Another fine offering from Greg below. Here I share with you the band who gave that Westie bootleg its name. Just so you don’t have to play the guessing game: their name is the Gravel Pit. A friend of the Gravel Pit was putting out the Stone Pony show on the Kiss the Stone label, and with the Pit having cut the song “Paul Westerberg,” he connected two of his faves.
“Brothers and sisters, c’mon now. That means everybody just cool out.”
You’ve seen the movie and you’ve heard those words. But not quite like this. This is all 79 minutes of the Rolling Stones set at the Altamont Speedway show Dec. 6, 1969. “Gimme Shelter” makes it seem like the Stones played 8 minutes and were off the stage. But here is an audience recording of the concert in all its storied, sordid glory. Yup, you hear that jamoke singing along to “Gimme Shelter,” you hear fans wrastling early on (be cool!) during “Sympathy for the Devil,” you hear Jagger introduce the live debut of “Brown Sugar” and you hear the melee (”The Melee”) that breaks out during the famed rendition of “Under My Thumb” — the crunching, the commotion, the call for an ambulance, all of it — during the stabbing of Meredith Hunter.
This bootleg is commonly (if distastefully) referred to as “Killer Festival” or “There’s No Angel Born In Hell.” It is only a fair audience recording — basically it sounds like they used the tape to build the Panama Canal one cassette scoop at a time — but it’s irrelevant considering you are placed square inside the mayhem. Just add headphones and amphetamines.
There are some bands you can’t believe took so long to find. DM3 is one of those bands for me. I don’t have Sirius but my friend Ted tells me just about every other time I see him that *HE* has it, and is always spooging over some such or other that Little Steven’s Underground Garage has been spinning. One day Ted laid a copy of DM3’s “Dig It the Most” on me. The superhooky lines dug in immediately and it was the line “I want to be a big star” that tipped the hat to what these guys were about. I was in. A new band! A new band even my power pop fiends haven’t heard of! FFFan-tastic. I looked up their (nonexistent) MySpace and tracked down their bio info on AllMusic.com. “What do you mean they broke up in 1998?!”
Headed by ex-Lime Spider and Stems lead singer Dom Mariani, the Perth, Australia group reigned from 1993 to 1998. Their “Road to Rome” is listed in the top picks of Not Lame’s “Shake Some Action: The Ultimate Power Pop Guide.” “Dig It the Most” is as good a place to start as any — a 20 track compilation of powerpop goo goodness — culled from their first 2 EPs and 3 LPs (they would bow out with 2 more EPs and a final LP).
“Dig It the Most” is one stop shopping — from the kick off track “Can’t Get What You Want” to the whipsmart 50s-kinked “Speedfreak” to lovelorn cranker “Second Floor.” Even the “Friends” theme-esque track “TV Sound” would become a favorite. Then there’s “1×2 Devastated,” “Hold On,” “Far From Here,” “Like This” and “Pleaze You.” And and and.
RIYL: Raspberries, Westerberg, Badfinger, Big Star
Mike Gent of the Figgs told a story to us recently about how his Gentlemen bandmate Ed Valauskas had met Rick Rubin and mentioned being in a band with “Mike Gent, you know, of the Figgs.” To my shock, Rubin’s response was not, “Who?” But “Oh yeah, the Figgs. They were a good band.” EdV: “Still are.”
For the uninitiated, Figgs are RIYL: The Kinks, The Replacements, Elvis Costello, The Plimsouls. Basically any sort of great power-pop. This one’s a throwback to 3/22/01 at San Fran’s Bottom of the Hill, circa the release of “Sucking in Stereo.” We have no recent shows of the Figgs, but to get a full sense of the songwriting lifespan on this upstate trio, go buy “Continue to Enjoy the Figgs,” a double disc set released in two parts by Gert Blandsten.
We’ve had a request for some Faces, and there really isn’t much out there on them, comparatively, but we do have the bootleg known as “Killer Highlights,” recorded mostly for a BBC-aired show. Some of this appears on the completist’s wet dream, “Five Guys Walk Into a Bar” box set. The batch includes Faces faves like “Had Me a Real Good Time,” “Borstal Boys” and for the first time live, “Bad n Ruin.” But more interesting are the covers — McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” balanced by Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” The Stones’ “Love in Vain,” The Temptations’ “I’m Losing You,” and Free’s “The Stealer.”
Wilson and Alroy have a great Faces refresher, which outlines their short-lived, six-year catalogue.
RECORDING DETAILS: BBC Paris 1,2,3,5,6,7+14 1972, rest 1973
Between the solo record, the DVD, Mudcrutch and the big homecoming show, we get a sinking feeling about Petty. Like he’s cleaning out the attic. Like he knows something we don’t.
The below finds the Heartbreakers in their original and finest form, with their outta-nowhere debut behind them and celebrating the release of their sophomore followup, “You’re Gonna Get It,” which dropped two months before the show below, recorded July 16, 1978 at the (still standing) Paradise Rock Club in Boston in a WBCN-sponsored gig. The clear and curious omission is Listen to Her Heart — the best or second best song on YGGI, depending on how you swing. Four covers cut in back to back for the end of the set — Shout, I Fought the Law, Route 66, I’m a King Bee.
TRACK LIST: Anything That’s Rock ‘N’ Roll / Fooled Again / I Need To Know / Don’t Bring Me Down / You’re Gonna Get It / Breakdown / American Girl / Strangered In The Night / Too Much Ain’t Enough / Shout / I Fought The Law / Route 66 / I’m A King Bee
July 16, 1978 Paradise Rock Club/Boston. FM recording.
As promised! Volume 2 of the Paris Outtakes, along with some more info on the sessions. You can sift through this uber-detailed review of the Place Pigalle rarities set, which is a slightly re-orged, four-disc compendium of Some Girls, Exile, Goats Head Soup, Black and Blue, Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You sessions. God bless other nerds with this much time on their hands.
TRACK LIST:
1 Miss you / 2 Let’s go steady / 3 Everlasting is my love / 4 Lies 2 / 5 Yellow cab / 6 When the whip comes down/ 7 Shattered 2 / 8 Fiji Jim / 9 We had it all
Au revoir, mon petites. Until tomorrow! When we offer…. the Lonely at the Top outtakes, which, we have to say, is worth checking in on, if only for the cover of Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away.”
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