3 posts tagged “southern rock”
About four years ago I heard a song on the radio while driving to work (back when I lived too far away to walk), and it sounded like vintage Van Morrison, but I had never heard it before. My web searches for the few lyrics I could remember turned up nothing beyond a message on a lyrics forum asking "What's the song that sounds like Van Morrison with lyrics about smiling through the rain and laughing through the pain?", but with no messages in response. I gave up, but tonight I heard the song again in a restaurant; the staff couldn't help me (wouldn't you know they used to have a screen that would show what song was playing on their Muzak service, but they got rid of it), so I listened hard to try to remember a few more of the lyrics. And it paid off: the song is not by Van Morrison, but by the American "Southern Rock" band Wet Willie, the title track and hit single (unbeknownst to me!) from their 1974 album Keep On Smilin'--
Don't try to tell me they weren't going for a Van Morrison vibe on that one. The only song I ever knew by Wet Willie was the less successful "Street Corner Serenade" from 1978--
Which never struck me as sounding like Southern Rock, but maybe the bulk of their other material did; and being from Alabama they were southern by geography if not capital-S Southern by sound. More research is required on my part, obviously.
A few days ago Jeff was looking for an unlikely cover of a disco song; that reminded me of something I came across last year, a disco cover of an unlikely song. Yardbirds disco, anyone? If that's not weird enough, the chorus turns into southern rock! (At around 2:20)--
The recorded version is actually twelve minutes long, and it is strangely mesmerizing; I listened to all twelve minutes of it without being able to stop it. More than once, too. Solid Goldberger has the whole track here.
It didn't take me as long to get Jo Jo Gunne's "Run, Run, Run" as it did to get UK's Danger Money, but it did take me over twelve years to identify it. One night in 1994, driving home to Mt. Airy, Maryland, from Frederick, I had the radio on and heard a fantastic song that sounded like a combination of glam rock and electric blues, but I didn't catch what it was (because they probably didn't even announce it). It bugged me ever since, but I didn't remember any details about the song that would help me to find it. Then late last year, while sampling an oldies compilation on Amazon, there it was again! I finally knew what it was! And I got it! Hallelujah! I listened to it over and over for days.
Jo Jo Gunne formed in 1971 and featured Jay Ferguson as lead singer, heard recently here fronting Spirit. (Bassist Mark Andes had also defected from Spirit.) Jo Jo Gunne had a more down-to-earth sound than the psychedelic Spirit, using a lot of slide guitar for a Southern Rock sound, while incorporating the throbbing beats, handclaps, and shout-alongs of British glam rock. Pretty cool stuff that I somehow completely missed the first time around (though I think I remember seeing their records and passing them up because I thought the band name sounded stupid).
The band broke up in the mid-70s, with Jay Ferguson moving on to a solo career, for better or for worse. But since every band is required to reform after twenty or thirty years apart, Jo Jo Gunne is back together, with a new album and everything. Based on my experiences with other albums by reconstituted old bands, it may be a while before I get around to listening to it.
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