Year: 2020
Original format: MP3
Probably this should have been part 6, but so it goes. And what if 6 did turn out to be 9, anyway?
Playlist:
This World Is a Veil Shea Whigham
From the first season of True Detective — you know, the good one.
I Got Evil Slapp Happy
“Avant-pop cult favorites Slapp Happy formed in Hamburg, Germany in 1972; there vocalist Dagmar Krause, a veteran of the folk group the City Preachers, first met British experimental composer Anthony Moore, who had previously issued a pair of solo LPs, Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom and Secrets of the Blue Bag, on Polydor. When the label rejected a third Moore record, he instead proposed a pop project, recruiting Krause and New York-born guitarist Peter Blegvad to form Slapp Happy; recorded with input from members of the famed Krautrock band Faust, the trio issued their debut album Sort of… in 1972.” —Allmusic.com
You’re No Good Betty Everett
“[‘You’re No Good’] first became a hit in November 1963 when recorded by Betty Everett for Vee-Jay Records of Chicago…. Vee-Jay’s head A&R man Calvin Carter found the song while visiting New York City in search of material for his label’s roster and he originally intended to cut ‘You’re No Good’ with Dee Clark but, he recalled: ‘when I went to rehearsal with the tune, it was so negative, I said, “Hey, guys don’t talk negative about girls, because girls are the record buyers. No, I better pass on that.” So I gave the song to Betty Everett.’ During the playback of Everett’s track her label-mates the Dells ‘were sitting on the wooden platform where the string players would sit… just stomping their feet on this wooden platform to the beat of the song as it was playing back… I told the engineer ”Let’s do it again, and let’s mic those foot sounds, ’cause it really gave it a hell of a beat.” So we did that, and boom, a hit.’” —Wikipedia
Where Evil Grows The Poppy Family
Written by Terry Jacks of “Seasons in the Sun” fame, this song was recorded in 1971. But I didn’t hear it until it popped up on an episode of Killing Eve, and then it was like, where have you been all my life? Still, it’s good to know there are always new old things to discover.
Blindfold Morcheeba
The tension between this song’s placid surface and undercurrent of dread is never resolved — but it’s a sexy kind of tension.
Toxic David J
You may perhaps remember this song, which was originally performed by a different artist.
Sweat Loaf (excerpt) Butthole Surfers
“There are few experiences in this life that leave one feeling as sullied as a spin through the grooves of a Butthole Surfers record. Unlike so many nouveau scuzzbos, Austin’s Buttholes don’t descend into the depths of squalor to make a point about the human condition — they just like it down there.” —The Trouser Press Record Guide
666 Ray Torske
Apparently Torske couldn’t convince any record company to release this oddly peppy little number about the end times. So he pressed it himself; I found it on a compilation called Enjoy the Experience: Homemade Records 1958-2004.
Six Sixty-Six Larry Norman
“In the ’60s as it does now, Christian rock can evoke balding ministers attempting to rock and singers who substitute ‘Jesus’ for ‘baby’ — and, after a cross into the mainstream, the other way around. But as the ‘Father of Christian Rock,’ Larry Norman never had it easy: He was a pioneer, a heretic, a saint, and a madman. He was outspoken against the Vietnam War, the hypocrisy of the church, and ‘righteous rockers’ who cashed in on God. Pixies frontman Frank Black has been known to cover Norman’s ‘Six Sixty-Six’ in concert.” —NPR.org
The Silver-Tongued Devil and I Kris Kristofferson
Technically I think that should be “The Silver-Tongued Devil and Me,” but Kris needed it to rhyme with “die” — so, poetic license, I guess.
There’s a Devil on the Loose Mavis Staples
“‘It was the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard,’ [Bob Dylan] told AARP Magazine of Uncloudy Day as recently as last year. He first heard the Staple Singers on the radio in 1953, and has often mentioned their influence on him ever since. “It was like the fog rolling in … I knew who Mavis was without having to be told. Her singing just knocked me out.‘ ’Bobby would always say: “Pops has a velvety voice, but Mavis get rough sometimes,”’ Staples says. It’s a line she has used in previous interviews, but they did ‘court awhile,’ after meeting on a TV show in New York in the early 60s. ‘We would write letters back and forth, because we wouldn’t see each other until we were on a festival together,’ she adds. ‘And we’d smooch!’ Dylan also proposed to her, but Staples turned him down, feeling she was too young…. ‘I often think about what would have happened if I’d married Bobby, though,’ she says. ‘If we’d had some little plum-crushers, how our lives would be. The kids would be singing now, and Bobby and I would be holding each other up.’” —Jude Rogers, The Guardian
Are You an Evil Spirit? Ryuichi Sakamoto & David Bowie
Dialogue from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Apologies if you saw the credit and got excited; they never collaborated musically, so far as I know.
The Devil Is Dope The Dramatics
It sounds funny now, but “dope” did not mean “awesome” then.
The Devil Is Gonna Get You The Future Kind
“The Future Kind’s ‘The Devil Is Gonna Get You’ is propelled by a bass line that is plain and simply pilfered from Sly’s ‘Thank You,’ though the vocals owe more to a night in with Funkadelic.” —Acerecords.co.uk
Why You Wanna Do It Willie Harper
A.k.a “Why You Wanna Do It Devil, a.k.a. “Why Do You Wanna Be the Devil.”
Necessary Evil Edgar Jones
It was hard to find information on this song, partly because there are so many songs with the same title — including the one by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.
Necessary Evil Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald
One might call Ella an enabler here, if one wanted to be ornery about it.
The Devil Has Won Otis Blackwell
“Otis Blackwell, who wrote ‘All Shook Up,’ ‘Don’t Be Cruel,‘ ‘Great Balls of Fire,’ ‘Fever‘ and more than 1,000 other songs, and had a major part in shaping the sound of rock ’n’ roll, died on Monday in a hospital in Nashville, where he lived…. Mr. Blackwell’s songwriting legacy is complex because he sometimes used pseudonyms and split authorship credit with others. Many of the songs he wrote for Presley gave both men songwriting credit, because of an arrangement with Presley’s management. ‘I was told that I would have to make a deal,’ Mr. Blackwell later said…. Though Mr. Blackwell had to split his songwriting royalties with Presley, he still collected his share, which was a great deal of money. And Mr. Blackwell, known as a bon vivant, spent it gladly. He once said, ‘I wrote my songs, I got my money and I boogied.’” —New York Times, 5/9/2002
Evil Stevie Wonder
If you read that together it looks like “Evil Stevie Wonder,” which makes me wonder, what would evil Stevie sound like? Pretty damn funky I’d bet.
Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon October 21, 1967 (excerpt) The Fugs
“To figure out how many hippies it would take to encircle 6.5 million square feet [sic] military office space, [Abbie] Hoffman and a friend alternated holding hands, counting body lengths as they circled the building. ‘Everybody knows that a five-sided figure is evil,’ explained Hoffman. ‘The way to exorcise it is with a circle.’ Before long security guards rushed out of the Pentagon and arrested them for littering. (They had put some leaflets on the windshields of cars in the parking lot.) They were brought before a General Services Administrator, at which point the pair explained they would like to obtain a permit to levitate the Pentagon 300 feet. By forming a circle and chanting Aramaic exorcism rites, the monstrosity would ‘rise into the air, turn orange, and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled. The war would end forthwith.’ According to Time magazine, a compromise was reached in the end: a permit was granted, but it only allowed a maximum levitation of 10 feet.” —Timeline.com
True Love Cast Out All Evil Roky Erickson & Okkervil River
R.I.P. Roger Kynard Erickson, 1947–2019.