WNEW | Where Rock Lives

In the WNEW.com Studio - Street Sweeper Social Club (Tom Morello)

It seems like Tom Morello is starting a new music project every 5 minutes - which is lucky for us because we can’t get enough of him. This time, Tom teams up with Boots Riley (The Coup) and Stanton Moore (Galactic) to create to a hard rocking, funky, revolutionary band called Street Sweeper Social Club whose new album came out yesertday. Here’s how the band was born - Listen up:

Check out this song from the album, “100 Little Curses”:

At first I tried to decipher the meaning behind the band name – okay, so obviously it has to be about them “sweeping the streets” with their music and message and continuing the socially conscious revolution, right? Listen up to hear how wrong I was:

This Beat Goes On: Still More With Mister Zero of the Kings

(Part 3 of 3)

In 1980, This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide by the Kings blasted onto American radio and into rock history. But the group’s 1981 album Amazon Beach disappointed both the band and their record label, and they sound found themselves back on the club circuit in Canada. In part 3 of our interview, Kings guitarist Mister Zero talks about the Kings today and reflects on the legacy of their biggest hit, explored in the new DVD Anatomy of a One-Hit Wonder: The Kings’ “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide.”

It was 1995 before you made Unstoppable, and 2002 until Because of You.  

Unstoppable was basically financed by me from my day job working on movie sets here in Toronto. It was a real labor of love that took a year-and-a-half to make in fits and starts, but it is a great record full of great songs. Because of You was made with the support of Bullseye Records of Canada, an indie label run by a friend of ours, Jaimie Vernon. He had a U.S. backer with enough money to do it right, so we were able to do it in a proper studio and do it every day for a month, not just on weekends or what-have-you. Again I think there are a lot of quality songs on there, and we are quite proud of it.

The DVD features over an hour of videos, and some of those tunes are indeed fabulous. Which are the ones you’re proudest of, or best represent what the band is all about?

You do know that songwriters think that all their songs are great and should be hits, right? In our case we have some that are not great, but we do have lots that really are great, and if we hadn’t fallen from grace the way we did, maybe they would have been hits. Some are on the DVD, and some we never did make a video for. One called Shoulda Been Me is one of those; it’s just an obvious hit song. I remember playing it when we opened for the Beach Boys. The audience had never heard it, and at the end they gave it a big hand. I remember thinking, “You know, that thing could go!” It did get some play here [in Canada], but because it was our own indie thing, it didn’t do what maybe it could have. One song on the DVD that got a lot of airplay here in Canada was If We Don’t Belong Together, which is a ballad that Sonny Keyes and I wrote. The MOR stations loved that one ...

Other songs that I like on the DVD are Parting of the Ways, Your Old Boyfriends, Bad Side of Town, and Partyitis. A personal fave is Cosmic Groove. I think the lyric I did in that one is spot-on. And it’s a nine-minute jam-fest with lots of me showing off on guitar. As a player I’m not great, but I have fun.

On the DVD, you tell about your first American show, where you opened for Jeff Beck, and the disaster it turned into. Surely the gigs got better, though.

We did play a few more dates with Jeff Beck, and they turned out better, but it wasn’t a great fit. We also opened for Eric Clapton once, and it was like the Jeff Beck thing -- here we are again opening for a guitar god and the place is full of guitar players, and I’m the first axe man of the night. No pressure there! I think that might have been the show where my guitar strap was on wrong, and I walked out and dropped the bloody thing! So I went to my spare and it was out of tune! Shit! After the show, Eric Clapton went up to Dave [Diamond] and said, “Hey, great singing, man,” which was incredible, but he didn’t say “boo” to me!

I know there’s YouTube video of some recent Kings gigs, like the Andy Kim Christmas Show last December.

The show with Andy Kim was a lot of fun. It was sold out and packed, which is always good, and we got to meet and hang a bit with Lawrence Gowan, who plays with Styx now, Ron Sexsmith, a super songwriter, Andy Kim of course, a very nice guy with some iconic huge hits, and also Alex Lifeson from a little Toronto band called Rush. I think the finale might be on YouTube as well. Everyone is up doing Rock Me Gently, Dave is close to the front stage left singing backup, and I’m behind, faking it on a guitar that isn’t plugged in! It’s pretty cool. [Watch it here.]

