas. America can be a wonderful place!

Yeah! Next! The first latina to be honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as the first Latina to appear on American Bandstand, way back in 1961, was Rosie Hamlin of Rosie and the Originals. Pretty damn cool. What a melting pot! What a country!

And Della Reese, wow, this lady was a powerhouse. I like to imagine her over on Vernor Street in what was then the very poor neighborhood of Black Bottom Detroit (literally a five-minute walk from where I’m sitting now.) I bet she was an adorably pudgy little toddler who, after taking her first steps, did not stop until she had conquered whole goddamn world.

Valerie Carter was one of those voices you grew up hearing floating in the background, she is the pretty lady with the golden voice who hung out at LA’s Troubadour, lived up in Laurel Canyon, wrote songs, sang backup for Jackson Browne and James Taylor. And when she had a tune of her own, singing a song like this, she floated out of the radio, a light aural spirit, surrounding you, comforting you, but only for that soft, glowing, ethereal moment, and then she was gone.

“And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time.” Of course. Jesus. Come on.  Glen Campbell.

Wait - nobody told me there was a Cuba Gooding Senior!!! I mean, I should have figured it out. Ken Griffey. Cal Ripken. Adlai Stevenson. Good rule of thumb, if there’s a Junior there’s generally probably gonna be a Senior. This particular Sr. stepped into the lead singer’s role in The Main Ingredient just in time to hit this one out of the ballpark.

Robert Knight’s “Everlasting Love” was the last song cut during the studio session, “kind of like a throwaway tune” they remembered.  Now there’s a mix tape in itself, the songs that were cut at the bitter end, when everyone was burned out and tired, the cigarettes all gone, when folks are mean and cross and just want to go home, these are songs no one thought were gonna be anything, but fuck it, we’re gonna try it, why not, give it a shot, everyone quiet now, let’s go… 

Philly in the house! Sister Sledge’s second oldest sister Joni Sledge passed away this year. Just like their monster hit “We Are Family,” this tune was written by the demi-gods Nile Rogers & Bernard Edwards.

Meanwhile, Melvyn "Deacon" Jones was an organist and founding member of Baby Huey & the Babysitters. Perhaps you have not tuned into Baby Huey, and if that is the case you better fucking turn it up (“eatin’ spam and oreos…”)  When the 300+ lb. lead singer Huey died in October 1970 – no doubt thanks to the spam and oreos – news headlines put him up there in a triptych with Janis and Jimi (but only because they were so very recently dead too.)

I somehow missed the fact that guitarist J. Geils died. Founder of the eponymous Boston band, they considered Detroit their second home and recorded most of their live stuff here. To me, they’re the original “I like the early stuff” band and “Full House” from way back in 1972 is an absolutely fantastic live rock & roll gem of an album.

For some reason, I’ve been singing this ditty to myself for years. “Texas on a Saturday Night” is a duet Mel Tillis did with Willie Nelson. It’s a lively and fun little song. And I even don't even like Texas all that much.

I debated leaving Chuck Berry off of this entirely. He was a legend, an amazing singer, writer, musician, a driven man who defied time and space and racial barriers, building himself a fortune and a kingdom. He was also a disgusting scat muncher who put video cameras in the bathrooms of the trailer park he owned. I’m not saying that takes everything away from what he accomplished, but, well, I dunno. And then, on the other side of the ledger, “The Promised Land” is a perfect song. So, in a compromise, I’m using the Band’s cover of that tune. Cause it’s perfect too.

More ornery. Okay, I didn’t really love Soundgarden. Maybe I should have given them more of a chance, it was just so overwhelming at the time, all that Seattle. Nirvana, cool, and, okay, Pearl Jam, fine, but then MTV starts pushing the hell out of Soundgarden and I was just like “Uh-uh, too much.” But Chris Cornell deserves some respect. He had a nice set of pipes and he did a great job writing. I’m going to use Johnny Cash’s cover of Chris Cornell’s “Rusty Cage” because, well, it’s better. “When the forest burns along the road, like God’s eyes in my headlights.”

