Review: Paul McCartney & Wings' 'One Hand Clapping'

After releasing Band on the Run and finally getting a gold star from venomous critics, including the most venomous critic of all (Lennon), Paul McCartney was hot to keep riding that wave of good will. So he rushed into the studio with Wings to follow up with a live-in-the-studio session of covers and songs he'd already recorded and released with his current band, as a solo artist, and with his old band featuring that most venomous critic of all (Lennon).

Psychobabble's 100 Favorite Songs of the Fifties!

Attention, attention: Psychobabble is having a hop tonight, and you and yours are invited. So grease up your D.A. and pull on your boogie shoes. Those soles are gonna get a real work out because we’ve lined up the hottest rockers, hippest jazzbos, and wailingest blues bruisers to make you flip your lid. Get ready to jive and jump to… 

100. “Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)” by Bill Haley & His Comets

The party starts now, so let’s get this shack together, Daddy-O! Nail down the furniture, snap the lock off the liquor cabinet, and for christ’s sake, dim, dim those damn lights… I want some atmosphere. Bill Haley eases us in with one of his smoothest unions of rock and swing, but don’t worry, things are about to get crazy, man, crazy.

99. “Rockin’ Bones” by Ronnie Dawson

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 66

The Date: December 5

The Movie: The Girl Can’t Help It (1956)

What Is It?: Former Looney Tunes animator Frank Tashlin makes a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon starring live-action cartoon Jayne Mansfield. Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Fat Domino, and The Treniers make the floorboards quake with a seismic blast of Rock & Roll in the days when Rock & Roll was still a tiny, little baby.

Why Today?: On this day in 1932, Little Richard is born.

April 27, 2009: The 15 Greatest Singles of 1959

Rock & Roll’s first boom was pretty brief. Although it sent American teens into frenzy and inspired countless future British Invaders; parents, religious types, and other squares saw to it that Rock & Roll didn’t get the radio-time it deserved. As every rock doc ever made has already stated, a slew of controversies and deaths helped hip-check R&R from the spotlight by the end of the ‘50s: the deaths of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens; Elvis’s stint in the army; Little Richard’s shunning Rock & Roll in favor of religion; Jerry Lee Lewis getting hitched to his 13-year old cousin; Chuck Berry getting arrested at the end of 1959; and on and on. Regardless, there were still some red hot singles hitting record shop shelves 50 years ago. Here are my 15 favorites:

15. “I’m Ready”- Fats Domino

Fats Domino is one of the few original Rock & Rollers who made it through the ‘50s unscathed, although his hits certainly dried up when the decade was over. “I’m Ready” is one of his last big ones, but its relentless rhythm, good-natured boasting, and breezy piano fills suggest that Fat Man didn’t have a worry in the world.


14. “Forty Days”- Ronnie Hawkins

Rockabilly meets gospel on Ronnie Hawkins’s hit version of Chuck Berry’s “Forty Days” (basically a rewrite of the Berry hit “Thirty Days”). The fiery performance arrives special delivery from Hawkins’s backing band, the Hawks, who would achieve stardom a decade later as the Band.


13. “Mr. Blue”- The Fleetwoods