In Which Doctor Casino Listens to Classic Rock Classics for the First Time

He obv. likes to do that!

ha ha it seems like there should be lots of photos of Jackson flipping off the camera

In the song "Everything You Did," a lyric says, "turn up The Eagles, the neighbors are listening." Glenn Frey of the Eagles said, "Apparently Walter Becker's girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time. I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day and that was the genesis of the line." Given that the two bands shared a manager (Irving Azoff) and that the Eagles proclaimed their admiration for Steely Dan, this was more friendly rivalry than feud.[3]
Later that year in a nod back to Steely Dan for the free publicity,[4] and inspired by Steely Dan's lyric style,[5] the Eagles penned the lyrics, "They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast" in their hit "Hotel California". Frey commented, "We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so 'Dan' got changed to 'knives,' which is still, you know, a penile metaphor."[6]
Timothy B. Schmit, who sang background vocals on "The Royal Scam" would later join The Eagles.

Frey commented, "We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so 'Dan' got changed to 'knives,' which is still, you know, a penile metaphor."[6]

Henley added, "Well, yeah." [7]

A+

Walk Away: oooh, a classic rock opening if I ever heard one! Jagged and crunchy. Bra-DANG! Dunk dunk, Bra-DANG! I like this thing about his socks not wanting to come off, neat way of saying he's tempted but not quite tempted. I have the faintest, faintest memory of this chorus - possible I've heard it at some distant point but not anything that made a surface impression. This is good though. Got the "drivin' that train, high on cocaine" rhythm to it, your basic highway rock and roll. The guitar break/solo is a little less compelling than the kinda post-Byrdsy/Beatlesy country rock chorus - could be a little more lively or inventive, though I like it when it does sound distinctively Walshian, on the high notes. Dunno what it is I like about those notes so much, in his playing generally - they connote something a little mournful, a little removed, which in some cases starts to feel like a distant sneer back at the main body of the song, but here it's more a flourish, the extra confident shimmy in the walk away. The wah-wah not so much, but the psychedelic mess it's starting to reach when the fadeout happens is interesting - would be down with more Eagles songs or "Life's Been Good" going that way. But of course the fact that they didn't is one of the things that distinguishes smooth-polished cocaine corporate rock from your turn-of-the-seventies rock shamble.

Chorus is still stuck in my head ten minutes later, a good (?) sign. Thumbs up.

Love this tune. The James Gang are maybe my favorite power trio ever. Jim Fox's drum breaks on this song are so great!

This still rocks pretty good. Maybe a little too hard and drivin' for this fucking muggy, humid, limp-along end of summer. A difficult but key itch for classic rock to scratch - sometimes you want stew, sometimes you want jumping beans, but sometimes you want a huge pitcher of unsweetened ice tea and nowhere to be. "Drift Away" is key here as I've said before, but if I had to pick from the above, feel like Call Me the Breeze fits the times best (and not just because of the title) (though it'd be cool if he was trying to summon a breeze to himself). This is also a good time for the 80s things, which generally are "cooler" in palette - "Your Love," "Stand Back" and "You Got Lucky." And oddly, "Roundabout" has the right kind of freshness - a cool brook wends its way through the western forest of the elves. "Eminence Front" might also work; its iciness would cool the room, and the heat of the day might give the song a different story than I'd imagined - less New York in the fall, more LA in the summer, but still with the phonies.

"walk away" is probably my favorite song that we've done so far another excellent review, dr. c. "bra-DANG dunk dunk bra-DANG" pretty much covers it, i think! though i'm not sure it quite captures how fantastic those guitars sound.

and, yeah, please go away, september heat. 95 today according to my car thermometer today, but felt like 97. "call me the breeze" does indeed work well in these situations, though of course another approach is to just go with it and play "the fire down below" as loud as you can.

in honor of both doctor casino's recent road trip and the imminent end of the cosmic arena rock show known as summer 2014:

SONG #29: JACKSON BROWNE "THE LOAD-OUT / STAY"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdWNBqyxcA

Thread that didn't take off: Lines from the 2014 version of Jackson Browne's "The Load-Out"

*flips u off*

^^ looool

hahaha was gonna say, i've been looking forward to this one on account of sandy's story

ahhh fuck, and then i de-prioritized the bookmark by posting that and lost track! Sorry y'all, I really do want to get back into the rockin' groove here, really appreciate fcc bearing with me as the curation and the context/backstory for these has been so great.

welcome back! glad that you could, um, stay just a little bit longer. and really appreciate you sticking with it since you're doing all the heavy lifting here! the rest of us are just spinning the same tracks in the same rotation as we always have.

i think i have also been subconsciously avoiding this one because i keep expecting it will actually turn out to be a variant of "Roadhouse Blues," with Jackson oafishly grunting "LOAD OUT LOAD OUT" towards the end, but i think it's time to take a deep breath, ready my middle finger, and face down my fears

Wow, you really haven't heard this song then...

