Many of STAR TREK’s stars have enjoyed double lives… as pop music singers. Hear the dulcet tones of Kirk, Spock and Data, among others, in this episode of NOTES.
NOTES - The Music of STAR TREK, Pt. 2: Kirk Croons! Spock Sings! [5:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Science fiction television music, the final frontier. These are the soundtracks of STAR TREK, Gene Roddenberry’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes daffy 1960s series that spawned spin-offs and motion picture franchises . Your five-minute mission: to explore strange new worlds of music. To seek out interesting composers and musical arcana. To boldly go where this blog has only once gone before!
Listen, pal. They say, “The best revenge is a life well-lived,” and — sitting here in 1959, in Don the Beachcomber’s Dagger Bar, one of Hawaii’s best-known Tiki lounges, sipping Mai Tais from ceramic moai mugs — who are we to question such wisdom?
Revenge. It drives a lot of people into lives well-lived and otherwise, even here in Waikiki. That’s right, even here, in as close to an island paradise as you or I will ever see, bad blood can flow like the Mai Tai you almost spilled ogling that hula dancer a few minutes ago. You don’t believe me? If you’ll unwrap your lips from your umbrella straw long enough to look up at the man behind the piano over there, you’ll see the poor schmo who was backstabbed by a billionaire.
That’s Martin Denny, the pianist who coined the musical genre of “exotica” — and here on the brink of the 1960s, he’s busy living his life very well indeed… to retaliate against Henry J. Kaiser, the filthy rich industrialist who tried to take Denny down a couple years ago.
Y’see, back then, Denny was a prime attraction at Kaiser’s Shell Bar in his Hawaiian Village Resort near here. Denny had put together a crackerjack jazz ensemble that included percussionist Augie Colon (whose bird calls and frog croaks, you’ll undoubtedly recall, helped propel Denny’s cover of Les Baxter’s “Quiet Village” to the top of the pop charts this year), and a prodigious, young vibist named Arthur Lyman, who Denny had discovered working as a desk clerk at the Halekulani Hotel. Backed by talents like these, Denny was the toast of Oahu. By 1957, he was courting invitations to play the Mainland and had landed a recording contract from Liberty Records.
But Kaiser (who had himself poached Denny’s band from Don the Beachcomber in ‘56) didn’t take kindly to the notion of his star crossing the ocean. When blustery browbeating failed to intimidate the pianist, Kaiser got dirty. Before Denny had even booked his passage to the States, Kaiser engaged Arthur Lyman in negotiations sub rosa, offering Denny’s young vibist his departing bandleader’s spot at the Shell Bar. When Lyman left Denny’s group in 1957, he took bass player John Kramer and drummer Harold Chang with him, leaving Denny to scramble for replacements.
Luckily enough, he drew a pair of aces in jazz drummer Roy “the Kidd” Harte and, especially, Julius Wechter, who replaced Lyman on the mallets. Wechter would contribute much to Denny’s subsequent recordings, before moving on to a career that included stints in Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass (for whom he wrote “The Spanish Flea”) and the Baja Marimba Band.
We’ll discuss the Denny-Lyman imbroglio — as well as other blood feuds of exotica — in this space in future weeks. Join us then as we learn more about America’s passion for all things Polynesian at the midpoint of the 20th century. Now, please pass the pupu platter, pal. Because unlike revenge, pupus are not best served cold.
Some songs entertain… others change the world. Learn about one of the latter — a song inspired by an awful, true event, written by a leftist organizer and immortalized by one of the greatest voices in jazz — in this episode of NOTES.
Cowabunga!
Rock n’ roll inspiration lurks in many odd places. Jungle rhythms… military cadences… barnyard squawks… and electronic bleeps — all of these have triggered great rock songs during the genre’s half-century existence. But in the late 1950s and early 1960s, west coast rockers found their muse on the beaches of southern California.
Although the sport of surfing first came to California from Hawaii in the late 19th century, and gained a real foothold in 1907 when it was promoted by the Pacific Electric Railway as a means of drawing tourists to Redondo Beach via the company’s famous “red car” trolleys, it was in 1959 that surfing became a bona fide craze, thanks to its depiction in the hit motion picture GIDGET. The film starred Sandra Dee and James Darren as hot, young surfers, and sparked renewed interest in the sport — as well as a spate of imitative “beach movies.” (Future Academy Award-winner Cliff Robertson also appeared in GIDGET as “the Big Kahuna,” a nickname nicked by the film’s screenwriters from Duke Kahanamoku, the Hawaiian swimming champ credited with inventing the modern form of surfing.)
