REVERB

Discothèque: The Revolutions of Dance Music Culture

2012-02-11T05:03:00.000-08:00

A quick post to announce that we have recently signed up Katie Milestone to write a book titled Discothèque: The Revolutions of Dance Music Culture for the Reverb series.

'Discothèque' here is understood in fairly broad terms - wherever people have gone to dance the night away, and whatever the particular details of the many and various dance spaces one might point to, they have arguably reflected something of the fashions, trends and music of particular times, places and eras. So, the 'discothèque' is indeed the 'disco' in that kind of seventies sense, but it is also the dance hall, and the club - as well as other less permanent spaces, often improvised for the sake of some fun and then abandoned.

What this book seeks to show is how we can understand these unique self-contained spaces. They are worlds-in-themselves where the music comes to life through dance and the collision of strangers, and even disparate cultures, who find - for once - a seemingly common goal in life.

Northern soul - moves, grooves ... and shoes

Discothèque seeks to develop a novel appreciation of the subject through a number of themes - 'Technologies', 'Temporalities', 'Grooves', 'Moves', 'Locations', and 'Pleasures' - to reveal the importance of dance music culture to an understanding of the changes urban life in Western society has undergone since around the mid-20th century.

Le Bain club - on the roof, Manhattan's Meatpacking district

Katie Milestone is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has written widely on popular music, its role in urban regeneration, and the dance clubs of northern soul. She is also the co-author (with Anneke Meyer) of the recently published Gender and Popular Culture (Polity, 2011).

Discothèque should be published sometime in 2013/14. Until then, here's an interesting little thing I found in youtube.

28 years gone: Van Halen return

2012-01-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

With our own Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock'n'Roll due in a couple of months, it seems a coincidence of cosmic proportions that the very same Van Halen should reappear this very week at the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village (capacity, 250) - after a long 28 years in anticipation of a new album and tour. Of course, with Alex Van Halen, brother Eddie and Roth at ages 59, 57 and 57 respectively, that just leaves the 20-year old Wolfgang Van Halen (on bass) having any legitimate claim to the characteristic youthful exuberance! But, with David Lee Roth back at the helm, who knows how it will pan out.

Whatever surprises lie in wait - implosion mid-way through being the biggest danger - it seems apt that the opening act on the US tour will be ... Kool and the Gang, a choice that follows in a Van Halen tradition of matching up with unlikely openers (their last outing, in 2007, had Ky-Mani Marley, son of Bob, in the same role). It'll be a celebration then.

Here's two clips - the first shot from a mobile phone at the Cafe Wha? last night, featuring the song 'Hot for Teacher', and the second is a short video released by Roth last week, in which he can be seen grooving along to the O'Jays, herding cattle, flying a helicopter and waving around some weapons of the Orient. To find out how Roth ended up like this, you'll need to read my book ...

Here's a notice from the MTV News website about last night's invite only gig at the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village, a homecoming of sorts for Roth, who revealed during the show that he carved his name into the wall 50 years ago, as seven-year old, in 1961.

Van Halen Rock New York City With Intimate Comeback Show
The quartet took over NYC's tiny Café Wha? to announce their new album, and picked up the tab. By James Montgomery

There are the traditional ways that bands announce their comeback, and then there's the Van Halen way, in which you take over a hole-in-the-wall New York City club, cram it with every music writer in the biz (and some celebs, too) and practically burn the place to the ground with a hit-packed 70-minute set. Oh, and just to ensure maximum good times, you pick up the bar tab, too. For everybody.On Thursday night in NYC, VH hyped A Different Kind Of Truth — their first album with original frontman David Lee Roth in almost 30 years — and their massive tour that kicks off next month. The fiery, fierce, fantastic show took place at the venerable Café Wha?, the Greenwich Village club that has played host to the likes of Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary. In an apparent nod to the place's folk roots, Roth even strummed an acoustic guitar for a minute, which was about as muted as things got.

From the second they strode onto the tiny stage — Roth in overalls and a newsboy cap, Eddie, Alex and Wolfgang Van Halen in workman-like blue jeans and T-shirts — it was one massive party. And not just because the booze was free.

Roth joked "Welcome to Occupy Van Halen, everybody!" and then they were off, launching into a cover of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me," which was stretched out to allow Roth and Eddie Van Halen to trade vocal shouts and guitar licks. Their classic "Running With the Devil" had the crowd (which included everyone from Jimmy Fallon to Roth's uncle Manny, who owned the Wha? Until 1988) losing their collective minds.

That song wrapped with Roth planting a kiss on bassist (and Eddie's son) Wolfgang's cheek, and sent the dynamic frontman into a lengthy monologue. He regaled the crowd with stories about his time as a New York City EMT and pleaded with the "guys from the press" to introduce him to Lady Gaga. He then fired into back-to-back burners "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" and "Everybody Wants Some."

"The last time I stood on a stage this low, we had to have the car back by midnight," Roth said, a comment that highlighted what made the show so special: Not only was it the smallest show VH had played in decades, but it was unquestionably one of the happiest. For a band whose past is so dotted with acrimony, everybody on stage looked like they were having an absolute blast, joking between songs, smiles plastered to their faces. And, yes, that mood was matched by the folks in attendance.

Up next was the brand-new "She's The Woman," which, in a welcome break from reunited-rock-legend tradition, was actually kind of killer. Following it were colossally surging smashes like "Panama," "Hot for Teacher," "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" and, of course, the set-closing "Jump," which sent the crowd back out onto the Village streets deliriously happy — and slightly inebriated. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of night, and seemingly everyone realized it, especially Van Halen. They looked great and sounded even better, a reminder of their prominence in rock's all-time pantheon and a promise that this new tour is a can't-miss. And boy do they know how to throw a party.

Original source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676859/van-halen-concert.jhtml

And if you follow this link HERE you will find in yesterday's Guardian newspaper a reprint of a feature on David Lee Roth, based on an encounter the journalist Mick Brown had with the singer in late 1984. It was originally published in the UK Sunday Times in January 1985, a couple of months before Roth originally quit Van Halen.

Guitar Dog

2011-12-29T13:57:00.000-08:00

Nothing to say about this, really ... just watch it:

Hey, I'm Just a Regular Guy #2 - David Lee Roth

2011-12-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

And ... quickly following the first one, sometime Van Halen singer, conquerer of mountains and sheep-herder, David Lee Roth:

Photographed somewhere in Chicago, 1984 (apparently) - but where? Name that location! And what the hell is he wearing ... We'll send the first respondent with the correct and verifiable answer a free copy of the first two REVERB books, due out in April (UK) and May (USA)

Hey, I'm Just a Regular Guy #1 - Bob Dylan

2011-12-17T07:07:00.000-08:00

Here on REVERB is the first what will hopefully be a series of rock star sightings. Or, should we say, rock stars doing ordinary and / or unusual things, or going about their daily business.

