Tag: superdekes.wordpress.com

Kinks Weeks – Where Have All The Good Times Gone? …superdekes.wordpress.com

I met deKE when I published a Georgia Satellites song and fellow blogger Graham told me about him after he posted a Satellites song a little earlier. Since then he has me listening to all sorts of music. I’m forever indebted to him for the introduction to the Canadian Power Pop band Sloan. Go visit his WordPress site. and he also has a youtube channel to visit. It’s worth subscribing to the YouTube channel. He has interviewed musicians, producers, and all sorts in the know. Ok, deKE…take it away…

Thanks to Mad Max for letting me be a part of this series. I’ve been reading everyone’s posts about The Kinks and I can honestly say I know the least about them and their history. Sure I know about Ray and Dave’s onstage/offstage antics as I read about some of it back in the day when I would pick up the monthly issue of Creem magazine.

The first time I ever heard of the band name ‘The Kinks’ was via ‘Van Halen’. Believe it or not it wasn’t VHs killer version of ‘You Really Got Me’ but Dave and Eddie’s muscled up version of ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone’.

Now you’re probably thinking “say what?!” but it’s true. I discovered VH back in April 81 but I didn’t get the VH debut with ‘You Really Got Me’ on it until 1984.(if you’re a fan of VH, see what I did there). There was so much hard rock coming out between 1980 and 1985 (my teenage years) I had a hard time keeping up. My first two VH purchases were ‘Women & Children First’ and ‘Fair Warning’ in 1981 as previously mentioned. My third VH purchase was in 1982 when they dropped the half originals/half covers release ‘Diver Down’. One of the cover tunes featured was ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone’.

If VH wanted to kick off their latest release with a loosey jam like vibe then this was the track to do just that with. Once you hear Alex Van Halen’s drums kick in, next thing you know Eddie Van Halen and Micheal Anthony are joining the party. Ringleader/vocalist David Lee Roth pulls down a good vocal on the song.

As a young rock fan and even as the years passed by and the decades started rolling by, I liked the fact that VH could take a cover tune and make it their own! Eddie’s guitar solo on the song is what air guitar is all about.

The great thing about YouTube is I pulled up The Kinks original of this song and holy moly Van Halen definitely rocked it up but you have to consider back when Ray and Dave cooked up this track that many years later VH took that cue and partied it up and put it out for the masses to devour.

By the way I’m sure Ray and Dave are still enjoying the royalty pay cheques thanks to Halen!

Thanks Max for letting me bend the rules here…

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Beatles Week – Revolution @superdekes.wordpress.com

I met Deke when I published a Georgia Satellites song and fellow blogger Graham told me about Deke after he posted a Satellites song a little earlier. Since then Deke has me listening to all sorts of things I wouldn’t have dreamed of before. Go visit his WordPress site. He also has a youtube channel to visit. I can tell you from experience…it’s worth subscribing to the youtube channel. Ok Deke…take it away…

Thanks to Max for the invite. My name is Derek but all my pals call me deKe and I have been blogging at WordPress for almost 10 years now. As many know I’m a huge fan of hard rock as my blog tends not to deviate from that style lol. I also have a Youtube page titled The Distortion Den that takes up a fair bit of time (but in a good way mind you) where I have had the fortunate pleasure of talking to friends, musicians and book authors.

Recently along with a pal from Moncton named Jex we have started a show called Retro ThrowDown (on Youtube) where we pit two rock albums against each other and rate each one out of a score of 10. We don’t discuss beforehand with each other what we were thinking on each album. That’s the charm and oh we keep these shows around the 30 minute mark so they are action packed!

I will be the first to admit I’m no way the biggest Beatles fan in the world but I like their music as they were innovators and it really wasn’t into the back half of the 80s when the catalog of Beatles music started coming out on CD that I started picking away at getting their music.

My contribution to Max’s Beatles week is the time Nike ran their TV ad with Revolution being the music to it.

Why well for me, it was the power of that Nike ad that made me want to start getting some more Beatles music.

I didn’t care for the running shoe part, I wanted the song which was, of course, the John Lennon powered Revolution!

So along with my good pal T-Bone, I came across one of those mixed Beatles tapes as there were many on the market and I believe it was called Rock N Roll Volume 1 that had Revolution on it along with a few other Beatles standards.

I purchased it on cassette tape for the sole purpose of cranking Revolution in T-Bones car.

Man I still recall at one point as (now remember we’re talking the summer of 87) we were cruising the streets of Thunder Bay windows down cranking Revolution over and over like no one’s business and I’m sure we lost some hearing along the way as that stereo in T-Bones car could crank out the decibels.

One of the moments that is etched in my brain forever is we were sitting at a red light on that warm summer evening the windows down and the warm summertime air blowing our mullets around and as I looked over to my right was an older dude and his female companion (older by that I mean me and T-bone were 21 years old at the time whereas the fellow and his lady friend were probably our ages now).

I will always remember sitting at that red light and the dude looking over at us and giving us the thumbs up! That for me was like winning  Olympic Gold lol. Maybe that guy thought “hey, look at these young punks digging on the Beatles or maybe he thought we were posers because of the commercial)

Whatever way that guy was thinking it was one of those fun moments and the power of a song connected at that red light!

Revolution to this day is still my favourite Lennon song. Love that it’s just the four of them laying it down with basically just drums, bass vocals, and guitar.

At the time when the Nike commercial aired The surviving Beatles sued Nike for 15 million which was crazy considering Michael Jackson owned the Beatles catalog which we all know drove McCartney nuts.

But if anything I have to give Nike credit as they did a really cool commercial for it all in black n white and even had John McEnroe and Micheal Jordan in it as well.

The commercial made me seek out and buy the song, not the running shoe!