Casey Redmond produces and hosts the show. He is a singer/songwriter, radio dj and podcaster. He has been hosting and producing podcasts for over ten years and has been working in commercial radio since 1992. A native of Cleveland, he currently resides in Ohio’s Hocking Hills.
Below are links to an aircheck of the show and a full episode. Take a listen.
You can catch the Sixties Pop & Rock Appreciation Society on KDUB Radio every Saturday night at 5 (EST).
e-mail: rnrcasey@gmail.com
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| Daddy Stovepipe: Maxwell Street (Chicago) 1963 |
They say you are never too old to change and I may just become a hockey fan yet, thanks to the Zambonis. The ‘Zambonis are a rock n roll band out of Bridgeport, Connecticut that play nothing but tunes about hockey. No love songs, break up songs or car songs, just hockey songs.
Okay, so they put out a couple of songs about hockey, big deal? Right? Try seven albums and counting. They play everything from punk to ska, metal, rockabilly and even country and western.
Mainly a recording act, they do play a few gigs a year mostly in the northeast. Last year they played a 2:30pm gig at a library in Roxbury, Connecticut! How rock n roll is that?
They have been sanctioned by the NHL and have been commissioned to write songs for several teams. There music is available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple etc..and you can checkout there videos on YouTube.
My sister outgrew her Donny obsession about the time he started teaming up with his sister Marie. There popularity was at their peak when they made this 1976 New Year’s Eve Special.
It’s amazing what passed for entertainment back in the seventies. This was the heyday of the variety show and the Osmonds pulled out all of the stops.
Highlights (lowlights?) include:
1. Terribly stupid jokes courtesy of Rip Taylor.
2. Fake out of control laughter by Marie upon hearing Rip Taylor’s terribly stupid jokes.
3. Donny’s over the top synthesizer solo dressed in purple sequined tuxedo & top hat.
4. The Osmond Brothers Band’s weird prog rock/ soul jam dressed in three musketeersesque pastel colored space suits.
5. A music of the 1920s song and dance medley.
6. Insane over the top audience response to all of the above.
These things could only of happened in the 1970s. It is worth checking out. If nothing else. it proves that we have evolved, at least a little, in the past fifty odd years.
Happy New Year.
-Casey Redmond
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| "Under cover of October skies". |
Yesterday was an unseasonably warm day for October. Deciding to spend some time outdoors, I stepped from my house and surveyed the activities that were taking place in my general vicinity. My neighbors were indulging in various labors thar all seemed to end with the letters I-N-G, in other words; mowing, raking and, uhh....working. I am by nature a rather lazy person and since there was a good chance that this could be the last warm and dry day of 2023, I opted for "hammocking" and that, to paraphrase Robert Frost, made all of the difference.
If you are looking to indulge in some laziness today (or any day, for that matter) here is some music to help you enjoy your sloth.
NRBQ (The New Rhythm & Blues Quintet) has been around, in one form or another, since 1965. I have also been around since 1965 and though NRBQ has all the qualities I usually like in a band (catchy retro pop, stupid lyrics, weird tunes) I've never become much of a fan. However, their latest album, "Dragnet" ,is a pretty fun listen. Highlights include, "Where's My Pebble"(I have no idea what this tune is about but it rocks), "You Can't Change People", "Miss Goody Two Shoes", "The Memo Song" and the title cut. If you are looking for weirdness then "Five More Miles" and "L-O-N-E Lone-ly" should suffice.(The last two are like demented Tom Waits music.) Some of the tunes just sort of uhh….end. It's like they ran out of ideas (or time) and just decided to be done. Regardless of how strange or weird, "Dragnet" has a laid back vibe that gives you the feeling that NRBQ isn't taking things too seriously or trying too hard which makes it perfect music for a lazy October afternoon.
This is a great early seventies singer/songwriter album and I am a sucker for seventies singer/songwriter music. Coming out in 1974, this was the begining of the end of Joel's mellow troubador period. In 1977 he would become the king of a arena rock with the release of The Stranger. Yes, Billy would go on and become a rock n roll star but in '74 he was still mining the same territory as his buddy Elton John (who would also go on to become a pretty big rock star). No real hits from this album ("The Entertainer hit #34 on the Billboard charts) but you have great tunes like "Los Angelenos", "The Great Suburban Showdown", "Roberta" and the title cut. With great lyrics, melodies and stellar keyboard work ("Root Beer Rag", "Los Angelenos") Streetlife Serenade is one of Joel's best. That being said, nobody seems to like this record very much. Even Joel himself . But it's a good album to hang out in the backyard to.
Okay, I admit it. Peter, Paul & Mary can be hard to take. All of that earnestness makes me nervous. Plus, I am embarrassed that I like them. While wallowing in my hammock, I nervously scanned my backyard a few times to make sure none of my neighbors were within earshot of all that sincerity. It's not good for one's self esteem to like Peter, Paul & Mary, but we all have our crosses to bare. "Blowing In The Wind", "Early Morning Rain", "Jet Plane", and "Puff The Magic Dragon", what's not to like?. One of my all time favorites is the clueless, "I Dig Rock N Roll Music" which cemented their reputations as hopelessly square doofuses for eternity. (In their defense, they disliked the song so much that they allegedly never played it live.). Taking all of their dopiness into account, what is more relaxing then mellow acoustic tunes about aeroplanes, dragons and peace?
Here are five songs I have been listening to a lot lately. Hope you enjoy.,,
The Night Beats: "Night Beat" CLW Records (Edgewater, Colorado)
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| The Night Beats |
One of my favorite early sixties primitive surf instro tunes. Released as a single on CLW Records out of Edgwater, Colorado. The B-side is a cover of George Gershwin's "Summertime". Not sure if it was a vocal cut or another instrumental.Unfortunaely, I can't find a recording. Were The Night Beats a family band? There seems to be a big age dispairity and the two guys on the end resemble one another but, who knows? For more information on CLW Records, go HERE . Enjoy the tune below.
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| Eric & The Norsemen |
Nothing much happens, to be honest, but it's a quirky character study of a moment captured in time. The hero of the film is a local crank named UFO Bob. The elderly goodnatured UFO believer spends most of the movie pontificating on various pseudo scientific theories, laughing and downing bottles of Samuel Adams beer.
The Dundee Project is not a great movie, to be honest, I'm not even sure you can call it a movie. But if you have thirty minutes or so to spare, take some time to hangout and drink some beer with the denziens of Dundee, Wisconsin. They're worth it. Checkout the trailer below.
***On a sad note, I recently read that Mike Schank of American Movie passed away late last year. Checkout the obituarry in Rolling Stone Magazine HERE
Winter has arrived. Rather rudely, I might add. Like a drunken dinner guest, it showed up late and knocked over the dessert cart. What can you do but hunker down, have a few drinks and crank up some tunes. Here are a few of my favorite songs about winter. There aren't many but these are pretty good.
CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Possibly the Mamas & Papas greatest tune. "I'd be safe and warm, if I was in L.A" sums up many people's thoughts on the subject. Warm? Yes. Safe? Maybe, not.
HAZY SHADE OF WINTER: One of Simon & Garfunkel's rockiest tunes. I always wonder who came up with the guitar lick? Paul Simon, maybe? Simon is actually a pretty good acoustic guitar player, so it could have been him. The Bangles had a hit cover version in the eighties. Susannah Hoffs has such a cool voice. Both bands do it better live, see YouTube for proof.
VALLEY WINTER SONG: Fountains Of Wayne was such an underrated band. Best known for their 2003 hit, Stacy's Mom, they released five albums of great guitar pop. Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger wrote jangly pop songs with Beatlesque harmonies and insightful understated lyrics. Think The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society. Valley Winter Song is no exception. Sadly, Adam Schlesinger died in 2020 at the age of 52 from Covid.
TEN DEGREES AND GETTING COLDER: A folkie Gordon Lightfoot song about a traveling musician freezing his butt off on the side of the highway, trying to catch a ride and pining for a woman. There are a couple of bluegrass cover versions of this song, one by J.D Crowe & The New South and the other by Tony Rice. Both are better than the original. Tony Rice released an album of Gordon Lightfoot covers that is worth checking out
IN THE BLEAK MID-WINTER. This is song is based on a poem that was written back in the 1800s. The poem was popular with soldiers during World War I. If you are a fan of the Netflix series Peaky Blinders, which takes place in the years following World War I, you may have noticed they utter the phrase, The bleak mid-winter, whenever somebody dies. There are many versions of this melancholy winter dirge. Two of my favorites are by James Taylor and Shawn Colvin.
BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE. For some reason this is now considered a Christmas song, although it never mentions the holiday. (Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow & Jingle Bells have suffered the same fate.) It has also become controversial in some circles, but we won't get into that. There are dozens of versions, but Dean Martin's is still the best. Both the original and the one he recorded with Martina McBride. (Of course, he was dead for the later recording, but we won't get into that one either.) I imagine this would be a very difficult duet to sing. Goes down even better with alcohol. But don't they all.
Casey Redmond
January 27, 2022
As a child, we had a scratched up copy of Alfred Hitchcock's "Ghost Stories For Young People". We used to listen to this on long humid air conditionless (hey, it was the seventies!) summer nights. Sitting in a dark room, trying to scare each other. I also was a big fan of Disney's "The Haunted House", an album from the early seventies that actually went gold.
Even though I have been a "grown up" now for going on forty years, I still love Halloween..When the days grow short and the leaves begin to fall, I love nothing more than sitting in the dark on my front porch and listening to these old recordings. Which brings us to, "The Story Of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman".
Most of the spoken word Halloween records I have collected over the years are from from the sixties and seventies but I found this recording on CD back in the nineties. There is no copyright date on the package and what little information I can find says that it was released in 1999 or 2006. I remember listening to this with my kids when they were grade school age which would make the date closer to 1999.
The album was released by an entity called, Sellthrough Entertainment out of Tampa, Florida. The company formed in 1995 and, as far as I can tell, this is the only audio recording they ever released. In addition, there is no information on the voice actors or producers. It's a mystery.
What exactly was Sellthrough Entertaiment? A multi-national conglomerate? A shell company for a shadowy South American arms dealer? A fifteen year old kid making scary spoken word recordings in his bedroom? I like to imagine, all of the above.
This was defintiely a low budget enterprise. From the pakaging to the sound effects to the actors, you can tell this was done with a budget in mind. That being said, it is a fun listen. As the title indicates, the CD containes the tales of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman. Frankenstein is definitely the strongest and the Wolfman the weakest but all of them are enjoyable listen and probably not scary to anyone over seven years of age.
It's worth picking up a used copy on Amazon or Discogs or you can listen to it for free HERE
Happy Halloween
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| Greg Brady; Pre-Johnny Bravo |
Sure, she never got to play twenty minute classical music solos at mach-speed (Keith Emerson) or got to wear a super groovy cape (Rick Wakeman) or make her keyboard sound like love mad muskrats (Daryl Dragon) but she had chops. Check out her harpsichord break on "I think I Love You". Do you need more evidence than that?
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| Emerson, Wakeman & Dragon |
Unfortunatley, Lori was over-shadowed by her ego-maniacal brother, Keith, and her overbearing Mother. After the Partridge's broke up, I thought she might join King Crimson or start her own prog-rock band (The Lori Partridge Experience, perhaps) but, alas, it was not to be.
Instead she joined a law firm in L.A and her hair turned yellow. A sad ending to a once promising career.
The movie was great but I remember being disappointed that Neil had cut off his long hair. At the time, I wanted long hair in the worst way. But, being a Catholic school kid, we couldn’t have long hair because Jesus was against it.
I remember finding this confusing because there were pictures of Jesus all over school and he looked like a Deadhead. He also had blonde hair and blue eyes but was supposedly born in the Middle East. Needless to say, this was a confusing time for me.
Despite Neil’s haircut, it’s a good movie. Check it out.
Which brings us to Neil Young. Contrary to his hippie brethren, I don’t think Neil Young has ever made any attempt to “keep up with the kids”. That being said, it doesn’t make his eighties musical output any less bizarre.
Starting in 1983,Young released a series of weird albums that saw him changing musical genres about as often as he changed his socks. From synth pop (Trans,1982) to rockabilly (Everybody’s Rockin’,1983) country (Old Ways, 1985), synth metal...maybe? (Landing On Water, 1986) to big band blues (This Note’s For You, 1988).
The constant genre hopping not only confused and alienated his audience but also so infuriated his record company that they sued him for, basically, being too weird.
By the early nineties, after putting out several critically acclaimed albums and being embraced by young bands like Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth, he was being hailed as St.Neil and The Godfather Of Grunge and his weird eighties albums were thought of, if they were thought of at all, as a regrettable period in an otherwise stellar musical career.