Bob Dylan, somewhere in New York City, 1970 (apparently) - but where? Name that location! And we'll send the respondent with the first correct and verifiable answer a free copy of the first two REVERB books, due out in April (UK) and May (USA).

Some awesome surf ... and some good trash

2011-11-27T05:34:00.001-08:00

I just felt a need to leave this here so I can find it easily again. Images from Stacy Peralta's movie, Riding Giants, which is pretty good - great footage, anyway, although the pace of it seems too rushed to me. The song is 'This is the Sea' by The Waterboys.

You know, readers, we do want some brave person out there to write a book for this series on songs of the sea ... get in touch if you think you have an angle on it!

And, posted earlier - here's some trashy throwaway rock'n'roll - pretty glam-a-like, if you like. This is from Giuda, a band from Rome. Does Giuda mean 'Judas' in this context ...

They look like they are from the 70s, but it is a 2011 release. Dig it.

Paperback delights

2011-11-26T08:28:00.000-08:00

I once read, long ago, a profile of Ronald Reagan that had been written soon after he succumbed to Alzheimer's and in which it was reported that those around him began to worry that there might be something seriously wrong when he began to routinely refer to the books in his library as 'trees'. Well, those of us fortunate not to be afflicted by the kind of confusions that Alzheimer's gradual separation of person from world (and from self) results in, tend to form attachments to those hunks of reconfigured tress that identify them rather as very personal things. They are often much more than pulped wood and ink. They may, indeed, be 'evocative objects' - to use a term popularised by Sherry Turkle in a recent excellent collection of essays about how objects and things form the link between the interior and the world we bodily inhabit.

So, it was as a fan of books as desirable objects that I read with interest a piece by Geoff Dyer in the New York Times about his fondness for old Penguin paperbacks and their cover art. The above striking example of how simple and elegant these covers often were is one of several images accompanying the article that can be viewed if you follow the link. A quick visit to flickr.com, though, will deliver many more examples of the changing styles of the series / imprint.

Dyer's article was a nice reminder of how often Penguin remake these titles through regular changes to the cover designs and art. The appearance of new 'editions' (sometimes they do have new introductory essays; other times they just have an attractive new jacket) has caused me, several times, to buy new copies of titles I already own ... just for the cover. I don't have the shelf space for it, really.

One of these revamped novels is Jospeh Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Here are six different Penguin designs (and there are more):

Visit the Penguin Paperback Spotter's Guild at Flickr, and you can while away a wet Saturday afternoon. Someone should do an equivalent for Reaktion Books. Beyond Penguin, of course, there are many other examples one could point to - the Zone / MIT imprint, for instance, has been producing very classic interior designs (based, I think, on Penguin) with amazing covers. So, while I am on the subject of wonderful books and their covers, here are a few other favourites - books in which the contents and the cover manage to dazzle and enchant.

Infidel Poetics: Riddles, Nightlife, Substance (Chicago, 2009) by Daniel Tiffany. The designer of this one has a webpage about the cover HERE.

Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone, 1998) by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park. The image here doesn't do justice to the object the reader takes within their hands - it is almost A4 sized (but more elegantly-shaped than that sounds), quite hefty (at 510 pages), and with a cover that is richly embossed with 'illuminated' lettering. I seem to recall buying it brand new in a store (not discounted online) - in hardcover - for less than twenty-five quid.

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Harvard, 1990) by Greil Marcus. The new edition has a different cover - worse, by far. This is the only book I can think of that has its own soundtrack album (Rough Trade records, 1993), something it would have been nice to do for the Reverb series, but ... the cost and copyright issues would undoubtedly be prohibitive:

An interesting collection that features nothing from the Sex Pistols, who are one of the principal subjects of the book (probably for the aforementioned copyright issues). It features, as many compilations tracing the roots of punk do, the wrong version of Jonathan Richman's 'Road Runner'. The best version is this one:

Roadrunner - The MODERN LOVERS (Jonathan RICHMAN)

Drinkify

2011-11-12T06:27:00.000-08:00

Dear readers - match your music to the most appropriate bevvy with Drinkify. One of the most amusing recommendations was that Brian Eno should be accompanied by 8oz. water, served neat! Clearly Eno occupies the sober end of the rock'n'roll spectrum, and should immediately cease from producing Coldplay and, indeed, occupying public platforms where he finds himself next to the likes of Richard Dawkins, the great disenchanter of our age.

Of course, I wondered what might be the best drink to accompany the music of some of the subjects of our REVERB series. The results are as follows (you can perhaps draw your own conclusions about the music from this):

Antonio Carlos Jobim (for Brazilian Jive): 1 Corona (lager). Serve cold. Garnish with a twist of grapefruit.

Astor Piazzolla (for Tango): 1 bottle of red wine. Serve at room temperature. Garnish with an olive.

Nick Drake: 1 bottle of red wine. Serve at room temperature. Garnish with sparklers(!)

Television (for New York, New Wave): 1 bottle of 2 Buck Chuck

The Beatles: 6oz Mezscal. Serve neat. Garnish with olive.

Van Halen: 1 bottle Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey. Serve on rocks. Stir quickly. Garnish with cocktail monkey.

King Tubby (for Remixology): 1 Red Stripe (lager). Serve cold. Garnish with salt.

Kraftwerk: 1 oz. Blackwoods Gin. Serve on rocks. Stir quickly. Garnish with sprig of mint.

Bob Dylan: 8 oz. Sipsmith Gin + 8 oz. Cough syrup(!). Combine in highball glass and serve.

Other entertaining results were produced for searches on Black Sabbath, Primal Scream, Dr. John, Iggy Pop ... etc. etc. I am sure you can find many more good recommendations.

If you are listening to Primal Scream's great 2000 album, XTRMNTR, you may be looking out at something like this, as you drink your ... Buckfast.

Bottoms up!

Unveiling the first two Reverb book covers ...

2011-10-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

The books will be published in April 2012 and retail at £14.95 in the UK (I don't know what the US price will be yet.).

Each of these titles contains around 30 B&W photographs (give or take a few). As for the book interiors, I wish I could give you more of a preview, and hopefully we can do that soon, but for now here is a two-page spread from my Van Halen proofs, and a further single page below it. These are the only three pages I scanned - keep in mind that these are scans of cheaply printed photocopy quality pages. The real thing will look much smoother and the images will be perfect, as anyone who has purchased Reaktion titles in the past will have come to expect.

Nonetheless, rough as these are, I think these pages perhaps gives a sense of the layout of the books, and what they will look like in terms of typography, headings, etc.

Click on image to see larger size

More details about Ian Inglis's The Beatles in Hamburg can be found HERE, and John Scanlan's Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock'n'Roll HERE.

Reverb ... cuts a rug

2011-10-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Visitors may have noticed that we have shortened the name of our series (at the top of the page - not the URL) to 'Reverb'. It is a snappier title, and more in keeping with some of Reaktion's more recent series, such as Animal and Edible.