The Load Out / Stay: Pleasant start. Piano, someone's whistling. Must not be that popular of a song or the opening chords would get more of a response from the crowd. So... .... .... it's a ballad.

I don't mind this stage-setting, the roadies taking the stage. Not a ton of songs about that. I admit that Sandy's story is already coloring this a lot, I just picture Jackson flirting with the bartender and occasionally glancing back over at the stage and going "Huh, maybe I should pay those guys more. Oh well, what was I saying again?"

I'm of two minds about all the detail on what they have to do. Hahahahah, "you know you guys are the champs," Jackson Browne sounds like middle management or Mitt Romney now. I'd be like, fuck you dude, if I don't load this piano I don't get to go to bed. Even setting that aside, while it's nice that he gets into more detail about the material details of their labor rather than just kind of sweeping it aside as "they sure work hard" kinda thing, it means they remain just laboring bodies without interiority - do they have favorite songs, do they read, what do they think about while they toil? Basically they become background landscape for Jackson's interior monologue, the towns he gets confused about, the reasons why the band came.

Okay, what they listen to on the bus is nice, I wish the band tried to mimic the sound of 8-tracks and cassettes in addition to the sound of R&B and disco (I always love these moments in songs, like "Ready Steady Go"). That moment about Richard Pryor sounded really Warren Zevon-y to me. I guess they're developing a little more with interests and stuff, but once you get everybody on the bus, it's just one big "we" and the roadies cease to exist. How did they have Richard Pryor though? How common was having a TV on this kind of tour bus back then? Honest question, I have no idea.

Not sure what's going on really at this point, who's a thousand miles away from who? The roadies are waking up at home and Jackson has to go on tour? Serves you right! Or did Jackson sell all his tickets to people living a thousand miles away from the concert? Oops!

Well, the "stay" bit is cute I guess but not really clever - "the promoter don't mind" laaame. I guess this is the end-of-show crowd-working angle, like, please ask me to stay for an encore? I wish Jackson actually went for the falsetto rather than having a backing singer wander in for that one line, let your damn hair down. Oh well he's doing it now - or wait. I guess that wasn't him. Anyway, y'know, I wanna see my rocker actually go for the funny voice, don't be afraid to fuck it up and sound like a jackass. The roadies are having a beer and chuckling at him from the shadows: what a yutz. This instrumental section is just fine, very warm. It almost sounded like he was about to start getting everybody to really stomp-clap along for a few bars before a big finish but then it petered out.

Overall, kind of a slog. The slow ballad part is going for a "Turn the Page" assessment of this hard life on the road, but it's a little too ponderous and sure of its own Serious Song-ness, and that puts too strong a spotlight on Jackson's roadie sympathies. It invites the Sandy critique from the word go. Things got a little better when the rest of the band showed up (I picture Jackson, hands on his hips, tapping his foot, glaring at a roadie desperately trying to get everything plugged in), but it was pretty tuneless throughout. Thumbs down for "The Load Out," I guess sort of thumbs horizontal for "Stay," that's a good song and hard to really fuck up too bad, and I liked the arrangement.

I also like picturing the backup singer as Michael McDonald in that SCTV bit, racing in from a thousand miles away to deliver exactly one chorus. Won't you stay just a little bit longer, indeed!

How did they have Richard Pryor though? How common was having a TV on this kind of tour bus back then? Honest question, I have no idea.

First of all, huge huge yays that Doctor Casino is back reviewing these songs! I have been missing our classic rock talks, so much fun. I'm psyched that Jeff W. stepped up to the plate to run the AM Gold poll, I wish it were happening sooner.

