Review: 'Bo Diddley' (Chess/Acoustic Sounds Edition)

He didn't have Chuck's knack for storytelling, Buddy's melodic gifts, Elvis's voice, or Little's sheer excitement, but Bo is still probably my favorite Rock and Roll pioneer. His rhythm defined his work—the "shave-and-a-haircut" groove will always be known as "the Bo Diddley beat"—but the artist formerly known as Ellias McDaniel also deserves credit for his spacey atmosphere. He's really the only major early rocker who prognosticated psychedelia, which is my personal fave genre. He was also damn funny.

Farewell, Little Richard

Chuck Berry brought the wit, Buddy Holly brought the melodism, and Bo Diddley brought the rhythm, but no one did more for making Rock & Roll wild, cathartic, and outright crazy than Little Richard. 

With his ten-story tall pompadour and airplane-engine shriek, there was nothing little about Little Richard. He could turn a tumble of gobbledygook like "Tutti Frutti" into an ode to fucking as terrifying (to parents) as it was exhilarating (to kids). Without the voice that screamed "Long Tall Sally", "The Girl Can't Help It", "Lucille", "Rip It Up", "Good Golly Miss Molly", "Heeby-Jeebies", "Jenny Jenny", and Psychobabble's selection for best song of the 1950s, "Keep a Knockin'", Rock and Roll would be missing as essential an element as if the letter "E" had been stripped out of the alphabet. Today we lost the man. Richard Penniman died at the age of 87 of unknown causes. The voice never will.

Review: 'The Everly Brothers-The Cadence Recordings'

The two albums The Everly Brothers made for their first label, Cadence, aren’t necessarily their two most essential (that honor goes to their first two Warner Bros. LPs), but The Everly Brothers and Songs Our Daddy Taught Us do contain a few unquestionably essential numbers. These include “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie” on the former and “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine” on the latter. Mostly, the first two Everly Brothers albums spotlight the duo’s two sides in an extreme fashion that would be more organically blended on their next albums.

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.

Review: Little Richard's 'Directly from My Heart: The Best of the Specialty & Vee-Jay Years'

Chuck brought the wit, Buddy brought the craftsmanship, and Bo brought the rhythm, but Rock & Roll would reside in Nowheresville without cuckoo energy. Little Richard was the architect responsible for that crucial construction. Whenever you hear a song veer out of control, whenever a singer can’t hold back a whoop or a shriek or starts speaking in tongues (“A-WHOMP-BOMP-A-LOO-BOP, A WOMP-BAM-BOOM!” “BAMA LAMA BAMA LOO!”), there’s probably more than a little Richard Penniman in his or her bloodstream.

Review: 'Rock Covers'

I used to keep a copy of Michael Ochs’s 1000 Record Covers on my desk. It was a handy reference for cool album art and fit perfectly next to my little dictionary and thesaurus. One thing the 5.5-inch x 7.5-inch book did not do was provide an accurate representation of the scale and detail of those covers. That kind of thing may have cut the mustard during the CD age when we forgot what we were missing, but vinyl has now made a resounding comeback (do I need to refer you to the wild hype surrounding the release of the Beatles in Mono vinyl box a few months ago?). That means the 1-foot-square sleeve has too. For a better idea of how it feels to actually hold a copy of Here's Little Richard or Pet Sounds or Atom Heart Mother or Marquee Moon or Goo or The White Stripes in your hand, dig Busch, Kirby, and Wiedemann's Rock Covers. Like 1000 Record Covers, it is published by Taschen, but it probably won't fit on your desk. Just a half-inch shorter on both sides than your average LP jacket, Rock Covers is surely intended to provide an authentic experience even though every one of its artworks is not presented at full-page size. The editors also fill in a lot of Ochs's blind spots, giving much more space to punk, college, and alternative albums than Ochs did. Not only do we get some classic Vaughan Oliver sleeves but we get a short interview with the man himself, as well as others such as Henry Diltz and Black Crowe Chris Robinson.

That this is a great art book is a given since it contains so much great art. It does lose a few points for authenticity when compared to Ochs's book because everything in it is so straight-out-of-shrink-wrap clean. Ochs did not whitewash what goes down in a real record collection. You could tell his records were used, abused, bruised, deeply loved, and regularly rotated. I also like how he'd juxtapose sleeves that shared some sort of aesthetic trait. Busch, Kirby, and Wiedemann go for straight alphabetical order. Still, if it's between tiny, damaged images and great, big, unblemished ones, I admit size matters. Rock Covers comes out on top.

Psychobabble’s 20 Greatest Singles of 1957!

The training wheels were off Rock & Roll for good by 1957. Parents, teachers, priests, and politicians deemed Rock & Roll dangerous enough to inspire its most impassioned defenses. It started developing beyond its blues base into fascinating new territory. And all the founding fathers were in full swing: Elvis, Buddy, Chuck, Larry, Jerry Lee, and Little all making some of their definitive records. 1957 is Rock & Roll, and these are 20 of its rockingest rockers.

20. “I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent” by Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers

By 1957, Rock & Roll had its grip on America’s youth sufficiently enough that its supposed detrimental effects had become common knowledge. It made kids horny, violent, disrespectful little criminals. A nation of teenage werewolves. With that came some impassioned defenses from the Rock & Rollers who bashed out this heinous new form of “music.” In the case of “I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent” by 15-year old Frankie Lymon, it came from an actual teen too. His call for his fellow youngsters to “stay out of trouble” is weepily sincere, but Lymon’s tragic true story told a different tale.


19. “The Monster” by Billy Ford and the Thunderbirds

Frankie Lymon’s doo-wop plea is lovely, but it’s not the most defiant stance. Billy Ford and the Thunderbird’s (soon to transform into the soul duo Billy & Lillie) “The Monster” is another beast entirely. “I’m the monster Rock & Roll” he growls, threatening that everything you moms and dads fear about your kids’ music is true, true, true. The louder the critics complain, the harder he rocks. Try cutting off his head, and two will grow in its place. As his young fans grow up, they’ll still love him and worship him as a king. That every one of Ford’s monstrous assertions would come true shows that parents really did have something to fear in Rock & Roll. Hail, hail the monster!


18. “Pink Champagne” by The Tyrones

Rock & Roll is dumb, inarticulate, a bad influence that appeals to its fans’ basest instincts. Yeah, so what’s your point? Down some booze, whip your hair and hips to the out-of-control, endlessly modulating mania of The Tyrones’ “Pink Champagne”. “Wine! Wine! Wine!” the boys shout in unison to a raunch-o-la sax wail. The track may begin with a list of all the ways pink champagne wrecked the singers’ lives, but their cheery delivery and chug-a-lug chant speaks a lot louder. Get drunk, get crazy. Rock & Roll’s essence served up in long-stemmed crystal.


17. “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors