Rating My CD's: A-Wop-Bop A-Loo-Bop, A Good Goddamn

39. Little Richard -- Georgia Peach

The original lyrics to "Tutti Frutti" were all about butt sex:

Tutti Frutti -- Good Booty
If it fits, don't force it
You can grease it, make it easy
A Wop-Bop A-Loo-Bop, a Good Goddamn

That's according to Jim Miller, author of Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock n' Roll 1947-1977 (see link below), a pretty good cultural history of the classic rock n' roll era. Apparently Richard Penniman had no plan of recording "Tutti Frutti" until a producer convinced him that it would be a hit if he just excised all the naughty lyrics. He did and it was, and the result was one of the great nonsense phrases of Rock. The recorded "Tutti Frutti" isn't about anything but a Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On. Little Richard just howls and shrieks and hits that ecstatic thrill that Rock'n'Roll so often promises but fails to really deliver.

Amy Winehouse RIP

Insert your own "Should-a gone to rehab" joke here.

A promising career and talent shuffled off. A shame.



The missus will be listening to her for the rest of the day. Amy Winehouse caused her to cave to buying albums on iTunes.

It also caused her to do this:

Halloween, 2008. Her arms are more toned now
(She is looking over my shoulder as I type).

Sometimes you sing the blues, and sometimes the blues sing you.

My Car Got Busted Into

And the insurance-wrangling and repairs have delayed my posting.

The thief got away with my gym bag, containing old gym shoes and brand new, unused workout clothes.

My Johnny Cash box set was untouched. There's no accounting for taste.

I Suppose I Could Care About Paul McCartney...

...but I don't.

And by this I mean care about any of McCartney's post-Beatle work. Among certain rock snobs, of course, McCartney's status as a pop tunesmith means certain of his records require respectful consideration. But while I respect the talent, I can't put myself in McCarney's audience.



This is good; this is well-crafted. But I don't care about it. It doesn't move anything in me. I can nod my head at it, but if I never heard it again, I wouldn't feel the poorer for it.

I don't know if that's my deficit or Paul McCartney's, but there it is.

It's Going to Be a Rockabilly Kind of Week

For some reason, my post-zeppelin L's are full of 50's stuff: Little Richard is next, and then Jerry Lee Lewis. I didn't plan it this way, but there it is.



From the comments: "Prince, is that you?"

Black Keys, Danger Mouse Working Together

They worked together before, on Attack & Release, and according to Spin, on Brothers as well.  So I don't know why Under the Radar thinks this is news. But a record in the vein of the Clash & the Cramps sounds wicked tasty.

Rating My CD's: A Lot of Rhythm

38. -- Let's Go! That Rockabilly Rhythm


I suppose I should be filing this under "V" for that bestselling tunesmith "Various Artists" but since those words appear nowhere on this disc, I ain't gonna. Compilations is as compilations do, and this one...well.

I bought it at Starbucks. Yeah. I'm that guy. If you want to know why Starbucks keeps selling music to the phony hip and the crazy pampered, look no further. Because every now and again I see one of their bizarre choices and decide I have to have it. Because a corporation that earns so much hatred for the vile sin of selling coffee well has to have something going for it. And because, as I've mentioned before, I dig 50's stuff.

I'm a Man of Means, By No Means...

Hear, Hear! has a neat little retrospective on Roger Miller, who I largely know because I still have the Swingers soundtrack (ah, 1998...):



Apparently he was quite the productive little tunesmith. Which you have to be, to survive.

That's all the Zep I can take for a while.

I considered throwing on a Coda (get it?) about the later Zep albums that I don't have, but the name of the series is Rating My CD's, not Babbling Incoherently About CD's I Don't Have.

So what's coming in the future at Genre Confusion?

Rating My CD's: Physical Exhaustion

37. Led Zeppelin -- Physical Graffiti


When Joey Ramone died in 2001, Bill Wyman at Salon.com summed up the shift that his band had caused in the mid-70's thusly:

When the first Ramones records were released, high school friends and I would sit in one of our rooms, huddled around the stereo. (Parents would yell if we turned it up.) We tried to parse the lyrics, the sounds, the meanings. We didn't know much about pop history, but we could sense the sendups -- "You're Gonna Kill That Girl," the title a slap at the Beatles's "You're Gonna Lose That Girl"; the indolent drawl with which Johnny sang the thing a slap at the indolent Mick Jagger.
Once we figured out the Zen of it, the world looked different. Bands like the Eagles and the Who sounded weak, Pink Floyd sounded mannered, Zeppelin almost flatulent.

When I first read that, I knew exactly what he meant, even though I knew it to be a less-than-just description of Zeppelin's catalogue. But when it comes to Physical Graffiti, the word "flatulent" becomes almost apt.