Tucson’s own human siren song was already an itchy-palmed dream for boys (and girls) by this ’78 single—a household name really, no doubt helped by a fetching Time Magazine cover story that featured a shot of a scantly-clothed Ronstadt sipping steaming sauce over a stove, sexualized for the American mass consciousness.

This version of “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me” didn’t top songwriter Warren Zevon’s godhead version, but damn if it ain’t peerless in a ’70s radio-rock, sterile production, hit-single sorta way. Golden-eared producer (and Ronstadt manager) Peter Asher kept the spirits alive in a way that transcended said sterility because the man understood songs. Hear that.

A sweet acoustic drone and cowbell opens to Ronstadt’s hip-swinging sexuality and Waddy Wachtel's anthemic four-on-floor riff, and you can visualize coke-gacked grins on faces of the post-Laurel Canyon mellow mafia all over this—a weirdly beautiful thing in hindsight. And god love fright-haired Wachtel and his bong-smoke-clearing power chords that bestow the tune with indelible weight and oomph.

Zevon’s version, with all the suicide and domination in the lyrics etc., was ironic self-mockery passed off jokingly as narcissism yet still narcissistic as hell, on purpose. But Zevon knew that—that’s how fucking smart he was, and his had the requisite weatherbeaten vocal tone to match the literate and deceptively simple sentiment. But Ronstadt’s slightly cleaned up version had real sexual verve, and her unstoppable voice, which gave the song staying power.

Still, it’s really too bad Ronstadt switched the song’s gender here because that changes the male/female power dynamic in the worst way (a woman-pummeling dude ain’t no “credit to his gender”). Had she kept the gender as written, the tune would’ve been wickedly subversive in its time, but no Top 40 hit. Also dropped “West” from “West Hollywood.” Another meaning-changer. Shame.

"Never be the ground/It could end your story," Lenguas Largas singer Isaac Reyes intones at the outset of “Yardsale Heart,” from the Tucson-based garage/psych band’s self-titled 2011 debut album. He then issues a series of commands, extolling the virtues of emotional honesty (“lead a sentimental life”) but warning not to give everything away (“think about your tongue”). The ensuing verses and choruses shroud these contradictory impulses in the language of pop music classicism: “I can’t afford the sweetest girl in town … yardsale heart/just like mine.”

The song’s music is far less mixed-up. Trading Lenguas Largas’ usual inscrutability for a compositional straight line of build, explode and repeat; second verse, same as the first. “Yardsale Heart” fuses a cyclical two-chord frame to an arrangement of near-orchestral grandeur, recalling nothing as much as the early-’60s productions of Phil Spector. The band seemed to not be unaware of the song's anthemic overtones; both Reyes’ lead vocal and the tracks of percussion are significantly louder than those of other songs on the album, bringing the accessibility of “Yardsale Heart” to the forefront and rendering its melodies timeless and indelible. Again, Spector’s influence looms large—if the sweeping introduction of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” bypassed subsequent verses and skipped directly to its climactic conclusion, the result would be quite similar in tune and spirit to “Yardsale Heart.”

But despite its lyrical clarity of confusion, the track is essentially a blank slate. It's a rallying of ecstasy and a breached dam of romantic anguish. A song of unbridled connection and one of broken convictions. But in its unending waves of sighs, it's unquestionably a triumph of the human comedy.

Who can resist the allure of a band festooned in black masquerade ball masks and biohazard red protective face shields? Or hold out against the seductiveness of spirited singers/rappers, who resemble the anarchic cheerleaders on Nirvana's “Smells LIke Teen Spirit” video, dressed in red and black skirts, tank tops and just below-the-knee triple striped tube socks who at times, when they aren't dancing au-go-go as if to satisfy their satanic majesties requests, whirl nunchucks haphazardly about then bounce frenziedly on trampolines?

Enter B4Skin, on special show benefiting Downtown Radio (KTDT 99.1 FM) last Saturday at the Lathe Cave art space on Stone Ave. They kicked alongside local support Deschtuco and New York City’s Sound of Urchin. B4Skin’s appeal is more than aesthetic. Described by one of its members as “high school musical inspired by Satan,” B4Skin are a pop band, for real.

Beneath layers of vocals, their core instrumental sound is generated by just two musicians. The face-shield wearing guitarist—whose sharp-cut guitar lines sometimes recall rhythm-master Keith Strickland work with the B-52s, then it shifts into high-gain propulsion where the tone is
aggressive, metallic and driving, like riffs nipped from a Fast and the Furious soundtrack—is all the while triggering loops and samples, laying down a foundation for B4Skin’s hard-hitting drummer to play on top of, fattening the sound and creating infectious grooves that’d
do Dr. Dre proud. The kind of ass-clapping, in-the-pocket grooves in which the use of anything more than the most bare-bones of kits—snare drum, kick drum, hi-hat, cymbal—would be superfluous.

There's an estimated 32 million people in the U.S. who attend music festivals each year and that number continues to rise because of popular demand from millennials around the country. And as a frequent festival-goer myself, it seems as if Tucson has officially jumped on the popular bandwagon and is now offering two major shows to kick-start festival season this October.


To start off the month, Oro Valley Music Festival will be swinging by the Oro Valley Marketplace (955 W. Vistoso Highlands Drive) for a two-day event Oct. 1-2 and will include live performances from Billy Currington, ID Nail, Daughtry, Colbie Caillat, Simple Plan and many more.  The festival claims to be "the next best thing to hit Tucson," and with this line-up, I don't think they are messing around.  
And it doesn't end there...

To round off the month, Dusk Music Festival will be held right before Halloween weekend on Saturday, Oct. 22 at Rillito Park Race Track (4502 N. 1st Avenue), and will include performances from Matt and Kim, RL Grime, A-Trak, DJ Mustard, Danny Brown, Calexico, Wild Belle and Luna Aura. This festival has more of an "electronic feel" to it as well as more indie-based genres that will leave you feeling like a kid again.

Songwriter John D. Loudermilk called it quits this past week at the age of 82. But man was he a master of songcraft, of disguised defiance and blinky humor, and building on the musical bones that'd come before him. In fact, the kickass-named Loudermilk is known for many oddball things in song, but not for this Hoyt Axton-helmed ’69 Nashville masterpiece, The Open Mind of John D. Loudermilk, one of a handful of albums he recorded for RCA/Victor in the ’60s. It's a mad pastiche of psych, straight-up country, pop, protest folk, with sitar drones and big-band nods and lots of plucky acoustics, as well as a treasure-trove of beat philosophies, well-sketched characters and swampy epistles to bizarre loves (including a graveyard romp).

My fave among faves here is “The Jones’.” In the album’s notes, Loudermilk writes that he penned the tune “for those who fall for Madison Avenue ‘truth,’ Haight-Ashbury ‘freedom’ and Washington D.C., 'advice and assistance.'” He nailed it too. The song's a perfect little pop parable that Tim Hardin could’ve written, with sweet dynamic shifts, panning backup vocals, and a gentle acoustic guitar that builds to a chorus that’s as a sugary a protest as you’ll likely ever hear.    

In honor of J.D. Loudermilk, we say goodnight, brilliant sir, and sweet dreams.  

**If you can the find the Omni Recording Corporation’s beautiful 2007 reissue of this album, it features restored audio straight off the master tape reels, as well the album John D. Loudermilk Sings A Bizarre Collection of the Most Beautiful Songs, plus his versions of songs he wrote that others had hits with including the ubiquitous “Tobacco Road,” “Indian Reservation” (called “The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian”) and “The Little Bird” (and seek out Marianne Faithful’s tender version).

Sure, blow and women and depression and panic went lengths to ravage the Mississippi-born singer’s vocal range and tone (it finished him off in the end) but it’s that hold-a-note-despite-the-odds quality—a perfect aural metaphor of just hanging on—that made David Ruffin one of the greatest soul singers to draw a breath. His voice didn’t age as much as reveal his life’s face-plants and failures and attendant sadnesses. And ain’t that what singing is all about? How did that stop mattering? Music would sound a lot different now had Ruff never existed.  

This autobiographical, you-can’t-tie-me-down tune even references Tucson, Arizona in its open-road romance, and is tempered with a sense of yearning that defined Ruff’s life. There’s a lilting, post-psych/Sly Stone undercurrent too—the wah-wah guitar heroics and Funk Bros swing—that gets mellowed-out with an early ’70 bedroom-soul groove. Features a thoughtful, almost spry arrangement by David Van DePitte (Jackson 5), and production and co-write by undersung Detroiter Bobby Miller (Gene Chandler, Earth, Wind and Fire).

“The Rovin’ Kind” leads off Ruff’s third official, post-Temptations solo Motown LP (official ’cause Motown head Berry Gordy shockingly shelved Ruff’s brilliant third album, which finally saw light in 2004). The tune was originally tracked for the Four Tops, and then another ex-Temptation, Eddie Kendricks, before Ruff got it.  

By this time Gordy had no love for Ruffin, hence Motown scarcely promoted this 1973 self-titled album. (It stiffed, peaking at No. 170 on the Billboard pop chart.) More, Gordy stopped Ruff from recording songs penned by A-list writers. But the good shit always rises, and years and years later Gordy has been proven dead wrong, and Ruffin gave us this, and many others, as well as that voice.

Sidenote: I owned a house in Detroit near 7 Mile and Livernois that was a few blocks from where Ruffin’ had lived when he recorded this song. One old woman neighbor remembered him in the hood from back in the day. She had a crush on him, of course, and said Ruff was bigger than life. “In that big black car, he seemed higher than the sun,” she’d told me. “He didn’t walk as much as float.” I’ll never forget that.