I am happy to say that the first two books in the series will appear in April 2012. Ian Inglis's The Beatles in Hamburg, and the product of my own midlife crisis, Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock'n'Roll. Next down the line, probably later in the 2012, will be the books on Brazil and Nick Drake.

Apologies to any prospective authors waiting to hear back from us - it has been a busy time recently with several manuscripts arriving amidst other outbreaks of chaos not connected to the series. But we're looking at a number of proposals, and expect to be in touch soon.

Seeing that it is Friday, I will dump some fine weekend music - just so you know we are alive and well, and about to slip on those dancing shoes for the evening. What Reverb is grooving to today is the magnificent 'Miss Grace' by The Tymes. A UK hit in the mid-70s. Must have heard this a million times, and it still sounds great at evey single listen.

Talking of cutting a rug, it is impossible not to think after viewing the video for Chic's 'Good Times' that the phenomenon of men with beards dancing in a disco setting must be a 70s thing.

I always thought that one of the most distinctive things about Chic was the bass playing, and that - in turn - always reminded me of the style of Andy Fraser of Free, who was a 17-year old genius of the instrument as you can see on the clip below from - I think - 1970. The tempo is obviously slower than Chic, but it's the same bubbling, percolating, kind of overlay that is also underneath it all - it really has little in common with rock bass playing as holding down the bottom end, etc. It does that, but with extra added mobility. It dances.

Looking at that again had me wondering what happened to Andy Fraser, the bass player. He left Free in 1972 - almost 40 years ago, only 20 years old. But later, it seems, he wrote tunes for other people, including this one for Robert Palmer, 'Every Kinda People' - which maybe gets him halfway to Chic.

Peter Doggett / You Never Give Me Your Money

2011-09-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

So, continuing a day of updates after a prolonged period of absence / internet unavailabilty (and when I have a bit of time on my hands), I would like to bring you a fascinating interview that I just listened to yesterday about the affairs of the post-Beatles Beatles, with one Peter Doggett, author of the excellent You Never Give Me Your Money (2009), which is so good that it has at least three editions - all in different (and not very good!) jackets.

Here is the audio clip:

The interviewers will be familiar to almost anyone (maybe that should be 'any male') from the UK who is approaching (or now enduring) their middle years, and who had an interest in rock'n'roll / pop music before the dawn of multi-channel TV and YouTube - Mark Ellen and David Hepworth. Two entertaining pranksters, as they always were, late of the BBC's (Old Grey) Whistle Test, and now editors of one of the best current magazines about music, The Word. There are too many fascinating and funny anecdotes in the Doggett interview to mention here, but the story of the photograph of the Abbey Road album cover - is fascinating.

The photographer took about 3-4 exposures, and the one that appeared on the album cover was the only one where they are walking in step with each other. They pretty much couldn't stand to be around each other by this time, and were not about to keep trooping across that road all day - so, in a few minutes, the shot was taken. But, what's more, it was seemingly the LAST time the four of them were ever together in one place - August 8th, 1969. As a correspondent on Wikipedia has added, "at around 11:30 that morning, photographer Iain Macmillan was given only ten minutes to take the photo whilst he stood on a step-ladder and a policeman held up the traffic ..."

Can't imagine that there was actually much traffic around then ... would Her Majesty's Woodentops be stopping the traffic now now for a bunch of dope-smoking hippies ...

Mogwai Nick Drake / Nick Drake Mogwai ...

2011-09-03T04:31:00.000-07:00

We recently took delivery of Nathan Wiseman-Trouse's typescript for Nick Drake: Dreaming England (see link on the sidebar for more details), which we are in the process of doing what publishers do to such things. I'll say more about it - and the other forthcoming books - when we have firmer publication schedules, and so on.

But, one thing that occurred to me when I was reading this was that Nathan never mentioned a particular song that I was very fond of. It was something I listened to many times on some nameless compilation CD that belonged to an ex-girlfriend, and which I thought was one of those fabled, unreleased, outtakes by Nick Drake. 'Wow', I would think, 'they amplified his guitar - sounds pretty contemporary, doesn't it ...?' It's title, I thought, was 'Mogwai'. Lo and behold, I go in search of said tune, which I assume will be on one of the several posthumously-released Nick Drake albums / box sets, only to discover it does not exist.

Except ... it does exist! But it is 'Nick Drake', by the band named Mogwai. Not 'Mogwai' by Nick Drake ...

David Crosby & Joni Mitchell

2011-09-03T04:09:00.000-07:00

So, I can't seem to get my head out of California, if my posts on here are anything to go by ...

I can't claim to have ever been a big fan of David Crosby. Aside from his part in The Byrds (coonskin caps and mystery-man capes noted) and the Buffalo Springfield, I'm not that familar with his work. And while he is recognised as a pivotal figure in the Los Angeles music scene of the 1960s, he seems often to be fairly modest about his own musical contributions.

He appeared in the fine BBC documentary, Hotel California: L. A. from the Byrds to the Eagles (skip to the 7:00 mark in the above clip for Crosby and Mitchell), but preferred to point to the artistic merits of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell rather than mention his own songwriting. That may be because he is more often thought of as a kind of sideman, rather than the singer out in front - who knows.

He may not be as singular a voice as those two, but all the same, I have been knocked sideways by the brilliance of his atmospheric 1971 solo album If Only I Could Remember My Name. It's a laid back, trippy album that seems to come - as it does, in fact - from a different world, and a different kind of headspace; one where immersion, rather than distraction, was the aim. I'd guess that partly for those reasons it stands up today - because we seem to be awash in a popular musical culture that has given in to the shuffle, the randomisation, and the idea of the album as a collection of 'tracks', as opposed to a kind of 35-40 minute experience.

So, listen to the whole album in one sitting. This being a blog, though, I have to give you a chunk to sample. The following tune, 'Traction in the Rain' reminds a bit of Joni Mitchell - in the guitar work, and in some of the vocal phrasing - particularly a song that appeared in the late 70s, 'The Wolf that Lives in Lindsay'.

Birmingham, or, I am Iron Man ...

2011-07-12T02:09:00.000-07:00

Well, not really - I'm not Iron Man, but we're back. That's Anthony Gormley's 'Iron Man' (pictured above), in Birmingham - home of industry and heavy metal, a relationship which is the subject of a new exhibition in that city (and in various locations around the Black Country), Home of Metal. There was a recent BBC Four TV programme about this as well (last year), but I'm also reminded of Jonathan Meades' film, 'Heart By-Pass: Jonathan Meades Motors Through Birmingham' (1998), which is mostly about cars and roads, but it features a section that does a rapid 'rock tour' of that part of England - and here is a chunk of it:

Gormley's Iron Man - a homage to Black Sabbath's song of the same name, the always-honest Meades says - is about halfway through the clip at 04:09.If only he had known that the song was orignally going to be called Iron Bloke, as Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler recalled:

In any case, I was alerted to the exhibition by my Brum friend, James, who once expressed a preference not for metal, but for rather different industrial sounds (or sounds of what appeared to be building sites as simulated by the likes of David Tudor), but since relocating to his home city of Birmingham after long exile in Scotland doesn't mind a bit of Black Sabbath or Judas Priest with his Terry Riley.

