The Swells - Inner Migrations

The album cover of The Swells "Inner Migrations" album makes me think of the late, great Bob Ross doing 'shrooms while imagining all of his fans clicking over to see his show. Then again, it could just be an homage to Pink Floyd's "Ummagumma" cover which, like this one, utilized the Droste effect. It pretty much hints to what the contents will be with the freaky colored clouds hovering in the background. If that's not enough, you can visit the band's Facebook page and see it spelled out to you:

The Swells is a Psychedelic Rock group hailing from Nashville, TN, USA.

I like that. Just be out front about what you sound like these days. Side A of "Inner Migrations" begins with a fuzz tone straight outta the garage (you can bet there are blacklight posters on the wall too) and straight from early Pink Floyd with a bit of "Elephant Stone" era Stone Roses to boot. First tune, "Tangerine", is some fast psychedelics tempered only with flanged vocals, and if you enjoy flanged and processed vocals you are in for a treat on this EP. Main man, Chris Higdon, who wrote the tunes and designed the awesome cover, really must dig them. 

Track 2 "Cosmic Caravan" feels like a less jazzy update of Black Sabbath's "Planet Caravan" albeit with no vocals and an almost dance like groove underneath. I can't tell if the bass is actually a synth line or not. Well done. There's some fantastic guitar that somehow reminded me of the guitar sample (I believe Prince's "Let's Go Crazy") used in Public Enemy's "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" so how's that for picture inside a picture inside a picture. The tune ends with the sound of water.  The next song is called "Bones" which features some heavy flanged vocals once more evoking "Planet Caravan", but the music is more on the trip hop side with a spacey synth and flute. Perhaps the mellotron credited is used also. I can't tell if the lyrics are "we're just bones" or "witch's bones". I suspect the first is right, but would be interesting if the second was really the words. This first side wraps up with "Drifting" which has some buzzing heavyosity to it. If the processed vocals were ditched it would be the most purely commercial cut on the EP.  Think Jack White solo crossed with Greta Van Fleet. I suppose the processed vocals keep the tune from falling into the Seventies dinosaur rock tarpit, but sometimes that's what I want to hear. 

"Be In The Flow" kicks off the B side and it's probably my favorite. 60's style humming with a flute begin until the drummer kicks off a galloping psych surf beat. Some slashing wah-wah as we are urged to "let it all out, take it in stride, it's just a moment in time." Simple rock and roll adorned with cool baubles that ends taking another dip into the water while some cinematic Indian type music plays us out. "Flower" is next. It's a slow burner of a song. It's probably a good one to hear live. The EP ends with "Despertar" which means to awake. It's mellow in spots, but rocking in others. I think they were going for an epic vibe. The guitar tone is boss in the fast parts. The coda would, once again, make for great film music, it led me to write this down as it played: smokey haze of rapture. Pretty positive there! So go out and see The Swells if you can. Purchase their music. 

They have another release titled "Take Off" which just came out that I hope to also review. They play out around the Middle Tennessee area, but are hoping to get a tour up the East Coast soon. So check out their homepage linked at the first of this review. You can hear them on Spotify. And you can also follow them at Instagram @theswells_official. 

Rock and Rock Hall of Whatever

They really should just change the name to the Rolling Stone Magazine Music Museum at this point though I do have to admit Whitney was as rock and roll as it gets.

Sunday Showcase Top Pop Songs In Nashville October 13, 1968

I wasn't living in Nashville in 1968. I was just a toddler in the Frayser neighborhood of Memphis. I would imagine that the number 1 song in Nashville from the October 13, 1968 Tennessean Sunday Showcase was probably the number 1 song in Memphis too. The Beatles were atop the charts with "Hey Jude" which was a juggernaut ending up as the best selling single on the Billboard Hot 100 of 1968 which makes sense as it is their longest running number 1 in the US. I like how the Top 10 is bookended with future 70's superstars Bee Gees whose "I've Gotta Get A Message To You" ended up 59th on the Top 100 for the year. Barry is wearing a gold medallion in the video....perhaps foreshadowing their disco ascendancy.        

Film Flashback October 11, 1979

What was playing at the movies in Murfreesboro 40 years ago? Sheesh....40 years is a long time ago. I grew up watching Leave It To Beaver and it was closer to the 70's than these films are to the teens of our present day 21st century. Time is just wild. Perhaps Ram Dass had it right: Be here now. And what's happening now is films from yesteryear. It's a total mind melter I know.

