Author: Kim Simpson

“Duel at Diablo (Main Title)” (1966) – Neal Hefti * Written by Neal Hefti * LP: Duel at Diablo: Original Motion Picture Score * Label: United Artists

By 1966, the trumpeter and arranger Neal Hefti, having made a name for himself with Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, shifted his focus to film and TV scoring. Although his themes for The Odd Couple (1968) and Batman (1966) are his most enduring, other ones paired with lesser-known projects would nonetheless sport a certain trademark heft, shall we say. The Duel at Diablo theme is one of these, catchy and finger-snappy enough to work as a TV jingle. Instead, it accompanied one of the era’s more distinctly violent and emotionally complicated westerns. Based on Marvin H. Albert’s 1957 novel Apache Rising and featuring James Garner in perhaps his most sullen role, it grappled with the grim and messy reality of US/Indian relations and offered the viewer, whom it wore down with its relentless fighting and high body count, no convenient outs. When the snazzy theme kicks in for the closing credits, it feels like a tone-deaf maneuver, if not intended as outright mockery. What’s up with you? the peppy theme asks. It’s only a movie. (Duel at Diablo‘s opening sequence plays on a TV during Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976), giving Hefti’s theme an opportunity to do double-mockery duty.)

“New York, New York” (1981) – The Dictators * Written by Adny Shernoff * Cassette: Fuck ‘Em If They Can’t Take a Joke * Label: ROIR

The Dictators, above every other categorization (proto-punks, hard rockers), were New Yorkers. Part of the fun of their debut album Go Girl Crazy (1975) was hearing vocalist Handsome Dick Manitoba, who wore the same kind of afro as the MC5’s Rob Tyner, doing renditions of California-centric material (“California Sun,” “I Got You Babe,” “Cars and Girls”) in his unmistakably Bronx manner. (Manitoba joined the reformed MC5 as the obvious frontman to replace the deceased Tyner when they reformed in 2005.) But those tracks had the whiff of escape fantasies. Their next two albums, Manifest Destiny (1977) and Bloodbrothers (1978) betrayed a few too many commercial intentions that made them seem vulnerable in a way that betrayed their band name. The chosen title of their 1981 live cassette on the NYC-based ROIR label, Fuck ’em If They Can’t Take a Joke, may as well be understood as their explanation for any previously perceived weaknesses, because it’s their best album. It’s got most of the best tunes from the other releases and includes their crucial “New York, New York,” which is, unlike the Sinatra signature tune, a dispatch from Fear City (a term used in a 1975 union pamphlet to scare off tourists). The song tells of garbage in the streets, dirty air, and fellow citizens worthy of only derogatory names, with an insistent and staccato melody that could, in some other guise, do intro duty for a news hour or movie-of-the-week on WNEW (channel 5). The Fleshtones, also intrinsically New York, do a cover of it as the sole keeper track on the 1996 Dictators Forever Forever Dictators tribute album. On the 1981 source version, though, you get to hear Manitoba close the track by yelling, “you talkin’ to me?!”

Jon St. James’s band SSQ very much resembled Berlin, another Orange County group whose Pleasure Victim EP he had worked on as an assistant engineer. Both combos had four guys handling the programmed instrumentation with a petite female singer out front. Terri Nunn of Berlin and Stacey Swain of SSQ could have been sisters, and the cover art for SSQ’s debut album seemed inspired by the cover art for Berlin’s 1979 debut single. But SSQ were in good hands with St. James, a film and TV placement radar machine whose Casbah Recording Studio accommodated plenty of project traffic. He’d eventually guide Swain to a hitmaking career (as Stacey Q), manage and produce a number of artists such as Anything Box (“Living in Oblivion”) and Candyman (“Knockin’ Boots”), and compose for the big and little screen. If tracks on the SSQ Playback album show their age in celebrating defunct technology, much of the music itself streams comfortably retro in the 2010s (cf. Kraftwerk, Computer World (1981)). Five out of the nine titles refer to machinery that jibes with the record’s overall sound, with the true timepiece being “Walkman On,” referring to the portable audio cassette player that Sony first made available to consumers in 1979. It’s digital music about analog listening, but the Walkman concept lives on and so does this song. (Stacey Q’s electro-dispassion works so well here, but it’s an approach she’d abandon for her chirpy late ’80s Billboard chart assault.) 

The soft-rock Diamond Head from Southern California (not to be confused with the UK metal band) took their name from the famous volcanic ridge mark in the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and although their version of the Dennis Lambert-Brian Potter tune “If That’s the Way You Want It” only reached #106 in Billboard (their only chart appearance), Hawaiian radio spun it like crazy. Info about this band is elusive, but a 1975 B-side of theirs called “Proud to Be Your Slave,” has the distinction of being a curio from the song catalog of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Although Diamond Head are shoo-ins for the recently-conceived “yacht rock” category, as are Steely Dan—thanks to their studio slickness and camaraderie with the genre’s regulars—this record, with its lyrical and musical sardonicisms, calls attention to the otherwise odd fit.

“Run Runaway” – Slade (1983) * Written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea * Produced by John Punter * B-side: “Two Track Stereo One Track Mind” (UK); “Don’t Tame a Hurricane” (US) * Label: RCA (UK); Epic/CBS (US) * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#20); UK #7.

England’s Slade, the early ’70s glam-stomp hitmakers with merely a cult following in the US, found renewed momentum as elder statesmen thanks to festival gigs in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal early ’80s. They were thus all warmed up to capitalize when the American metal band Quiet Riot turned their “Cum On Feel the Noize” into a top 5 US hit in August 1983. Smartly, Slade got some new material ready, and by April 1984, a track called “Run Runaway” became their biggest stateside hit, peaking at number 20. In context, the key line “all things to everyone” points to the track’s crossover appeal in a cliquish market—American Top 40, AOR, and alternative rock stations all embraced the tune (whose guitar lines nodded to the bagpipe rock sound of Big Country). “Run Runaway” also tapped into cozy subconscious memories of a protestant hymn called “There Is a Happy Land” (its opening words: “There is a happy land far, far away”), whose third line melody parallels the third line of Slade’s hit. The track appeared in long form on a late 1983 British release called The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome, shaken free of cultural stereotypes in 1984 with a new cover and title for American release (Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply). The zippy 3:42 single length version celebrated here was 45 only.

The British acoustic guitarist Andy Bole released his debut LP Ramshackle Pier in 1986. Listening to it sends you back to what feels like an era of more sprightly fingerstyle sounds, before the Fahey-revival steam engine started making its rounds. Bole is an internationally-minded multi-instrumentalist who would go on to study hansa veena (a type of Indian slide guitar), and he’s also an experimentalist, with certain tracks sounding like his fingers have turned into pencils, or his guitar has been somehow strung up non-linearly. He’s participated in numerous projects past and present, including Bonfire Radicals, Fret and Fiddle, Shankara, and Daevid Allen’s Glissando Guitar Orchestra. This bouzouki track, called “Pheromones and Incense,” appeared as one of three bonus tracks on the 2004 CD reissue of the Ramshackle Pier LP, although the notes don’t indicate whether it’s an outtake or recorded later.

“Go Lil’ Camaro Go” (1987) – Ramones * Written by Dee Dee Ramone * Produced by Daniel Rey and Dee Dee Ramone * LP: Halfway to Sanity * Label: Beggars Banquet

The Ramones and car songs are among America’s greatest exports. “Go Lil’ Camaro Go,” from 1987 — one of the Ramones’ less celebrated eras — is a merger of those two products. Debbie Harry’s vocal contribution reminds us that upper-register female voices in the car crash records of the early sixties signified angels warning of impending tragedy. Songwriter Dee Dee (not to be confused with the Dee Dee of Dick and Dee Dee) also installs a set of healthy “papa oom mow mows,” knowing that all songs with such machinery turn into classics.

“Easter Parade” (1957) – Freddie Mitchell and His Orchestra * Written by Irving Berlin * 45: “Easter Parade” / “Freddie’s New Calypso” * Label: ABC-Paramount

A 1950 version on the Derby label (for whom tenor sax player Freddie Mitchell led the house band) has greater notoriety as a left-field hit. It reached #7 on the R&B chart, draping Irving Berlin’s candied squaresville melody in cavernous sounds, clanking saloon piano, and spontaneous vibes. But this 1957 redo on ABC-Paramount has more grab to it, sounding premeditated in the sense that the players knew a) that it would work and b) that they were in for a good time. Listen to them hooting in the background.

“Hare Krishna Mantra Chant” (1966) – A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami * LP: Krishna Consciousness * Label: Happening Records

The charm of this 1966 album, one of the primary sources for the rise of Krishna consciousness beyond India (complete with an Allen Ginsberg endorsement on the back), is its simplicity. The message, as demonstrated in track one (presented here), and explained by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhubada himself on track two, is the inner peace one can find through chanting the holy names of Krishna. (See his widely available Chant and Be Happy.) Prabhubada made enough of a countercultural impression that observers were liable to view him as just another contemporary religious cult figure, one of the many who paraded through lifestyle avenues of the late sixties and early seventies. (He had led a two-hour chant of the Hare Krishna mantra at Tompkins Square in October 1966, in many ways kickstarting awareness of the now-familiar mantra, a few months before this album came out.) In truth, Prabhubada was a Vedic scholar and guru with a communicative flair, an eye- and ear-catching branch from the Banyan tree of Hinduism that’s been flourishing for millennia. In multiple interviews, George Harrison has credited this record for adding Krishna Consciousness to his Eastern spiritual menu.

“Adounia Idagh” (2018) – Bombino * Written by Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou * LP: Deran * Label: Partisan Records

The newcomer to the Nigerian Tuareg vocalist/guitarist Bombino (real name Omara Moctar) may approach with skepticism, seeing that his most recent album cover presents him in the visual language of sainthood. But the addictive nature of his music (sung in the Tamasheq language), his guitar command, and his people-power role in Tuareg culture should see the newcomer through. Originally from Niger, he has relocated throughout his life to Algeria, Libya, and Burkina Faso, due to unrest among the nomadic Tuaregs and the significant reality of the Niger government’s attempt to ban guitars. Things settled down by 2010, when he returned to Niger, played triumphant shows, and recorded steadily to build on high-profile acknowledgment, such as a 2008 recording date with three Rolling Stones (Watts, Wood, and Jagger) on saxophonist Tim Ries’s Stones World. His nickname, incidentally, comes from bambino, that most musical-sounding of Italian words. Although Bombino recorded his 2018 Deran (well wishes) album in the king of Morocco’s studio HIBA in Casablanca, its best moments make you feel like you’re nowhere indoors, maybe at the top of a mountain which is the title translation for this track, written by pioneering Tuareg guitarist Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou.