10 Greatest Link Wray Songs

Tomorrow, May 2nd, is the late Link Wray's birthday.  His hometown of Dunn, North Carolina will honor him with a concert on the same day.  Link Wray passed in 2005 but he left a substantial body of recorded music dating back to the 1950’s.  He graced nearly a hundred or more songs with his trademark raw guitar playing.  Now, as the festival celebrating his life and work approaches, is as good a time as any to highlight a few of Link’s best tracks.

Rumble

“Rumble” is Link Wray’s magnum opus.  It’s little more than an incredibly simple guitar riff but in Link’s hands it became a rock and roll anthem, comparable to “Johnny B. Goode” or “Rock Around The Clock.”  Except neither of those was as dangerous as “Rumble.”  Link’s entirely instrumental song was banned from several radio stations out of fear that its title and dynamic sound would encourage violence.  Fifty years later “Rumble” entered the Library of Congress.  
Decades before it was recognized by any formal institution the song inspired legions of guitarists and other musicians.  Rock legends Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page, and Pete Townshend, of The Stooges, Led Zeppelin, and The Who fame respectively, all credited “Rumble” with their desire to play music professionally.  Even the studio production was about as rock and roll as it gets.  Legend has it that Link stabbed his amplifier with a pen in order to get the raw sound of a live performance, thus creating the distortion and feedback that made history. 

Fire

Although Link Wray never duplicated the success of “Rumble” his career was revitalized in the 1970’s when he teamed up with singer Robert Gordon.  The duo’s biggest hit, “Fire,” was the result of two more music icons.  It was written by The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, for The King, Elvis Presley.  Elvis died before he had the chance to perform the song so Springsteen passed it along to Wray and Gordon because he thought they could do it justice.  The song has since been performed by The Pointer Sisters, Cher, Tom Jones, and Robin Williams doing an Elmer Fudd impression, but none could match the Robert Gordon and Link Wray version.  The tune’s famous driving bass line is best served with Link Wray’s guitar.

Home is Where The Heart Is

For the first decade or so of his career Link Wray mostly performed country western music.  When Elvis Presley arrived on the scene he changed the face of music and Link along with it.  Soon after Elvis popularized rock and roll Link began to move towards his trademark gritty style and he never forgot the role Elvis played in his musical development.  Link covered several of Elvis’s greatest hits including “Jailhouse Rock” and “Heartbreak Hotel,” but he also made the most out of some of The King’s more obscure work.  “Home is Where The Heart Is,” most famously featured in the Elvis movie Kid Galahad, is a fairly generic pop ballad by Elvis’ standards but Link turned it into a folk/western epic.Link didn't sing much, especially early in his career, due to tuberculosis taking one of his lungs, but when he did his voice proved to be the perfect complement to his guitar, exposed and intimate, yet powerful.

Black River Swamp

Just as Dunn honors Link Wray now, the man never forgot his home.  He more than likely wrote the song “Black River Swamp” about his birthplace in North Carolina.  The opening line is “I was born down in the country where the cotton grows.”  Link is known to be from Dunn and I can personally confirm that cotton grows there.  
“Black River Swamp” appeared on Link’s self-titled 1971 album.  The record was quite a departure from his earlier work.  It was the first time he traded in heavy guitar riffs for folksy acoustic plucking.  The album was largely a mix of blues, country, and gospel, reminiscent of the easy listening country rock of The Byrds and The Rolling Stone’s Exile on Main St.  The change in style did more than display Link’s versatility.  It also created the perfect atmosphere for a nostalgic song about childhood in the country.

Ain't That Lovin' You Baby

This actually isn’t the similarly titled Elvis Presley song.  This is “Ain't That Lovin’ You Baby” by Jimmy Reed.  It’s Link Wray at his most bluesy.  Reed’s original was bouncy and upbeat, but Link slowed it down a little and added a gothic Howling Wolf breathiness.  The result is a thoroughly creepy song about obsession.

Run Chicken Run

Link had a knack for turning live improvisations into iconic recordings.  “Rumble” was born when he was asked to provide something the audience could dance “The Stroll” to.  Similarly, Link was performing at a wild frat party when he created “Run Chicken Run” based on the students’ animalistic actions.  The song starts with a sharp plucking to represent the pecking of a bird then falls into Link’s typical rockabilly guitar chords and alternates between the two for the rest of the track.  It’s a raving ride as Link changes abruptly from staccato stabs to a blunt roar.