Since it was October there had to be a scary movie. Cinema One wouldn't morph into Cinema Two for several more years. The exact date in case you're interested was April 20, 1984 showing The Ice Pirates and Romancing The Stone. Senior citizens would continue to get 40% off their tickets all the time. I wonder how many were scared out of their wits (For God's Sake, Get Out!) while viewing The Amityville Horror on what was a Wednesday in 1979. Since it was rated R there was no way I could get to see this one in the theater since I was only 12 at the time. I wanted to go see it since I loved horror movies, but would have to wait until it played on HBO or Cinemax later. It was okay. Maybe it would have been better on the big screen.

The Martin Twin across town couldn't let the Cinema One steal all of the spooky movie dollars during October so The Legacy was one of the two films playing there. I have never seen this one. Starting Over was also playing which was disappointing to me at the time even though I didn't see it. The disappointment came from it being a Burt Reynolds movie without cars, action, or Dom DeLuise (not that I was allowed to see The End in the theater, but at least it looked as crazy as its plot.) Starting Over was a romantic comedy also starring Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen. I have still not seen it, but I will get around to it. Burt Reynolds movies are, for the most part, all worth watching at least once.

Finally we come to the "Now equipped with radio sound" Marbro Drive-In  What movies were trunk loads of people going to see? Nothing scary going on at the place I used to call Marlboro Drive-In. The Kirk Douglas and Ann Margaret movie The Villain, which also featured Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ruth Buzzi, Mel Tillis, and Paul Lynde, and Peter Falk's Neil Simon written The Cheap Detective also starring Ann Margaret were what you'd see there. I didn't see these in the theatre either, but saw them often on HBO as they seemed to play in high rotation on it during the early 80's. I really need to catch The Cheap Detective again as Peter Falk's appeal just grows as one ages, but The Villain was a really terrible flick.

Hope you have enjoyed this trip into the past. If you like it tell your friends. I do this every Friday. Why? Why not. 

Sunday Showcase Top Pop Songs In Nashville October 5, 1986

I was not into mainstream pop music at all circa 1986. I knew what was playing on college radio and that was about it. WRVU 91.1 at Vanderbilt was once a beacon of alternative music, but like most everything from that era in Nashville it's now long gone. Sold out to classical music. The top alternative songs from 1986 as a whole taken from a website called Pulse:

01 REM - Superman
02 New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
03 Dramarama - Anything, Anything (I'll Give You)
04 INXS - What You Need
05 Smithereens - Blood And Roses
06 Gene Loves Jezebel - Desire (Come And Get It)
07 Wang Chung - Everybody Have Fun Tonight
08 Talking Heads - Wild, Wild Life
09 OMD - If You Leave
10 Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

Let's see: I think I had every album these songs came from back then except for Wang Chung, Gene Loves Jezebel, and Peter Gabriel. Gabriel was much more mainstream than alternative. Keep in mind that was an annual list. This top ten from The Tennessean Sunday Showcase from October 5, 1986 is just a weekly look at what was hot.

I liked Bananarama and picked up their album used at some point. Lionel Richie is okay. I have never seen Top Gun so Berlin's tune doesn't do anything for me. All of the rest are unmemorable except for one tune which towers over the list and that would be Run-DMC's "Walk This Way." I most likely bought "Raising Hell" on cassette the day it was released. I was a huge Run-DMC fan. Heck I was a huge hip hop fan in addition to loving heavy metal and punk. That tune is the shining beacon in that top ten from then.

Kurt Vile (bottle back) documentary

I was late to the Kurt Vile party. But since discovering his music my life has become a wonderland of plenty. I would say he's become my spirit animal, but that's just weird. I was lucky to see him at the Ryman earlier in the year with The Sadies and that was a night for the ages. If I am ever lucky enough to sit on a porch in the Catskills with Kurt I would probably just stare like a dummy even though I am older than him, and don't usually go into the whole hero worship when I'm face to face with people I admire. If you don't own any of his records you should remedy that posthaste by ordering some or all from Matador Records. Note: this isn't some paid shill promotion. I'm just a (now old) music fan trying to spread the gospel of Kurt.

Friday Movie Flashback

This week we journey back to 1974. I was a mere 7 years old and was probably wearing my jacket with the snotty sleeves. The high temp the day before Friday October 4, 1974 had been 61 degrees. The low was 33. That's much different from the 99 degree temperatures we've been having during this first week of October. Were the movies playing in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on this date cooler than the weather we have now? I believe so.

