Favorite Songs:"End Of The Line" by Concrete Blonde

  California alt rock group Concrete Blonde are such terrific songwriters that their take on other artists’ tunes are largely overlooked- Unlike some other groups who merely “do” covers, this group takes songs they like and lovingly transform them into true Concrete Blonde masterpieces!

  Songs like George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness”, Thin Lizzy’s “It’s Only Money” and Tommy James’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion”…Listening to any one of their covers and it is obvious that the band has given the same amount of time and crafting to these tunes that they’ve given to their own songs!

Of all these cover tunes that the band has produced, (and there have been many, many…!) the song that stands out in MY mind as one of their very best is their take of Roxy Music’s THE END OF THE LINE, featured on their incredible 1993 album MEXICAN MOON.

There are lots of reasons why this cover works so well, but a large part of is that by the time Mexican Moon came out, vocalist/bassist Johnette Napolitano and Guitarist Jim Mackey were seasoned pros; after travelling across the world a zillion times in as many tours, their experience shows through in their sound-No one croons like Napolitano with her low, growling whispers and powerful wailing, and when you add in the lush, layered guitars of Jim Mackey, you are left with pure perfection!

The End of the line was originally off Roxy Music’s 1975 SIREN album, and though I liked the song, I always thought of it as the opening to the avante-grade third track “Sentimental Fool” (since they were essentially connected) and never thought of its potential as a “single” type of song. WOW, how the Concrete Blonde version has changed my mind!

Over the years, I have made quite a few Concrete Blonde cassette mixes for people, and almost ALL of them have concluded with “End of the Line”… Just listening to Jim’s  echoing reverb as he picks out the  resounding notes on his guitar- with double-tracking and a guitar synthesizer, he’s created this beautiful guitar harmony , and then laid over this is the incomparable Johnette’s heartfelt singing- She sings with such passion, you really feel like the lyrics are hers, and when she hits those notes…MAN! Just awesome!

The End Of The Line

(Bryan Ferry)

Take a walk out in the rain

Called you time and time again

Everything is wrong-

You´ve gone

Reached the point of no return

The more I see the more I stand alone

I see the end of the line

Were you ever lonely?

Mystified and blue?

Realising only

Your number´s up

You´re through

Had my share of winning

Now´s my turn to lose

After a fair beginning

The game´s up

You’re through

Think I´ll walk out in the storm

Got no love to keep me warm inside

I see the end of the line

Now´s the time to take a dive

Try a magic carpet ride

Everything is wrong

You´ve gone

If you ever miss me

If I should cross your mind

You know where to find me

I´ll be waiting at the end of the line

Electric Company: Phyllis and the Pharaohs!

I did not grow up in the Fifties, but being a child growing up in the SEVENTIES, it just as well may have been, what with the burgeoning 1950’s retro boom in full swing!

With movies like American Graffiti, The Lords of Flatbush and Grease on the movie screens and television shows like Happy Days and Sha-Na-Na in the homes, it’s no wonder my childhood memories seem to stretch back further than my birth!

Even the 1950s musical style was enjoying a sort of renaissance, and one outfit I particularly liked as a kid was Rita Moreno and the guys (Morgan Freeman, Luis Avalos, Jim Boyd and Skip Hinnant) as a cool vocal group doing a decidedly Fifties take on their songs, the incomparable Phyllis and The Pharaohs!

Looking at it now, I’m not sure how they intended to keep a kid’s interest in the skits, as they weren’t done for laughs per se, meaning, no juvenile humor  or zany slapstick to keep the kids entertained- just sweet, catchy tunes… and guess what- that seemed to have done it- at least to THIS young musical connoisseur!

When I was a kid, my hands down favorite of the Phyllis and the Pharaohs songs was “Grease”, a tune I constantly (and irritatingly, at least to my friends and siblings within earshot) sang over and over again at various speeds and pitches, ESPECIALLY Morgan Freeman’s groovy bassman lines, but watching (and re-watching) the Electric Company  as an adult, BY FAR  my favorite song has to be “Is It Love?”…

Listening to it now, I can see why it was (back then) my least favorite of the bunch, as it was clearly the most “mainstream” and “normal” sounding of all of them, but SERIOUSLY FOLKS! Never mind that this was a little ditty simply written for a kids show to teach you grammar- this song was just BEAUTIFUL- with a playful Moreno lead vocal over AWESOME background harmonies by the guys, this is the song that REALLY takes me back to my childhood, and I’m inundated with those faux Fifties memories I told you about!

Super-Vixens: Lilith

When the Teen Titans began in 1966, it was a comic geared towards kids with a supposed “hip” slant to it, but with scripts that seemed decidedly UN-Hip (Mad Mod, anyone?) and it wasn’t until Dick Giordano came aboard and re-tooled it with the likes of Neal Adams and Marv Wolfman did it actually come across as a cool, timely strip.

 Stories were introduced that more accurately reflected the times of the late-sixties with Race Riots, Love and Peace, and College Protest Marches, and along with these tales we were introduced new characters that reflected the times as well…

Among these new characters was the gorgeous if not slightly aloof red-haired temptress named Lilith- though she was Clairvoyant Telepath, she was less like a super-heroine than that Annie Golden character in HAIR, and when she wasn’t helping out the Teen Titans with their various dilemmas, she was rocking out in the Go-Go dancing cage and/or rocking out the coolest and sexiest dresses and outfits!

 And by outfits, I mean CLOTHES outfits…A funny thing about Lilith is that she (along with fellow new character Mal Duncan) never ever did get a costume proper and spent the entire series in civilian clothing. Each episode I would wonder just when the heck she was going to get a costume, but before I realized it, I was used to and quite happy to see her in her swinging’ sixties dresses, and didn’t WANT her to wear a costume!

When Marv Wolfman and George Perez revamped the Titans in the 1984 series “The NEW Teen Titans”, I was disappointed to not see Lilith among the ranks (but satisfied myself with the knowledge that at LEAST Donna Troy would be there, and even MORE comforting was the exclusion of those characters from the mid- seventies East/West Teen Titans whom I’ve NEVER liked). And though I’ve read that they DID eventually bring Lilith back in some capacity, by that point I’d stopped collecting the New Titans, and missed out on it completely. Ah well, chances are I woulda been disappointed anyway- nothing can compare to the vibrant sixties era Lilith, a true product of her times!