The Stooges - Dirt

Friday. Noontime. I’m getting stuff done today, thanks to several cups of my favorite stimulant, a 45 furious minutes on/15 calm minutes off intensity, and a virtual stack of albums starting with all three legit Stooges albums in order. Tore through The Stooges psychedelia, into the perfect bruising genius of Fun House now, with Raw Power still to come.

On deck: Pink Flag; Playing with Fire; Heaven’s End; Loveless; The Clash; London Calling; Signals, Calls, and Marches; VS.; and some Coltrane’s Sound or The Sound of Things to Come to cool me down. So yeah, pretty much the usual suspects, just end-to-end with the volume jacked to 11.

The Modern Lovers - I’m Straight

This track is just wry attitude and self-deprecating confessional, the epitome of being cool by being entirely uncool.

Could’ve sworn I posted this track before, but a quick search reveals no Modern Lovers tracks…maybe Tumblr search weirdness, maybe my own brain deficiency…

The Zakary Thaks - Bad Girl

1966 garage rock from Corpus Christi, Texas, off the Nuggets compilation. This is straight proto-punk energy from a band I’d never heard of, from goddamned Texas, before anyone had any interest in this sort of song. Cool.

As a follow up to that last post, here’s screenshot of Eric Burdon from the House of the Rising Sun video - that is a hostile and mutinous look, not exactly the scrubbed British Invasion pop star idea his management was probably hoping for. That’s a precursor to Johnny Rotten right there.

Just a simple glance at his ensuing career, and the incessant changing of the backing bands, tells me he was probably a grade-A asshole, but whatever…guy had the voice of a god.

The Animals - House of the Rising Sun (via YouTube in HD)

I had to include this on a proto-punk mix I’m putting together, if only for the wailing organ solo and desperate vocals…and proto-punk is an ad-hoc genre anyhow, so who’s going to tell me differently? That is an aggressive song for today, never mind 1964.

(Note: in the interest of full disclosure, I don’t think I’ve yet conceived of a mix that I couldn’t fit House of the Rising Sun into.)

The Kinks - I’m Not Like Everybody Else

Proto-punk gem from the ever-underrated Kinks. Seething, defiant, caustic lyrics around a simple, driving riff.

And I don’t want to live my life like everybody else,
And I won’t say that I feel fine like everybody else,
‘Cause I’m not like everybody else,
I’m not like everybody else.