Shawnee

It would be an understatement to say Link Wray was ahead of his time.  The world wasn’t quite ready when “Rumble” was released in the 1950’s.  Music and recording techniques finally caught up to Link by the 1990’s after the grunge movement began to use feedback and distortion to full effect.  Link’s career experienced another resurgence with some help from movies like Pulp Fiction and Desperado, which included Link’s music in their soundtracks.  “Shawnee,” from Link’s 1990 album Apache is one of his grungiest songs of the era.  It’s also one of several of his recordings that pays homage to his Native American heritage.

Young Love

Perhaps even more impressive than Link’s musical prowess was his dedication to his integrity.  He recorded several of his albums in an old chicken shack and was the farthest thing from a sellout.  One of the reasons he never quite fit in with pop radio was that he didn't have much interest in pretty choruses.  However, on occasion he showed a flair for melody.  One such song was “Young Love” from his 1997 album Shadowman.  It still has all of the loud guitar noise you’d expect from Link but with a sweetly nostalgic chorus about teenage romance.

And I Love Her

Link Wray generally stuck to Americana in his music.  His go to genres were rock and roll of course, as well as blues, folk, and country.  However, his work with Americana gained him a substantial European fan base and he lived in Denmark in the last years of his life, so it made sense for him to experiment with music from other countries once in a blue moon.  One such song came from four lads from Liverpool.  When Link covered “And I Love Her” from The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night he added a little of his Americana and removed the lyrics.  The result was one of Link’s best instrumentals since “Rumble.”  His guitar was all Link needed to convey the romance of the song.  Words would have just gotten in the way.

Midnight Lover

Link Wray typically took a punk rock approach to song length.  They were short, fast, and wild.  However, when the songs were long Link still made the most of every second.  Take, for instance, “Midnight Lover” from Link’s 1975 album Stuck in Gear.  The shortest version of the song is six and a half minutes long and others come in at almost nine minutes.  It’s a funk rock epic to put the Red Hot Chili Peppers to shame fifteen years before they became a household name.  The experiment with funk gave Link’s bassist a rare chance to shine and he made the most of it, but he still couldn't outshine Link’s incredible guitar solo.

Guardians of the Galaxy or: How I Stopped Hating And Learned To Almost Kind Of Like Boy Bands Again (Trust Me, It All Ties Together)

From the very beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy my favorite part of the movie was the music.  I, like many people, first developed an interest based largely on the use of Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling" in the trailer.  Then, when I got to the theater and the film started I knew I could like it when I saw Chris Pratt dancing to Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love."  When the credits were over I left with a light heart and The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" in my head.

All of the music comes from a cassette tape belonging to Chris Pratt's character Peter Quill.  He gets the tape from his mother on the night that she dies just before he's abducted by space pirates when he's nine years old.  The tape is one of the few connections he has to his mother and his life on Earth while he's of gallivanting through space living my dream life.  He spent most of his life having space adventures and listening to awesome music.  Peter was abducted in 1988, four years before I was born.  If I had left to have space adventures when I was nine my soundtrack would have been about 90% a mixture of Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC.  The rest would have been 3% Aaron Carter, 3% Music From the Motion Picture 'Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius,' 3% Christian rock, and 1% not explicitly addressed but still very present emotional confusion about 9/11.

I mean I really liked the Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC.  Almost every night I drifted off to sleep to the soulful sounds of Joey Littrell or Howie Chavez on my boombox.  I should probably mention that no matter how much time I spent listening to these CD's and going through the liner notes I never quite grasped which was which.  I couldn't tell you the names of the band members or which band they were in.  However, I did know that when Justin Timberlake left N*SYNC it was a sure sign of the death of boy bands so I moved on to other things.

There was a time  when I was ashamed that so much of my life was scored by boy bands.  This was around the time I was watching a lot of VH1 and it led me to group all decades into multiple big "best of" lists.  I believed that while I was listening to the Backstreet Boys in the late 90's I was missing out on all the cool grunge stuff even though Kurt Cobain died when I was an infant and BSB didn't release their first album until several years later when I was still an infant.

Nevertheless, I held on to these regrets for most of middle school and high school.  I held a grudge towards BSB and N*SYNC for wasting my childhood on their bubblegum pop nonsense when I could have been listening to the Afghan Whigs like a normal well adjusted nine year old.  For the next several years I listened to as much music as possible to make up for what I missed.  That sentence kind of sounds like I would never accomplish my goal but I think I did.  In the past hour I've listened to The Violent Femmes and Wheatus so I'm pretty confident in my alternative credentials.

Slowly my grudge against boy bands faded away and I barely noticed.  Then I saw the film This Is the End.  The movie features the Backstreet Boys' "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" in an early scene then ends (spoiler [duh]) with the Backstreet Boys themselves appearing for a dance number with the stars of the film in Heaven.  The appearance of the Backstreet Boys in a star studded movie in 2013 surprised me and made me realize how big the group was at one time.  It occurred to me that for BSB to have been so popular they must have been at least kind of good.  I'm not saying I went and added a lot of their songs to a bunch of Spotify playlists.  I didn't think about boy bands much but when I did it was mostly positive.  For instance, I was pretty excited to see the highly choreographed dance moves I remember show up in the form of John Krasinski in a recent episode of Lip Sync Battle.

I guess what I'm saying is I wouldn't mind too much if nine year old me was in control of the soundtrack for my space adventures.  I probably wouldn't even notice because I'd be too busy having space adventures.  Please someone take me on their space adventures.  I listen to better music now, I promise.

Previously

Iron Man

The Incredible Hulk

Iron Man 2

Thor

Captain America: The First Avenger

The Avengers

Iron Man 3

Thor: The Dark World

Captain America: Winter Soldier

Other Times For Captain America to Wake Up In

A few weeks ago in my untitled Marvel Cinematic Universe viewing extravaganza leading up to and including Avengers: Age of Ultron I looked at some time periods that would have been worse for Captain America: The First Avenger to be set in.  Now it's time for the sequel and I want to think about this from the other way.  Captain America: Winter Soldier is about Steve Rogers adjusting to modern America after being frozen in time at the end of his previous movie.  Throughout the film he faces current political issues and learns about the past 70 years of pop culture while fighting the evil Nazi offshoot Hydra.

The story of Steve waking from his cryogenic sleep has been told several times since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first told it in the early 60's.  With each generation Cap's ice nap lasts longer and longer and his awakening happens farther and farther from his asleepening.  It makes me wonder what it would be like if Steve Rogers had woken up in a different time that hasn't been shown.

The 90's

"Hasn't been shown" includes the 90's Captain America
movie that is reportedly so bad I have not seen it and
probably never will.

I love the 90's as much as the next millennial, if not more.  I listen to Nirvana and watch Seinfeld reruns and remember Power Rangers.  I wouldn't trade the 8 years I spent alive in the 90's for anything but I don't think Steve Rogers would feel the same way if he woke up there after spending his whole life in the early 20th century.  It was obviously difficult for Steve to adjust to life in the the 2010's but the 90's were something entirely different.  Imagine going from the early days of film and the last days of jazz to this:

In case you were doubting my 90's cred.

You can't go straight from Billie Holiday to Butthole Surfers.  Grunge is my favorite music genre but without knowledge of the decades of music leading up to it it probably sounds like absolute horse manure.  There's a scene in Winter Soldier when Steve goes incognito by putting on hipster glasses and a hoodie; modern clothes that are radically different from the collar and tie he wore for much of The First Avenger.  He might have felt a little uncomfortable but that would have been a lot worse if he had to wear the grunge uniform of flannel and aggressively bad posture.

The Same Time as Austin Powers

Speaking of the 90's, can you prove that Austin Powers doesn't take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?  Apparently Steve's friend Bucky, AKA the Winter Soldier, had been frozen and thawed out repeatedly after he seemed to die back in the 40's.  In the first Austin Powers movie the international man of mystery of the 60's volunteered to be frozen after his nemesis Dr. Evil did the same, no doubt basing his science on that used on Bucky.    Surely, if Captain America had been found by the time Dr. Evil returned in the 90's Steve would have been unfrozen along with Austin and the two would have had to work together against such an immense threat.

Immense.

Observant readers may have noticed that this post is not about worse time periods but simply different.  That's because an Austin Powers/Captain America team up would be objectively incredible and I just wanted to point that out.  Steve Rogers would make a great straight man for Austin Powers.  Also, there's an interesting role reversal between the two.  British people are typically seen as very stuffy and uptight, much more so than Americans, but Steve Rogers is generally very stiff while Austin Powers is famously groovy.  It would be like an Odd Couple reboot mixed with the time displacement of The Brady Bunch Movie.

Immediately After the Events of The Avengers or Winter Soldier

As great as Captain America is, I can't think of anything he did in The Avengers that someone else couldn't have done.  Still, I imagine it would have been a punch in the gut to happen upon the greatest soldier in history right after the greatest battle the world has ever known.  It certainly seems unlikely that anyone in the middle of an alien attack would think "Good thing Captain America isn't here.  He would bring absolutely nothing to the table."  

On the other hand, for obvious reasons, Captain America played a much larger role in Captain America: Winter Soldier.  As the star of the movie he sets everything in motion and is practically the only obstacle between Hydra and world domination.  If Cap had stayed in the ice for a few more years millions of people would have died  There's a chance no one would even know why if Hydra chose to stay in the shadows.  If they found Steve just after the events of Winter Soldier no one would know just how much they needed him.  It wouldn't have the same ironic edge as finding him after The Avengers but the loss would have been much worse.

Previously in the Untitled Marvel Cinematic Universe Viewing Extravaganza Leading Up To and Including Avengers: Age of Ultron

Iron Man

The Incredible Hulk

Iron Man 2

Thor

Captain America: The First Avenger

The Avengers

Iron Man 3

Thor: The Dark World

Thor and the Many Uses of a Hammer

In the first Thor movie Odin says that his son's hammer Mjolnir "can be used as a weapon to destroy or a tool to build.”  (At least, I think he does.  I deleted my recording so the only evidence I could find of that line is from someone's blog post about a Bible verse.)  However, in the past month or so I have seen both Thor movies and The Avengers and I don't remember Thor ever building anything.  Regardless, there's no denying that a hammer can have a variety of uses.  Mjolnir was recently revealed as a potential shaving device.

This makes me wonder just how versatile a hammer can be, so I've decided to try out the known uses of a hammer and experiment with a few of my own.




First I used the hammer as a tool to build, something Thor could apparently never do.  I was pleased with the results.  I definitely recommend a hammer if you're planning on building anything in the future.  I made this handy cup holder.  It works great and I can see myself using it a lot in the future.

5/5 hammers.



Next I used the hammer as a weapon of destruction.  I utterly decimated the cup holder I had just worked so hard on in a matter of seconds.  Although a hammer is quite distinct from a sword it does have something in common with a double edged sword in that it is double edged.  Odin was right, a hammer is good for destruction.

5/5 hammers.



I also tried using a hammer to shave my face.  I'm usually an electric razor kind of guy but I was willing to try going manual for my research.  I'm sorry to say that the hammer performed poorly as a shaving device.  I have just as much hair on my face as I did before.  However, I was worried that with my limited experience with manual razors I might cut myself but that didn't happen.  It was a perfectly smooth shaving experience.

3/5 hammers.



Thor uses his hammer to propel him in flight.  He spins it around and throws it then he flies because that's Stan Lee's idea of scientific accuracy.  I attempted to use the same method to replicate Thor's flight but it was ineffective.  I barely got a few inches off the ground.  I'm sorry to say that Stan Lee may have been incorrect.  (That's not going to stop me from sacrificing myself so he can absorb my youth if he asks, though.)

1/5 hammers.




Thor also uses his hammer to summon lightning and channel the electricity.  When I attempted the same I failed to summon any lightning.  Because I could not summon any lightning I did not have an opportunity to test the hammer's ability to channel and redirect electricity.  Therefore, I have no evidence to suggest that had lightning struck the hammer I could not redirect it at my discretion.

2/5 hammers. Plausible.




I had the idea to try using the hammer as a phone.  I spoke into it and no one responded.  I tried a few more numbers and got the same results.

1/5 hammers.




I used the hammer as a bookmark.  After placing the hammer between the last page I read and the next I closed the book.  I was pleased to find the hammer stayed in that location.  I could have easily returned to that page at any moment.

4/5 hammers.




Using a hammer as a hat rack proved difficult.  When I first put the hat on the rack it fell over.  It worked fine on the second try but 50% is not an acceptable statistic from a hat rack, which I expect to be consistent.  Even when it held steady I don't think it could hold much more than one hat.

1/5 hammers.




I find that as a remote control a hammer gives you what you need, not what you want.  I tried to change the channel from an episode of How I Met Your Mother and the hammer refused to let me.  I had no choice but to watch the entirety of what was left of the episode and I just laughed and laughed.  This hammer really knows good television.

5/5 hammers.