Maybe Meades would like to write a book for our series? Or, indeed, Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian journalist who usually writes on philosophical matters - here's his piece on the exhibition, and a clip from The Guardian website (there's an advert first):

More reflections on Birmingham in the early-to-mid 60s and the music that came from the city and the surrounding Black Country were featured in BBC Four's recent film about Robert Plant, 'By Myself':

Not dead ...

2011-05-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've had reason to post, so just to say that here at REVERBERATIONS we have gone somewhat Brazilian this week. Summer approaching, etc. Here are a couple of tunes to prove that we're still here.

'A Felicidade', Black Orpheus Soundtrack

'Aquas De Marco', Elis Regina & Antonio Carlos Jobim

'Cala Boca Menino', Joao Donato

more soon ...

Bob Dylan: Heading Out for the Western Skies

2011-02-25T04:47:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to say that we have recently signed up Laurence Coupe to write a book on Bob Dylan for the Reverberations series.

Bob Dylan: Heading Out for the Western Skies will examine themes of myth, time and place in a body of songs that now spans five decades, from ‘Talking New York’ on 1962’s Bob Dylan to the songs of later albums such as Time Out of Mind (1997) reading Dylan's work as a renewal, revision and interrogation of traditional narratives which have given shape and significance to American experience. It will draw on ideas about the nature and origin of such narratives to understand what makes Dylan the most comprehensively mythic songwriter of the past century.

Laurence's other books include Myth (1997), Beat Sound, Beat Vision: The Beat Spirit and Popular Song (2007), Kenneth Burke on Myth (2005), Marina Warner (2006), and The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism (2000).

Spirit - 'Turn to the Right'

2011-02-18T05:43:00.000-08:00

Here's some guitar heroics from the late Randy California and Spirit, from The Old Grey Whistle Test. 1981, I believe - I don't think this ever appeared on any of those official DVDs that the BBC released. This is from an old videotape.

The song appears on The Adventures of Kaptain Kopter & Commander Cassidy in Potato Land - I guess that explains the potato people at the end of the clip.

Taking a trip

2011-01-29T05:04:00.000-08:00


*Top:* San Vicente and Sunset Blvd, with Whisky A Go-Go in background, 1968; *Bottom:* Crossroad of San Vicente / Clark St and Sunset Blvd., Dec. 1977.

Mind going in circles today. Am I in England or Los Angeles? I am working on / writing a book on memory right now, as it happens. And I have just last year finished a book on Los Angeles - a book about Van Halen and, mostly, the 1970s.

Memory - that's my official excuse for all this old stuff you find here on Reverberations - it's the music that does it, you see. The possibility of mental time travel - nostalgia, too - is a powerful lure. I have, in recent months, been trying to find a wormhole back to the early 70s - 1971, actually. Photo albums on flickr.com are extremely useful in this regard - just type in a year, and off you go.

Songs are curiously powerful artefacts when it comes to recalling times and places. One song really does it for me - plunges me into some kind of kaleidoscope of a real and possibly imagined past - George Harrison, 'My Sweet Lord'. I hear that and I'm back in 1971.

Today, though, I seem to have involuntarily landed back in 1967, and it got me thinking of Los Angeles again. I woke up hearing a song in my head that was all hazy sunshine and warmth - 'Turn On A Friend (To The Good Life)' by The Peanut Butter Conspiracy. I had to confirm my suspicion that this band were from Los Angeles - and, yes, they were.

I figured that like the rest of all lived experience, there would be something on the internet to help me indugle these memories. Youtube to the rescue, as usual. Listen to the first 2:14 mins of this:

Makes me think of The Byrds, The Mamas and Papas, California - the mid-to-late 60s. All these bands that had an distinct emphasis on the vocals - vocal bands. Hearing it again, released a chain of associations .... first, The Byrds, 'I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better' (1965):

A bit shaky that clip. But, seeing it makes me think that every band would do well to stand still onstage and let everyone else move - just get your own go-go dancers ... which got me thinking about how that Los Angeles sound had changed by the early 70s, but still with an emphasis on vocals. Here's Little Feat's 'Easy to Slip' ...

I believe that the images are from the movie Wise Blood (1979). The song is from the excellent Sailin' Shoes (1972), which was produced by Ted Templeman. Templeman once produced - along with John Cale - an album by Chunki, Novi & Erni, titled ... Chunki, Novi & Erni (1973). Yes, that John Cale, of Velvet Underground fame, who by 1973 was a staff producer at Warner Bros in Burbank, and part of what the record label were promoting as 'The Burbank Sound', which could be found on a bunch of Warner Bros Records produced by the likes of Templeman, Cale, Russ Titleman, Lenny Waronker, and Andy Wickham.

Waronker, Wickham, Templeman, Titleman and Cale, 1972

One of Templeman's band's in those days was Montrose, whose 'Underground', was a cover of one of those Chunky, Novi & Ernie tunes that Ted had produced in '73. I love this - it's from the 1974 Montrose album, Paper Money.

Following that train of thought, I realise that Ted Templeman is the glue that holds together a lot of these associations. He would occasionally play drums with Randy Newman. Memory is the subject of Newman's song, 'Dayton, Ohio 1903' from 1972's Sail Away - another great album that you should buy now if you don't own it (if only so that Randy may be encouraged to leave aside the Disney sountracks and start doing old-fashioned albums more often). Unfortunately, I can't bring you the Randy Newman version, but here's Harry Nilsson's version:

So, where are we? Yes ... Randy Newman. Nilsson Sings Newman is the album that song appeared on. Harry Nilsson used to hang out on the bars and clubs of Hollywood in mid-70s - The Troubadour, The Roxy, etc. This was right at the time that Van Halen, the subject of my researches into the LA music scene, were playing three sets a night, several nigths a week, at the club just a stone's throw from The Roxy, Gazzari's - inbetween the two was the Rainbow Bar and Grill.

Clubs on the Strip: Gazzari's, (Bank of Ameria), The Rainbow, The Roxy

Nilsson was there when John Lennon got thrown out of The Troubadour, in early 1974. Back then, drunkenly carousing through the less-than-vibrant Sunset Strip of the early 70s , they were often accompanied by Alice Cooper, Keith Moon and Ringo Starr. The latter two did a hilarious turn in The Who's movie The Kids Are Alright, which might've been shot in between drunken piss-ups in the bar of The Roxy in 1974.

