Tony Valentino

Dirty Water single

Big Stir

Tony Valentino was the guitarist for the Standells, famous for the song “Dirty Water,” on which Tony played the famous guitar riff. if you’ve never heard the song, go listen. It’s classic garage rock, and you may have heard it and not known what it was or who did it.

The song originally came out in 1966, and Valentino has done a new version, which is very faithful to the original, has the famous riff sounding better than ever, and while it’s a tongue in cheek tribute to Boston, all the sports teams there use it for their official anthem now. The dirty water they refer to is the Charles River, which was very polluted in 1966.

I always liked this song. It still sounds great, and with today’s recording techniques the mix is clear and cleaned up somewhat, but there is still a lot of grit, as there should be. So if you want to hear a fun and great song, this is it. What’re you wanting for?

Andrea Weiss