There are some great videos I made after I finished the DVD. You can see them on our website, thekingsarehere.com. In fact I may swap them into the DVD if we go into reprinting it. We have better versions of Clean Shot and My Habit for example, which are both terrific tunes as well.

I’m curious about what you think of the phrase “one-hit wonder.” Are you frustrated by having had just the one hit? Or is having made one of the greatest party songs of all time, one that’s fondly remembered by so many people, a fair exchange for scoring just once?

I have a saying: “It’s better to be a one-hit wonder than a no-hit nothing.” . . . When I was growing up, I never really looked down on the one-hitters. I was always rooting for them to succeed with more great songs. And as we found out more about the music business, we began to realize that there are a lot of factors that have to line up perfectly for a hit to happen. Some bands never really charted a lot in a conventional Top 40-type way—you may have heard of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I recently read a book about Neil Diamond, and I was shocked to learn that Switchin’ to Glide charted higher than Solitary Man! That kind of blew my mind, and I intend to boast about that for years to come.  

Seriously, we certainly are grateful for our hit. People have asked, “Do you ever get sick of playing it?” and the answer is, honestly, no. From the stage, you can feel the energy level rise as soon as I play that great riff that Dave wrote. People love it and so do we, and it is an honor to be part of people’s lives and memories like that. People have told us how it has helped them through bad times, how they got laid to it, drove too fast to it, partied to it, and all sorts of different things. It really is an amazing accomplishment to achieve even once. We have talked about how it will be around forever and outlast us, and that is more than OK. It’s great, in fact.

The DVD Anatomy of a One-Hit Wonder: The Kings’ “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide” is available now through the Kings’ website (http://thekingsarehere.com). Kings music is also available through the website, and at iTunes.

This Beat Goes On: More With Mister Zero of the Kings

(Part Two of Three)

The Kings had spent much of the 1970s playing clubs in Canada, looking for a break. They got it in 1980 when producer Bob Ezrin consented to work on their first album, The Kings Are Here, which contained the radio classic This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide. In part 2 of our interview, Kings’ guitarist and songwriter Mister Zero talks more about that landmark hit.

I remember hearing Switchin’ to Glide all by itself on some radio stations. I’m guessing that a short version was a necessary evil, since radio stations were going to be reluctant to play a six-minute record by anybody in 1980, let alone a six-minute record by bunch of unknowns. How did the whole segue end up on so many stations?

The record company logically thought that we wouldn’t have much chance of getting the segue played, so they released Switchin’ on its own. It made a bit of noise, but not much. From what I remember, our camp was pressuring the label to put the segue out, and they finally did. Then we started to see success with influential FM stations like the Loop in Chicago, WRIF in Detroit, and WMMS in Cleveland. They found out that the Kings got great phones. People wanted to hear that weird song again, it was very fresh and new-sounding. With that kind of encouragement, the promo department at Elektra got into high gear and really started going ...

A biggie happened when we were at the Elektra office in New York. They told us we’d been added on WLS, and they broke out the booze. Being as green as we were, we had no idea of the significance, but we never turned down a party. It so happened that WLS was one of the largest AM stations in the U.S. out of Chicago and they played us a lot. We eventually got to #9 on their chart, with a piece of music over five minutes in length! We also landed CKLW out of Windsor, Canada [just across the river from Detroit], another powerful AM station with massive U.S. coverage. AM stations can reach out over huge areas, especially at night, so millions of people were now being turned on to the Kings.

After that a lot of key stations in major markets got on the bandwagon from New York to Texas to California, and the phones kept ringing with requests for the Kings. That kind of buzz is what led our future manager, Randy Phillips, to our door.  In case you didn’t know, he is now the CEO of AEG Live, one of the biggest music companies in the world. And he hasn’t taken our calls in 20 years! Love the music biz!

So in January 1981, the Kings got to be on American Bandstand.

That experience was great, going to the ABC studio in Hollywood and seeing the set. They did a bunch of shows in one day, so you had to wait your turn. The show they taped before us had Kool and the Gang doing Celebration, which was something to see. We shared our episode with Nick Lowe and Rockpile, who did Teacher Teacher and one other song. We performed Switchin’ to Glide and Don’t Let Me Know, and if I do say so myself, we blew those Englishmen off the stage.

