Apropos of something else, I mentioned during an email chat with Nicholas James Pell that reading these books had shoved me into that sweet spot of feeling really smart and really stupid at the same time, and that I “was trying to teach myself about the origins of rock and roll as a kind of menopause/50th birthday project.”
He replied that he’d mail me “a thumb drive with a metric fuckton of R&B, race music, Western swing and hillbilly bop on it if you’re so inclined.
Sure enough, a week later there was a padded envelope containing an adorable Hello Kitty flashdrive with almost 5000 songs on it.
So I’ve been trying to wrestle this thing to the ground ever since.
Highlights so far include “Funny Looking Thing” by Honeyboy Bryant, a few non-Kingsmen versions of “Louie, Louie,” and “Hungry” by Paul Revere and the Raiders:
I already own a collection of dirty (that is, “painfully strained and rarely successful sexual metaphor”) blues songs but now I’ve got a whole lot more, like Chick Willis’ “I Wanna Play With Your Poodle”:
Also included is “Kill,” a Damned parody by Stiff Records punk rock pastiche/comedy group Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias. Alas they only ever charted with this yob rock spoof, “Heads Down…”
Possibly racist:
Oh, also on this “mix tape,” here’s Giorgio Moroder’s ABBA-like “Son of My Father,” which actually sounds like a pastiche song but is weirdly real, and illustrates why punk had to happen:
Anyhow, it’s possible that I know possess 75% of the songs ever written before 1967 which have the words “baby,” “rock,” “roll” and/or “teenage” in the title. Thanks Nicholas!
