Your Sister’s (Record) Rack: Singles, Part 10 – B-sides!

We wrap up our Labor Day singles sock hop rock-a-thon with a few B-sides, some very famous, some legendary and some totally unknown.

In 1970 Led Zeppelin cut its classic Led Zeppelin III, and the first single off that album was “Immigrant Song.”  The flip side was “Hey, Hey What Can I Do.”  The song was the only non-album track Zeppelin would offer up during its career, and for the longest time the only way you could hear it was on a scratchy single (or through the benevolence of a local radio DJ), but it’s since appeared on some Led Zeppelin box sets and as a bonus track on the Coda CD.

MP3: “Hey, Hey What Can I Do” by Led Zeppelin

Elvis had a pink cadillac, John Prine called an album Pink Cadillac, and Bruce Springsteen cut “Pink Cadillac” during his sessions for Born In The U.S.A. in 1984.  Appearing on the flip of “Dancing In The Dark,” Springsteen’s Cadillac got a lot of mileage during his 1984-85 world tour and received radio play worldwide.  The song has since appeared on a few of the Boss’s compilations and Tracks sets.

MP3: “Pink Cadillac” by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band

Townes Van Zandt is perhaps the godfather of Texas singer/songwriters.  Before his death in 1997 he wrote and recorded a number of classics, and he has influenced the current generation of Lone Star pickers, like Steve Earle and Robert Earl Keen.  “Dirty Old Town” is the Ewan MacColl song most famously covered by The Pogues, and Townes cut it in 1996 at one of his last recording sessions.  “Dirty Old Town” is the B-side of “Riding The Range,” released on single by a German company in 1999.

MP3: “Dirty Old Town” by Townes Van Zandt

SXSW Fever Begins: Cheap Trick to play free outdoor show

The big South-by-Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin has begun its annual preseason of rumors, speculation and the occasional announcement … with the very real confirmation that pop-punk-rockers Cheap Trick will play a free show at Austin’s Auditorium Shores park on Friday, March 19.  Opening act will be the BoDeans, who will have a new album out this spring.

These big shows are official SXSW events designed for the locals who don’t want to go to other “official” SXSW showcases.  In recent years, the 0utdoor concerts have featured acts like Spoon, Ian Hunter, Rosanne Cash, Public Enemy and Mastodon.  These free shows will usually feature more recognizable names, as opposed to the literally thousands of emerging artists that SXSW is supposed to be about promoting.  However big stars like Kanye West and Metallica slipped in last year to steal a lot of the thunder from the new bands, so we wonder if SXSW will continue that trend this year.

SXSW music festival official website

Live: Batfest, Austin

Two million freakin' bats!

They sure love their bats in Austin, Texas.  About 2 million bats live under the Congress Avenue bridge and just about every summer night people gather along the busy bridge around dusk to watch these bats come out from their hiding places and fly out into the night.  Look closely at the photo above – those are people lined shoulder to shoulder along the bridge.

Review: BoDeans, “Still”

In the 25-year history of Wisconsin roots-rock outfit the BoDeans, the name of producer extraordinaire T-Bone Burnett pops up intermittently.  Burnett produced the duo’s 1986 debut album, he was on board when “Closer To Free” hit the Top 10, and now Burnett is back at the helm for the BoDeans’ newest, Still.  Roots rock of the sort crafted so effortlessly by Kurt Neumann and Sammy Llanas likely belongs to a long-gone day and age, but a few repeat listenings of Still may make the tunes sound fresher than they really are.  Nonetheless, the opener “Pretty Ghost” is appropriately spooky, while “Lucille” has an irresistible garage-rock thump.  While the rest of the songs seem to spin off into the land of been-there-done-that, the boys’ blended voices still sound great.  Any producer — no matter how big the name or how deep his bag of studio tricks may be — can manufacture that kind of magic.  A quarter of a century down the line, the BoDeans still have at least that goin’ for them … and that’s plenty.  You should catch them live if you can. 

MP3: Everyday

The BoDeans official website