I purchased most of these recordings at the time of their release and have periodically gone back and revisited them and must say that most of it is at best forgettable and at worst, just plain awful. The only exception to that last statement being 1985’s Old Ways.
Filled with the sounds of fiddles, steel guitars and banjos, this was Neil Young’s attempt to crossover to the country charts. To help legitimize him to the country audience, he even duets on a couple of songs with Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
Although it is now seen as just another one of his weird genre experiments, at the time, Neil gave every indication that he was leaving the rock n roll world to become a permanent member of the country music community. He made the rounds on a number country music talk shows, did a full length tour to support the album and, perhaps to help ingratiate himself to conservative leaning country music fans, even made statements supporting President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy initiatives.
Needless to say his old fans were aghast at all of this, especially his support of Ronald Regan, while the country music establishment didn’t buy the hippie-in-a-cowboy-hat bit. As a result, Old Ways is the worst selling album in Neil Young’s entire catalog.
All that being said, Old Ways is a really good Neil Young record. Despite a lot being made of his use of Nashville studio musicians, the record is not much of a departure from his other acoustic based albums. Think Harvest or Comes A Time with just a little more twang.
Yes, the duet with Willie Nelson, Are There Anymore Real Cowboys and the remake of Gogi Grant’s 1956 hit, The Wayward Wind are a bit corny but the album contains some great original tunes. Bound For Glory, My Boy, Once An Angel and California Sunset can stand with anything on Comes A Time or Harvest Moon and the backing band, a combination of Nashville session heavyweights and some of Neil’s long time collaborators, is stellar.
Old Ways is worth checking out though it can be a little difficult to find. It’s not available on many of the big streaming services but their are plenty of used cd and vinyl copies around. I actually bought a cassette copy on Amazon. How’s that for old ways?
An amazing early seventies set of Blues, Soul, Folk and Gospel from the incomparable Brownie Mcghee and Sonny Terry. This album is a big departure from their usual acoustic duo perfrormances. On this record they really stretch out using a full studio band with guest apperances by John Mayall, John Hammond Jr., Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Arlo Guthrie and Michael Franks (who also wrote three songs on the album). Interestingly, the album cover was designed by Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean fame.
Yes, you will get your fill of straight ahead blues, "Sonny's Thing", "Walking My Blues Away" and the humorous "White Boy Lost In The Blues" but it is the electicism of the material I find most interesting. The album was produced by the legendary Maurice Rogers and, perhaps, he had a hand in pushing the duo to explore more contemporary and experimental material. They cover a couple of Soul classics; Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" and Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" plus a couple of great Gospel songs; "Jesus Make it Right" and the powerful and playful "God And Man" (written by producer Rogers). The highlight of the album may be their stunning rendition of Randy Newman's anti-slavery anthem "Sail Away".
Although they play with band accompainment throughout the recording, the production is laidback and tasteful giving Brownie and Sonny plenty of room to shine. The duo laugh and banter throughout especially on the final track, a cover of the old blues classic "On The Road Again" where they reminisce about their many years traveling the world together.
I've read that despite outward apperances, Sonny and Terry did not get along well off stage. Legend has it that Sonny Terry had been against recording with drums and electric instruments and was unhappy with the results. Things eventually got so bad between the two that though they continued touring they refused to appear on stage together, each bringing their own accompianist and performing without the other.
It's a shame the two couldn't work things out.. It would have been intersting to hear more recordings in this vein. Still it is a great lost blues album of the Seventies and well worth a listen.
--Casey Redmond
So, the story goes that back in the early seventies Cub Koda, the lead vocalist and guitar player for Brownsville Station, wandered into the Orbit Room cocktail lounge at the Brentwood Lanes bowling alley in Detroit and witnessed one of the worst musical performances he had ever seen. In the liner notes of this album Koda describes the experience this way; "Lame out of tune vocals delivered with third rate Elvis imitator enthusiasm...horrid two and three note guitar and sax solos...flagrant disregard for tempo or even remotely keeping their instruments in tune...every song in their repertoire being played in same monotonous key of E natural." Ladies and Gentlemen we bring you, King Uszniewicz And The Uszniewicztones.
King Ernie Uszniewicz (pronounced, You-Sneb-Bitch) was a Detroit vocalist and tenor saxophonist who trolled the Detroit bar band scene back in the seventies. Ernie and his band, the Uszniewicztones (U-Tones for short), landed a five night a week gig at the Orbit Room where their auspicious meeting with Cub Koda resulted in a recording deal with his own 1-Shot record label.
