brainsplotch

This is probably a bit self-indulgent on my part, but here are the notes I took when listening to The Godfathers' More Songs About Love & Hate. I thought it might be of some interest to some people (and probably completely boring for 99.9 percent of everyone else), but it's my blog and I'll do whatever I want--so there! So here are my musically uneducated off-the-cuff observations of each song on the album: "She Gives Me Love"--Poppiest song on the album? Prominent drumming and wah-wah guitar. Good opener. "Those Days Are Over"--Has an AC/DC "For Those About to Rock" feel with Byrds-y guitar break. Song about dissatisfaction or maybe warfare (either real of metaphorical). "How Low Is Low"--Title says it all. More dissatisfaction sung over a Rolling Stones groove. "Pretty Girl"--This could have been on a mid-'60s beat group album. Simple lovelorn lyrics and "yeah, yeah, yeah" vocals on the outro. "This ...

The following is adapted from and expanded upon an Intagram post I made. There was copy-and-pasting going on, which always seems to irrevocably mess up the font size and font type in Blogger. I recall loving The Godfathers' song "Birth School Work Death" back in 1988. It was full of piss and vinegar, righteous anger, and in the video, the guys in the band looked like extras from The Long Good Friday . For whatever reason, however, I never bought the album. After finally discovering, 32 years after the fact, the no-frills, Clash-meets-AC/DC rock 'n' roll of More Songs About Love & Hate , I now feel the need to dig into their earlier stuff. And in fact, I have finally ordered Birth, School, Work, Death album a mere 33 years after its release. (Update, the disc arrived yesterday and I love it). More Songs About Love & Hate (I assume the title is a nod to Leonard Cohen) largely avoids the cheesy production that mars many '80s albums. It might help that, ...

Mark's latest book report: Arc of Justice, by Kevin Boyle, was published in 2004, won the National Book Award, and I finally got around to reading it (though I took a few breaks along the way). I had the book on my “to read” list for many years. The book is the painstakingly researched and detailed story of Ossian Sweet, a young, successful Black doctor who bought an attractive brick bungalow on the corner of Charlevoix and Garland in an all-white neighborhood on Detroit’s east side. On the evening after Ossian and his wife moved into the house in September 1925, a white mob gathered outside, and chaos ensued. Stones were thrown at the house and shots were fired from an upstairs window. Two people were struck by bullets, one of whom died.  What unfolds is a kaleidoscopic view of 1920s Detroit. The city was a rapidly growing industrial metropolis, with thousands of people of all races and nationalities flooding the city to work in auto (and auto-related) factories. At the same time,...