Disclaimer No. 1:I was married to the singer (Shireen Liane) and we lived in Tucson for a
spell, had a little place with our cats and a garden over on Camilla Street. I was drunk so we splintered and she landed in London with a fat major-label deal with Virgin Records, and did the sole Slingbacks album (All Pop, No Star) with pop-mighty producer Mitch Easter. Like any great album it tanked—Virgin was fizzing on the Spice Girls then—but it did OK in Japan. (Disclaimer No. 2: I know it did OK in Japan because I co-wrote a couple of the album’s tunes and the Japanese royalties kept the beer flowing freely for a number of weeks. Truth is, I had zero to do with how brilliant this record is. Can’t help it if I’m lucky.)

All Pop, No Star is a stunningly overlooked gem, testament only to Liane’s pen-perfect writing abilities and mad love of mid-period Kinks, Odessey-era Zombies, Chrissie Hynde and Suzi Quatro. This title tune, the album’s first single, kills with that jackbooted stomp of glitter (nods to Noddy Holder, natch!), deceptively haunting and literate turns to our tragic, fallen mutual pal, Gin Blossoms songwriter Douglas Hopkins (such as, “This should’ve been your rags-to-riches/Instead of detox wards and stiches”), and a sugar-stained key change into the bridge and gooey choruses that release butterflies under our skirts. And the video’s a ’70s pisstake of Top of the Pops! 

There has been a lot of hype over tech juggernaut Apple’s new iterations to the iPhone 7—primarily over the introduction of packaged in Bluetooth headphones and the removal of the headphone jack which will not allow wired headphones to be used unless you have an adapter.

Many see it as a step forward, others see it as a disadvantage. This bold decision by Apple is a step towards evolution in the tech world. However, also points us in a less desirable direction: loss of sound quality.

Bluetooth headphones are nothing new. They have been in on the market for a while now with prices ranging from fairly affordable to fairly expensive. But if you are looking to get the best quality sound from your iPhone or MP3 player, Bluetooth headphones are not the way to go.

Tapped The Osmonds ear-bender “Crazy Horses” for Song of the Day but remembered Tucson’s man-for-all-seasons Chick Cashman (nee Clif Taylor) and the killer takedown version he recorded last year with one-time Black Flag shouter Ron Reyes (and backed by rhythm aces Boyd Peterson and Jamie Peters). Lord do Cashman and Reyes make a fist-jacking bid to top the untoppable original.  

That original, a screaming anti-pollution screed penned by eldest Osmond bros Alan, Merrill and Wayne, found the group perhaps overcompensating their populist teen boogie while listening hard to, say, Buddy Miles, Mountain and Sweet, yet shamefully overlooked when rock ’n’ roll cred was being doled out. ( "Crazy Horses" was, you’ll note, about as sonically detached from Joseph Smith and “One Bad Apple” as anyone could be back in ’72). This version by soul bros Cashman and Reyes features all the funked-up glam and jizzy slam of the original while bettering any other version this digit has ever heard, including the much-ballyhooed yet comparatively limp takes by Electric Six, KMFDM and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. More, there are no tongues in cheeks. Among the heavy-wristed riffs and slashes, Cashman and Reyes are saying fuck irony, we absolutely adore this shit.

Ron Howard directs the first major Beatles documentary since The Beatles Anthology in the nineties.

While Anthology is still the most definitive and damn well perfect account of the greatest band to ever walk the earth, Howard does a nice job culling footage snippets of the band during their short lived touring days, replete with screaming fans (one of them being Sigourney Weaver, who is seen in a crowd during vintage footage and in a present interview).

The surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, participate with interviews, while John Lennon and George Harrison have a strong presence in archived interviews. As with Anthology, there’s no narrator, just the voices of the Fab Four either recounting those crazy touring days or commenting on them as they were happening.

The film focuses for the most part on their stretch as a live band. That stretch ended right before Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, when The Beatles became a studio band and eschewed live performances. As the film demonstrates, that decision came about not because they didn’t love playing together, but because they were basically afraid for their lives.

Hardcore fans will be familiar with most of the interviews and performances, although you will see and hear some surprises. This film is actually a great starting point for any of you out there looking to get a little more serious in your examination of the band. Keep this in mind when you check them out: This band did what they did in just seven years. SEVEN YEARS. That’s how long it takes many current bands to put out one album. The many style and sound changes they went through, most of them anyway, are depicted in this film. They were the very definition of progressive.

Through all of the media, music, lifestyle, fashion and technological changes that have happened since the sixties, The Beatles have remained an amazing, lasting, non-dated entity. They were cool then, and they are cool now. They will always be cool, and Ron Howard is well aware of this.

Watch the movie, then dive into the albums.