In the months following the release of GIDGET, the beaches of California were swarmed by “gremmies” and “grommets” “carving” and “boosting” off briny “bumps” and “dunes.” And with the teenaged hordes with boards came peculiar forms of speech, apparel… and, of course, music.
To many people, the phrase “surf rock” will conjure memories of the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. These bands were exemplars of the “vocal” school of surf rock, and derived their tight harmonies from the doo wop groups of the previous decade.
But genuine surf enthusiasts know that the real surf rock action was found on records by instrumental rockers like Boston-born Richard Monsour, who under his better-known identity as Dick Dale stunned his generation with the guitar attack of “Let’s Go Trippin’” in 1961. This record is generally considered the first true surf rock single, and it was quickly followed by other instrumental classics like the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out,” the Chantays’ “Pipeline,” the Pyramids’ “Penetration” and the Tornados’ naughty “Shootin’ Beavers.”
With the popularity of these and like-minded records, labels quickly began assembling their ace sessions men into ad hoc surf combos like the Revells (which included Glen Campbell and Phil Spector’s favorite drummer, Hal Blaine) and the Marketts (who were the collective brainchild of Joe Saraceno, the producer who had already helmed some of the best albums of the Tacoma, Washington-based instrumental group, the Ventures, for Liberty Records).
During the first half of the 1960s, the wave of surf rock grew into a tsunami, traveling far inland before cresting. Bands that hailed from landlocked states like the Trashmen from Minnesota scored surf hits such as “Surfin’ Bird” and “My Woodie.” Even Colorado produced one of the great surf rock songs, when the Astronauts — five young Boulder musicians — touched down on the charts with their reverb-soaked version of Lee Hazlewood’s “Baja.”
They’ve won their place in the public imagination by hitting gongs… tattling tales and making love connections… but many of television’s best-known game show hosts have led shadowy, alternative lives — as pop singers! Come on down — and learn more about the recording histories of Barris, Convy and Woolery, et al., on this episode of NOTES.
The world has shrunken.
So goes a popular platitude… and in an age that has seen cheap and ubiquitous air travel, giant Wal-Marts swollen with NAFTA-enabled foreign goods, widespread international outsourcing of labor and an Internet that allows a toy store in Hong Kong to reach customers in Peoria, this is one saying that rings true today.
Nor has popular music been entirely immune to this trend. Witness, for example, the astonishing career of pop polyglot Manu Chao.
Since emerging as the leader of the influential French rock band Mano Negra in the late 1980s, Chao has perched on the peak of a globe-girdling tsunami of performers and artists willing to draw from the musical palettes of many different countries in the pursuit of their art. The 44-year-old singer-songwriter is a multi-linguist’s dreamboat, his songs an entoxicating blend of French, Spanish and English lyrics set to an equally eclectic montage of relentless dance beats, South American folk flourishes and comically flatulent synth riffs, leavened liberally with musique-concrete samples galore. Listening to one of his albums is like undertaking an international tour at supersonic speeds — around the world in 80 minutes.
His role as a global synthesist came naturally to the young man born as Oscar Tramor in Spain, but raised in France, the son of well-regarded novelist and journalist Raymond Chao. As a teenager, Chao the younger came under the influence of U.S. rockabilly and British punk rock — especially the Clash. He was also inspired by the music of the Spanish Revolution. He formed his first band, a French rockabilly combo called Les Hot Pants, in the early 1980s.
But in 1986, Chao came together with his brother Tonio and his cousin Santiago Casiriego to create the band that would secure him a place on the world stage of popular music. Mano Negra (named after a Spanish anarchist organization) scored a major French hit with the song “Mala Vida” from their 1988 debut album PATCHANKA, drawing the attention of Virgin Records, which signed the band worldwide the following year.
Over the next five years, Mano Negra became huge stars the world over… except in the United States, where their glossological dexterity made them a marketing challenge. The band called it quits in 1994. But Chao’s career was far from over. Four years later, he issued his debut solo album, CLANDESTINO, which included the huge international hit, “Bongo Bong,” a re-recording of an old Mano Negra number that benefited greatly from its lazy, insistent hook and silly, sotto voce lyrics.
Since then, Chao has continued to defy generic boundaries with subsequent releases like his sophomore effort, PROXIMA ESTACION: ESPERANZA, which found the artist sprinkling Caribbean rhythms into his unique musical stew. Already a superstar in much of the world, and with his profile growing within the United States, it is safe to say there will be more border-crossing to come from this musical alchemist.
We’ll further examine the career of Manu Chao in this space in the near future. Join us then for a look at an artist who, in helping shrink the globe, has enormously expanded the world of pop music.
Gospel… rhythm n’ blues… soul music… you name it. For more than half a century, the Staple Singers transcended generic boundaries with their groundbreaking, funky grooves and relentlessly positive message. Find out more about the family that merged the blues of Charley Patton with the swing gospel of Thomas A. Dorsey and taught a generation to respect itself.
Like some unholy rubber monster from a Japanese daikaiju movie, punk rock of the late 1970s and early ’80s was a chaotic, multi-headed creature.
Sprouting from one wire-hoisted vinyl neck were the pop stars — bands like the United States’ Ramones, Britain’s Buzzcocks and Ireland’s Undertones, whose notion of punk was bubblegum pop played at blistering speed on buzzsaw guitars. Bobbing violently next to them were the political bands like the Clash and Stiff Little Fingers, who saw in punk rock’s populist ethos a platform for their anti-racist, anti-imperialist jeremiads. And then there were the nihilists, the punks whose sloppily played pogo rock and boozy, self-destructive lifestyle were inspired by the pessimistic puke-in-public shenanigans of the Sex Pistols.
The latter camp represented the punk rock that struck the loudest chord in the United States, especially on the west coast. The spirit of late-1970s American youth was typified by director Jon Landis’ cinematic celebration of inarticulate anarchy, ANIMAL HOUSE, which grossed more than 60-million stateside dollars. Simultaneously, the rise of skateboard culture in California set the seedy club stage for bands like the Germs and Henry Rollins’ Black Flag, whose songs like “Lexicon Devil,” “TV Party” and “Six Pack” glorified anomie and apathy in 4/4 time.
But standing out amidst the believe-in-nothing bands that burst onto L.A.’s late-’70s music scene was one group that not only rejected their fellow punkers’ easy indifference, but did so with uncharacteristic instrumental virtuosity and a nod to pop music’s past. X, the Los Angeles-based quartet formed by married couple John Doe and Exene Cervenka, was unlike any other California punk band in almost every way. Eschewing the juvenile profanity of Black Flag in favor of a lyrical poetry that had more to do with Rimbaud and Kerouac than Rotten and Vicious, and substituting the rhythmic precision of rockabilly guitarist Billy Zoom’s amped-up fretwork and classically-trained drummer D.J. Bonebrake’s pounding gallop for the discordant din of their peers, X started to develop a devoted following almost as soon as they formed in 1977.
And they set themselves apart again three years later when they enlisted ex-Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek to produce their first album, LOS ANGELES, for the independent label Slash Records. Manzarek would go on to helm three more long-players for X, becoming almost a fifth member by supplying sinewy organ to songs like “The World’s a Mess (It’s in My Kiss)” and their adrenalized cover of the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen.”
Although X signed with Elektra Records in 1982, saw their music videos placed in high rotation on MTV and even secured a gig on Jerry Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy telethon(!), they never managed to escape the ghetto of critical adulation. Doe and Cervenka divorced in the late 1980s (with Cervenka later remarrying LORD OF THE RINGS actor Viggo Mortensen), but X never officially broke up, and the band still performs sporadically.
We’ll talk about X’s incendiary career again in this space. I hope you can join us when we further examine a band whose “unheard music” still excites almost 30 years after its recording.
When Philadelphia’s “gentle Don,” Angelo Bruno, wanted to make his daughter’s wedding special, he called his old buddy, Sam Giancana… who, in turn, told Frank, Dean and Sammy to be there, capish? Learn how, when Sam said, “Jump!” the Rat Pack asked, “How high?” in this episode of NOTES.
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