Rolling Stone, April 74. (Click to see larger)

John Lennon, Harry Nilsson and Alice Cooper (with can in hand), 1974

Yoko Ono and John Lennon bump into Ringo Starr, The Roxy, 1976

Which all, in a roundabout way, brings me to Alice Cooper's School's Out (1972) album, which begins with his fantasies of blowing his school sky high, but ends with Alice stuck with indelible memories of it - 'Hey, goodbye guys... don't forget the Coop ...':

Now, with all that rambling, I've ended up somewhere I didn't intend to be. This was all supposed to come neatly back to why my head is in Los Angeles. Okay, so by the mid-to-late 70s Ted Templeman was known for some of the most well-known of California soft rock - such as The Doobie Brothers' classic, 'What a Fool Believes':

And maybe less so, this - 'Lotta Love', a kind of disco-lite version of the Neil Young tune by Nicolette Larson that has features breezy flute - a hallmark of those Boz Scaggs, Quincy Jones kind of confections:

That kind of mid-to-late 70s Los Angeles mellow sound is sent up in the hilarious online 'mockumentary', Yacht Rock. In epsiode nine, Ted Templeman, king of smooth rock, meets Van Halen and struggles to keep it mellow.

But, finally, this allows me to end with what's buried at the bottom of all this - Van Halen's 'hacked' version of Nicolette Larson's Ted Templeman-produced mellow chart-topper, 'Lotta Love'. A studio prank, probably - 'Lotta Drugs' ...

Okay, before I go potty - the end.

Southern Journeys

2011-01-18T16:54:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in my last but one post (23rd December), here's the BBC Radio 'Archive Hour' show from July 27, 2002 on Alan Lomax, titled 'Southern Journeys'. It is presented by Shirley Collins. As with the other audio on this site, it is a streaming MP3 - and you can't skip forwards (or backwards). But, if you right-click the link you can save the file to your own disk / computer and do whatever you want with it.

MP3: Southern Journeys (57mins)

The above pic was appropriated from The Guardian website, where it adorns a nice review of John Szwed's book, The Man Who Recorded The World. You can read it here.

Record sleeves remade as Pelican books ... and fakes

2010-12-30T09:32:00.003-08:00

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a gallery at Flickr.com with a series of well-known album sleeves remade as Pelican books. I picked the Kraftwerk one seeing as we have just signed up a book on 'Kraftwerk and Germany' for Reverberations (more details to follow). These brilliant designs reminded me of something similar I saw on Flickr.com a year or so ago, an example of which is this one below -

- which was apparently inspired by the likes of this one, below:

And that reminds me ... the good people at Continuum had a competition to make fake covers for imaginary books in their 33 1/3 series, and I - with too much time on my hands - made a few (if you click on these, you should get a larger size):

I never won the competition, but I'm still quite interested in actually writing that last one (or, in fact, about any of the first handful of BoC albums - they're all death, conspiracies, evil, etc) ... if anyone is interested in letting me ....

BBC Night Waves on Alan Lomax

2010-12-23T04:59:00.002-08:00

I have an Alan Lomax radio documentary that I have been planning to post here at some point soon, but for those of you in the UK (or able to listen to BBC Radio online / BBC iPlayer) I will point you in the direction of a fascinating discussion between Philip Dodd and John Szwed on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves last night. Here's the link (the interview is from 19:30 to 30:25mins) and the blurb from the show's website:

"Philip Dodd discusses Alan Lomax, the pioneering oral historian. He created an irreplaceable archive of early American folk and Blues recordings. These included interviews with Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters and Jelly Roll Morton. Lomax's biographer John Szwed talks to Philip and plays some of Lomax recordings.

From 1937 to 1942, Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress. He took his microphone into the field and collected folk music from the United States, Haiti, the Caribbean, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, assembling a treasure trove of American and international culture. But his techniques applied to social history as well. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lomax took his recording machine into the streets to capture the reactions of everyday citizens."

One day I will also post something more contemporary, if only to prove that I'm not an old fart stuck in the past ...

UPDATE - I have now added the short interview chunk from the above broadcast:

MP3: Philip Dodd discusses Alan Lomax with John Szwed (11mins)

Andy Kershaw, 'Ghosts of Electricity'

2010-12-14T12:07:00.001-08:00

Here - for as long as I can leave it here - is a BBC Radio 3 documentary, 'Ghosts of Electricity' (1'45"). Originally broadcast in 1999, and here from a 2005 re-broadcast. Presenter Andy Kershaw goes in pursuit of the man who cried 'Judas' at Bob Dylan's 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall concert.

Here's Kershaw's written account in The Independent

There's a twist in the tale at the very end.

Playlist

Bob Dylan, 'When The Ship Comes In', 3'00"
Bob Dylan, 'Masters of War', 4'35"
Bob Dylan, 'Like A Rolling Stone', 8'00"
Bob Dylan, 'Maggie's Farm', 5'00"

Ghosts of Electricity Documentary, 80'00"

MP3: Andy Kershaw Show, 25 Sept, 2005

Joe Boyd 'White Bicycles'

2010-11-18T08:56:00.008-08:00

Back in 2006 Joe Boyd's acclaimed memoir, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, was published. I was trawling through a crate of old minidiscs (whatever happened to the minidisc!?) and I found a recording of a fascinating interview from BBC Radio 3's Mixing It programme (August 2006) - the show is now defunct, of course. This special edition was presented, as always, by Mark Russell and the late Robert Sandall.

I have dematerialized the the now Jurassic disc into MP3 format and uploaded it for your listening pleasure. The 60 minutes or so are mostly taken up with a discussion of various events and characters, and some readings from White Bicycles. But, there are also snatches of music from some of the artists he worked with, including the Reverend Gary Davis, The Incredible String Band, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, and others.

MP3: Joe Boyd talks about 'White Bicycles'

Incidentally, it is one unbroken MP3 - you can't skip through it, so it is just like listening to the broadcast. A playlist is still up on the BBC website, detailing the tracks played.

I've just been looking around online and it seems that Boyd now has a radio show of his own, streaming online or in podcast format, at London's Resonance FM. The first of these shows seems to have been last week - there are some more details here at Boyd's website.

Chess Records / Chicago

2010-11-06T04:47:00.000-07:00

In The Guardian today, a good piece about Chess Records and Chicago (the Chess brothers pictured above) by Elijah Wald. Here's a snip:

Leonard and Phil Chess were prototypical cigar-chomping, old-fashioned record men who took a chance on music they didn't understand. Jewish immigrants from Poland, they got into the record business more or less by chance: Leonard bought a liquor store in an African American neighbourhood on the south side of Chicago, and did well enough that he opened a small nightclub called the Macomba Lounge. It was a rough ghetto bar, patronised by prostitutes and drug dealers, but from the start it was known for having good music. In the late-1940s, that meant it had jazz groups playing bebop, pop tunes, and mellow blues ballads. That was what the better-paying black patrons preferred to hear, and when Leonard got involved with a small local label, Aristocrat Records, that was what he intended to record.

