#maximum r&b

READY STEADY GO! -- READY STEADY WHO?!

PIC INFO: Spotlight on English rock band THE WHO, left to right: John Entwistle, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, and Keith Moon on the set of British rock/pop music television programme "Ready Steady Go!" in London, UK, c. 1965 📸: Glen Craig.

Teenage Depression Eddie and the Hot Rods 1976, Island

Eddie and the Hot Rods were pub rock legends, which is one of those particularly subby subgenres you need to be fairly deep into your second divorce proceedings (thanks for nothing Debra) to understand as distinct from punk rock or power pop. You do know it when you hear it though—more soul and maximum R&B than punk’s bleached ferocity, a certain sing-songy bop. The Hot Rods had as frenzied a staccato attack as any in the UK’s first generation of punk, were considerably more competent musicians, and beat most of them to market by six months to a year. They also had a lot less to say artistically, but the Rods still made a formidable mini-boss for any fledgling punk band who shared a bill with them.

Their debut Teenage Depression absolutely goes—half of the songs are originals recorded in a studio, the other half ferocious live covers, and all of it sounds like a party thanks to their relentless “Train Kept A-Rollin’” chug. Of the originals, “Double Checkin’ Woman” has the best riff and is therefore the best song, but the snappy “Been So Long” and “Why Can’t It Be?” (in certain moments a dead ringer for Stiff Little Fingers’ “Alternative Ulster”) aren’t to be slept on. As to the covers, they’re all pilled to the gills, though the specific songs vary a bit between the UK and American issues, as was (annoyingly) common at the time. Alongside the expected ‘60s rock chestnuts (e.g. The Who’s “The Kids Are Alright”), the UK version showed greater range with its takes on Sam Cooke’s “Shake” and Joe Tex’s “Show Me”; the North American edition swaps these soul tunes out for more white R&B, including Bob Seger’s recent “Get Out of Denver.” (Wild that at a time when Seger couldn’t buy a hit outside the Midwest his numbers kept cropping up in UK bands’ live sets.) The most impressive testament to the Rods’ power as a live force might be that they manage to get more than an eyeroll out of their medley of Them’s “Gloria” and the Stones’ “Satisfaction.” It’s an object lesson in the power of teeth-kicking rock ‘n’ roll that even those played-out jams can sound new again given sufficient wallop.

Folks who are into this kind of music tend to already know Eddie and the Hot Rods, but if you’re a Reigning Sound / Dr. Feelgood / Oi! etc. type and you haven’t had a session with Teenage Depression, best get to it.

Courtesy of

Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy The Who 1971, Track Record

The Meaty, Beaty, Big, OR Bouncy Personality Assessment Quiz

Which of the following looks is the most *you*?

Suede fringe jacket, no shirt, nipples exposed to the sun like the staring brown irises of an idiot god. (1 point)

The loudest shirt imaginable and a pair of headphones taped around your head. (2 points)

Skeleton costume. (3 points)

Union Jack blazer, imperious glare. (4 points)

First job?

Sheet metal worker. (1 point)

Radio repairman. (2 points)

File clerk. (3 points)

N/A. (4 points)

What is your drug of choice?

Weed. (1 point)

Booze. (2 points)

Cocaine. (3 points)

Children’s documentaries. (4 points)

If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

A gender euphoric centaur. (1 point)

A Muppet. (2 points)

An ox. No, too obvious. A spider. (3 points)

An anteater. (4 points)

What side of Brexit were you on?

Leave (1 point)

I had been dead for 38 years. (2 points)

I had been dead for 14 years. (3 points)

Remain (4 points)

Do you feel like you’re more of a…

Singer. (1 point)

Drummer. (2 points)

Bassist. (3 points)

Guitarist. (4 points)

The following question is for demographic purposes. Which uh member of The Who would you say you are most like?

Roger Daltrey. (1 point)

Keith Moon. (2 points)

John Entwistle. (3 points)

Pete Townshend. (4 points)

Okay, time to total up your points.

If you have seven to eleven points YOU ARE MEATY (ROGER DALTREY)

You are a good-natured himbo with the fluff and affect of a spaniel. On your band’s early (and best work) you are constantly forced to play against type (often to hilarious effect) by singing deviant pop about compulsive masturbators, enforced transgenderism, dimwitted police, and blind pinball messiahs. You will spend 60 years of your life enduring the jabs of an unappeasable snob who claims to despise you, despite the fact that yours is the most important relationship he will ever have. He will never forgive you for being happy simply playing the hits, but the fact that you are means he can go on playing them too. One of you will die first, but only you could survive it. You made some of the greatest rock music there ever was.

If you have twelve to eighteen points YOU ARE BEATY (KEITH MOON)

You are a hyperactive child in the body of a lecher from an Italian softcore sex comedy. You play like a cartoon of a jazz drummer whose stool is slowly being heated up by the devil. When you’re not doing that, you’re pulling faces or standing on your head or dynamiting toilets for a laugh. When no one’s paying attention to you, you cease to exist, so you make sure that doesn’t happen, ever. It is abundantly clear you will be the first to go, but when you do everyone else will have to become an adult for real, and that’s the end of it. You made some of the greatest rock music there ever was.

If you have nineteen to twenty-five points YOU ARE BIG (JOHN ENTWISTLE)

You are a looming, cigarette-smelling presence with the black humour of the Grim Reaper in bellbottoms. Because your ambitions as a singer and songwriter have been stifled, you turn your corner of the stage into a fiefdom of ever-more elaborate stacks of amplifiers, pouring your energy into bass lines of impossible, virtuosic dexterity. In perhaps rock’s most spectacular collection of undiagnosed personality disorders, you are the depressive. You relish your reserve and fuck-off aura but grow bitter no one tries very hard to see past it. Though it is obvious to everyone you are the most gifted musician in the group, you founder without the rhythms and cashflow of arena tours. You will not grow old. You made some of the greatest rock music there ever was.

If you have twenty-six points or more YOU ARE BOUNCY (PETE TOWNSHEND)

You are the sharpest pencil, wreathing your religious fervour for pop music in weary sarcasm and absurd pretension. Early on you sang like a choir boy and played guitar like a choir boy on Dexedrine, scribbling out naughty little doodles until someone dragged you offstage by the ear. With a hand from Mark David Chapman, you now find yourself the most dyspeptic survivor of the British Invasion, treating the opportunity to regularly perform into your seventies for tens of thousands as a leaden obligation. Because your best ideas are as adolescent as they are brilliant, your access to inspiration withers with age. You’re left playing your skewed teenage anthems to greying audiences you hold in contempt, alongside a golden god yob who is the living embodiment of who they would be if they had his gifts. You’re mean to him, but not nearly as mean as you are to yourself. You made some of the greatest rock music there ever was.