Now, to answer the question... this song was written and recorded in 1977, IIRC. It was January 1978 that Jackson flipped me off, so I know that the song was current at the time. Most of the tour buses then did have TVs, of course they weren't equipped for cable or anything like that, they would just pick up local stations that the crew could watch during their down time (and for some of the crew people, there's a lot of down time... those guys work LONG, long days, but some of them kind of work in spurts), and on most crews, there was always at least one guy who was an electronics junkie and had either a Betamax or a VCR. Betamaxes were pretty popular on tour buses from what I remember. Roadies loved anything Sony made back then.

So yeah, they could have been watching Richard Pryor.

Also I should add that most of the crew guys I know hate that song. The line about them working for minimum wage pisses them off, it makes them sound like Wal-Mart workers or something. Crew people get paid pretty well, especially the ones who are on retainer and get paid year round even if they're not on tour. One of my friends who worked for Metallica was making 52K a year in 1990, which equates to about 95K today, plus they're getting per diems for food and shit when they're on tour. And they get goodies. Another friend of mine from when I lived in Seattle works for Pearl Jam, and in addition to his salary, they bought him a Prius for working on an album. Most crew guys are very, very skilled at what they do. A lot of guitar techs are great players themselves who just don't want to perform for one reason or another. I have a lot of respect for crew guys. Plus, they're fun to hang with and there's always at least one person on a crew who loves to gossip and has stories that make mine seem totally dull.

Oooh, thanks for sharing, Sandy! For whatever reason I just never pictured them with TVs, but I think my picture of a "tour bus" is sorta hazy and has more to do with multiple DIY punk bands sharing a van than big rock acts that have a crew and so on.

It's a shame Jackson kind of blew the opportunity to write a good crew anthem, seems like there'd be tons of material for a poignant rock ballad thing, especially in the idea that they can actually play, maybe even better than the band, but choose a different road.

so good to be back at this!

Must not be that popular of a song or the opening chords would get more of a response from the crowd.

to be fair, the live version was the original release. so when they did the live recording, it wasn't out yet. when it did come out, it got oodles and oodles of radio play. fm radio loved those long, serious ones. (but this one required you to sit through a lot to get to the payoff of "stay," which was not quite as good a payoff as, say, the loud part of "stairway to heaven.")

That moment about Richard Pryor sounded really Warren Zevon-y to me.

jackson was producing warren at the time, so that makes total sense.

Not sure what's going on really at this point, who's a thousand miles away from who? The roadies are waking up at home and Jackson has to go on tour?

i believe he's taking to us, his loyal audience, here. we will go home after the show, while he will be getting on a bus headed for chicago, or detroit, he don't know, he does so many shows in a row.

i've always thought this could have been a billy joel song. reminds me of the kind of song the narrator of "the great suburban showdown" would move on to once he got out of the suburbs for good and became a rock star, touring somebody else's suburbs.

The line about them working for minimum wage pisses them off, it makes them sound like Wal-Mart workers or something.

that line always pissed me off, because if jackson thought they actually were making minimum wage, maybe instead of singing about it he should have, like, paid them more.

David Lindley the guitarist, who is a talented weirdo, does the high falsetto.

Ha, I almost brought up Billy Joel too but figured I'd already brought him up too often in this thread!

would be impossible.

I love Joel, but in his live demeanor, particularly on the ballads, he sometimes loses me - but the crowd is loving it. There's this whole dreary, doughy maudlin side of classic rock that clearly struck huge chords. Got that vibe from "The Load Out." Is it a distinct CR phenomenon? I mean ballads are big any old time, but I feel like the Sensitive Rocker, the Tough Road Guy who does have Something to Say From the Heart, letting his guard down, etc., kind of gets solidified around this point. Dunno if it's just the inevitable distillation of various 60s trends and expectations, generational weariness, the emotive affect of the arena setting, or what.

I think it works great on songs I like better - see my effusive praise for "Running on Empty" (notably a more uptempo and energetic performance), but on songs that fall flat it just feels like they're made for aliens.

I'd never heard this Jackson Browne song. Nothing he's done has ever stuck in my head, 'cept Running On Empty and Doctor My Eyes. And Somebody's Baby.

I did not know that was Lindley!

As soon as DC mentioned those opening chords, I felt these gray memories of sitting alone in the DJ studio, looking at the clock and sighing.

I love Joel, but in his live demeanor, particularly on the ballads, he sometimes loses me - but the crowd is loving it.

"Blame it all on yourself, but she's always ~a woman~ ~to me~" *throws piano over the stage; crowd chants Отечество наше свободное.*

Well, that moment I've always been able to get behind.

