The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast
The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast celebrates the magic of live music through sharing personal stories. Each week, our guests will share their stories of different shows that were memorable and meaningful to them. We’ll also have concert reviews and conversations with musicians and crew members who put on those live shows. By sharing their stories, we hope to engage you - our audience - to relive your live music memories also. So please join us every week as we explore the transformative power of live music that makes attending concerts not just entertaining, but essential. This is The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast, where every concert tells a story.
The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast
Episode 50 - Hidden Gems, Vol. 1
Welcome to our milestone 50th episode! This special installment kicks off a new series called 'Hidden Gems,' showcasing great rock songs that were never hits. To be featured, songs must have failed to break into the Hot 100 top 40, come from defunct acts, and be available on both Apple Music and Spotify.
This week, we'll hear songs from a guy named Kim, a band that once opened for Jimi Hendrix and then released their first studio album in 2018, and Pete Townshend's brother-in-law. So come celebrate 50 episodes with us, and dive into some lesser-known but awesome tracks, all this week on The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!
00:00 Introduction to the 50th Episode Celebration
01:26 Criteria for Selecting Hidden Gems
02:33 Hidden Gem #1
07:15 Hidden Gem #2
10:41 Hidden Gem #3
14:02 Hidden Gem #4
16:14 Hidden Gem #5
18:51 Hidden Gem #6
23:02 Wrap-Up
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Welcome to the Rock-N-Roll Show podcast. I'm your host, Alex Gadd and this week we're going to do something special to celebrate our 50th episode. Yeah, that's right. It's our 50th episode. We're starting a new series where we'll share some songs that we really like, but for whatever reason, they were never a hit. We're calling the new series Hidden Gems, and we'll try to do one of these every month or so. What makes a song a hidden gem? Well, it starts with a song that we really like. From there, we used only three rules. One, the song never got into the top 40 on the hot 100 singles chart. Number two, the act is no longer together. And number three, the song is available on both Apple Music and Spotify. So please join us for our 50th episode, sharing some of the less familiar but just as cool rock songs that should have been a bigger hit coming up right now. I've always enjoyed turning my friends onto cool songs. It sound like they should have been huge hits, but never were. Now, I'm gonna do that for all of you. Of course, there's always a chance you've heard some of these songs, especially if you're a music nerd like me. So if you have, I hope you'll enjoy revisiting them again. But if you haven't, I hope you find some hidden gems within. As I mentioned, the only parameters that we're using to choose these songs for this week's show were that the song wasn't a top 40 hit in the US, that the act is no longer actively making music or touring, and that the song has to be available on both Apple Music and Spotify so that you can enjoy it. That's it. That means though that songs like Tommy TuTone's 867-5309/Jenny isn't on this list despite the fact that I loved playing this song in my cover bands, because it was a one hit wonder that topped out at number four on the hot 100 singles chart. Amanda Marshall's Birmingham is one of my all time favorite songs, but it won't be included here because she's been touring and releasing new music again for the past few years, at least after being inactive for the beginning of the century. Finally, both Bottle Rockets' Radar Gun, and Don Dixon's Praying Mantis aren't on this list because neither is currently available in the US on either Apple Music or Spotify, even though they're two of my favorite songs. That's the downside to subscribing to music instead of buying the physical media. Anyway, let's get to the list. Our first hidden gem is by a guy named Kim Mitchell. Now that isn't a household name in the rock world unless you're from Canada. Kim was the lead guitarist and vocalist for the great Canadian band, Max Webster, and when he recorded his first solo record, which was 1984's Akimbo Alogo, he recorded Go For Soda, which was the lead single from the album. The lyrics are kind of simple, maybe even a little too simple, but the song is great anyway. The song's about a couple fighting, and then one person suggests going for a soda instead of continuing to fight. But a few years after it was released, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, licensed it to be their theme song, and it gained some attention. From that campaign. Now, I first heard the song when I was up in Burlington, Vermont at college. The local rock radio station 1 0 6 0.7 WIZN would play it occasionally, usually at night, and I thought it was really good. The intro guitar lick is a little bit funky while also having a little bit of a chicken picking kind of country sound. Then the overdriven second guitar comes in with the opening chorus before the drums and bass break it down leading into the first verse. Now, that's a lot of things going on right out of the gate, yet they all worked great together. That breakdown happens again before the second verse as well, which as Kim Mitchell pointed out years later, was a totally eighties thing to do
Hurts. This was an eighties thing shot to the heart in yo two play, right. Died. I knew there's, there's so many songs that do that. They do. The breakdown. I'm like, but a fun tune.
Alex Gadd:and then the chorus uses the bell of the ride symbol, like a cowbell and. I always want a little more cowbell. I fell hard for this tune and went out and found a used CD of the album at the local independent record store in Burlington called Pure Pop. The cover image was kind of cool because I thought that Kim Mitchell was trying to look like David Lee Roth and wondered why I had never heard this song or of him before coming to Vermont. Moreover, I was disappointed to learn that New York City stations wouldn't play it even by request, which I tried to do when I was home. In my senior year of college, I started working as a disc jockey for WIZN initially on the weekends overnights, where there was a lot more leeway to play, offbeat things and things that weren't big hits. And so I played this song Go For Soda as often as I could. My friends caught onto it too, I remember my buddy Kevin Bernie used to love when I played this song and I sometimes made up that he had called in requesting it just so I could play it. Back then, WIZN was kind of a jock-programmed station, and while we had rules to follow about what types of songs we could play and when there was flexibility for each DJ to inject our own personality and our own favorite songs, and this was certainly one of mine.
Might as well go for so nobody hurts, cries. Might as well go die.
Alex Gadd:Hidden Gem number two is Feel Good by the Ace of Cups. I heard this song when it came out back in 2018 on the band's self-titled second album, and I really liked it. It's an upbeat tune that has interesting lyrics that are actually a little heavier than they seem when you first listen to'em. What I didn't know was the history of this band, which I've since learned, and it's totally fascinating. This band was formed in 1967. In San Francisco and it was named after the tarot card that suggests the beginning of something beautiful, the Ace of Cups, and it was one of the first all female rock bands. Their first gig was in Golden Gate Park opening for Jimi Hendrix, and they were managed by the team that also managed Quicksilver Messenger service. All of those things suggest that they were set up for huge success, but due to various circumstances, they never even made a record or went on tour. They did continue to play out in and around San Francisco, and by 1970 original band members had started dropping out. By 1972, the band had broken up entirely. Obviously though that wasn't the end of their story. They got back together in 2011 to play at Wavy Gravy's 75th birthday celebration, and they were so good that they were offered a new record deal They finally went into the studio to begin recording their first album in 2016 with four of the original five women participating, and they got some contributions from some major heavyweights in the music world, including Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady from Hot Tuna, Bobby Weir from the Grateful Dead, blues great Taj Mahal, Buffy St. Marie, and Steve Kimock among many others. The self-titled album was completed and released in 2018 and Feel Good was released as a single, which I first heard on SiriusXM's the Spectrum Station. Check it out.
There's a lot of people trying to mess with mind. How does you're down? What everybody's have faith. So.
Alex Gadd:Next up is something completely different. It's Walking In the Rain by the Australian band. Flash and the Pan. This is another song I first heard while I was DJing at WIZN in Vermont, and it is decidedly different from most of the other music I was listening to at the time. It's a very moody, atmospheric track with a synthesizer based sound. It's kind of depressing if you really think about it, but that said, it's a great song for when you're feeling down and you just wanna sit with that feeling. Of course, I used to play it whenever I was on the overnight shift and it was raining. Maybe it wasn't the most creative choice, but it's a good change of Pace Tune. It was released as the B side of the band's first and only minor hit song, which was called Hey St. Peter from their self-titled 1978 debut album. A few years later, Grace Jones covered Walking in the Rain on her Night Clubbing album, and had a minor hit with it. Again, as with the Ace of Cups, there's a fascinating backstory with flash in the pan that most people probably aren't aware of. The band put out six albums between 1978 and 1992, and the two primary members were Harry Vanda and George Young. They had originally been in the band The Easy Beats, which was the first Australian band to have an international hit song with Friday on my Mind from 1966.
With, so tonight outside.
Alex Gadd:More impressive to me at least, is that Vanda and Young were also record producers, and among the bands that they produced were George Young's younger Brothers Band. It was a little band you might have heard of called AC DC. Vanda and Young produced AC DC's first five albums. Plus later, George Young came back to produce 2000's Stiff Upper Lip for the band. So Flash and the Pan was done as a studio project for Vanda and Young while they were helping to usher AC/DC's music into the world. The music sounds totally dissimilar, and yet the connection from 1966 is Friday On My Mind to Walking in The Rain to Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is just waiting there to be discovered. Here's Walking in the Rain by Flash and the Pan.
Walking down the street. Kicking cans, looking at the billboard. Also ran summing up the people, chicken out the race, doing what I'm doing. Walking. Walking in the.