Cinema One featured a movie that would go down in history as one of the most un-PC comedies ever. If you are easily offended you might want to avoid it. I think the film is a classic comedy. Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little were perfectly cast in this Mel Brooks Western spoof. It's full of outright hilarious moments with many of them crude and juvenile. Then there are other more subdued comedic moments like when we meet Jim, just Jim, formerly the Waco Kid.

I didn't see Blazing Saddles until many years later. The same is the case for one of the movies playing across town on this day.

The Martin Twin theatre featured Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby and Joe Don Baker as Buford Pusser in Walking Tall. 

I have never seen The Great Gatsby. Perhaps I will watch it one day. If you grew up in Tennessee it's mandatory to have seen Walking Tall at least once. I didn't get to see it in the theatre, but I've watched it many times on television over the years. Buford Pusser even appeared at car lots in Murfreesboro when this movie came out. It would bring in crowds to the dealerships and he could promote the movie and himself. The film is pretty gritty and it was shot in Tennessee which is always interesting to us locals. It goes on much longer than it should have, but it's well worth watching. The action is decent and it just exudes Seventies Southernness that the Jackie and Dunlap at Redneck Matinee cover. I believe Walking Tall will be coming up on their podcast soon.

The Marbro Drive-In was showing 3 rated G action films. A Few Bullets More leads off the night, followed by Any Gun Can Play, and Dirty Heroes finished out the evening. A Few Bullets More was a re-titled movie from 1967 I'll Kill Him and Return Alone. It is a "Tortilla Western." Any Gun Can Play starred Ed "Kookie" Byrnes and was a satire of the "Spaghetti Western" genre. Which I guess is an appropriate lead in to an Italian made movie about World War II. I have not seen any of these 3 films, but I might have to check the two westerns out. 

Be In The Flow

Local Middle Tennessee band The Swells obviously make swell music. I'll have a review of their record Inner Migrations up in the near future.

Sunday Showcase Top Pop Songs In Nashville September 28, 1980

I've written about roller skating here before and this Top Ten from the September 28, 1980 Tennessean Sunday Showcase takes me back to that time again. So many of the songs in that week were staples at Skatecenter West aka Jack's. It was about a month into 8th grade and my life was devoted to baseball cards, comics, KX104, and roller skating. Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" is my favorite from this Top Ten. I even bought the 45. 

Liam Gallagher - One Of Us

It's with much pleasure and wonderment to see Liam Gallagher make such a complete comeback to rock and roll. The chants of "Liam, Liam, Liam" during the MTV UK Unplugged performance made my son's day. He is named for him after all. 

Film Flashback September 27, 1975

What was playing at the movies in Murfreesboro, Tennessee 44 years ago? The Martin Twin was showing a couple of interesting British movies. One screen featured Tommy directed by Ken Russell while Monty Python and the Holy Grail played in the other theatre. The Towering Inferno was playing at Cinema One. The Marbro Drive-In was featuring the usual Seventies exploitation style b-movies Games Guy Plays and Games Girls Play.

Cinema One was usually where the more cutting edge type films were shown so it's a bit strange to find a weekend where the Martin Twin showcased the edgier fare while an Irwin Allen disaster movie played on the south side of town. The Towering Inferno was a towering hit though. It ranked number 2 on the highest grossing movies released in 1974. It came out in December of 1974 and didn't get to Murfreesboro until September of 1975. This was the second week at Cinema One. I didn't see any of the movies playing this week at the theater, but I did catch some of The Towering Inferno on network television back in 1980 and it just bored me.

The Martin Twin was where it was at for this week. I'm not a huge fan of Tommy even though I enjoy the songs, Ann Margaret is ravishing, and Roger Daltrey is tremendous in it. I guess I would like it to be less opera and more of a musical. Singing all of the time is just strange to me. I recall that it was the Riverdale High School Drama Club that would show Tommy every year to raise money for the Drama Club. I believe they showed it in the auditorium with an actual film projector. It wasn't a crummy VHS tape. I never went though. Lots of students did. It got you out of 2 classes during the school day. I loved The Who, but I guess money was just too tight for me. I needed my extra few dollars to buy a new Creem magazine or old Black Sabbath tapes back in those days. Tommy was a pretty big hit back in 1975 as it was the 9th biggest grossing film of the year.

