Some Lazy Saturdays are bigger than others.

(Editor’s note:  Bit of a switch on this Lazy Saturday.  Instead of all live cuts, we’ve got  introductions to two bands you need to know about and one lonely live track.  Just wanted to keep you in the loop.  The dude above loves his lawn.  Good for him.  I hate mine.)

I’ve written in the past that one of the best things about writing for Citizen Dick is the level of exposure I get to bands that I might not otherwise hear.  This week San Fransisco trio Sir Salvatore dropped a copy of their recently released EP in our e-mail; in the alternate universe where I only teach and don’t have an “internet,” I probably don’t get the chance to know about Sir Salvatore.  Happily, the six songs on Good Luck Charm have been filling my headphones all week; if you’re on the ball, you’re going to hit the itunes post-haste so they can fill yours.  The boys in Sir Salvatore have clearly been listening to good records for a while.  You can hear snippets of artists as diverse New Order (the fluid and heavy bass line in “Modern Consequences,” which is impossible to get out of your head) and early REM (the drums and guitar riff in “Parallelevator”) all over the record.  Given that, the unique quality of David Lean’s vocals makes the band sound like their own thing, which is good.  (Nobody wants to listen to a mish-mash of influences with no original stamp, after all.)  Overall, the seventeen minutes you spend with Sir Salvatore are going to have you primed for more material.  The track below is catchy, clever and well-executed.  More tunes can be heard at the band’s myspace.

Sir Salvatore – Fireflies, Reading Books

We held back a little bit when we reviewed The Builders and the Butchers live show last week.  Rob and I rolled in just a tiny bit late, but still in time to catch the tail end of Simeon Soul Charger’s set.  You probably wouldn’t slap the “indie” label on the Akron-based band, but their blend of dramatic, metal-tinged chops and epic delivery translates really well live.  We’ve got two tracks below, both of which are intricate and borderline operatic.  The supplementary percussion breakdown in “Rockets” is particularly solid.  We’ve said this before, but it’s fun to write about local bands that have talent.  These dudes, Suede Brothers and The Modern Electric are certainly making Northeast Ohio proud at the moment.  (That said, we’ve got to have a conference or something about how to name a band.  Maybe there’s a good story behind it, but Simeon Soul Charger doesn’t quite work for me.  The band would jump a level if the name was Killer Whale or something, right?)

Simeon Soul Charger – Someone Shoot the Fuckin TV

Simeon Soul Charger – Rockets

I’ve been storing the live track for today up for a while.  It comes from the expanded 1990 American release of Europe ‘72 and is almost certainly my favorite Dead song.  It’s a Pigpen original and was only performed nine times on the 1972 tour.  At the conclusion of the tour, Pigpen left the band and died eight months after.  Like “Easy Wind,” another Pigpen track, “The Stranger” is drenched in the blues and plays like an elegy when you consider McKernan’s stuggles with (and ultimate demise as a result of) alcohol.  (Jesus Christ.  What would have happened if the dude found somebody to “hide (his) liqour, try to serve (him) tea”?)  “The Stranger” finds Pigpen (in this case, it’s almost impossible not to ge the narrator and the author conflated) ruminating on the nature of love and its apparent impossibility to attain.  Nearly all of the lyrical content in “The Stranger” is top-notch, but it’s this bit at the end that always gets me:

“I’m a man, I’m not made out of stone.  My needs they are simple.  I don’t want many things.  But I surely want to fly on them wings, on them wings of love one time.  Oh yes I do.  I’m a stranger yeah.  I’m a stranger in your town.  Won’t somebody please help me now.  Help me find the right way to go.  I just want to ride, I just want to ride, I just want to ride on them big old wings of love.”

After that, he goes into an emotional crescendo to close the song, ripping raw vocals out of his damaged body, pleading to the universe for love.  If you’ve not heard it before, buckle up and get a kleenex ready.  In a Keith Moon-ish kind of way, Ron McKernan lived rock and roll and shuffled off as a result of those indulgences.  This song can be read as his conception of what could have been had he chosen not to; that kind of prescience is where tragedy comes from.  (Remember:  it’s not particularly tragic if the hero doesn’t know he has a flaw. That just sucks, much like rain on your wedding day or whatever.)    Equally tragic is that the tune, to a degree, died with McKernan.  This thing cuts across the sorts of stereotypes that you’d generally associate with the Dead.  Had they laid it down in a studio and put it on Wake of the Flood, you’re probably asking the DJ to play it at your wedding.  Push play on this one and soak in six minutes of anguish and (I might argue) the opportunity for redemption.

Grateful Dead – The Stranger (Two Souls in Communion)