Category: [Music]

Reborn in the USA

This comes interestingly timed after that bullshit the other day where Aaron Lewis was whining about being later than everyone else to realise “Born in the USA” actually wasn’t the ra-ra anthem he thought it was… this is the so-called “Electric Nebraska” version; having done the home recordings that turned into the Nebraska album, Bruce then tried to work up full band versions of those songs but wasn’t happy with the results and scrapped them (until now, with an expanded Nebraska featuring those E Street Band recordings coming out soon). However, the sessions had produced a number of other songs that would be reworked for Born in the USA, including the title track… whether or not the 1982 version above is better as such than the 1984 one is obviously a matter of taste, though I think it might actually be. And, either way, it’s different enough in its approach that even Aaron Lewis might realise the bitterness underpinning it.

It’s been a while (since everyone else learned this)

Staind’s Aaron Lewis: Bruce Springsteen “Duped Us All with One of the Most Anti-American Songs Ever”

Staind frontman and outspoken conservative Aaron Lewis recently made an appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show, during which he was asked about his thoughts on Bruce Springsteen, whose political beliefs are in strong opposition to those of the post-grunge rocker.
Not surprisingly, Lewis proceeded to go on a tirade, accusing The Boss of being unpatriotic and fooling everyone with one of the most “anti-American songs ever.”
“I think that he is a disgusting display of not appreciating what was handed to him, in this country as being an American, the success that he has had,” Lewis told Carlson (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “The fact that he duped us all with one of the most anti-American songs ever and called it ‘Born in the USA’ as some sort of celebration of how great it is to be born in the USA. I’m angry at myself for not seeing it for so long and actually giving him, in my mind, the credit of being a representation of blue-collar America.”
Springsteen wrote “Born in the USA” from the perspective of a Vietnam War veteran who was disillusioned with the way the country treated him upon his return home, but the song has often been misinterpreted as a patriotic anthem.

Aaron Lewis has apparently only just discovered the concept of irony. Meanwhile, I suspect most music fans who care about this sort of thing have been aware for decades that “Born in the USA” was celebrating piss all and was far more about standing up for the blue-collar Americans drafted into that shitty war who then got ignored when they returned home having lost it. I suspect, mind you, that brother Aaron should be less angry that he was too stupid to realise what a certain song was well known to actually be about and more that Springsteen looks better at 76 than he does at 53…

Come back to the Moon

So I heard this in full for the first time today:

“Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” by Jonathan King, a song I’d heard of but never properly heard until now; it was a fairly substantial hit in its day (1965) but somehow it completely bypassed me until this afternoon. I can only assume that at least part of why that should be is down to King’s later, er, career as a convicted sex offender, you know, a bit like why you don’t hear much from Gary Glitter any more… But there is another song I have known for a lot of years that suddenly shone in a new light after hearing this one:

The Humblebums featuring Billy Connolly in 1969 (before Gerry Rafferty joined), with “Why Don’t They Come Back to Dunoon”. I actually only have this on cassette so haven’t been able to listen to it in I don’t know how many years, but “Dunoon” has always been my favourite song on it… and, listening to the King song today, I suddenly realised “Dunoon” had an earlier model. Not an exact match, but near enough…

…Indeed, had I ever done any discographical research into the Big Yin, I might actually have discovered this fact years ago, cos there it is right there on the label of the First Collection album. This is, obviously, a somewhat meaningless discovery but I’m kind of amused to have finally made it; as for which of the two I ultimately prefer, well, there’s an undeniably appealing wistful quality to the original, but, you know, the pedophile thing. So I think Billy & Tam win by default.

Goddamn it, Chud

I’ve been rewatching some of Pat Finnerty’s stuff lately, so the YT algorithm has been suggesting more, including this one which I somehow had missed before. Not only did it introduce me to “San Quentin” (not a Johnny Cash cover, fortunately), it also introduced me to the even more egregious “Figured You Out“, which just… Christ. So yeah, I just got one but TWO new reasons to despise Nickelback. I don’t usually expect much from a Sunday night, but that’s a lot more than I usually get.

Da ya think I’m fashy?

Via Billy Bragg’s Bluesky:

Whoops. Someone let their inner Morrissey out, didn’t they, Roderick?Indeed, according to someone else responding to the above, this isn’t a new thing…

International Times issue 94, December 17 1970. If Eric Clapton ever sees that, he’ll probably wish he’d said his own piece about Enoch Powell in the underground press where apparently nobody paid much attention to it rather than on stage… though people do seem to have picked up on it since then, from what I can see online, but this is the first I’ve discovered it, it doesn’t seem to be as well known as Clapton’s incident. The whole interview, such as it is, can be found at the IT archive; a slightly curious time capsule in which violence comes up a lot and Rod reckons his own career won’t last much longer, and the Enoch Powell bit is the only part highlighted thus. I assume someone at IT really wanted that to be noticeable… I suppose Rod still gets points for his support of Gaza and Ukraine, but if he thinks Cuntface Farrago would be anything even approximating an improvement to the admittedly kind of awful Starmer Labour, he’s fooling himself, obviously.

Oh not another one

And just a few hours later it’s goodbye Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb… no word on what took him out, but he was apparently diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver last year so I’m guessing alcohol caught up with him at last. A damn shame, whatever the case. I was shocked to discover he wasn’t even 60 yet; apparently he was just 15 when Nitzer started, so only 18 when the first single came out.

I never saw Nitzer Ebb live, but I gather they saw me; back in 2006 they were one of the main acts at the Under the Blue Moon festival, performing upstairs at Newtown RSL while I was downstairs with the Inflatable Voodoo Dolls… we were part of the DJ lineup, and also we played a short live set (friends of ours were also playing support upstairs that night), and apparently Douglas and Bon came down to witness our semi-musical shenanigans and enjoyed whatever the hell it was we were doing. So there you go. Lift up your hearts:

And, with rather more hair, here he’s guesting with Alan Wilder’s side-project (as it still was at that time) Recoil on a cover of Alex Harvey’s “Faith Healer”:

We believed you, Mr Wilson

News just breaking that Brian Wilson has left the building. Apparently he was diagnosed with dementia last year, as if the poor bastard didn’t have a life full of problems… one of the biggest of which, of course, was Eugene Landy, who I’m glad Brian outlived and achieved things without (wish he could’ve outlived the scumbag Mike Love too, but we can’t have everything, I suppose). Brian lived a more difficult life than most people in the world of pop music, and he’s at rest at last, and I suppose we can be grateful for that for him.

Thanks but no

This was, apparently, a 1983 flyer for Pantera when they were still glam:

Yeah, there comes a time when “the 80s were like that” ceases to be an excuse. I understand why they’d rather write their 80s period out of their history than be forced to relive Rex Brown’s hair from that time. They used to get played a fair bit on Triple J in the 90s after Phil Anselmo replaced Terry Glaze, but I never particularly liked them then or now and was even less enticed by their earlier glam metal incarnation… but seeing the above flyer for some reason enticed me to finally give Metal Magic a listen for the first time…

None of Pantera’s early albums had good art, but the first one was uniquely cursed…

…and it was… okay? I mean, I hesitate to call it good, but it was mostly tolerable, not as actively terrible as I’d expected it to be, one or two actually tracks actually kind of cut the mustard… just not especially distinctive in any way, which I suppose isn’t too surprising given all of them were still in their teens at that point, Vinnie Paul was only 16 when this was recorded and was a major asset even then… So yeah, that was OK. Mind you, when I do want the best in headbangin’ kick-arse rock’n’roll, I still don’t think I’ll be turning to Pantera as my first choice…