It was only after the first few records went nowhere that he took a chance on another kind of musician, a Mississippi singer who was too raw and country-sounding to have pleased the crowds at the Macomba.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

BBC Four will show a 60-minute documentary about Chess Records next Friday, Nov. 12th. More details:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vv0zz

I'd like an omelette, with wheat toast ...

2010-10-23T16:11:00.005-07:00

Or, time for some songs about foods. Call me a tragedy, but I was doing these thematic mixes aeons before Bob Dylan started his Theme Time Hour radio show. There are people out there with copies of my Food compilation, which I will here try to reconstruct (bottom of the post) and link as an audio stream.

After track one, the listener would have heard the famous scene from Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson's character Bobby Dupea, attempting to order some toast without breaking the diner rules. Not sure I've I'll be able to segue that into the playlist - but here it is to set the scene:

Further confirmation, if you needed it, that my head seems stuck in the early 1970s. Nevertheless, food songs ... there have been a number of performers who seem to be rather fond of food and drink songs. I think of G Love and Special Sauce - 'Cold Beverage', 'Milk and Cereal', 'My Baby's Got Sauce' etc:

Pictured in a diner on the cover, naturally.

Then there's the determinedly obscure NRBQ (short for New Rhythm and Blues Quartet), for instance. This playlist has two of their tunes, but there are probably half a dozen more I could've picked, although, as Robert Christgau points out, they are also rather fond of songs that have a kind of home maintenance theme. Songs about smoking as well, as I recall. It is probably for those reasons that none of you reading this will have heard of them - not exactly the kind of subjects that light up the charts. But, once upon a time, I had a serious obsession with them, and was even intent on going to their annual 'Moon Pie' festival.

If you are reading this in the UK, you probably won't know that Moon Pies are delicious treats best washed down with RC Cola (that's Royal Crown Cola) - it's a Southern (American South, that is) thing. That's why NRBQ - from Kentucky originally - sang the most excellent 'RC Cola and a Moon Pie'. But, if the above-pictured Moon Pies nonetheless look familiar, it's because in one of their varities (the chocolate covered version), they are essentially the same as Wagon Wheels.

I used to have a very good friend from Tennessee - home of the Moon Pie - who would bring me over boxes of the things, which I much appreciated. People at customs probably thought she was nutty - she always got frisked. Probably the boxes of suspicious-looking Moon Pies.

I recall, too, my first taste of grits came from my Tennessee friend - lots of songs about grits, as it happens, not on this playlist. My reaction to grits was not much different than that of Joe Pesci in the very funny film, My Cousin Vinny, in which he plays a Yankee totally baffled by the attitudes and customs of the American South:

Grits - the allure of them - baffled me, too. Okay, this is probably all getting a bit ridiculous.

What of the music, you say. Well, unfortunately, NRBQ's 'RC Cola and a Moon Pie' is so obscure that it is not on Youtube, so I can't play it for you - but, if can load the audio stream, you'll be able to hear it, I hope.

MP3: Songs About Food and Drink

Songs in sequence (* spoken word):

Green Onions - Booker T. and the MGs
Milk and Cereal (edit) - G. Love and Special Sauce
I'd Like an Omelette and Wheat Toast - Jack Nicholson*
The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana) - The Banana Splits
RC Cola and a Moon Pie - NRBQ
Diggin' my Potatoes - Washboard Sam
Grits & Gravy - The Fame Gang
Danny Hoch as Caribbean Tiger - Danny Hoch*
My Baby's Got Sauce - G. Love and Special Sauce
Custard Pie - Led Zeppelin
Mashed Potatoes '66 - James Brown
Good Biscuits - Memphis Minnie
Girl Scout Cookies - NRBQ
Flex - Danny Hoch*
Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer) - Billie Holiday
TV Dinners - ZZ Top
Egg Cream - Lou Reed
Country Pie - Bob Dylan
I'd Like a Turkey on Rye - The Fabulous Picasso Brothers*
Brown Sugar - Rolling Stones
Rock Candy - Montrose
Potatoes, Tomatoes, Gravy and Peas - Terry Taylor
Milk and Cereal (full version) - G. Love and Special Sauce
Watermelon Man - Herbie Hancock
Eggs and Sausage - Tom Waits

The Black Keys and Jerry Butler and Johnny Adams

2010-10-23T09:59:00.004-07:00

Album of the moment is Brothers by the Black Keys (2010). A remarkably good record. Here's a version of a Jerry Butler tune, 'Never Gonna Give You Up' (no - not the Rick Astley tune...).

The Black Keys are one of those bands - two guys - that don't really look like they sound - here's a pic of them:

Jerry Butler probably ended up less well-known than Curtis Mayfield, his bandmate in The Impressions, but was at one time the more well-known figure. 'He Will Break Your Heart' was always a favourite:

And ... listening to that reminded me of another song that used to follow it on an old compilation, and which I haven't heard for 20 years. Where Jerry Butler is cool and restrained, Johnny Adams can't control himself. 'Reconsider Me'. This is for Big Dougie, if you are out there:

More cowbell ...

2010-09-29T08:13:00.001-07:00

This, below, is a comedy sketch from quite a long time ago - ten years or so - that has apparently passed into folklore as as one of the best ever sketches on the US TV show, Saturday Night Live. I just discovered it in the last few days. Can't remember what led me to it, but here it is - Christopher Walken demands more cowbell from the 'Blue Oyster Cult', circa 1976. Will Ferrell, on cowbell, wrote the sketch.

I've been lauging at this for ... five days now. Even thinking about it makes me laugh - in fact, I keep waking up and thinking about it, and laughing ...

I'm not sure if it can have that effect on anyone who doesn't know the song whose making it spoofs. But everybody should see it.

Ramones. 'It's Alive', the Roundhouse London, 1977

2010-09-25T16:09:00.005-07:00

For those fans of the more 'traditional' R'n'R set-up of vocals, guitar, bass, drums, one of the greatest live albums has been It's Alive by the Ramones. Recorded in London at the Roundhouse (below) on 31 Dec. 1977, it remained for a long time an artefact known only to UK fans.

Which is to say, this electrifying set was oddly never released in their homeland, the USA, until fairly recently. This meant that for a couple of decades US listeners would have to order it on import. Yes, order it - in the days before the internet made the celestial jukebox available to any thief. The only alternative was to go without, or listen to crummier live albums that the Ramones had later released in the US. I do still have my double vinyl LP, as it happens (even if my turntable has now decided to stop working), and probably a CD, too.

