This band has everything that I like – Mott The Hoople looks, finger-tapping, mustaches and a fan club I can join!
I don’t have any idea who Wink were or why they chose to do this to the Beatles, but their treatment is a winner. Nick Gilder take notice – these guys can sing high, harmonize and look stupid almost as good as you can!
Probably from California. Probably their lone release. Probably gonna want to buy it the next time you see it (if you can afford it that is!). And probably gonna keep you up late at night wondering why these guys ever bothered writing original songs at all (the group original B-side is probably closer to the journeyman AOR capabilities of the quintet’s combined perspirations than the stellar A).
Also like that the lead singer’s last name is FUNDERBURK. WHAT A COUNTRY!
Enjoy Wink!
BLUE RAIN, 'LIFE' b/w 'NEW MORNING' (Blue Rain Records, 1986)
Since the local weather lately has resembled nothing quite so much as an Ernest Hemingway death-dream, I figured I would go on with the flood-plain flow and post up this late Louisiana mystery disc produced by a group of Baton Rouge weirdos who previous-to had slogged and smogged their way in unrecorded combos with such arcane names as Vacation Bible School and probably many others.
It's Nineteen Eighty-Six (okay) and only the synth drums give it away. Otherwise no jury in the world would convict you if you had subtracted a few years off of that sum or even reversed the order of the final two digits. I can't decide if Blue Rain were left-over punks, siphoning-off and shooting-up the bad trip residue of such loser antecedents as THE SHIT DOGS or THE ZOOMERS or if they were just hippies who accidentally smoked their way to success.
And success is obviously what they had in mind - why else would they think to include a paste-on map of their home-town on the back of the primitive, over-size picture sleeve? Why, so the major label record companies could come visit them, of course! Also, the combo of business card and the 'thanks to everyone who made this record possible' dedication is always a good local look.
While the A-side of this effort, 'Life,' is cool in its primitive repetition and druggy delivery (did he just rhyme 'Sea of Saragossa' with 'John Dos Passos?'), it's the jumpy, fake U.K. D.I.Y. sounding B-side that here wins honorary Latin distinctions. I only were it was longer.
A cool single still available in mass quantities cheap on ebay from the guy with the seemingly limitless supply of Boyz and Whizz Kids 45s. REAL HEADS KNOW THE DEAL!
Also, for anyone ever in the vicinity of the Red Stick and clutching a copy of this record to their bosoms, make sure to make use of the map on the back and take time out to visit Carville, just to the south: the nation's leading and - to my knowledge - only Hansen's Disease Museum (that's leprosy for those of you not up on the current PC-isms - also, the birthplace of identically-surnamed political pundit James).
Enjoy, but before that, a short ode to the greatest left-handed pitcher of all-time.
'First we'll use Spahn then we'll use Sain Then an off day
followed by rain Back will come Spahn followed by Sain And followed
we hope by two days of rain'
CARL JOHN SATTLER, 'WHEN THE LEVEE BROKE' b/w 'ONE PAGE, ONE PAUL' (LINK, 1985)
I'm not sure I possess the right amount of letters following my surname to properly interpret the AOR tea-leaves of Carl John Sattler's 'Pictures At 23 (Link)' single. You thought they only gave titles to albums? We-he-ll, you obviously don't know Carl John Sattler! He's so high-minded that he not only named this private-press single, he also thought it proper to include a parenthetical in its dubbing (No Augustus Pablo). Think of it as a chaser or an after-dinner mint.
I'm not fooling, I really
don't know what to make of this record besides the fact that it rules in an
extremely ideological fashion. Beatles interview snippets, semi-locked
groove, profanity, whispered backwards lyrics, total Rundgren/Cheap
Trick guitar. An intricate label design and a one sided picture sleeve
only adds to the mystery.
I'm also not sure if Carl John Sattler is the performer or the
songwriter here. In any event, I think the b-side 'One Page, One PAUL' totally rules. A proper paean to the clearly better Beatle.
One year past Orwell: here we are. This is Bobb Trimble with a perm and a degree in the humanities if his life's ambition was to to be a guitar tech for Boston or Crack The Sky. Enjoy then and please make sure to circulate your papers before next week's seminar and to be prepared to discuss romantic facts of musketeers and the mongrel dogs who teach.