Alex Gadd:Our fourth hidden gem is a new wave track from the late eighties by a guy named John Asley. Now, John Asley is not related to Rick Asley, at least as far as I can tell, he did have a very successful career as a record producer and a mastering engineer. Most notably, he co-produced The Who's Who Are You with Glyn Johns in 1978, which given that his sister was married to Pete Townsend at the time, it was nice to see Pete bring in his brother-in-law on what became one of the band's bestselling records. He mastered albums for a ton of big acts, from Paul McCartney to The Rolling Stones, to Peter Gabriel Sting among many others. Ashley also released two albums of original music in 1987 and 1988. The first of those was called Everybody Loves the Pilot Except the Crew, and included the single Jane's Getting Serious, which is a really good synth driven groove, and it has a hooky chorus. The music was used a year later for a Heinz ketchup ad. I had no idea and I didn't recognize it at all, but when I was DJing in IZN, I discovered this song among the many album tracks we were allowed to play once in a while and play it. I did whenever I could. This is Jane's Getting Serious.
She introduces me to her friends around town. She gets, I get writings on the. So come around 11. We're on way home. I can't leave alone because she's looking at me. James. Getting James. James getting. Something bad getting serious, so.
Alex Gadd:Fifth on our list of hidden gems for today is from the band Luscious Jackson. This group of women formed up in 1991. Their first gig was opening for the Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill in New York City. That's a pretty good first gig. They were subsequently signed to the Beasties new record label, Grand Royal, they recorded three records for Grand Royal between'94 and'99. The second of those was the band's most successful. That was the album Fever In Fever Out, which was produced by Daniel Lanois, released in 1996. It went gold, meaning it sold 500,000 units in the US and produced three singles, the first of which was Naked Eye, which rose to number 36 on the Hot 100 singles chart. Now, I wanted to use Naked Eye on this list, but it violates one of those rules that we arbitrarily set for ourselves. However, their third record Electric Honey was recorded as a trio after their keyboardist. Vivian Trimble left the band and was released in 1999. The first single was the lush sounding Ladyfingers, which I think is just as good as Naked Eye, if not, maybe even better. The album also contained the excellent song, Sexy Hypnotist, which I love, but it's Ladyfingers that I keep coming back to. The message here is that Luscious Jackson deserves your attention. They produced a bunch of really good songs and you can still listen to them all and uh, I encourage you to go do that. Here's Ladyfingers.
I. Underneath the, there's another good girl. She standing with a suitcase ready to run in case you're wondering why. She's good. She's good. Her I, her, I.
Alex Gadd:Finally, our last hidden gem this week is a song called The Good Luck You're Having from the band Bloodline. Now, I've mentioned Bloodline before because it was Joe Bonam Masa's first band. So when I did my concert review for Joe, I brought up Bloodline. I first got clued into Joe Bonamassa in 1994 because of Bloodline. The name came from the fact that it was made up of the sons of three music icons, bassist Berry Oakley Jr. who was the son of Allman Brothers bassist, Berry Oakley, guitarist Waylon Krieger, who is the son of Doors guitarist, Robbie Krieger and drummer, Erin Davis, who is a son of jazz legend, Miles Davis. The original lead singer was Aaron Hagar, son of the Red Rocker, Sammy Hagar. But he didn't make it to the time that the band recorded their first record. The album was a straight ahead bluesy Rock album, which in 1994 was definitely not what was happening in the music industry, but many of the songs had incredible solos. Many of those played at dizzying speeds. I love the album right away and tried to find out more about them, but as would have it, the worldwide web had just started that year. Search engines were very, very basic, but even more, there wasn't a ton of information out on the web yet because. It was brand new and businesses, including bands and record labels hadn't really figured out how to use the web to their advantage for the most part. There was no YouTube, no Spotify, no iTunes music store, nothing like that yet. So finding out more about this band was challenging. After reading the few articles I could find, I learned that the lead guitarist in the band was called Smokin' Joe Bonamassa, and he wasn't even 18 years old when they cut the record while the other guys were already in their mid twenties. I also found out that he had played with many of the blues greats starting as young as 11 years old. He even opened dates for BB King at the age of 12, and so began my fascination with Joe Bonamassa. But Bloodline, while short-lived, released one great album. Just about every song on that album was fun to listen to. It really was a great set of songs and my favorite is the Good Luck You're Having. Take a listen.
I am suspicious. Nature, I guess I, my. Have on is about to run out. Hey. Only fame Queen Ofs. That shoulda have been your name, the You Win. It's is about to out. Are you sitting pretty now on ease of street?
Alex Gadd:Alright, which of your favorite hidden gems? There's plenty of room for other opinions here at The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast, so please let me know what you think in the comments. And that's it for this week's episode. Our 50th episode is a wrap. Thank you for joining us. We'll be back next Tuesday, and if you like what you heard today, we'd appreciate it if you would like and subscribe or follow to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and please tell your friends. Also a reminder that we release a playlist for every episode, so look for the Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast Playlist on Spotify every week this week, featuring the songs I mentioned here today. So please check that out. As I said, we want to know what you think. Please leave us a comment. We'll try to respond to every one of them. We do love hearing from you. The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd and, until next time, remember that life is short, so get those concert tickets.