One of the most alluring things about the Ramones - for young impressionable males, especially - was the look. Black leather, and denims. At the time, 1977, this is what I wanted to - and, in fact, tried to - look like. But they modelled themselves after the look of the Hamburg-era Beatles - in the mid-70s that probably seemed like a prehistoric era, but the truth is that the Beatles in Hamburg (1960-62) and the Ramones (1974-ish) are separated by less time than has elapsed since the Blur/Oasis wars. In other words, The Beatles were more contemporary to the Ramones than Oasis are to us, today. Scary, eh?

And if you listen to The Beatles Live at the Star Club, Hamburg (1962), it's as raw and energetic as It's Alive - perhaps with less speed. The Ramones were doing the same thing, essentially, but at 100mph.

During the many years when I listened to It's Alive - particularly side one of the vinyl album, which is just one blow after another - bam bam bam - I always wondered what it must've been like to be there at such an explosive, electrifying performance. It seemed to be one of those performances that sounded as though it just levitated the whole building.

But now, all those years of wondering are no more. I'm sure it will have something to do with the fact that most of the Ramones are now dead - only drummer Tommy is still alive - and the obstacles to releasing material being removed, but it was still a shock to discover that most of the performances that comprised the material for the It's Alive album was also filmed.

And, thanks to youtube I can now post it here - all there is - if only so I know where to find it all in one place myself. Well, not quite all .. the killer opening on the album, 'Rockaway Beach', as well as some others, is not here. Guess the cameras were still readying themselves as the old '1 -2 -3 -4' kicked in

PART ONE (10: 35mins)
'Blitzkreig Bop'
'I Wanna Be Well'
'Glad to See You Go'
'You're Gonna Kill That Girl'
'Commando'

PART TWO (10: 28 mins)
'Havana Affair'
'Cretin Hop'
'Listen to my Heart'
'I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You'
'Pinhead'
'Do You Wanna Dance'

PART THREE (5: 18 mins)
'Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy'
'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue''
'We're a Happy Family'

A postscript here - found a 'Rockaway Beach' clip, but low quality, and without Joey's cool into. It's not, as it says on the clip, from the Rainbow Theatre, but from the Roundhouse, Dec 31 '77.

Stanley Booth

2010-09-22T14:16:00.013-07:00

Keith Richards and Stanley Booth

It sounds like the name of an unassuming clerical officer from Stevenage, or some other provincial outpost on these islands. Stanley Booth. But, it's a name that anyone interested in writing that is concerned with music and musicians as its subjects - rock'n'roll, R'n'B, blues - should know. But, you know, I don't think Stanley is well known at all.

So, why is he not as revered as Greil Marcus or Nick Kent? Um, I don't know ...

When I was looking at the clip of the Rolling Stones (which I posted below) from the early 70s, I couldn't help but think of Stanley Booth's great book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (that's the jacket of the original Heinemman edition, 1985, pictured below). Far from being some kind of clerical officer, the inside flap of the book notes that Booth had previously worked as 'a karate teacher, a state welfare worker, a Pinkerton operative, and a writing teacher.' A Pinkerton operative?

I recall now buying it back in 1985 for something like 25p, from one of those Bargain Books shops that always seemed to be located near bus and train stations (remaindered stock, on the way to the skip, for a transient population on the road to nowhere, etc).

It's a tremedously evocative portrait of the end of the 1960s, whose demise has been closely associated with the Rolling Stones' infamous December 1969 performance at the Altamont Speedway in California, which was famously captured in the Maysles Brothers film, Gimme Shelter.

One of the most memorable chapters in the book recounts Stanley's trip to Cheltenham to interview the parents of Brian Jones, not long after the Rolling Stones' founder member had died in 1969. And there they were: two respectable middle class people, probably born in the distant 1910s, 1920s, baffled by how this thing, rock'n'roll, could have changed their polite son from an aspiring draughtsman into the embodiment of rock'n'roll decadence.

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, for Stanley - who was from the swamp country of Waycross, Georgia - was a foreign land. So, of course, he records the kind of details that only a traveller would latch onto - the fact that the only soft drink his hotel serves is orange squash seems strangely characteristic of how little England, beyond the metropolitan centres, had changed in the previous 20 or 30 years. Cheltenham reminded him, he said, of Macon, Georgia, where he went to school 'wearing an army uniform, carrying a rifle.'

This was a book published some fifteen years after the events it recounts took place. Stanley Booth was there at Altamont, and spent the year on the road with the Stones. This was still an era when rock musicians allowed writers and reporters to get close to them. That proximity to his subject shows in the way the story of that year is told. It's no surprise that the cover of the second edition of the book, published by Chicago Review Press in 2000, has the testimony of Keith Richards emblazoned across the front:

Stanley Booth's book is the only one I can read and say, 'Yeah, that's how it was'.

But, it's worth saying that this is no censored, 'official', biography. The portrait it paints is often not flattering. Of first meeting Keith Richards, for instance, Stanley describes seeing before him, an 'advertisment for dangerous carefree death - black ragged hair, dead green skin, a cougar tooth hanging from his right earlobe, his lips snarled back from the marijuana cigarette between his rotting fangs'.

And, in the light of all that has been said about Altamont - that it represents the end of sixties optimism, etc., etc. - what more could be said about it, especially by a first-hand witness who had stood at the side of the stage as the Stones performed, and Meredith Hunter was murdered by the Hells Angels?

Fifteen years - and in the meantime eveyone else (i.e., those who weren't there) has had their go at telling the story. But you know from the opening paragraph of The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones, which captures Stanley riding with the band in their car, on the way to Altamont Speedway, that this is better than the rest:

It is late. All the little snakes are asleep. The world is black outside the car windows, just the dusty clay road in the headlights. Far from the city, past the last crossroads (where they used to bury suicicdes in England, with wooden stakes driven through their hearts), we are looking for a strange Californian hillside where we may see him, may even dance with him in his torn, bloody skins, come and play.

That last sentence undoubtedly reflects the publisher's preferred title (changed at the last minute), 'Dance with the Devil', if not how apt the Stones' own 'Sympathy for the Devil' was in soundtracking that year of 1969. My guess would be that Stanley Booth's book is the one that fully fills in the background and captures the era and its mores - i.e, we read more than just the events leading up to that unfortunate day at Altamont Speedway, and get more of a sense that something really bad could be just around the corner at anytime with the Rolling Stones in those days.

One other enduring image of Altamont for me was provided by the sight of Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead. In the film Gimme Shelter, he is seen to arrive at the site late in the day and we first glimpse him in the company of Santana's drummer, Micheal Shrieve, who is attempting to relay how disastrous things had turned out. As Shrieve explains to Garcia, and the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh, that the Hells Angels (who they had recommeded as security for the concert) had been beating up members of the audience and even musicians onstage, Garcia just kind of stood there dressed in a cape - stoned - saying, 'Uh, bummer, man'.

I found this very short interview with Stanley Booth, for those who want to read more. A longer and more informative piece than this can be found here.

