Entertainment For Lively Minds
Great band/Wrong record
Posted by Blue Sky on 23 August 2011 - 4:15am.
Whilst reading the blog entry about bootlegs where Jethro Tull were mentioned I was reminded that I own one record by the Tull.
"Aqualung" I hear you ask? Or maybe "Thick As A Brick"? Has to be "Living In The Past" surely?.
Nope.
I bought and still own a single released in 1987 by the name of "Steel Monkey".
Not only that but I bought it on 12".
I recall buying "Mixed Emotions" by the Rolling Stones around the same time (also on 12").
"Come Dancing" by The Kinks? I liked that but never got round to buying it. Must have been waiting for the 12" dance mix to come out.
I am uncool.
Any other uncool folks out there?
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Cool schmool
Steel Monkey is great. Admittedly it sounds like the greatest ZZ Top song ZZ Top never wrote, but what's wrong with that?
The 12" also has the fabulous dodgy estate agent song "Down at the End of Your Road", which contains lines about pushing dogshit through letter boxes.
Uncool is not liking things you like because *someone else* might sneer at it.
Seperated at birth?
Disco backing, big drums, Bluesy geeter, cowboy hats and facial hair all present and correct. But which came first?
Crest Of A Knave
The LP from which Steel Monkey is taken went on to win the 1989 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental, beating Metallica's heavily favoured ...And Justice for All. The award was highly controversial as many did not consider the album or even the band to be hard rock or heavy metal. Under advisement from their manager, no one from the band turned up to the award ceremony, as they were told that they had no chance of winning. In 2007, the win was named one of the 10 biggest upsets in Grammy history by Entertainment Weekly. - Wikipedia.
To be fair
the Grammy probably would have gone to Metallica if only they'd remembered to put some bass on the record.
And let's not forget that...
...'Steel Monkey' (the greatest record ZZ Top never made) was on the same LP as 'Budapest' and 'Said She Was A Dancer' (the greatest records Dire Straits never made). The Grammy awards committee also, somewhat controversially, decided that year that the album - 'Crest Of A Knave' - was the best one Metallica never made.
"no one from the band turned up to the award ceremony"
...not quite true: Doane Perry, their drummer (who lives in LA, hence proximate to the ceremony) turned up as token representative and was no doubt hugely surprised and unprepared in having to accept anything.
Crest of a ... what?
Knave: an unprincipled, untrustworthy, or dishonest person. Pretty well announces what it is, certainly in terms of an attempt to lift other peoples Production and guitar sound wholesale.
Just heard this again on Spottify. As correctly pointed out, there is a huge ZZ Top influence (the guitar sound and approach completely lifted, although I seem to remember Barre attempting to deny it?). Andersons vocal inflections sound influenced by Mark Knopfler, almost to the point of plagiarism on a few tracks. So why did they do this then? It was 1987 and its fairly obvious what was going on.
But to say, as some have done, that the result of all this is actually BETTER than ZZ Top or even Dire Straits best work is not a great judgment.
Marky...
...it's just a bit of fun.
To say something is 'the best ZZ Top thing they never wrote' or whatever else is clearly an excercise in affectionate absurdism, just designed to bring peiople's attention to something in a 'hey, if you haven't heard this, you might be tickled to hear it - it sounds just like ____ [whoever]'.
Ah Ok then
... was just the word "best" that confused me. And I often get confused.
As has been mentioned before around here...
...Pete Best released an album, in the mid 60s, called 'Best Of The Beatles'. You have to admire him. I guess a fair number of his album's purchasers might have been confused too.
Not half as much as me
... after that contribution. Is George Best going to find his way into the conversation too at this point?
George's name has found its way...
...onto an airport and into a stage musical in Belfast. It can only be a matter of time before he has a pub named after him.
Surely...
He should have a bitter named after him? Or has that already been done?
Lake Bled, Slovenia
I watched Man Utd vs Barcelona here in May 2009:
The mind...
...boggles.
A bit like my local Wetherspoons
Named after the actor Robert Shaw, who was born very close to the spot where the pub resides.
He was an alcoholic too.
If my memory serves, Ian
If my memory serves, Ian Anderson introduced the track as being from "the metal album". At least he did in Brighton in 1988.
I may have been high from secondary fume inhalation.
My all time favourite Stone's track
[video:youtube][/video]
My Dad...
... owns two U2 records: The Joshua Tree and Pop.