Music Thread (post a song)

MC5 and the Stooges, absolutely.

The Velvets were Andy Warhol art rock, plus a place for Lou Reed to hone his songwriting. How's it go, "The Velvet Underground helped start more bands than they sold records."

 

I wish. Hell, I'd have settled for seeing Robert Palmer circa "Sneaking Sally" backed by the Meters.

 

I don't know that I'd call Beefheart punk. He occupied his own pocket of weirdness, somewhere adjacent to Frank Zappa. I sure do remember the first time I heard "Low Yo Yo Stuff" on the radio, though.

 

New York Dolls. Television. The Ramones.

For proto-punk we're talking pre-1975, because that's when punk broke wide open.

 

If “Heroin” isn’t a proto-punk song, I don’t know what is.

Same with “White Light, White Heat.” Same with some of Lou Reed’s solo stuff.

 

Conceded. Still don't fit the slot in my head marked "punk band", but you're absolutely right.

 

Christine Reid is a freaking treasure. She's been working with Lyle for 15-20 years now.

 

Robert Palmer covering Motörhead (and doing a damn good job of it too):

 

Heard this at a store tonight - at first I thought it was from some '80s teen movie. Googled it - found out the lead singer ended up winning an Oscar for co-writing Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing. Who knew? 80's cheese at its finest. Feathered hair, tight clothes only ever worn by rockers and keyboards, lots of keyboards.

 

Willie Nile is one of the great lost rockers of the early 1980s. Hadn't heard this one in a while, a great piece of power pop from his debut.

 

I suppose you could put him into the "art rock" category as well. He started out ripping off Howlin Wolf stylistically with blues/r&b covers like "Diddy Wah Diddy" and "I've Grown So Ugly"... but veered off that track with "Trout Mask Replica."

Ry Cooder tells a pretty good story about filling in on lead guitar for The Magic Band after Beefheart drove his regular guitarist to a nervous breakdown. He apparently was a compulsive perfectionist and required that his band live in the same house with him.

"Art rock" is another category that can get fuzzy. Is glam a branch of art rock? I do see a lot of glam elements in punk, particular the costumes.

One musician who has intrigued me over the years is Lou Reed's onetime bandmate, John Cale. He has some very impressive avant-garde chops; he released a fair amount of music in the early '70s that seems (to me) to be proto-punk coming out of art rock. "Gun" and "Fear is a Man's Best Friend" are a couple likely candidates.

One of his weirdest efforts was an album he put out with Terry Riley in 1971 called "Church of Anthrax." Call it "hypno-techno-trance," whatever, it was 30 years ahead of its time.

 

Love this one: