Members rasputin1963 Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Are Canned Heat the most boring and bogus and ersatz outfit ever? Discuss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 If you don't "get it" already, what's the point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted October 7, 2008 CMS Author Share Posted October 7, 2008 Are Canned Heat the most boring and bogus and ersatz outfit ever? Are you talking about the Canned Heat with Al Wilson, Henry Vestine and Bob Hite that broke up about 30 years ago, or is there a new band with the same name? I can explain technical things to you, but not music/emotional things. That's where the differece between your head and my head, and your age and my age pretty much explains everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted October 7, 2008 Moderators Share Posted October 7, 2008 Are Canned Heat the most boring and bogus and ersatz outfit ever?Discuss. Alan Wilson. It's funny. I just last week sent a YouTube link to a friend. Canned Heat on one of those European TV shows. I asked him if he could put his finger on it. Ya see, I love them, I just can't figure out what it is about them that's so cool. If torn apart, there's nothing unique about them at all except for the singer Alan Wilson. He's got his sound and you can spot him a mile away. But the band? Straight blues 101. Except I think they sound incredible. I can't put my finger on it but I just love that boogie / chug thing they do. It's like a steam engine. Watching them live on the YouTube link, they were making that sound. No studio trickery, or groove enhancement through overdubbed shakers or what have you. The band, made a sound together that was totally them. Nothing groundbreaking, but at the same time, totally groudbreaking... bringing simple boogie to the stinky, unwashed hippie masses. The link below isn't the one I mentioned above (can't seem to find it) but check this out. Alan Wilson is the voice and harp. But on other cuts he's the slide and rhythm as well. But the other guys? They're just a hippie chug machine. But... they never lose it. When you hear a band do this stuff, someone always steps out and loses the groove. The ego takes over and ker plat. But not here, the bass, drums and simple rhythm go chugging along like a steam locomotive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlueStrat Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Well, they....I mean if you listen to....see, there's this.... *scratches head* Well, damned if I know! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted October 7, 2008 Moderators Share Posted October 7, 2008 Well, they....I mean if you listen to....see, there's this.... *scratches head* Well, damned if I know! Oh come on. Tell me when you hear On the Road Again with that harp, you don't think that's something special. And then the voice starts up and you go WTF?? That's cool. You know it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members eeglug Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 I only know "On The Road Again" and "Going Up The Country". The latter has (to my ears) this hippy charm to it with those vocals and flute(!) on a blues. That falsetto voice is like an unholy marriage between Skip James and Mickey Mouse in the middle of a commune. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlueStrat Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Oh come on. Tell me when you hear On the Road Again with that harp, you don't think that's something special. And then the voice starts up and you go WTF?? That's cool. You know it is. Actually I've never liked them. When they were being touted as a "blues band" back in the day, I was already into BB King, Albert King, T Bone Walker, Freddie King, Mayall, Elmore james etc etc so Canned heat always sounded like a bunch of white guys trying to play blues. Not to say they sucked-they clearly did not. Just not my cuppa joe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted October 7, 2008 Moderators Share Posted October 7, 2008 Actually I've never liked them. When they were being touted as a "blues band" back in the day, I was already into BB King, Albert King, T Bone Walker, Freddie King, Mayall, Elmore james etc etc so Canned heat always sounded like a bunch of white guys trying to play blues.Not to say they sucked-they clearly did not. Just not my cuppa joe. Fair enough. And I get it too... they were a bunch of guys trying to play real blues. But all that middle-class-suburban-whiteness-turned-to-drugs-and-free-love got in the way a bit. And that's the charm to me. But I hear ya. They couldn't swing. Chug, yes. Swing? No. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted October 7, 2008 Author Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Oh come on. Tell me when you hear On the Road Again with that harp I start thinking..."Wall? Where is it? Must climb." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 I think the popularity of Canned Heat was predicated largely on those two songs and their reputation as a band that would play real long songs, like "Fried Hockey Boogie," a track that exemplified what a lot of folks at that moment in time found intoxicating about long songs: it was a trip through a number of styles and modalities (with lots of solos) built around a simple boogie bump and what appeared to be a central impromptu vocal motif of the timelessness of the blues. I just tried to pull up some classic Canned Heat in Rhapsody -- but a problem I'd noticed with earlier subscription services -- the amount of product pumped out by subsequent versions of the band, redoing signature songs endlessly and then repackaging them in "greatest hits" albums that apparently don't include the actual hit recordings. Very sad to see their legacy (such as it was) diluted and contaminated by lame re-dos. Yuck. I did finally fight my way through various pathetically lame versions of "On the Road Again" and "Goin' Up the Country" (horrible imitations of the original vocals, oof!) and found the originals -- no freakin' comparison whatsoever -- that appear on the "Greatest Hits" dated 1987 that appears as the 'oldest' album in Rhapsody (and has a cover photo that looks like a very bad color Xerox) but contains original versions -- unlike so many of "their" other supposed greatest hits packages; you have to look to the Burrito Brothers to find a band so hideously disappointing in subsequent versions). Anyhow, even back in what we newbie seniors like to call the day, Canned Heat were among the first of the hippie bands to be dismissed by presumed hipsters (like my hard-to-please pals). The Heat, as they were sometimes known, came to be the darlings of the cheap wine and Seconal crowd (AKA, downer-poppling winos) who were cultural cousins of today's tweakers but whose drugs of choice produced a whole different set of symptoms -- mostly falling down hard on your face... over and over again. I saw CH at least two or three times -- ah those festivals of the late 60s... my first was the Palm Springs Pop Festival -- an event infamous to this day in Palm Springs history for bringing thousands of hippies to town where very few of them stayed in hotels or ate in nice restaurants (duh) but hung out on the strip of highway that formed, even then, a super-glitzy "Beverly Hills Jr" kind of shopping strip. I've been listening to that collection and... I have to tell you... it's a lot of fun. They even make the cautionary tale of "Amphetamine Annie" a fun trip -- to the graveyard -- as the band shouts out in the song, "Speed kills!" as they tell the story of the unfortunate Annie as speed takes her beauty, her teeth, and then her life. And they make it a fun sing along. Tough to do but they do. But I got to tell you, there was something kind of timeless and cool, though, to be a little high on cheap wine and whatever was in the air at some 60s festival, feeling the slanting sunshine (CH was always one of the bridesmaids and seldom the bride, relegated to the late afternoon slots in many a festival) -- and hear the band roll into the opening riff of "Fried Hockie Boogie" and know you weren't probably going anywhere for the next 10 or fifteen -- or 45 -- minutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted October 7, 2008 Moderators Share Posted October 7, 2008 I start thinking..."Wall? Where is it? Must climb." Well, that's it. I'm not sure I get your reference there. Escape? Get away for it? Sure. But it does evoke a mood right away. That quivering mojo thing dressed in hippie stank. Right from the get-go. I hear that harp and I can imagine an early 70's hippie flick. The desert road is putting off heat. The camera's filming from down low on the pavement shooting miles down the road into the distance. You can see the hot air swirling from the tarmac. And that harp plays chugachugachuga... and it almost sounds like cicadas. And then shwwooooommm... a kick ass Chevy hot rod goes zooming by full of hippie chicks smoking dope. yeah, on the road again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted October 7, 2008 Moderators Share Posted October 7, 2008 Oh... and then they pull over and say to you, "Got any matches" and you say, "Sure..." and the cute one in back says, "Hop in." Really! On the road again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 If you stopped 100 people on the street tomorrow and asked them what they thought of Canned Heat, 98 of them would have no idea what you're talking about. So, I'm guessing you meant the "one-time" popularity. They've faded into oblivion by now, so the question of their current popularity isn't exactly at the height of relevancy, ifyanomesain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members St. Mallarmé Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 | Ba-ba-da P-a-a-a-a ba-da-ba-da | | Ba-pa-da P-a-a-a-a Ba-da-ba-da | | Bi-be-di Ba-be-di Bi-be-di Ba-be-di | | Ba-ba-da P-a-a-a-a Ba-da-ba-da | Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Joseph Hanna Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 For me Canned Heat will always represent my youth and the defining of Topanga Canyon as an L.A. music enclave and a true hippy movment. Those L.A. folk here know that on the right day you can still see and feel the 1960's in Topanga. Hippy's...old hippy's.. but real hippy's none the less. I hate getting old but I'll be forever grateful that my musical roots grew from that place and those days. When I win the lottery I swear I'll retire up there somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hard Truth Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 They do the John Lee Hooker boogie rhythm and they're white. That was good enough for a lot of people. Worked for George Thorogood and ZZ Top also. I give them some credit for creativity, such as the electric sitar on On the Road Again. I have heard that they were knowledgeable about old blues and brought that it to their music. For example, the flute solo on Going Up the Country was inspired by the Panpipe playing that could be heard on some older music in parts of the south. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Magpel Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Blue's post inspired to tune Rhapsody to that 1987 Greatest Hits collection...ha! all I can say for sure is that I like it a f*ck of a lot more than I like Foghat. Actually maybe I'd better listen to some Foghat to confirm that... Did you know that's Jean-Pierre Rampal playing the flute on "Goin' Up Country"? No it's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted October 7, 2008 Moderators Share Posted October 7, 2008 Did you know that's Jean-Pierre Rampal playing the flute on "Goin' Up Country"? No it's not. Everyone knows it's Gallway... I mean Zamphir. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ermghoti II Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Are we talking about that sub-mediocre band from 40 years ago, with Kermit the Frog singing falsetto? If so, why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Blue's post inspired to tune Rhapsody to that 1987 Greatest Hits collection...ha! all I can say for sure is that I like it a f*ck of a lot more than I like Foghat. Actually maybe I'd better listen to some Foghat to confirm that... Did you know that's Jean-Pierre Rampal playing the flute on "Goin' Up Country"? No it's not. Glad I can save someone else the heartbreak of hearing all those bad subsequent "self-covers" that "grace" many of the seeming scores of Greatest Hits albums... I listened to that particular GH package and it was a nice trip down Memory Lane... or perhaps, as Joseph points out, down the winding Topanga Canyon Road of my lost youth. (Actually, my lost youth had a lot more to do with Trabuco Canyon Road... but while you can almost see the 60's from Topanga Canyon Road -- about all you can see from Trabuco is the march of MacMansions into the once pretty and pretty lonely foothills surrounding Santiago Peak, aka, Mount Saddleback, as it was called in those good old days.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members cooterbrown Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 They kinda sucked, but they kinda knew that too, and they put it all over with a smile.That's their appeal, IMO - charming amateurism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 Are we talking about that sub-mediocre band from 40 years ago, with Kermit the Frog singing falsetto? If so, why? :lol: :lol: Just... awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sailorman Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 I don't pretend to know the facts here but; I'd heard that Canned Heat's "Going up the Country" was ripped off. Well, recently a DJ on U of Penn's WXPN pulled out the original recording and played it. I've never heard such a blatant ripoff ever, including the flute part. The DJ has hosted a weekly Blues Show on XPN for 20 years so I'll trust that he knows what he's talking about. They lost a lot of respect in my book for calling it their own, though I'd always liked their version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hard Truth Posted October 7, 2008 Members Share Posted October 7, 2008 bluetoblue ".... the cheap wine and Seconal crowd (AKA, downer-poppling winos) who were cultural cousins of today's tweakers but whose drugs of choice produced a whole different set of symptoms -- mostly falling down hard on your face... over and over again." Ah, the people who gave us Altamont. Remember in the seventies at every rock show there would always be some fat, hairy drunk guy with a big hat standing in front of you unsteadilly, shouting "Boogie! Boogie!"? Or his buddy, the guy playing harmonica along with the band (sort of) while in the audience? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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