Previously:

Iron Man

The Incredible Hulk

Iron Man 2

Thor

Captain America: The First Avenger

The Avengers

Iron Man 3

'Iron Man 3' and How to Be An Exploding Man

Sometimes people explode.  It's just a natural part of life.  When a person gets so full of nuclear energy or rage or poop jokes and that stuff has no way out it has no option but to explode out of the person it's inside of.  It's unfortunate but everyone has to go sometime.

Iron Man 3 is the story of the little billionaire who knew it was none of his business.  The people in Iron Man 3 explode because they've been exposed to something called Extremis.  Extremis was designed to heal people but overexposure causes them to explode.  When someone explodes and a friend gets hurt Tony Stark is shattered.  He feels like someone has exploded on his head.  He then sets out to find the person responsible and explode on his head in return.

On my way to explode on your head.
(The explosions are poop.)

Iron Man 3 is just one of many examples of exploding people.  People have been exploding since at least...

Jimmy Neutron

When I was trying to think of examples of exploding people I kept thinking of a robot that exploded then reassembled itself but I couldn't remember which robot it was.  For hours I couldn't stop picturing a bang followed by several pieces of metal moving towards a central location.  

Finally I saw the head and realized it was Goddard, Jimmy Neutron's robot dog.  Goddard isn't technically a person but he is very intelligent.  Like, scary Haley Joel Osment artificially intelligent.  Fortunately, Goddard is on the side of the angels as long as you consider a hyper intelligent 10 year old who likes to play God an angel.  Goddard is seen blowing up then reassembling himself several times throughout the Neutronverse.  It's even an important plot point in the 2001 movie that started it all.  Between his artificial intelligence and ability to die and come back with ease Goddard is frighteningly close to being a canine Terminator.  Even more worrisome is his loyalty to a child who, again, is not hesitant to toy with the laws of physics and answers to no authority.  It's good that children in cartoons almost never age or else the world would be in danger from a mad scientist with an unstoppable mechanical dog lieutenant.

Don't worry, the other dog playing dead in the corner survives.
He's living on a farm where he can play with other dogs all day.

Heroes

As far as I can tell most people are under agreement that the first season of Heroes was amazing but after that the show went downhill fast.  I was in high school when Heroes was on and I was just starting to multitask between watching TV and screwing around on my computer.  I didn't have the balance down yet so I was only vaguely aware that I was enjoying the first season and not enjoying everything else, so the whole show just became a big muddled mess in my mind.   I still have pretty distinct memories of the parts when I was paying attention like Hayden Panettiere jumping off an oil rig, Masi Oka saying "yataa!" and becoming really invested in Milo Ventimiglia's career, but most of the show is just a blur.  I have almost no memory of the big climactic fight in the first season finale but I remember the question "how to stop an exploding man?" getting thrown around a lot leading up to it.  My research shows that Peter Petrelli absorbed some guy named Ted's ability to explode but he couldn't control it.  In order to save everyone Peter's brother Nathan (who can fly) had to fly Peter up really high where he could explode without killing anyone, apparently including the two people who were in the middle of the explosion.

Don't worry, Adrian Pasdar survives.  He's on
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where he's pretty awesome.

Superman

I'm a big Superman fan.  Others are not.  Most people only see Superman as an inoffensive pop culture figure.  People who dislike Superman often say the reason is that he is too powerful, which makes him difficult to relate to, unlike Batman, who is just an ordinary multibillionaire everyman.  Recently, writer Geoff Johns, along with artist John Romita Junior,  found a way to make Superman more and less powerful at the same time,  They gave him the ability to channel his heat vision from his entire body, expelling all of his power at once in a single blast.  

Oh no! Superman exploded and
killed everyone on the planet!

The new ability takes away Superman's powers for about 24 hours.  He first used the ability to stop an opponent named Ulysses.  The comic immediately after that showed a day in the life of a basically human Clark Kent.  Clark spent the day with Jimmy Olsen after telling him about his secret identity.   When the story ended Clark explained to Jimmy that he was the same basic person with or without powers and he proved it by stepping in front of a gun, even though he was no longer bulletproof, to save someone's life.  Seriously though, how are all these people looking at a rich guy who dresses like a bat and routinely endangers teenager's lives and thinking "yeah, that's me in a nutshell.  Oh, the guy with a normal job and normal friends and a normal family who explodes sometimes?  Isn't he a weirdo?"

Previously:

Iron Man

The Incredible Hulk

Iron Man 2

Thor

Captain America: The First Avenger

The Avengers