Peter Case

Rock ‘n’ Roll

Can’t Stop Shakin’ & I Don’t Know Why

conspiracies–I never thought about them on the grey November—in the backyard with a football—“the president’s been shot”—it never occurred until Rolling Stone started blowing on their trumpet—or maybe news of Garrison—as time passed I began to feel the enormity of the wounds of those killings—then, late nights alone, reading the lore—a quickening of all the senses—life—ah yes—and it made as much sense as the tale of a lone gunman—sympathy & identification with Oswald—not as a killer but as a young lost soul—then feeling the truth was being revealed—as waves of contradiction pursued across the airwaves—lines of print arranged to re-confuse? And explanations for the explanations: the theories soothe, help us deal with the mysterious uncontrollable forces—but the truth mattered & I know a little about that—the sense of truth seems to get stronger as I get older tho’ that may be an illusion—see? you will always struggle with these tales—making sense of evil is a tricky business—and now absurd theories of Clinton sex cults & murders—explain what?—Obama birth in Kenya explains…the theorist’s anxieties—away—a glimpse behind the veil—the curtain that dropped a long time ago—Jon said “watch who keeps winning no matter what.”

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Baltimore, 1995, a solo track from the same season as Kool Trash

If you dug the Plimsouls Kool Trash, here’s a solo track cut at roughly the same time, that has a similar vibe, in a way. By that I mean, a rocker story song set in the big city, with a big chorus, kinda like “Down.” 1995. This track was cut at Capital Records, with Steven Soles on harmony vocals, Jerry Scheff on electric bass, Greg Leisz on electric lap steel guitar, and Don Heffington on drums. It was cut at the very end of the session, when we had five minutes left! Billy Swan helped with the vocals too, I think…Larry Hirsch engineered it. Steven, Larry and I produced it, as a team…

Torn Again (1995)

 

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Falling Awake (from Kool Trash, by request)

Falling Awake is another of the Sunset Sound Demos. I played the surfy sounding leads on a Rickenbacker just like the John Lennon guitar. Eddie played the bluesy breaks in the middle and at the end. I goof up after Eddies solo and don’t get my pick-ups turned as load for my last twang lead, it doesn’t really have the bite. That always bugged me, but a card laid was a card played. This is a demo, I never really felt we got the arrangement right on this, but I dig the lyric, addressing the acute anxiety I call “falling awake,” that is, coming to a realization about life the hard way. Clem Burke played great on this track.  So there you have it, the seven cuts from Sunset. The album was filled out with three tracks recorded digitally, somewhere else, and the drums didn’t sound as good, as nothing beats tape.  But there you go, Shari Lipman!

 

(If you want to hear the rest of the ones I’ve featured, go to the blog here at www.petercase.com/blog  and scroll down through he most recent entires. The titles I’ve featured are “Down,” “Playing With Jack,” “Lost,” “Pile Up,” “Dangerous Book,” “Kool Trash,” and this one “Falling Awake.”)

 

 

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Plimsouls Kool Trash–the title track! 1995 at Sunset Sound.

I think this will be my last Kool Trash post, and the last of the tracks cut at Sunset Sound in ’95.

Dig the crazy piano part, frantic tempo, pissed off lyric, and explosive ending. The Kool Trash album was completely overlooked at the time, even missed by a lot of our friends. Maybe it was lack of management, or publicity, or just the atmosphere of the era. We played a ton of gigs, with Clem Burke, and then later, Bryan Head, and they were all fun, but the muted response on the record eventually sorta made the band a dead issue: what’s the point of writing and recording new material? People just dug the old stuff. Don’t take your bands and songwriters for granted, folks, if you do they may have to go on their way. Oh well, its all ok, life is such a gift, if you’re not rocking’ somewhere you’re rolling somewhere else. And Kool Trash certainly has it’s fans…

 

If you want to hear the rest of the ones I’ve featured, go to the blog here at www.petercase.com/blog  and scroll down through he most recent entires. The titles I’ve featured are “Down,” “Playing With Jack,” “Lost,” “Pile Up,” “Dangerous Book,” and this one, “Kool Trash.”

Next I’ll post a track from my 1995 solo record Torn Again, “Baltimore,” which has a lot in common with these tracks.

 

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Pile Up, Plimsouls demos from Kool Trash, recorded in 1995.

Another track from the Kool Trash sessions, this one recorded at about 3:30 in the morning, the last thing we cut at Sunset Sound. Rock and roll at it’s simplest, down to the core. Eddie’s guitar lick is cribbed from a Texas blues standard “Kinda Mixed Up,” but it fits perfect here, while my lyric reflects everyday tensions and frustrations in the Los Angeles area. Clem Burke is on drums, as on the rest of the album. Brett Gurewitz sings backing vocals with David-o.

I put the words here, as the diction is pretty gnarly. For a long time this was my favorite from the sessions.

“well they’re comin’ for miles/with beans in their ears/socked in/crocodile tears/dead set/caught in a cage/they’re flipped out/all in rage/it’s a pile up/it’s pile up/ they’ll slaughter the lamb/shut down and the road is jammed/help me/yeah we’re gonna be late

well my baby called me on the telephone/imagine that/ she said I’m all alone/I went out/ frantic search for my car/jumped in didn’t get so far/it’s pile up/a pile up/try to dart in this roadster slam /some time we’re all in a jam/oh/ we’re gonna be late/

ah-oom-bop-diddy!

the priest came down to bless the dead/ I cant tell you half the things he said/I knelt down–“father I confess/sometimes it’s a goddamn mess”/ it’s a pile up/it’s pile up/ we’re caught in a cage/ they’re glued up and all in a rage/it’s over/yeah we’re all gonna be late”

“pile up—grid lock! oh yeah we’re gonna be late.”

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Lost–from the Plimsouls–Kool Trash lp–1995

Here’s another track, from the Plimsouls album of demos, Kool Trash, recorded in 1995 and released in ’98.

“Lost” slows it down a little, and was placed, along with “Pile Up” (which I’ll post later) in a Liv Tyler movie called ‘Heavy.” I remember this as a live performance in the studio, next to no overdubbing. It’s raw but maybe that’s how the feeling gets through…

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John Lennon BIRTHDAY (belated)

When I was a kid John Lennon was one of my biggest heros. At 16 years old I read the Rolling Stone interview, and JL said something like ‘I’m the kind of person, when I have a hero, if I find out they wear green socks, I’ll run out and buy green socks’  and  I immediately started to wear green socks myself. Wore ’em for years. I know that’s fucked up.

He did a photo spread in Look Magazine, with Yoko, it must have been around the time of  the making of the White Album, and the pictures made a big impression on me. Him and Yoko were posing in a big empty house that they’d just moved into. She was sitting with him and he was playing the guitar, and  I just really admired him, with his girl and guitar in a big house where nobody could tell him what to do. It was one of the things that clarified, at the time, my ideas about life. Of course, my image of him was rubbish. He was mad, painfully insane, destroying his mind with drugs, about to break up his great band. But that flux was part of what was great about him. I would consciously, and unconsciously, imitate all of that before too long myself.

I identified with the depth of his problems, as expressed in Yer Blues. That was my favorite for a while. My band ‘Pig Nation’ performed it at every gig we did, through 1969 and 1970. Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan were my other biggest living heros, and that song kind of summed it all up for me.

‘I’m lonely, want to die,’  Pig Nation used to rehearse in my parents basement and my Mom once called down the stairs: ‘Boys, play that nice song about suicide again!’

I’d seen the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show every time they were on. That was the first time I ever talked back to a grown up. My Dad was making cracks about their hair and I told him to be quiet. He got me good for that one! That was the first trouble JL got me in. I still have a 1964 diary somebody gave me for Christmas. ‘Saw the Beatle last night on TV. Mom and Dad think they stink. I think they’re great!’  Then me and a couple guys skipped outta school at lunch, and went downtown. I was 9, what is that, 4th grade?  And we stood in the drugstore reading the first Beatle magazines ’til the guy asked us to buy something or leave.  My first adventure with truancy, thanks John.

So you see, he was a big one for me. I became a songwriter in 1965, right after ‘I Feel Fine’ came out. Me and George Pope, my first songwriting partner, wrote ‘Stay Away,’ that was my first tune. We played it in my band, The Telstars, and that was it: all I ever wanted to do, after that.

I could go on and on. But I think you see. I spent three years living and playing on the streets of San Francisco. That was sort of my ‘Hamburg’ period. Me and my pals would play 12 or or more hours a day, everyday. During this time, I didn’t give a fuck about anything, just like I knew JL didn’t when he was a young rocker. It was a dark time in a way, but it taught me that I could project rock and roll.

When he died I was in the Plimsouls. That night me and Eddie Munoz had just written our song Shaky City. When the news sunk in,  I cried my guts out. What a disaster.   Eddie didn’t cry. He just said ‘ They kill all our heroes.’

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