One Stupid Mop

We like music. You should too.

Sam Gopal - Escalator

(download)

Pop quiz music fans: Who would win in a wrestling match - Lemmy or God?

There are two reasons that anybody knows who Lemmy is. Either they've experienced any of the highly influential and identical sounding Motorhead albums, or they've read an article in the mainstream press about his extensive collection of Nazi crap.

Since he doesn't hate Jews and isn't a Nazi sympathizer, I have no problem acknowledging that Lemmy is a bona fide innovator who has outlasted pretty much everything. He's like a heavy metal Keith Richards - he cannot be killed by conventional weapons.

With Motorhead, Lemmy merged the heaviness of Black Sabbath with what would become the speed of hardcore punk. By the time I heard Motorhead for the first time, I already knew about both so it wasn't so much life-changing as it was life-affirming.

One of the first bands that Lemmy was in, though, was this Sam Gopal, an early psychedelic metal band named for its founder. Handling both vocals and guitars, it's hard to imagine that Gopal thought himself worthy to carry on after Lemmy left for Hawkwind. (He did, but I'm not covering any of that stuff.)

Every song on the album Escalator is worth it's space on the album, but the song "Escalator" is the one that really gets me. From the galloping tribal drums to Lemmy's desperate pleading for worship to what ends up as a dueling guitar solo by the end of the track - this is one incendiary slab. Put it this way: I had it up so loud in my headphones today that I nearly blew my eardrums. Not only am I proud of this, but I've done it three more times today. And not just because I planned to post it here.

Oh, and the answer to the question above. It's a trick question: Lemmy is God.


Bouncing Souls - True Believers

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When this came out, I always thought of it in the context of that time. It was right about when, in the popular mind, the definitions of punk and pop punk merged into one, devaluing the former into devastation that it's proud legacy never deserved. Blink 182 was the biggest guitar-based band in America, hundreds of Mtv-approved copycats were enjoying their 1.5-hit-wonder moments, and rebellion was brought to you by Nike, Coke and the letters F & U.

That's just how I heard it at the time, because one wouldn't naturally think of The Bouncing Souls as a band to create a timeless song. Despite the first stanza's direct reference to friends, it applies to virtually anything that one can believe in. That portion disappears before the real song even starts, leaving you with the indelible notions of independence and dedication as the only themes.

It's no "Imagine," but you have to admit that this punk's got a point.

Miriam Makeba - Pata Pata

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The only time I watch commercials anymore is when I forget to fast forward through them. So you can imagine my surprise when I finally snap to the realization that one is on, and Mama Africa's music was in it.

Makeba was among the most talented female vocalists during that format's heyday in the early 60s. She never got as much play as many of her contemporaries, owing partly to the fact that the strong African music influence in a lot of her work simply wasn't popular; the other part is that we still didn't have civil rights here and Africans make white America wet their diapers.

What is extra excellent about her - and the reason I learned about her in the first place - was that she was a badass. Her anti-apartheid work got her banned from her home, South Africa, for some 30 years (that wasn't too huge a problem, since plenty of other countries lined up to take her with open arms). She had a spot on the Graceland tour. She beat cancer. And by the time of her death 2 years ago, she'd even been sent to represent Guinea at the UN.

Boom.


Solex vs Christina Martinez and Jon Spencer - The Uppercut

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Solex hit the scene in the late 90s cutting together a nice groove and a totally different sound. 

Jon Spencer made ear-piercingly addictive noise rock in the 80s, with the emphasis on noise, and then merged punk, blues and noise with the essential Blues Explosion in the 90s.

And Christina Martinez (AKA Mrs. Jon Spencer) brought her own flavor to that blues noise rock with grossly underrated and underheard Boss Hog.

The three have got together for an album, "Amsterdam Showdown, King Street Throwdown," that's got some hip hop, and some blues, and some soul to it. A record like this doesn't come along so often and "The Uppercut" was tough to pick from the album because I can't get the whole damn thing out of my head.