Blotto Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

What’s the best B-side in music history?

CSNY, Beatles, Petty, The Clash

Super Black Market Clash Greg Burgas, curse him, asked “What’s the best B-side in music history?” Wait, it gets harder.

“I should clarify that I’m looking for songs that don’t appear on any of the band’s albums (unless it’s on a compilation from years later).” OK, let me think about this.

Greg came up with Hey, Hey, What Can I Do, the B-side of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song from 1970, which is a fine choice.

The first ones I thought of were a pair very much on the nose. The B-Side by Blotto is the flip of When The Second Feature Starts. Of course, I own this vinyl relic of the Albany-based band. It later shows up on a Blotto CD collection. Our “B” Side I first heard on Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1965-1975. B-side of Shambala.

Find The Cost Of Freedom is a simple but effective song on the B-side of Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Actually, NEITHER song was on a studio album until a greatest hits collection. Both do appear in live versions on their 4-Way Street double album.

Some radio stations I listened to liked playing Sugar Mountain by Neil Young in the early 1970s because of its seemingly mysterious origins. The live cut was the B-side of The Loner (1969) before it showed up on the Decade collection in 1975.

Fab

Dealing with The Beatles was complicated because there are a number of songs that were on US LPs but not initially on UK albums. Sticking to the US criteria, I am a sucker for I’m Down, which the Beatles performed at Shea Stadium, then ABC-TV aired the following year.

Some songs I’d count ended up on that Hey Jude/Beatles Again album: Rain (B-side of Paperback Writer), Old Brown Shoe (w/ The Ballad of John and Yoko), and Don’t Let Me Down (w/Get Back). I remember that Kelly correctly highly praised the latter.

And speaking of Beatles, sort of, One Day At A Time is a John Lennon song that Elton John put on the B-side of his version of – can you guess? – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

I have a certain fondness for Surfing and Spying by the Go-Gos, the B-side of Our Lips Are Sealed. It’s in part because when I saw the band at J.B. Scott’s in Albany in the early 1980s, it was the ONLY song they performed that wasn’t on their debut album, Beauty and the Beat.

Time to cheat

OK, there are tons of B-side ALBUMS, e.g., here which reminds me of other B-sides I own.

Elvis Presley Blvd. – Billy Joel is on the flip side of Allentown. It’s an OK tune.

There’s a slew of tracks I like on The Best Of 1980-1990 by U2.

Gator On The Lawn – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the B-side of “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me),” July 1981 a great rockabilly song at 95 seconds. It’s on the boxed set. Greg, I may have put this on one of those mixed CDs we used to exchange.

One of Greg’s commenters suggested The Kinks’ I’m Not Like Everybody Else. The A-side is Sunny Afternoon. I have it on a compilation.

But, and I may be missing some, I’m going to select Mustapha Dance by The Clash. It is a dub version of Rock the Casbah, and the B-side of that 1982 single. It appears on Super Black Market Clash, an album I love.

Finally, I recommend to you Attack Of The Killer B’s. This is NOT the Anthrax album, but rather a 1983 Warner Brothers various artists compilation. It contains, among others, the very weird Walk The Dog by Laurie Anderson, the B-side of O Superman.

I find there is never “nothing to do”

“This is theater as teaching tool, artistic expression and catharsis”

Hers One of my pet peeves – nah, it’s stronger than that, more an irritation – happens when I hear folks from around the Capital District say, “There’s nothing to do around here.”

For instance, last weekend was chock full. On Friday, author L. Lloyd Stewart spoke at my church about his 2013 book The Mysterious Black Migration 1800-1820: The Van Vranken Family and Other Free Families of African Descent in Washington County, New York.

Now mostly rural, Washington County, not far from Albany, is not a place people around here think of as an African-American stronghold. But the growth of free blacks, and slaves – the institution didn’t end in the Empire State until 1827 – was huge.

Saturday night, the Albany High School Theatre Ensemble challenged “gender conformity and misogyny in its… production of a student-written played called HERS: An Explanation of Our Expectations.”

Times Union newspaper critic Steve Barnes wrote: “This is theater as teaching tool, artistic expression and catharsis, for the performers and their audience, and it is often deeply moving to experience.” It was so much so that our daughter went AGAIN on Sunday afternoon.

Instead, I went to Remembering a Life of Words, Art and Music, celebrating the life of Greg Haymes, a/k/a Sarge Blotto a/k/a Will Bill Hayes, et al.: musician, writer, artist and Nippertown founder. I saw a LOT of people I’ve known over the years, such as intellectual property lawyer Paul Rapp, a/k/a drummer F. Lee Harvey Blotto, and photographer/critic David Brickman.

Peter Lesser from The Egg, the venue where the event took place, started things off. Sara Ayers, true love of Greg. was wonderfully gracious. Then Paul Jossman (guitarist Bowtie Blotto) and Bill Polchinski (guitarist/songwriter Broadway Blotto) gave touching and funny tributes to their band mate.

Michael Eck (Ramblin Jug Stompers) was particularly emotional. Local musician Bryan Thomas spoke of Greg’s encouragement. Kirsten Ferguson discussed Greg’s light touch as Nippertown editor. The aforementioned Steve Barnes marveled how Greg could know EVERYTHING about what was happening in the local music scene.

Rosanne Raneri and Steven Clyde sang and played a Jefferson Airplane tune. Then there was proper New Orleans sendoff with The 2nd Line Driveby Jazz Band. A wonderful celebration.

We were so busy that weekend, we didn’t make it to the annual Greek Festival. Monday night, I had three choices of activities, including something promoting the census; I did none of the above.

This is not a complaint, but most of my weekends have been very busy all year. There’s NEVER “nothing to do.” I can tell as my email queue gets longer and my prepared blog post list gets shorter.

Music throwback Saturday: Blotto

Metalhead by Blotto featured guitarist Buck Dharma.

For Ask Roger Anything, Tom the Mayor, who used to work at FantaCo, the now-defunct comic book store in Albany, NY, inquired:

What is your favorite Blotto song (For you Albany people)?

For you non-Albany people, Blotto was a popular local band who performed with humor and panache. Like the Ramones, the various performers took on the S-less band name as their surname. It was vocalist Sarge, bassist Cheese, guitarist Broadway, guitar-vocalist Bowtie, and drummer Lee Harvey Blotto. Female lead singer Blanche joined the band for a while, then quit, and was replaced by Chevrolet Blotto.

As you know, Tom, FantaCo sold the band’s various EPs, their single, and the album Combo Akimbo during the 1980s. The cover was designed by the late John Caldwell. I hung out with some of the guys at a Troy diner after the funeral of FantaCo mainstay Raoul Vezina back in 1983.

Cheese died back in 1999. He was also known as Keith A. Stephenson.

I still come across a couple of the fellows now and then. Sarge, a/k/a Greg Haymes, is a music writer, and co-creator of the Nipper Town website; he reposted an interview from 1980. F. Lee Harvey, a/k/a Paul Rapp is an intellectual property lawyer.

From Wikipedia: “The band in its current incarnation (Broadway, Bowtie, Sergeant, F. Lee Harvey, Clyde, and Hammerhead Blotto) is still active, and has reunited for occasional concerts in the Albany area.”

My five favorite Blotto songs:

5. She’s Got A Big Boyfriend HERE. I especially like the call-and-response. “I’ll make him laugh.” “He’ll break you in half.”

4. I Wanna Be A Lifeguard HERE or HERE. This was the 36th video played on the first day of MTV, I read, and got played a LOT. I’m surprised that the single never charted.

3. Goodbye Mr. Bond HERE or HERE. It has every 007 cliche.

2. Metalhead HERE or HERE. This was an over-the-top parody, which eventually found its way onto a compilation album called “Metal for Breakfast.” The song DID feature guitarist Buck Dharma from Blue Oyster Cult.

1. We Are the Nowtones HERE or HERE. The part “she can sound like Linda/she can sound like Joni” floored me when I first heard it. “Play something good!”

John Caldwell

John Caldwell was also known locally for that great cover he did for the Blotto album Combo Akimbo.

I have no idea how Tom Skulan, owner of a comic book store in Albany called FantaCo, where I worked for several years, got John Caldwell to allow us to publish one of his books. Mug Shots: A splendid collection of cartoons by John Caldwell came out in September 1980, just in time for the second FantaCon convention. The book was a 64-page trade paperback, with a wraparound cover by Caldwell.

I was surprised because I knew John’s work, if not his name, from the magazine NATIONAL LAMPOON, from which some of the strips had previously appeared, along with the SATURDAY REVIEW. Yet John was willing to let a publisher with a minimal record put out his book.

I should note that the sales were not terribly robust, but only because it didn’t appeal to the superhero-driven comic distributors we were dealing with. My personal copy is nearby the computer in our home office.

And John Caldwell not only showed up at FantaCon that year, and a few other events, he was a witty, pleasant, not at all arrogant guy. My friend Bill Anderson wrote: “I’m immeasurably saddened to learn of the death of the wonderfully funny and friendly John Caldwell. Meeting, and getting to spend time with, John was a highlight of the early FantaCons for me. Here [below, is one of] two drawings I own by John: a huge sign that he drew for his table at FantaCon (which I literally yanked from his hands as he attempted to throw it away after the convention).”

He was also known locally for that great cover he did for the Blotto album Combo Akimbo. One of the Blotto folks, Sarge remembers John.

On Facebook, MAD magazine expressed its profound sadness as well at the “passing of longtime MAD writer/artist John ‘Hammerhead’ Caldwell:
“John became one of ‘The Usual Gang of Idiots’ in October 1978, MAD #202. Over the years he contributed hundreds of pages to the magazine. He received the enduring nickname ‘Hammerhead’ after mailing a piece of his original cover artwork to the MAD offices wrapped between two flimsy pieces of cheap cardboard, the kind you would expect to get when buying a dress shirt at the Dollar Store. The artwork was almost destroyed in the mail.”

The last time I saw John was an unexpected meeting at the Albany Institute of History and Art a few years back. He remembered the guy who shipped out those Mug Shots for FantaCo. One fan wrote: “I have a whole case [of Mug Shots] buried away.” We both thought that John Caldwell, with his off-center sense of humor, would have appreciated the joke.