Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me) - Reunion

Any song that name-checks Brenda and the Tabulations, Mott the Hoople, the Kama-Sutra record label and, er, Mungo Jerry, and ends with handclaps and a white bread Sly Stone cover is ok by me.

"Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me. Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me...". Sang Reunion (pop king Joey Levine in another fab'lus throwaway guise) in their 1976 US chart hit.

I was a DJ once, breaking new acts; bringing the sounds of the city to the suburbs. I'd put 'the man' in his place with the acidic monologues I'd improvise in my glass booth.

Unfortunately, my Tuesday afternoon shift at Radio Top Shop ended when my supervisor suggested that my progressive music policy wasn't helping the sale of marble-washed denims.

As great as 'Life is a rock' is, it's 100mph lyrical name-checking of 30 years of rock music seems to have inspired such pop atrocities as Billy Joel's 'We didn't start the fire' and R.E.M's 'It's the End of the World...'. But we shouldn't blame it. We don't blame Taxi Driver for John Hinkley. Though maybe we should blame David Bowie for Gary Newman.

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Night of the Lions - Mark Eric

It's 1969 and by taking the melodic goofiness of the early Beach Boys and adding some Pet Sounds-type production values, bit-part actor and male model Mark Eric produced one of the great lost surf/sunshine pop albums.

Also in 1969 ludicrous, overrated cock rocker Jimi Hendrix proclaimed that no one would ever want to listen to surf music again.

Au contraire, Jimi. While Hendrix never played live again after 1970 (something do to with choking on his own sick. Silly boy.), Mark Eric has, for 3 decades, entertained on cruise ships, in hotel bars and he even enjoyed a ten year residency at 'Maxwell's By The Sea', a top seafood restaurant in Huntington Beach, California.

Night of the Lions seems to be about Lions of the prowl or a night on the pull or something. There's probably a darker theme in there somewhere, but I really can't be bothered to explore it...

I'm still recovering from discovering that the song 'I Just Can't Wait t be King' from the Disney animated film 'The Lion King', roughly translates as 'I just can't wait until my Dad dies.'

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Manifesto & Book News

If it's ever been on K-Tel or Ronco, it's in. If it features hand claps, cow bells, syrupy orchestration, walls of sound, wrecking crews, sha-la-las, toothy teen idols, candy-based metaphors for carnal acts or lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long, it's in.

Baby baby, gotta gotta, gimme gimme, gettin' hotter



> Martin Lampen (latest book news, contact details and other stuff)

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