Outernational, A Band

Unlike the Cure's Robert Smith, I've always had a special place in my heart for "message music." It didn't always have to be Phil Ochs or Country Joe and the Fish though, although I loved both of the songs I just linked to. The Velvet Underground was just as radical... to put it mildly, in an expansive way of defining political messaging. Not to mention Dylan. And Dylan is kind of what this post is semi-about. Well, it's not really about Dylan except that Amnesty International is making a new album of Dylan cover songs.

Did you listen to that Velvets song at the link? Man did I love that... it was behavior altering for a semester I dropped out of college. Before I did though, I never missed a Velvets show in NYC. I think I went to every single Exploding Plastic Inevitable gig at the Dom on St Marks Place. I was just a teenager at the time-- and damn lucky I could get in-- but I met all kinds of cool people at those shows. Including 3 fellow teenagers who had just arrived in NYC from California, Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley and Steve Noonan. They weren't famous, just cool. I invited them back to crash at my campus after the show, about an hour away from the city. I was booking the concerts at the college and they were all singer songwriters and I got them gigs whenever I could. I gave Tim the opening slot on the Doors concert. Jackson wound up as the quasi-lead singer of the campus house-band, the Soft White Underbelly, a precursor of the Blue Oyster Cult.

Last week one of my neighbors, drummer Jim Keltner, was recording a new song with Jackson. He's worked with Jackson before. Who hasn't he worked with? He's probably best know for the drumming he did for George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Dylan (hold that thought... it'll come in handy in a moment), the Stones, Gary Wright, Leon Russell, Roy Orbison, Jerry Garcia, Elvis Costello, Ry Cooder, Sheryl Crow... you know... everybody. If he's not the most famous drummer in the world, he's totally the most famous drummer on my block.

Remember that band I mentioned a week or so ago, Outernational? It was in connection with some anti-American hysteria Cuban-American fascist Marco Rubio was pushing at the Ronald Reagan Library. I posted a cool song and talked about how they were in Mexico working with Calle 13 and how Tom Morello from Rage and Chad Smith from the Peppers produce them. They're back from Mexico City and this weekend they're doing their song for the Amnesty International album, a new version of the one way up at the top, "When the Ship Comes In" (1964, way before any of these Clash-inspired NYC musicians was born). But lately their drummer has been Chad and this week his other band has a new album out they're out promoting.

So... who's the best drummer in the world who I know who knows Dylan songs and who heard the Outernational demos and totally loved them? Right! So this week, Jim Keltner started the week working on a new Jackson Browne song and ended the week working on a cover of an old Bob Dylan song with a band that only a handful of people know about so far. Remember I said how I booked the Doors to play at my school a few paragraphs back? I paid them $400. No one knew who they were when I booked them and Steven Krantz, the sophomore class president shook me out of a reverie during the show to demand I not pay "these clowns." "Light My Fire" had just been released as a single but the band wasn't famous yet. I knew them from a tiny bar where they played all summer one year under the 59th Street Bridge. The place only held like 60-70 people and I went every night so I got to know them. That's what seeing Outernational's going to be like if you catch them now.

I don't know what their version of "When The Ship Comes In" is going to sound like but listen to Dylan doing it with some Stones up top and then listen to this random Outernational song below and see if you can figure it out. I can't help thinking about what it was like on that first big Clash tour in 1977 with the Buzzcocks, the Slits, and Subway Sect. Special. Catch 'em if you can, although lately all they seem to do are immigrant rights gigs in Arizona.