(lol at the gray DJ booth memory, well-phrased)

while we're on the subject of rock stars chronicling and complaining about life on the road...

SONG #30: AC/DC "IT'S A LONG WAY TO THE TOP (IF YOU WANNA ROCK 'N' ROLL")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDCs7ijNUVM

"i tell you folks/it's harder than it looks!"

This'll be interesting. I know this band is a Big Deal and that freshmen get issued copies of Back in Black free with their subscription to Rolling Stone, but I really only know the very biggest hits, and most of them I don't like. Actually I think "Dirty Deeds" is the only one I'm ever happy to hear on the radio. I know they have a big deal where the lead singer died and they changed singers early on; I'm assuming this will be the second guy because it has a music video.

It's A Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll): Starting strong. Big loud riff. Kinda "generic rock riff," I know this kinda thing more through Buckcherry or Black Crowes or whoever trying to channel it, whatever generation of Rock is Back! bands. Na na na na highway, goin' to a show. Got it.

Cool that they have bagpipes in the band, they should mix those higher though. Hey, there they are. That sounds okay. Cool drone quality mixed in with the guitars, lets them cut through the mix without having a choir or synthesizers or w/e. The call-and-response between lead and bagpipe is totally cool. I don't mind this long instrumental section cause the vocal part was sorta generic trite rock on the road stuff. Plus they really sound like they're jamming with the bagpipe people, not like it's just some goof added by the producer, feels like they're really in the same room giving each other winks. Man, if this guy is the replacement guy he sure sounds a lot like the guy on the other hits. Maybe this is one of those old proto-videos? It sounds really punchy and clean though, no 70s haze holding these guys up.

It's bugging me what city they're in, trying to recognize it by its modernist landmarks. Glasgow maybe? Boston? Get it known, get it paid, get it ripped off on the plane! That's how it goes, playing in a band! Man, they're really struggling to think of other things they can do on this parade truck. Should have brought in Bjork.

I dunno man, I wanna hold the five minutes' running time against this riff but these guys are rockin' pretty hard. The rhythm section is just giving it 100%, not letting up, secret might really be the liveliness of the drummer, all this little rackety-tackety stuff in the background makes this a lively neck-swinging toe-tapper rather than a sluggish riff-pounder - "Ba bramp dang donk, ba dunh dump dump" could get reeeeeal tedious otherwise. That's really helpful to the theme honestly, you feel like these guys deserve being at the top - there's no feeling of coasting on their successes here.

Overall, another surprise thumbs up! I still don't think it needs five minutes but it was totally lively and fun... and the bagpipe thing, which could have been gimmicky, just sounded awesome coming out of the speakers.

I know they have a big deal where the lead singer died and they changed singers early on; I'm assuming this will be the second guy because it has a music video.

Nope, this is the original guy, Bon Scott.

It's bugging me what city they're in, trying to recognize it by its modernist landmarks. Glasgow maybe? Boston?

Probably Sydney; this was still early in their career (1975), and I don't think they'd made it off the island yet.

secret might really be the liveliness of the drummer,

otm. Phil Rudd is what makes AC/DC great. I'll take a whole album of isolated Rudd drum tracks over a non-Rudd AC/DC record.

haha reading up on wikipedia it appears i may be wrong about every detail of this song. The bagpipes are synthesized?!

Doc Casino and Tarfumes so very very OTM about Phil Rudd. He was the PERFECT drummer for AC/DC.

Possibly interesting sociological comment: in the mid-to-late 70s, there was a lot of dissent within the ranks of music fans. There were camps and you were supposed to pick one and stick with it. You were either a hard rock/metal kid, an "regular rock" kid (you liked the big selling stuff like Foreigner/Boston/Styx/etc.), a punk kid, or a new wave/glam kid. It was okay to overlap between hard rock/metal and "regular rock" and it was okay to overlap between punk and new wave/glam, but you weren't supposed to cross species, even though all of us secretly loved stuff the other camps did, too. But the one band that EVERYBODY loved openly was AC/DC. The hard rock kids loved them for obvious reasons, the "regular" kids loved them because they were catchy and commercial, the punk kids loved them because they had attitude, and the new wave/glam kids liked them because they were fun and Angus wore a costume. AC/DC brought us together.

I just recently ranked every AC/DC album from worst to best for Stereogum. As I said there, "AC/DC emerged in the early ’70s, when hard rock was at its commercial peak, but rather than head in the jamming, crowd-pleasing direction of, say, Grand Funk Railroad, they stripped their music to engine and chassis and went racing down Australia’s back roads like the musical equivalent of the bikers from Mad Max. And by keeping their heads down and preserving their core sound with zero capitulation to trends, they managed to build a solid career, particularly live, and eventually become legends." They really did have it all from about 1975 to 1979; Bon Scott was a fantastic, sneering frontman, and Angus was a great lead guitarist (he claims he only has one solo, but it's a really good one), but their strongest weapons were Malcolm Young's rhythm guitar, which is dead-on and devastating, and Phil Rudd's utterly no-frills drumming. Once Bon Scott died and Brian Johnson took over on vocals, they became bluesier but less of a boogie band, mostly to their detriment.

There were camps and you were supposed to pick one and stick with it. You were either a hard rock/metal kid, an "regular rock" kid (you liked the big selling stuff like Foreigner/Boston/Styx/etc.), a punk kid, or a new wave/glam kid

I would have been one of the backwards kids who still had Three Dog Night posters in their bedrooms, but this is super interesting! Watching that AC/DC video, and particularly with an eye on the guitarist, I was also funnily reminded of Cheap Trick, who I expect did not cross these lines so much. But there's a real miscellaneous quality to their different styles/presentations, and the one real goofy guy with funny hats and stuff rings this "they were fun and Angus wore a costume" bell for me.

horse, that's good stuff. Y'all are making me like this band more in a few posts than I've done in a lifetime of hearing "TNT," "Back in Black" and "Highway to Hell" ad nauseum (though the latter, I'll concede, has an amazing chorus).

If you do decide to dig into the catalog, pay close attention to Bon Scott's lyrics (he's on High Voltage, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Let There Be Rock, Powerage and Highway to Hell) - he's actually a pretty sharp writer, though there's a genuinely creepy sexual aggression to a lot of his songs that really wouldn't fly today. I mean, "Squealer" is describing straight-up rape, and gleeful about it.

Yeah, "Squealer" is pretty fucked up.

Great piece, 誤訳侮辱, only I'd put Ballbreaker way higher...maybe even just below Highway. Even though it's not as loud and in-yer-face as earlier AC/DC, it's more direct and sinister. It's the weird guy muttering menacingly behind you rather than the obnoxious drunk shouting in front of you.

I just recently ranked every AC/DC album from worst to best for Stereogum.
I really enjoyed this, thanks.

Watching that AC/DC video, and particularly with an eye on the guitarist, I was also funnily reminded of Cheap Trick, who I expect did not cross these lines so much.

Actually, Cheap Trick DID cross those lines as well, and largely for the same reasons. So did, interestingly enough, Tom Petty and Van Halen. Those were the bands that it was okay for everybody to love (punk kids loved Van Halen because it was well known that DLR hung out at all the punk clubs in LA and supported a lot of the LA punk scene).

Oh, rad! Always thought of AC/DC as just having fundamentally more street cred, or maybe their high just lasted longer.

I love how much thought AC/DC has put into being so thoughtless. Mal's illness has made me respect it even more, the more I read about their process. Because obviously Angus can play, and supposedly Malcolm is even better, but they put their energy into being as dumb and simple as possible. It's a hard rock salve. Also, never forget:

http://www.chunklet.com/index.cfm?section=article&IssueID=6&ID=96

I moved to Minneapolis in 1994, a cheap apartment on the wrong side of I-94. Coming home from the record store one afternoon, I got into a three-car accident a few blocks away from my place. I managed to "limp" it back to my street, but by the time I got there, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to drive it anywhere else.

I called a tow truck and waited outside. It wasn't a good moment standing out front of my shitty apartment looking at my busted car on the street. Some dude came up to me and tried to sell me some tapes out of a Case Logic carrier that he just so happened to have on him at that moment. I told him I wasn't interested just as the tow truck pulled up.

Guy loaded up the husk of my car on to the trailer, I signed the paperwork and handed the tow guy a check. As he was firming up the straps and everything, same neighborhood dude from before comes up and this time, gets a buy from the driver.

Which all leads up to this final moment of me standing on the sidewalk, watching the tow truck with its yellow siren lights turning and my car on its back, motoring south as the intro of "Thunderstruck" begins playing at full volume.