Canon Fodder #13: Boogity!

The Coasters - Coast Along With The Coasters

If you don’t really know the difference between the big vocal groups of the era right before the Beatles & Motown, here’s an extremely reductive primer. The Platters (co-ed at their peak) were the most romantically overwraught, least R&B (big hits: “Only You," The Great Pretender,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”). The Drifters line-up changed a lot, gradually moving from a Clyde McPhatter doo-wop vehicle to a sterling Tin Pan Alley delivery system. But no matter who sang lead, they always came off as affecting leading men (big hits: “There Goes My Baby,” “Save The Last Dance For Me," "Up On The Roof"). The Coasters, in comparison, were a comedy team, acting out the material (either by Leiber-Stoller or mistakable for them) with hammy aplomb, however wacky the material got (big hits: “Yakety Yak,” "Poison Ivy," “Charlie Brown”).

This 1962 compilation LP, their third, gets pretty damn wacky. “Little Egypt (Ying-Yang),” their last Top 40 hit, is basically a proto-“I’m In Love With A Stripper,” climaxing with a surprise Chipmunk cameo. “Girls Girls Girls - Part 1” is basically a proto-“Jizz In My Pants,” the quartet somehow crafting a DJ Snake vocal hook sans sampler. “Run Red Run” concerns a man who’d come to regret teaching a monkey how to play poker (possibly a civil rights metaphor!), the chorus hooked around an atypically dramatic deployment of the word “boogity." Even the more typical sex (“Wait A Minute”) and class (“What About Us”) complaints are delivered with such boisterous, tag-team relish you’ll either cringe or wonder why modern acts with multiple singers don’t similarly pass the mic. File me firmly in the latter group.

Al Green - Al Green Is Love

Coming four years (and six albums) after Al Green’s 1971 breakthrough Gets Next To You, I can understand why this one fell by the critical wayside at the time. What could scream boilerplate more than an album named Al Green Is Love with a hit named “L-O-V-E”? A hit that's one of three songs on Side A with the “L” word in the title? Hell, I didn’t check it out for ages, assuming it was, at best, enjoyable product. But, detached from cultural and commercial context, it’s less generic than definitive. The key track is “I Didn’t Know,” a seven minute epic you can truly get lost it in - an erotic Astral Weeks. I’d been given the heads up by David Toop and Robert Christgau (who changed his grade from B+ to A with forty years reconsideration), and I still couldn’t believe this amorphous accomplishment a few minutes into my first listen. The band is in full flower throughout, “Love Ritual” and “I Gotta Be More (Take Me Higher)” career groove highlights. Though my mind wanders during “The Love Sermon” - as it does during most sermons - with only one ‘70s album left unheard (Have A Good Time), Al Green Is Love competes with Gets Next To You for my all-time fave, The Belle Album settling for the bronze medal.

X-Ray Spex - Germ Free Adolescents

Though I’ve long meant to replace my CD-R copy of this disaffected post-punk dance party classic, I’ll admit I was hoping to find a copy of the 1991 CD reissue that includes the “I Am A Cliche”/“Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” single. My kid doesn’t like when I’m so selective though, and - despite his relative indifference to their music - he was very keen on me grabbing the recent LP reissue. What finally made me dive in was A) seeing the terrific I Am A Cliche documentary co-directed by Poly Styrene’s daughter and B) discovering how expensive every vinyl copy of The Descendents' Milo Goes To College is, another canonical classic  spotlighted in the SPIN record guide my kid would like to be able to hold. This was the cheaper option by about 500%.

While the band’s attack isn’t that different from the Rezillos, The Undertones and numerous other British beat bands energized by the influence of The Ramones and Blondie, Styrene was inspired by Johnny Rotten in the best sense - spewing cultural critique with an unapologetic, gleeful sneer, her experience as a half-Somali woman making Rotten’s alienation look like relative pique. It’s a shame Lora Logic was replaced on sax between the “Cliche” single and the album; a more striking soloist might move this album a little higher in my personal canon. But it’s still one hell of a party platter.

Burning Spear - Social Living

At a loss to even begin to talk about reggae, I’ll just pass the mic to Robert Christgau: Embroiled in one of those gruesome family melodramas that turn old age into a fate worse than death, I cast about for music to suit my mood. Monk? Miles? Holiday? All too jaunty. But the moment I heard the Rasta groans and wails that establish Burning Spear's Social Living, I had company. If the misery Winston Rodney and brethren articulate were any less primal, it would be depressing. Instead, it's proof positive that life always goes on.

I haven’t heard the Millennium Collection disc he ranks above this full-length (I myself enjoy Marcus Garvey even more than Living), but this CD - with two “extended mixes” serving as an earned encore - is succor plenty. If you scoff at the veneration of Burning Spear’s inspiring mix of anguish and endurance, believing it easily matched by others in the genre, please give me a checklist. I'm only getting older!

Neil Young - Trans

To quote my Neil Young discography posts, which I'll eventually update into the present: Due to the horror that met Trans' new wave damage upon release - much of it from his new label Geffen - it’s almost in danger of being overrated today. After all, only half the tracks feature a robot voice - a novelty he tied to the Human League then and trying to communicate with his son later.  The rest are from an aborted yacht-rock album. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a keeper. I just wish people paid more attention to the albums around it.

I originally found a used LP in high school (if I knew how cheap it was, I’d cry), then reduced it to a couple tracks on a mixtape (lol), then put the whole thing on a CD-R (double lol). While I can name at least ten Neil Young albums you need before it, I currently need twenty-three full-lengths from the guy on my shelf. In terms of the worthwhile LPs from his ‘80s insanity, I’d probably recommend it slightly before Re*Ac*Tor and Landing On Water, maybe even Life. It really is the place where his synth adventures are most easily grasped by hipsters today, the vocoder underscoring the Kraftwerk influence rather than alienating listeners. As such, it's the half-hearted attempts at ‘80s radio crossover bracketing Trans that I’m inspired to hail for their brave, vulnerable perversity. But that doesn’t mean the robot-rock on Trans ain’t cool, or that the plunkety-plunk of Joe Lala’s congas on the blithe opener “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and the extended closer “Like An Inca” (plausibly overtly inspired by “Ride Like The Wind”) aren’t a hoot.

(Al Green Is Love is at 101 on My Top 300 Favorite Albums of All Time, with The Coasters not finding their spot until I update the thing in 2024. I'm telling you this because I've found people are more inclined to discuss and share reviews if there's a quantitative element at the top or bottom they can easily debate. Prove me right!)