 

This Beat Goes On: An Interview With Mister Zero of the Kings (Part One)

It’s the early autumn of 1980, and a new song comes on your radio. The opening riff is a killer; when the organ kicks in, it gives the record a new-wave edge that the lead singer’s voice confirms. You reach for the volume control to crank it up. Halfway through, the song changes into a different one that starts with an all-time true lyric line: “Nothin’ matters but the weekend/From a Tuesday point of view.” By now, you’re wondering, “Who the hell are these guys?” They were a Canadian band called the Kings, and their record was This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide. Don’t remember it? Go here and listen. We’ll wait.

Beat/Glide (as we called it in the radio biz back then) went only to #43 in Billboard and #50 in Cash Box at the end of 1980, but those numbers don’t reflect its true popularity then or now. It was Top 10 on WLS in Chicago, and it got significant airplay on album-rock stations around the country. To this day, it ranks as one of the greatest party songs ever recorded, and it’s still making radio-station phones ring when it plays. A new DVD called Anatomy of a One-Hit Wonder: The Kings’ “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide” tells the story of the song and the band. It’s being sold through the Kings’ website (http://thekingsarehere.com), and is produced and directed by John Picard, whom Kings fans know better as guitarist and songwriter Mister Zero. I recently interviewed him from his home base in Toronto.

On the DVD, bassist and lead singer David Diamond says This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide was born while he was tuning up on stage one night. True, or was there more to it than that?

One of the funny things about making this DVD was realizing how we all remember things in different ways. When Dave says that he just happened on the opening riff for This Beat Goes On while tuning his guitar during soundcheck at a strip joint, I believe him, but I don’t remember it as a specific thing. I do remember the gig, and I guess [keyboard player] Sonny [Keyes] remembers the moment as well, but I don’t. I left some of our conflicting memories in the DVD because I find it funny that while we all usually line up on things in general, the details are often different. And a lot of the time it seemed like the four sort-of-fuzzy memories added up to one clear one. So, while I may not remember it, something obviously happened and that riff was memorable enough to work on later.

Was it always two songs segued together, or were they entirely separate at some point?

The songs were written totally separately, and I think they came together as part of the process where you try new ideas. The music and lyrics were both rewritten when it seemed like the two songs might be better together than apart. Then there was a lot of tweaking to maximize the hooks.

Beat/Glide and your first two albums were produced by Bob Ezrin, who had produced Alice Cooper, KISS, and Lou Reed, and was just off producing The Wall for Pink Floyd. How is it that a guy who could have worked with anyone in the world at that moment chose to work with you?

We were recording in what was probably the best studio in Toronto, Nimbus 9. We had made demos in other smaller places but we felt that we were ready to step up. We got some dough together and went in knowing full well that this was the place where the Guess Who, Alice Cooper and others had made records. Bob Ezrin was back in Toronto after being away working on The Wall. He had produced the Alice Cooper stuff at Nimbus and came in one day to hang out. Of course, the word spread that this big dude was in the house, and one of our managers went and sweet-talked him into having a listen. Something must have caught his ears because he took our tapes home, and when his kids thought we were good, I guess he thought we maybe had a shot. At first he agreed to mix a couple of things, but when he got into the process of tearing apart the tracks to mix, he realized that we really did have some good material, but we didn’t have much of a clue about making a real record. So that started the ball rolling, and then it was Cinderella story-time.

On the DVD, drummer Max Styles says that Ezrin put you through “rock and roll boot camp.” How so?

Well, when you are dealing with a major label and a real producer, making a real record, you learn in a hurry that there is hard work involved and very little is left to improvisation. All the players’ parts are worked on for maximum hook exploitation. Your goal is to make every note count, and therefore every bass note, every vocal line, every drum beat is there for a reason. So, the boot camp came from weeks of rehearsing, especially the rhythm section, because you build records from the bottom up. Dave and Max would work with Bob and come up with a solid foundation, and then we would leave them to drill the parts over and over until they were seamless. We would go eat or hang out while they were drilling—it was great! The effort paid off, though. You can hear how all the parts are organized. It’s not just some off-the-cuff jam session.

Coming next: The record gets on the radio, the Kings’ rocket ride begins—and then it ends.

An Interview with George Thorogood (and Free Tix to his Wellmont Theater show)

The world’s greatest bar band George Thorogood & The Destroyers have been rocking audiences in an almost non-stop tour for over 32 years. Recently, he checked in with us to give some details on his never ending tour, shared some fond memories, and tell us about a new live album headed our way. I remember the moment clearly when I tuned in to MTV in its early days to watch George do his rendition of Bad To The Bone where he faced off against Bo Diddley in a game of pool. George always had a knack for covering other people’s material in such a way that he made it his own. George always picked songs that people may not have heard of in years or at all. But now it’s not so easy to surprise people with new versions of his favorite songs.

Listen Up:

Throughout his career, there have been songs that he’s covered that have been favorites of fans and some that have fallen flat. There’s one song in particular that George never thought would get the huge response that it did – it was Hank Williams' Move It On Over.

Read on for the rest of our interview, and click here to win FREE TIX to see George Thorogood and The Destroyers on Friday 3/20 at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ.

WNEW Week in Review

With the year drawing to a close everyone is starting to put their "best of" lists together. So far we're resisting the urge to count down the year's top tunes, but we did get Fusion 45 to look back on 2008 and share some of his Favorite Finds. Check out editions I, II and III which include favorites like Adele, Bedouin Soundclash and an album of cool covers from Glen Campbell, with links to taste-test some of the tunes. Also this week on WNEW:

• Warren Haynes stopped by for an incredibly moving studio session featuring acoustic renditions of Soulshine and Beautifully Broken.
• Evan sat down with the comedy team Stella and talked about their upcoming tour (win tix here).
• Alex previewed new releases from the Decemberists and Neil Young, and proclaimed Canada's the Carps the Next Big Thing.
• Bill Melville's Forgotten Favorites turned us on to Husker Du's Warehouse: Songs and Stories.
• Tom Morello was here to talk about the Nightwatchman, the day of his oustanding show at Irving Plaza (thanks Jeany for the review).
• This week's Rock 101 lessons focused on Elvis circa '68 and the 39th anniversary of the disaster at Altamont.
• Brian Walther sent in this great review of Tea Leaf Green at the Highline Ballroom.

As usual we opened up some great new contests this week - check here for free tickets to Gov't Mule's New Year's show at the Hammerstein, and free tix to those Stella shows at Nokia Theater (going down December 9 and 10). Good luck!

Illinois: Live at the WNEW.com Studio

So I’m watching this episode of Weeds (one of my favorite shows), and there comes a part where the main character Nancy Botwin (played by Mary-Louise Parker) has to do a “brick dance” to obtain a her next batch of drugs to sell. She grabs a boom-box and this banjo-techno-rock song begins to play. It was a truly hypnotizing combination of Mary-Louise Parker seductively dancing to this heart pumping song. A flurry of Weeds fans, including myself, ran to their computers to find this song. Finally I tracked down the band who made the song Nosebleed which was featured in the episode. The band is Illinois, and I recently sat down with its leader Chris 'Arch' Archibald to discuss their ambitious new project Kid Catastrophe as well as find out the scoop on the EP that caused all the fuss and got them featured on Weeds called What The Hell Do I Know. Now, the album cover for the EP shows a naked torso with a sign taped that reads "What The Hell Do I Know". Wanna know how the hell that happened? Listen up:

I had to ask about Nosebleed as it’s quite a song. At first, one might think that it’s about a fist fight, but if you listen closely, it’s about something else.

Here’s the song that started everyone frantically searching for it – Nosebleed

Live Dead: Phil Lesh & Jackie Greene Visit WNEW For Acoustic Set, Interview

We could hardly be more blessed here at WNEW.com. Not only have we been enjoying these amazing Philathon shows right in our own backyard, but yesterday we were honored to welcome Phil Lesh and Jackie Greene into our Times Square studios for an interview and acoustic performance. That show is airing every four hours today on our streaming radio station, and available in it's entirety by clicking play below.

