Amyl and the Sniffers – "Shake Ya" (2019)

There’s the park where we first made it

A memory that is worth saving

Amyl and the Sniffers was formed in 2016 by four Australian housemates.  Their first release was a four-song EP that they say was written and recorded in 12 hours. 

2 or 3 lines featured the group’s “Guided by Angels” on Groundhog Day of this year.  It is such a great record that I decided to check out some other Amyl and the Sniffers music.

“Shake Ya” sounds a lot like “Guided by Angels,” and the same is true of the other Amyl and the Sniffers tracks that I checked out.  I don’t have a problem with that.  (Do you have a problem with that?)

Amy Taylor

Something else I don’t have a problem with is the group’s lead singer, Amy Taylor, who once explained why the group named itself for the recreational drug amyl nitrite thusly:  “[Y]ou sniff [amyl nitrite], it lasts for 30 seconds and then you have a headache – and that's what we're like!”

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Click here to listen to “Shake Ya,” which was released in 2019 on the group’s eponymous debut album, which won the ARIA award for Best Rock Album that year.  (An ARIA award is like a Grammy, only it’s Australian.) 

Click here to buy “Shake Ya” from Amazon.

Plastic Penny – "MacArthur Park" (1969)

Pressed in love’s hot, fevered iron

Like a striped pair of pants

(They sure don’t write song lyrics like those any more!)

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Serendipity is a very underrated force in our world.  To wit:

I was scrolling down the list of the zillion obscure records that I’ve heard in my car and made note of over the past few years, intending to feature them on 2 or 3 lines someday.  (There’s no way I will live long enough to get to more than a small fraction of those records, but that doesn’t stop me from continuing to add to the list.)

When I stumbled across a record titled “Mrs. Grundy” by a group called Plastic Penny, I immediately went to YouTube to give it a listen.  While I listened to it, I opened a second browser window and did a Google search for Plastic Penny – who I knew absolutely nothing about.  I was particularly curious about the group’s keyboard player, Paul Raymond, because I thought his playing was the most interesting thing about “Mrs. Grundy.” 

While I was reading about Plastic Penny in general (they were a British psychedelic pop/prog rock band that formed in 1967 and broke up two years later) and Paul Raymond in particular (after Plastic Penny’s demise, he replaced Christine McVie in Chicken Shack, and later joined Savoy Brown and UFO), “Mrs. Grundy” came to an end and YouTube automatically moved on to another recording.

Imagine my surprise when that other recording turned out to be a cover of the record that one critic* has called “perhaps the greatest achievement of Western civilization since the Renaissance” – Richard Harris’s recording Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park.”  Talk about your serendipity!

[Note: that critic is none other than yours truly.]

Plastic Penny’s cover isn’t quite as mad as the Richard Harris original, but it’s mad enough for government work.  (FYI, the SecondHandSongs database lists no fewer than 218 cover recordings of the song.  I have half a notion to spend the next two years featuring each and every one of those covers on 2 or 3 lines.)

I’m not sure what keyboard Paul Raymond plays on “MacArthur Park,” but I’m guessing it’s a Hammond B-3.

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Click here to listen to Plastic Penny’s recording of “MacArthur Park,” which was released in 1969 on their second studio album, Currency:

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

311 – "Down" (1995)

Electrified by the sound

It comes from the down

I’ve always wanted to have a cool nickname – like “P-Nut,” which is the nickname of 311’s Aaron Wills.

In 2011, Paste.com ranked Wills #16 on its list of the 20 most underrated rock bass players, citing his “jaw-dropping technical proficiency,” his “blistering slap technique,” “proficiency with melodic hammer-on riffs,” and his “real ear for tasteful grooves.”  (I’m a keyboard player, so I don’t really understand what any of that means – but it sounds like he’s a pretty sweet bassist.)

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In 2000, 311 created an unofficial holiday called “311 Day.”  Since then, the band has performed an extended concert for their fans every March 11. (Some years, the band hosted “311 Day” on a cruise ship.)

Aboard a “311 Day” cruise

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Click here to watch the official music video for “Down,” which was the first track on their eponymous 1995 album.  It went triple platinum – that means it sold at least 3,000,000 copies.  Among the bands that 311’s members have cited as influences are the Clash, the Cure, the Descendents, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cypress Hill, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, Fishbone, Jane’s Addiction, Faith No More, De La Soul, Public Enemy, and A Tribe Called Quest.  (Not bad!)

Click here to buy “Down” from Amazon.

Doja Cat – "Paint the Town Red" (2023)

She’s the devil

She’s a bad li’l bitch

She’s a rebel

Our marketing department is constantly complaining that our readership skews very “mature” because we feature a lot of really old records.

I’ve responded to their concern by promising to pander more to the younger crowd. . . which explains why we are featuring Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red,” which was released just over a year ago.

Doja Cat

“Paint the Town Red” was a yuuuge international hit, topping the charts in no fewer than 19 countries (including the U.S. and the UK).  It got to 100 million streams on Spotify faster than any other single by a solo female rapper.