They released a single (Surfin' School/Cry On My Shoulder) and recorded three albums (all produced by Cub himself) before it all fell apart at the end of the decade.
Teenage Dance Party is their first and perhaps best (worst?) album. King U and his right hand man, guitarist Logjam Lurch Patterson, lead the way as the band bludgeons its way through golden oldies like" Little Latin Lupe Lu", "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" and "Greenback Dollar". Highlights include covers of The Novas' "The Crusher" and The Broadside Brass Bed Band's ridiculous, "Little Dead Surfer Girl". Drunk, out of tune, out of control and fun best describes the contents of this album.
Koda lost track of the band in 1979. Their gig at the Orbit Room ended when the bowling alley burned down and Ernie reportedly quit his day job (wrapping produce at a motor city IGA) and left town.
Was there really a band called King Uszniewicz & The Uszniewicztines? Some say it was all a hoax, perpetuated by Cub Koda himself and that Ernie and the U-Tones never really existed. Koda died in 2000, so we may never really know. I like to think they were a real Detroit area bowling alley band. And I like to think they're still out there somewhere. Maybe Ernie split to Florida and is playing nursing homes and senior centers. Just enjoying the good life. Now that's a nice thought.
You can listen to the U-Tones blistering version of "The Crusher" HERE
The North Pole Chimney Shakers are the Artic Circle's premiere (only?) rock n roll band. Consisting of a group of former employees from Santa's Workshop, they spend their days collecting their unemployment checks and watching F-Troop reruns and their nights mixing it up at various North Pole watering holes. Their beer fueled live sets consist of sloppy garage rock and blues covers with a few originals thrown in for good measure. Their first record, the controversial "Mrs. Claus's Blues", not only got them fired from Santa's Workshop, it also got them a brutal beat down from a group of nasty elves and the "Bowl Full Of Jelly" himself. Still, they persevere. You can listen to "Mrs. Claus's Blues" HERE
The North Pole Chimney Shakers Are;
Rock N Roll Casey Vocals, guitars, drums
Lars St. Nicholas: Tambourine, beer runs
Herbie "The Dentist" Usziewicz: Keyboards, bowling
Eddie "The Jingle" Kringle: Musical Saw, hygiene
Songwriter; Rock N Roll Casey
For more information go to:http://cmsr11.weebly.com
If you are looking for some weird creepy sounds this Halloween, look no further than this weird sixties album by the Marty Manning Orchestra, “The Twilight Zone: A Sound Adventure In Space.”
In 1960, the year this album was released, Marty Manning was a renowned conductor and arranger for Columbia Records. In the fifties, he had worked with such luminaries as Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Buddy Greco and Barbara Streisand. He even won a Grammy for his work on Bennett’s “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”.
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| Marty Manning In Action |
Perhaps bored with arranging strings for tin pan alley balladeers, Manning and producer Ernie Altschuler got together and recorded this freaky way out soundscape.
Filled with traditional instruments such as woodwinds, brass, guitars and pianos, Manning and Altschuler also threw in the kitchen sink of sound using a huge array of percussion instruments (marimbas, xylophones, tympani, tuned bongos, tuned logs!?!) and weird futuristic sounding instruments such as the Martinot, the Serpent (a snake shaped brass instrument) the Bazzimba and the Ondioline (an early synthesizer played by Manning himself). Add in the voice of Lois Hunt,who wails throughout, and you get a set of space age bachelor pad circus music from Mars.
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| The Serpent |
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| The Ondioline |
In addition to the cover of “The Twilight Zone Theme”, the album contains such spaced out numbers as, “Forbidden Planet”, “Far Away Places” and “Spellbound Concerto”.
Not sure what exactly the Columbia Records executives thought of all this but it was the last experimental album Marty Manning ever put out. For the remainder of the sixties, he went back to arranging music for such MOR schmaltzmeisters as Perry Como, Sarah Vaughn and Harry Belefonte although he did release a cool 45 cover of “The Tarzan March” in 1966 under the name Marty Manning And The Cheetahs.
Marty Manning died in 1971.
Although it wasn’t a hit in its time, I like to think it was an influence on future prog rock Gods such as, Yes, ELP and King Crimson. Could that make Marty Manning the Father Of Prog? Sure, what the hell, why not?
