Elvis Presley, "Change of Habit" (1969)

This is the title track from Elvis' last movie, in which he plays an "idealistic ghetto doctor" who unwittingly employs three undercover nuns and, in the original draft of the script, attempts to enslave them Enter the Dragon style with daily doses of methadone-laced chitlins (hence "Change of Habit" - the scriptwriter was furious after the studio removed the drug-slavery sub-plot to achieve a general audience certificate, stating it had "ruined a pun that had undoubtedly been the highest achievement of my career").

Like all successful pop artists, Elvis moved with the times and this track is very much on the vibe of '69, a surprisingly tough-sounding effort from normally countrified backing band the Jordanaires, with fuzzed-out bass and frenetic drums hit hard to tape and bursting almost obnoxiously out of the left channel.

Elvis Presley - Change of Habit by doggziller

By extension, I suppose had Elvis lived to sip our modern air he would probably be doing weird remakes where Justin Bieber is skate-boarding around the city and when he looks up at a billboard, old-ass Elvis is inside the billboard, shuffling around singing an Autotuned version of "Suspicious Minds" and then there's a rap verse. The Reaper takes each at his appointed time and though the King suffered the small embarrassment of gasping his last upon the toilet he was perhaps spared the greater indignity of living on to suffer celebrity in the 21st Century.

He also missed the corny and overdone 2003 remix of "Rubberneckin'", another song from the Change of Habit soundtrack - I like to imagine that a surviving Elvis might've been grumpy enough not to authorize this but then again, it did make a lot of money and a guy who shoots televisions always needs some spare change.

The entire film is up on YouTube - I gave up watching shortly after Elvis mistakenly assumed the nuns all wanted illegal abortions and then said some pretty marginal stuff about rape, but I did stick it out long enough to witness Elvis and his apartment full of inauthentically "ghetto" buddies somehow perform "Rubberneckin'" on three acoustic guitars and a tambourine.

Merryweather and Carey, "Five Days on the Trail" (1971)

Neil Merryweather and Lynn Carey shall live long in my heart for releasing this album containing the absolutely incandescent slab of treacle-thick fugitive blues that is "Five Days on the Trail", a song that damn near breaks my neck any time I drop a needle on it:

Merryweather & Carey - Five Days On The Trail by doggziller

Merryweather and Carey have both had long and varied careers in music (mostly independent of one another, though they were apparently lovers when this album was released) - and with more than a few brushes against  giants of popular culture. For instance, one of Neil Merryweather's earlier bands, the Mynah Birds, was fronted by a young Rick James (not sounding much like his Cold-Blooded era self back in the mid-60s).

Lynn Carey belted out vocals for fictional group "The Carrie Nations" in the Russ Meyer/Roger Ebert collaboration Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - very loosely dubbed over actress Dolly Read's lip-syncing (Roger Ebert - these days notorious for his endorsement of 1997 Jamie Foxx vehicle "Booty Call" - would later claim this and all other flaws in the film were intended for comic effect).



Although Russ Meyer evidently considered her "too flat-chested" for the silver screen, Lynn Carey nevertheless appeared in Penthouse a couple of years later to promote her and Merryweather's new band Mama Lion (a band most famous for a minor scandal surrounding the cover of its first album - Lynn seemingly not especially shy at this point in her life)

A number of young men were to profess a keen interest in Isaac Asimov's article on immortality.

Penthouse December 1972 is also notable for containing "Xaviera Hollander's first advice column", which was to run for about 35 years. Xaviera will of course be familiar to you as the author of the best-selling saxophone sex mystery, Yours Fatally!

Oh Fausto! Your legacy lives on.

NZ MUSIC MONTH 2010 #1 - Quincy Conserve "Listen To The Band" (1970)

Having myself once appeared as a "professional dancer" in a New Zealand music video - a fact both inexplicable and hilarious - I'm well aware that in the Kiwi music scene, folks generally ain't got a lot of budget and you need to trade favours where you can. So I think we can safely explain the grimacing woman on the cover of this album, as... well... a friend of the band. A gift horse, shall we say, whose mouth has most assuredly not been inspected.

The Quincy Conserve was a local equivalent of American "jazz/rock" or "brass-rock" bands such as Blood, Sweet & Tears or early Chicago, a style of music that was pretty hot in the early '70s - basically around the time that significant numbers of white people first started wanting to play something like funk, but before most of them were comfortable saying as much.

The Quincy Conserve were one of the best local bands of the 1970s and their first two albums are little acknowledged classics. I'll most likely post about their second LP "Epitaph" later in the month, for now, here's my three favourites from "Listen to the Band":
 
The Quincy Conserve - Ride the Rain
Penned by drummer Bruno Lawrence, this strong, slightly psychadelic tune was the biggest hit on the album and was a finalist for the "Loxene Golden Disc" awards, the contemporary equivalent of the RIANZ awards, sponsored (oddly enough) by a shampoo. Despite this contribution to the band's success, by 1971 Bruno was out of the line-up, apparently due to his rascally behaviour (a habit of performing impromptu armpit fart concertos while frontman Malcolm Hayman was speaking between songs has been cited as one aggravating factor in their fraught relationship)...and as all patriots know, Bruno went on instead to form the very crucible of Kiwi male identity in landmark films such as 1982's "Battletruck".

"Men must be strong, like Battletruck."

The Quincy Conserve - Frustration
Another toothy original which cleverly references a second cornerstone of our national identity with backing vocals that mimic the cries of sheep and lambs.

Our national identity explained.

Bruno's drumming on this track is especially choice. 

The Quincy Conserve - Somebody Stole My Thunder
This is a cover of a track by Georgie Fame, which in my ultra-nationalistic opinion edges out the original.



The Conserve broke up in 1976, but had an unexpected boost in profile a couple of years ago when TV2 released a promo built around the song "Aire of Good Feeling" from "Epitaph", consequently both "Ride the Rain" and "Frustration" are available in high quality, legitimate versions along with a number of highlights from the Conserve's other albums. I commend all true patriots to COP THAT SHIT.