Popdose: The Ninth Day of Mellowmas: Fats? | Popdose
terje
· 11 months ago
Engineer Steve Reynolds said "It's like Fats Domino entertaining you in his own living room." Too true.
This was Domino's first major-label studio album since 1968. Now ain't that a shame. Still, despite its obvious drawbacks, it's probably the best thing you've posted so far. The wrapping's kind of tacky, but the style is pure Fats.
Beau
· 11 months ago
Sounds like a Casio in demo mode. Or with the magic "one-finger accompaniment."
Insert your own "one finger" punch line here.
mojo
· 11 months ago
Two thoughts:
1) Quality of music aside, I am sad to see Fats here. He's a legend and paid his dues. We've worked so hard to give his peers such as Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry their due on Popdose this year--for good reason, they've put up with a lot of garbage in their lives and even though they don't hit home runs every time they go in the studio, the world owes them more than they owe us.
Plus, even through cheezy early-90s Casio, he is creating rockin' New Orleans tuneage with a backbeat far from the Velveeta pap of your previous victims like Manilow and Mike McD. You can't stop the rock from him. But Michael Bolton, you guys showed, freezes the rock dead in its tracks.
2) On the flip side, Ike Turner started out on keyboards, played on some of rock's greatest early records, before he picked up the guitar and shaped its use for all the players who came after--both as an arranger and performer. He's right there with Fats and the other early great keyboardists making rock out of R&B's ashes.
That being said I got his last album and interviewed him and although it wasn't Casio bad, it was too digital in the fake-acoustic keyboards with too many synth pads. It was fake blues put out by a legend, and there was no excuse for passing it off as quality material. Of course I did not discuss my displeasure with him, because suggesting "You can do better than that, you know!" might have led to the ass-whippin' I was asking for.
I guess I'm saying, with all the Garth Brookses and Dolly Partons and Boltons/Manilows etc. out there cranking out what seems to be annual Christmas records to the Buick/Cadillac/Oldsmobile crowd, you guys have a lot more deserving targets than good old Fats, who deserves a break. If you can find an Ike Turner Christmas album, for instance, you could pummel him and I'd not object...
Do I get flamed for taking Mellowmas seriously? I guess I'll find out!!!!
jefito
· 11 months ago
I won't flame you. I also resisted including this song in this year's lineup, but Jason made a very persuasive argument, which is that it's terrible. My love for Fats remains undiminished, but I wish I'd never heard this song.
mojo
· 11 months ago
Agreed. You are a master of comments diplomacy.
Now where did I set down that Super Big Gulp of my signature Christmas beverage, eggnog & Sterno?
jasonhare
· 11 months ago
Wow, Jeff, way to throw me under the bus!
I see where you're coming from, Flucke, all the way. When I pick my Mellowmas candidates, I usually have my iPod shuffle through all my holiday songs. This song came on and I instantly hated it, without even knowing who it was. For me, this kind of comes back to the Stevie Wonder Argument -- do we forgive him his trespasses post '80 because of everything he gave us beforehand? I don't respect him any less, but a bad song is a bad song.
jefito
· 11 months ago
I didn't throw you under the bus! I said you were right!
MichaelWSP
· 11 months ago
I'm sad
No Doubt
That Fats
Sold Out
Ain't That a Shame,
My tears fell like rain.
Ain't That A Shame
Casio's to blame.
Thank you! I'll be here all ze week!
Bob
· 11 months ago
Dude, that rocked! I'll be sure to catch your next show.
Ted
· 11 months ago
My favorite part of the song: from 2:27 to the end.
edmur
· 11 months ago
While the backing music is pure casio cheese, and the arrangement little better, I actually like Fats' "reading" of the song. His vocal delivery is sublime...
MatthewBolin
· 11 months ago
If by "sublime" you mean sounding like he had one too many eggnogs...
I'm sorry, but what is with the one bar pause after the first line of each stanza? That may be his decided "reading", but it sounds BAD--herky-jerky. It catches you off guard, and seems more like someone who forgot the words the first time through, and then decided to keep doing it so the entire song would be similar.
Fats may be a legend and an originator, but a sub-par performance shouldn't get bonus points because of who is giving it.
jefito
· 11 months ago
Mr. Bolin speaks the truth. Amen!
WHarrisBullzEye
· 11 months ago
I will second the complaint about the one-bar pause - it's not clever; it's just off-putting - and, yes, the musical backing is definitely straight out of the Casio playbook. But I still love me some Fats. If you've never heard his covers of "Lady Madonna" or "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey," you're missing out. And I highly recommend Rick Coleman's "Blue Monday," a well-written and enthralling biography which gives you Fats' history inside and out.
eddie
· 11 months ago
try Fats again at Easter time... his rendition of "Easter Parade" is most excellent
DwDunphy
· 11 months ago
Engineer Steve Reynolds said "It's like Fats Domino entertaining you in his own living room." He probably meant "nursing home bedroom" because the only image this rendition conjures in my mind is a sad, lonely Antoine making the best of the crappy Casio his ineffectual grandkids dumped in his lap last Christmas, for the whole of the fifteen minutes they spent with Grandpere Fats on the holiday. He's got a flame in his heart that they'll be back this year, coming to hear what he done cooked up for them, but they're not coming. Not at all.
For Christmas dinner, Fats gets a plate of turkey, two ice-cream scoops of mashed potatoes covered in a gravy that has already begun to skin over, limp, grayish stalks that once were green beans and, as a "special treat", strawberry flavored Ensure to wash it all down. The temps start running down the halls, shutting the doors to the rooms. That can only mean one thing: someone didn't make it all the way through another holiday. Fats eats a brownish paste off a spoon. It tastes like Stove Top stuffing. It looks like crap.
Fats plinks a tune from his Casio, now too sad, lonely and scared to actually try to "tickle ivories", he lets the presets do all the work. He flips on the TV, watches Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dance into the pool for the thousandth time in his life and breaks down into low, almost unheard sobs. No one is there to hear him, so they might as well not exist at all.
Point of this story is: I hope you're all happy. Look what you've done to Fats.
Old_Davy
· 11 months ago
DwD, your post made me want to poke my eyes out with a candy cane.
DwDunphy
· 11 months ago
The inspiration to Pixies' "Gouge Away"... True story!
Old_Davy
· 11 months ago
While all the previous offerings were pretty hilarious - or in the case of Judy Collins, totally inappropriate, today's musical gift was just sad.
You know, this could be a killer cut with real musicians playing real instruments, but the computerized backing track sucks all the life out of it. This tune could use a musical defibrillator.
Sad indeed.
Beau
· 11 months ago
Wait, wait, wait ... Mellowmas songs are supposed to suck?
Uh oh -- this changes everything.
Curt
· 11 months ago
I haven't felt this violated since hearing Paul McCartney do the theme from "You Only Live Twice."
Curt
· 11 months ago
Fuck, it's "Live and Let Die" - I really thought I had totally repressed that memory...thanks a lot!
All Comments
This was Domino's first major-label studio album since 1968. Now ain't that a shame. Still, despite its obvious drawbacks, it's probably the best thing you've posted so far. The wrapping's kind of tacky, but the style is pure Fats.
Insert your own "one finger" punch line here.
1) Quality of music aside, I am sad to see Fats here. He's a legend and paid his dues. We've worked so hard to give his peers such as Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry their due on Popdose this year--for good reason, they've put up with a lot of garbage in their lives and even though they don't hit home runs every time they go in the studio, the world owes them more than they owe us.
Plus, even through cheezy early-90s Casio, he is creating rockin' New Orleans tuneage with a backbeat far from the Velveeta pap of your previous victims like Manilow and Mike McD. You can't stop the rock from him. But Michael Bolton, you guys showed, freezes the rock dead in its tracks.
2) On the flip side, Ike Turner started out on keyboards, played on some of rock's greatest early records, before he picked up the guitar and shaped its use for all the players who came after--both as an arranger and performer. He's right there with Fats and the other early great keyboardists making rock out of R&B's ashes.
That being said I got his last album and interviewed him and although it wasn't Casio bad, it was too digital in the fake-acoustic keyboards with too many synth pads. It was fake blues put out by a legend, and there was no excuse for passing it off as quality material. Of course I did not discuss my displeasure with him, because suggesting "You can do better than that, you know!" might have led to the ass-whippin' I was asking for.
I guess I'm saying, with all the Garth Brookses and Dolly Partons and Boltons/Manilows etc. out there cranking out what seems to be annual Christmas records to the Buick/Cadillac/Oldsmobile crowd, you guys have a lot more deserving targets than good old Fats, who deserves a break. If you can find an Ike Turner Christmas album, for instance, you could pummel him and I'd not object...
Do I get flamed for taking Mellowmas seriously? I guess I'll find out!!!!
Now where did I set down that Super Big Gulp of my signature Christmas beverage, eggnog & Sterno?
I see where you're coming from, Flucke, all the way. When I pick my Mellowmas candidates, I usually have my iPod shuffle through all my holiday songs. This song came on and I instantly hated it, without even knowing who it was. For me, this kind of comes back to the Stevie Wonder Argument -- do we forgive him his trespasses post '80 because of everything he gave us beforehand? I don't respect him any less, but a bad song is a bad song.
No Doubt
That Fats
Sold Out
Ain't That a Shame,
My tears fell like rain.
Ain't That A Shame
Casio's to blame.
Thank you! I'll be here all ze week!
I'm sorry, but what is with the one bar pause after the first line of each stanza? That may be his decided "reading", but it sounds BAD--herky-jerky. It catches you off guard, and seems more like someone who forgot the words the first time through, and then decided to keep doing it so the entire song would be similar.
Fats may be a legend and an originator, but a sub-par performance shouldn't get bonus points because of who is giving it.
For Christmas dinner, Fats gets a plate of turkey, two ice-cream scoops of mashed potatoes covered in a gravy that has already begun to skin over, limp, grayish stalks that once were green beans and, as a "special treat", strawberry flavored Ensure to wash it all down. The temps start running down the halls, shutting the doors to the rooms. That can only mean one thing: someone didn't make it all the way through another holiday. Fats eats a brownish paste off a spoon. It tastes like Stove Top stuffing. It looks like crap.
Fats plinks a tune from his Casio, now too sad, lonely and scared to actually try to "tickle ivories", he lets the presets do all the work. He flips on the TV, watches Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dance into the pool for the thousandth time in his life and breaks down into low, almost unheard sobs. No one is there to hear him, so they might as well not exist at all.
Point of this story is: I hope you're all happy. Look what you've done to Fats.
You know, this could be a killer cut with real musicians playing real instruments, but the computerized backing track sucks all the life out of it. This tune could use a musical defibrillator.
Sad indeed.
Uh oh -- this changes everything.