Phil brought that crazy light-up bass (click through for tons of pictures) and proceeded to tell us all kinds of stories. Like the time Bob Weir drove a sound engineer from the studio with his request for "the sound of heavy air." Or the mysterious equipment malfunction that prevented the Grateful Dead from using the Great Pyramid as an echo chamber for that famous Egypt '72 show. Phil had plenty to say about the Phil Lesh & Friends project, and how it has evolved over time, and he heaped praise on to the musicians currently starring with him at the Nokia Theater: Steve Molitz, John Molo, Larry Campbell and of course Jackie Greene.

Click "play" above to hear the whole show. You can also hear it after the jump, where you can check out all the photos from yesterday's session. If you haven't signed up to win tickets to the Philathon click here to enter. Thanks again to Phil & Jackie for an incredible in-studio session yesterday. No one I know is more dedicated to creating a memorable group experience for his audience, whether it's two people or two thousand. We hope you'll listen and enjoy.

Phil Lesh and Jackie Greene Stop By The WNEW.com Studio

Today we had the great pleasure of welcoming Phil Lesh and Jackie Greene to our WNEW.com studios. Phil, of course, is the leader of Phil Lesh & Friends - a great little band in the middle of a big 14 night residency at the Nokia Theater Times Square.
We talked to Phil about this year's Philathon, about the future of the Phil & Friends project, and about the good old days with the Grateful Dead. Jackie and Phil stuck around to play a tune for us too - Gone Wanderin' - a Jackie Greene tune that has become a staple of the PL&F live show.
Check back with us this Thursday, November 6th for the interview with Phil & Jackie. We'll have it running on the WNEW streaming radio station along with Gone Wanderin', and we'll have it here for you on the website as well along with all the photos from this very exciting studio session.
If you haven't entered our contest yet, click here and win yourself some Philathon tickets. While you're at it check out the remaining shows - tix are still on sale for select nights.

Citay and a Wall of Sound Crash Down on Southpaw

A couple Saturdays ago, back in the warmer nights of October; I had a chance to catch a rather interesting show.  It started with an opener duet involving a violin and electric guitar, and went on a detour through a lot more guitars ,keyboards, tambourines, and basically a whole ton of loudness.  It was pretty stellar.  I'm speaking of course of Citay; the 5 man and 1 woman line-up from San Fran.

The venue was Southpaw, which is a great little place off of the Union St. R stop in Brooklyn.  It's surrounded by sushi restaurants and the general yuppie aura of Park Slope.  Inside, it's a brew pub with a hipster feel.  It has some standing room up front near the elevated, and rather small stage; and in back is some lounge-style seating.  Overall, it's a great venue that most any band wouldn't have trouble filling with sound.  It's ideal for anything from acoustic solo sets to the kind of guitar wailing I experienced on the 18th. 

WNEW had the pleasure of interviewing the band and got some insight into the creative process behind their epic sound.  Check out two tracks off the latest album Little Kingdom, including Eye on the Dollar, see photos from the show, and hear the band talk about their genesis after the bump.

Blues Traveler Visits WNEW Studio: Interview and Live Performance

If you attended Penn State in the early 90’s as I did, you lived on a steady diet of Blues Traveler music. They frequently played gigs all around the campus and I always showed up to see them bring down the house. Recently John Popper & Chandler Kinchla came in to the studio to talk about their new album North Hollywood Shootout. John & Chandler explain that the title is pretty self explanatory, Listen up:

While I was doing research for the interview, John posted some “thank you” notes for the album on their official website bluestraveler.com. In that section he thanks a dead coyote that he crushed. Since he took the time to dedicate the album to it, we had to know how it all went down – it’s a pretty cool desert story, Dig it:

Little Feat do the WNEW Interview

It’s always great when a band you’ve loved for years puts together a collection of their greatest hits remixed and re-interpreted with their famous musical friends. It’s even better when it’s the legendary band Little Feat, who for 40 years have been cultivating a large number of fans and famous musician admirers. Their new album is called Join The Band and was born out of a documentary that the band was going to create, but never took shape. Sure, they taped lots of stuff with a lot of famous friends, but it seemed that a retrospective album came together faster than a documentary. Bill Payne & Paul Barrere stopped by the studio to explain how they chose the songs, listen up: