One Hit No More, No. 44: Norman Greenbaum & a Series of Accidents

He thanks you for the royalties, I'm sure.

The Hit
Somewhere in my late 20s, I remember lamenting to someone over how much I hated the idea of Bible thumpers laying claim to the beautiful, blues boogie riff that plays under Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” (found the original video). I’ve mellowed to a point where I just ignore evangelical Christian pop culture because it always tells the same damn story (e.g., person has problems, they find Jesus, Jesus makes it better, the end. Every. Damn. Time).

I never struggled to get through “Spirit in the Sky,” though, at least not till it reached a suffocating level of ubiquity by way of oldies’ radio play and movie soundtracks, which tells you how far a riff straight from heaven can carry a song. The fuzzed-up snarl on the guitar gives it a nice crunchiness too…only the song didn’t come straight from heaven.

The Rest of the Story
“It wasn’t my religion; I just did it. I didn’t think twice about it. I took some of the seriousness out of it, but I didn’t do it as a joke or against anyone. I guess people can take offense to almost anything. There was the song about the plastic Jesus on your dashboard. They liked that one.”

“[Now], quite a few churches have put it into their services and they sing it quite often. So it turned out OK. To be blunt, I don’t think it’s on the shit list.”
- Norman Greenbaum, Rolling Stone, January 2020 (and here’s that song about plastic Jesus)

As Wikipedia’s entry notes, Greenbaum was raised “an observant Jew.” It also implies he remains observant, but he says otherwise in Rolling Stones’“’Spirit in the Sky’ at 50” retrospective, published earlier this long, awful year. He had to learn a little about Christianity just to write what he did and didn't satisfy everyone; he still gets the odd grievance by first-class mail complaining about the line, “Never been a sinner, I’ve never sinned,” and that’s where the reference to people taking offense comes from.

One Hit No More, No. 43: Frijid Pink, Who Were Named by Their Parents

Decided to roll with what might have been...

The Hit
I’d never heard Frijid Pink’s “House of the Rising Sun” until last week and…it’s fine, a sound spin on what I learned was their particular mash-up of influences. I’ll cover that story below, but think hard rock meets the sounds of Detroit.

I also learned that Frijid Pink recorded that cover as filler for their debut album - i.e., they had some empty space to fill on the LP, so they producer asked them if they had anything else. They’d been working up their take on “House of the Rising Sun” for their live shows, and for exactly the same reason. They knew it, though, and recorded the album version on the first take. Even if it doesn’t top the most popular version* (I assume), it’s a nice serving of fuzzed-up acid-rock typical of the burned-out come-down from the 1960s. And the theme is timeless, obviously…I just struggle to accept someone getting famous on the back of a cover, but accept that’s more personal bias than a judgment of artistry.

(* I’m confident this list isn’t even half-thorough, but it looks like Georgia Bell Turner recorded the first version in 1937 (on bad tech, from the sounds of it), Bob Dylan revived it for his debut, and then The Animals played the version that I think most people know.)

It hit big, rising as high as No. 7 on the Billboard, where it stayed for 13 weeks; it made loud noises in Europe (11 weeks at No. 1 in Germany) and Canada. It gave a gold record to a rock band from Detroit for the first time, thereby (arguably) putting Detroit rock on the map, you’re welcome, KISS. The accidents continued from there, not all of them happy…

The Rest of the Story
It starts with two kids who picked up music early and on their own, drummer Rick Stevers and bassist Tom Harris. By the time they reached high school, circa 1967, they had an actual touring band made up of kids they own and managed by Stevers’ parents, Clyde and Clara. They played as the Detroit Vibrations and mainly as a cover act, if one with ambition: they kept tabs on every song that came out and prided themselves on being the first band to perform it on the Detroit party/lounge/whatever circuit. They rode that into something like a residency at The Chatterbox, their hometown hot-spot in Allen Park, Michigan, by winning one battle of the bands after another.

One Hit No More, No. 42: Mountain, Woodstock and the Other Side of "Mississippi Queen"

West did cut an impressive figure...

The Hit
Badly as I want to kick this off with, “you know what’s coming the second you hear that cowbell,” I would have never heard Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen” if they didn’t have it on one of the editions of Rock Band (2, I think). I have literally never heard this song any other time (and I linked to the only video I possibly could in tribute).

That said, a particular detail in the game-play of Rock Band - at least on the drums, the only “instrument” I ever so much as looked at - makes the tune a happy memory. I got through the easy setting on the drums on something close to the first take, and even the first handful of games on the moderate setting. “Mississippi Queen,” as it happens, is the first song in that run that really forces the player to get their legs and arms moving together but separately. It took about a dozen takes to get past it for the first time, but it also got me over the hump on that fairly-specific physical challenge, and that might have been the first thing I’d taught my body to do since my late 20s. It hasn’t come in handy yet, but it’s in the back-pocket…

The Rest of the Story
In a word, dramatic. The mystique of Mountain begins with where they played their third-ever live performance. It was Woodstock, a gig they appear to have picked up by way of sharing a booking agent with Jimi Hendrix. Jimi, of course, had one of his iconic moments at Woodstock, but here’s a recreation of the scene from a 2019 retrospective in Goldmine Magazine:

“The band’s close to classic lineup, sans soon-to-be-enlisted drummer Corky Laing, ripped through a set largely culled from guitarist Leslie West’s recently released solo album entitled “Mountain.” The wide-eyed, expressive and impressively built West manned center stage as if the fates conspired to place him there at that moment and time, while former Cream producer Felix Pappalardi stood semi-shadowed to his right unleashing furious bass runs in accompaniment. It is little stretch to say the massive crowd heard nothing quite like this before.”