Pat DiNizio was the lead singer, the songwriter, the man in The Smithereens. Kurt Cobain really loved them. Then Cobain launched his own little monster of a band and the Seattle grunge scene completely took over the airwaves (see above.) Consequently, according the DiNizio, “the bottom fell out of our career.” Funny how the world works.

Speaking of Seattle, you probably know the Pearl Jam version of this tune, but Wayne Cochran’s original is better. It’s simpler and sincerer. He sounds like a nice big idiot who actually believes what he’s singing, in a way Eddie Vedder never does.

The first two albums I ever bought were Tom Petty’s “Damn the Torpedoes” and the soundtrack to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” So that’s me. While “American Girl” is probably his most perfect song, for me this is the most evocative one, I remember putting it on the turntable back there in suburban Maryland, on a hot summer afternoon, waiting for a girl to come by.

Tommy Keene was actually from that same Maryland suburb and went to Walter Johnson High School (oh, Jonathan Richman wrote a great song about Walter Johnson.) Somehow, I missed Tommy Keene entirely. I really don’t know how since, for a period, this was a kind of sound that always surrounded me.

Mary Tyler Moore passed away in January. She was an amazing, inspiring model of humor, integrity, and independent feminist strength. That Hüsker Dü covered MTM’s theme song only makes sense when you realize the band was from Minneapolis. RIP Hüsker drummer Grant Hart.

If you live in Detroit, you listen to a lot of Canadian Radio. This year I listened to that entire country mourn the passing of The Tragically Hip's Gordon Downie in way that our country never mourns anything.

Can’s founding bass player Holder Czukay had a really great line “The bass player’s like a king in chess. He doesn’t move much, but when he does he changes everything.”Bowie loved Can. Eno loved Can. Can’s drummer Jaki Liebezeit even played on Eno’s “Before and After Science.” Holder and Jaki both left this year. (Fun fact! The band Spoon named themselves after a Can song.)

France’s Johnny Hallyday had a hit every year between the years 1066 and 2424. What an incredible run!

Another ornery moment: If you’ve been waiting for a Fats Domino tune, sorry, there ain’t one coming. I know he was a nice, hard working man, but “Happy Days” and K-Tel records utterly ruined him for me. I do know he had a lot of respect and I do wish him the best. 

Charles Bradley, “Ain’t It A Sin.” I think this showed up on an earlier 3MPM mix. Maybe one of mine. I fucking love this song. 

According to Berry Gordy, legendary songwriter Sylvia Rose Moy was responsible for the label keeping Little Stevie Wonder after his voice began to change. Motown was going to drop him, but Moy asked if she could try to come up with a hit for the kid. Hearing Wonder improvising on the piano, Moy wrote "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" and conveyed the lyrics to him by singing into his headphones one line ahead as he recorded.

Confession time. I was always a bit afraid someone would say “Hey, good news! We’ve got tickets to Al Jarreau tonight!” I might have gone along or I might have lied to get out of it, but either way I had a feeling I would regret it. I do like this song, from a very early album. I wish he had more stuff like this. I do know he was great, just not for me.

You know who probably loved Al Jarreau? Walter Becker. Now, picking out a Steely Dan tune is tough. First of all, bars and hotel lounges have played them to death and, secondly, I’m something of a Superfan. I wound up picking “My Old School” not so much because of the parallels to my own misadventures in various northeastern boarding schools, but more because I think it is the one that most rewards the close listener. There’s devilish fun here. And listening to the very end of it, I like to imagine the look on guitarist Skunk Baxter’s face as Walter Becker, mischievously grinning, pulls the mix knob down, fading out Baxter’s absolutely stunning bit of guitar virtuosity just as it’s really getting going. Leaving you hungry for more.

Maybe you never heard of Rosie Sorrels. One measure of her greatness as a folk singer is that fact that both Hunter S. Thompson and Studs Turkel wrote liner notes for her albums. Well, there’s an empty cot in the bunkhouse tonight.

Okay, I’m ending it here. Not to be overly pessimistic, but just to have some fun. Let's all have some fun. And so long, Malcolm Young. You absolutely killed it.

Adios amigos! And on to a brighter new year. Resist. And Remember Standing Rock.

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