But perhaps the truest indicator of the record’s phenomenal popularity is that it was used as the soundtrack it over 600,000 TikTok clips in the first week after it was released.

A brief sample from Dionne Warwick’s 1964 hit, “Walk On By” is repeated throughout the entirety of “Paint the Town Red.”  After the first hundred or so repetitions of that sample, I thought it became just a tad annoying.

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Click here to watch the official music video for “Paint the Town Red.”  (Here’s Rolling Stone magazine’s description of that video:  “The surreal visual sees [Doja Cat] plucking out her eyeball as the audience watches it fall into the depths of hell.  From there, Doja proceeds to cozy up with death, sway with the devil, toss chunks of bloody meat, and ride a gigantic green creature through the sky.”)

Click here to buy “Paint the Town Red” from Amazon.

 

Paul Butterfield Blues Band – "Love Disease" (1969)

Won’t you help me please?

I got that love disease!

I most certainly will NOT help you with your love disease!   I’m pretty sure that it’s contagious, so I plan to keep far away from you!

Just imagine what would happen if I did catch your love disease.  I might give it to someone else, and then I would have some serious ’splainin’ to do!

(FYI, Ricky never said those words on the show.)

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Click here to listen to “Love Disease,” which was written by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s saxophonist, the late Gene Dinwiddie.  It was released on the group’s fifth studio album, Keep on Moving, in 1969.

Click here to buy “Love Disease” from Amazon.

Lipstick Killers – "Hindu Gods of Love" (1978)

I gave up everything to love you

I even broke my vow for you

Why did you give back my innocence?

When all the money I had was spent?

I hate it when there’s no Wikipedia page for a record I want to feature on 2 or 3 lines – it’s a pain in the ass to have to do research!

From maximumrocknroll.com:

A garage-y quartet formed from the ruins of two first-wave Australian punk bands (FILTH and PSYCHO SURGEONS), the LIPSTICK KILLERS played the kind of spunky, glam-tinged rock ’n’ roll that was popular among grown-up punks in the late ’70s.  “Hindu Gods of Love” showcases the band at their best, with a crankin’ guitar that recalls DMZ and a sort of stripped-down jazziness that brings fellow Sydney rockers RADIO BIRDMAN to mind.  

On the single, this hit tune is pushed through a wall of flashy production that gives it a tint of psychedelia.  These guys are really only putting in the tip in terms of punk, as most of their songs read as a “STOOGES-lite” kinda deal and often flirt with a commercial sensibility, though the singer does pepper it up with a good amount of growls and howls that you probably wouldn’t hear much on the radio in that era.  

(“[R]eally only putting in the tip”?  Wow.)  

William Heirens

I assume the band took its name from William Heirens, who confessed to committing three brutal murders in 1946.  He became known as the “Lipstick Killer” because the following message was found written in lipstick on a wall of his first victim’s apartment: “For heAVens SAKe cAtch me BeFore I Kill More I cAnnot control MyselF.”  (For the record, Heirens later recanted his confession.) 

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Click here to listen to “Hindu Gods of Love.”

Click here to order it from Amazon. 

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – "Lucky Man" (1970)

He had white horses

And ladies by the score . . .

Ooooh, what a lucky man he was!

Life was going pretty darn good for the subject of “Lucky Man” for the first three verses of the song.  But things took a nasty turn for him in verse number four:

A bullet had found him

His blood ran as he cried

No money could save him

So he laid down and he died

Oooh, what a lucky man he wasn’t . . . making this the perfect record for a Friday the 13th.

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Greg Lake – who was a member of King Crimson (the numero uno prog-rock group of all time) before leaving to help form Emerson, Lake & Palmer in 1970 – wrote “Lucky Man” when he was 12 years old.  Emerson and Palmer weren’t crazy at first about making it the last track on the group’s debut album, but eventually came around to the idea.

Were you a little surprised to learn that our hero died of a bullet wound?  I was.  With all that stuff about white horses, and satin-clad ladies, and a gold-covered mattress (which doesn’t actually sound all that comfortable), and his countrymen singing his praises, I would have thought he was living in time when swords – not guns – were the weapon of choice.

Click here to listen to “Lucky Man,” which is one of the first rock records to feature a Moog synthesizer.  (Keyboardist Keith Emerson’s knocked it out of the park with his Moog solo at the end of the track – which he pulled off in one take.)

Click here to buy “Lucky Man” from Amazon.

Billie Eilish – "You Should See Me in a Crown" (2018)

You should see me in a crown

I’m gonna run this nothing town

Watch me make ’em bow

In 2018, the 16-year-old Billie Eilish mumbled her way through this song on The Ellen DeGeneres Show while seated on a throne inside a glass box.  

Click here to watch a video of Eilish’s appearance – note especially her pajamas (which have her name printed prominently on them) and the huge CGI tarantulas.  

According to The Ringer, it was the 9th most awkward Ellen performance of that year.  (You can click here if you’d like to see the eight that were even more awkward.)

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Click here to watch the official music video for “You Should See Me in a Crown,” which features animation by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

Takashi Murakami

Click here to buy “You Should See Me in a Crown” from Amazon.