I never would have thought Monty Python and the Holy Grail would have played during normal hours in Murfreesboro in its first run. I was familiar with Monty Python when I was 9 years old because PBS would show Monty Python and the Flying Circus back then. I didn't understand much of it, but the British accents were funny. Monty Python and the Holy Grail would later become a favorite of mine in my high school days. It would often feature in movie watching parties during the 1984-1987 or so boom of VHS tape renting. You had to be able to quote portions verbatim and with the correct accent if you wanted to keep up with your geeky friends.

The Marbro Drive-In has Games Guys Play which is a re-titling of the movie Goodnight Jackie. It's a sex comedy. Gregory Sierra, Jim Backus, Lana Wood, Christopher Norris, and Barry Williams are the better known actors in it. The IMDB reviews note that it's a rather mild film. Games Girls Play was originally titled Sex Play and also goes by the name The Bunny Caper. The synopsis: "Young daughter  of high ranking political figure gets into trouble when she and her friends compete at bedding the foreign diplomats." I have never seen either of these movies, but might have to look up Games Guys Play since there are so many television stars I liked in it.

Hip Isn't It

Old Sunday Showcase Review

The Nashville newspaper The Tennessean had a Sunday supplement called Showcase. I guess it still does, but I haven't purchased a newspaper in over a decade. This section of the paper was my second favorite with only the Sunday funny pages beating it out. My family never subscribed to the paper and didn't buy it every Sunday, so it was a big treat when my father would buy it. I'd go straight to the funnies and then hit Showcase next. During the Seventies I would go to the very end of the section just to see what song lyrics had been printed. I was mad about music from a very early age. I was given a little kids record player when I was 4 and would get to buy 45 records every now and then.

Showcase was all about entertainment and since I was into television, movies, and music, after seeing what the song in the back was I would go back to the beginning and read the whole thing. Ads, upcoming club shows, articles on artists I didn't know or care about, every television listing; I would actually read it all. When you're an only child you've generally got lots of free time. It didn't hurt that I loved to read and still do.

When I got to college I goofed my first semester up. I quite going to most of my classes. I got thrown out of English class for talking too much. So I spent several years just working. My mother finally talked me into going back and during my first semester I had no transportation into school. My father would take me. Since I then had lots of free time I ended up looking through old Showcases on microfilm just to see what rock acts had been through Nashville in the past. I wrote a post about this way back in 2005.

Here it is 31 or so years later and I have little free time at all. I commute an hour and a half to work, spend 9-10 hours there, and then an hour and about 40 minutes home. I barely have a moment to relax. When I do though, one of the things I like to do is look at old newspapers. I suppose it's nostalgia as a placebo for the frantic pace. Things seemed slower then. That is probably not true, but faulty old memories are sometimes all one has. Hence, most of what I post is trips to the past. I hope to make this a weekly stop just like Friday's Movie Flashback.

This Old Showcase Review will be on the top songs in Nashville in the Sunday, September 23, 1979 issue. What were we listening to 40 years ago? Here is what was hot.

I liked Dionne Warwick, but I loved "My Sharona" by The Knack. I can still remember riding with my mom and hearing it come over KX104 for the first time. The beat! The rocking guitar and that incredible bridge along with lyrics that seemed to my 7th grade ears to be on the naughty side just couldn't be topped. The inclusion of the song in the film Reality Bites was right on the money. It was, perhaps, the first pop anthem of Generation X.

"Sad Eyes" was a swooning song that made for a good change of pace when skating at the roller rink. CDB's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" was a favorite that had been on the charts for 3 months! I felt like quite the sinner though, because I always liked the devil's music section better. Local Murfreesboro radio station WGNS 1450 (hard to believe it was once a music station) probably really hated me as the summer of 1979 was when I started incessantly calling them up to request songs. "Lonesome Loser" was one of my many requests. I really liked that tune when I was 12, but nowadays not so much. Sorry Little River Band.

"Don't Bring Me Down" was ELO at their rocking best. I can still remember hearing that tune coming out of car radios that year. I wasn't too keen on Herb Alpert back then, but I have the "Rise" album now. The Commodores and Supertramp could do no wrong. "Sail On" is an especially good song since it flips the breakup song on its head. I don't remember the Bonnie Pointer song at all, but I bet it's good. In case you are wondering the song at the end of the Showcase this week was "Different Worlds" which was the theme song to the television show Angie.