Below is a clip from the Gimme Shelter film, with the Stones on the road in the States in 1969. In this scene, they have just checked into a motel, and we see them in a room listening to a demo of the song, 'Brown Sugar'. Stanley Booth is the guy standing up with Mick and Keith, wearing the blue denim shirt.

If you like rock'n'roll, or just like writing no matter what the subject is - or writing that is about rock'n'roll, read Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones.You will not be disappointed.

The Stones - 'Dead Flowers', 1972

2010-09-19T04:39:00.004-07:00

I just found out (courtesy of Aquarium Drunkard) that the Stones are finally releasing a cinema version of their 1972 movie, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones. Here is a rough version from the old video dubs that have been circulating for 30-odd years. The tune is 'Dead Flowers'. Best line-up of the Stones, with Jagger and Richards on vocals, and Mick Taylor on guitar - as the other Mick says: 'play your guitar, boy'.

Buddy & Stacy (w/ Hendrix) - 'Shotgun', 1965

2010-09-19T04:20:00.002-07:00

We may seem to be on a regular Hendrix kick here at Reverberations, but what the hell this is an interesting find. Here, below, is what is believed to be the earliest film of Jimi Hendrix in performance, from 1965. He is playing guitar in the backing band - on the left, you can't miss him. This is from a Nashville TV show called Night Train. The band here is actually Little Richard's backing band at the time (The Crown Jewels). The tune is 'Shotgun’ by Buddy & Stacy.

Count Basie, 'Splanky'

2010-09-12T04:40:00.003-07:00

Here's a ripping tune to get you moving in the morning - 'Splanky' by Count Basie. Originally from the 1957 Atomic Count Basie album, but here on one of those Blue Note CD compilations that you used to be able to pick up for a few quid in the 90s.

Video / audio grabbed from youtube. I liked the following comment from one contributor over there - 'if you don't like this song you are stupid'. This swings hard once into its stride. As it says in the liner notes: 'The biggest, brashest, most exhilarating sound, jazz's equivalent to a Marshall stack'.

Hide Your Sheep ...

2010-09-08T16:25:00.031-07:00

Well, this is an odd one.

As you may have noticed if you have looked at the menu on the right, one of our forthcoming Reverberations books is titled, Van Halen: Exuberant California. That's my book, as it happens. Now, it is not my intention to use this blog to go on about my own book at the expense of all other possible matters of interest in the world of music. Nothing could be further from the truth, but this story just seemed too bizarre to let slip.

And, you know, the whole point of a blog is to try and exist with the flotsam and jetsam of the everyday. That's why we're here.

So, here below is the elusive - near invisible and unusually silent - David Lee Roth, 'Rabelasian man of antics and adventure' (according to this guy), sometime lead singer of Van Halen (between 1973 and 1985, and intermittently since). That's him with the goatee beard, in disguise no doubt, wearing a San Francisco Caledonian Club t-shirt, standing next to the fellow who just happened to bump into him ... at the annual Scottish Highland Games in Pleasanton, California, last weekend.

Doug Lyle and David Lee Roth at the Highland Games

Well, David Lee Roth is not Scottish, of course, so what's this all about? He's Russian-Jewish American, you say (or whatever way around that goes). Well, actually, he could be considered an honorary Scot ... of sorts - seeing as he was a known player of the bagpipes (yes, it is true). This wasn't just a matter of the pipes being good for 'noising up' degenerate Hollywood neighbours after running out of other interesting things to do of an evening. It seems that he did, at the time (around the early 1980s), feel some affinity for the instrument - which, in light of what is to be revealed below, were significantly often made of sheepskin.

But, that aside - and moving from the particular to the general - there is quite a long-standing Scottish influence in California, and particularly around the Pasadena area that Van Halen sprung from in the early 1970s. So, in that sense, it is no surprise that these Highland games were taking place - there are similar events in several locations in California every year - nor that any random Californian might be there just to while away the hours on a late summer weekend - y'know, hanging around, drinking fine malt whisky, or something like that.

But no, the weird thing is that Diamond Dave was actually in competition at this event. But not tossing the caber. Not playing the bagpipes. So what, then?

Well, he was always a man of many parts - and sometimes singing just seemed like one of the add-on bits. And that's not forgetting that many say he couldn't even do that very well. As the NME said back in 1984: 'when not wrestling sharks, romancing women, and scattering wisdom, Dave likes to show off. Usually, Dave shows off with Van Halen ...' So just what was he up to at these Highland games? Singing tunes? Not with Van Halen. Er, country dancing? Doing that tippy-toe, lets reel around the swords on the floor thing?

Nah - that would be too unmanly (even though I am sure Dave is in touch with his feminine side).

He was, of course, in the sheepdog trials, where - as it says on the Games' website - 'highly trained Border Collies' are 'put through their paces herding sheep and other farm animals in the Amador Pavilion.' Yeah, leave the caber-tossing to the men in skirts. As our witness, Doug, looked on he was amazed - 'Wow, this guy knows his sheepdog stuff', he reports.

Well, for those of you of a certain age who are reading this in the UK, the words 'sheepdog trials' will immediately engage involunatry memories of the old One Man and His Dog routine, which ruled the broadcast waves in the days of 3 TV channels and boring wet Tuesdays, and still seems to be going. Now - think of that, and visualise David Lee Roth ...

David Lee Roth, 1978. Dog not present.

Yup. Man, animal, nature - what could be more David Lee Roth than that, I ask you. Is he not PAN, anyway - the mythical satyr-shepherd with goat-like features?! Ah, so that's the purpose of the goatee beard . . . Okay, call me crazy, but I do believe that Roth personally sketched this design (below), an unused Van Halen logo that, in retrospect, seems quite revealing:

And, let's not forget, Van Halen's 1982-3 tour went under the banner HIDE YOUR SHEEP (see pic below).

Entrance to Van Halen's backstage, Us Festival, 1983

As the sole baffled witness to Roth's shepherding (unable to believe that no-one else figured out who this 'Dave Roth' skilfully herding sheep was), Doug Lyle was initially alerted by the unmistakeable sound of Roth's voice. If you are familiar with it you will know that it has always been sort of down there in the heel of the boots - LOW, you know? Before long he decided he had to confirm that this 'Dave Roth' was, in fact, David Lee Roth, who by then was being told that it was time to 'call his dog'. As Doug says in his rendering of events that day:

I wanted to respect his [Roth's] privacy so I only talked to him for a short while. There were so many things I could have said and asked. What was his personal favorite song? How did he get in to Sheepdog herding? Later ... as we drove home I could not think of anything but what had just happened ... My wife tried talking to me in the car but I had to tell her that I just couldn’t focus on anything else as I was still in a blur from what had just happened.

That was also the kind of feeling some people had when they discovered that Roth - who in his heydey was one of the most famous faces in America - was (around 2005) working as a paramedic in New York, hauling tanks of oxygen up several flights, to come to their aid. So, although the whole sheepdog thing seems odd, then again, it seems very Dave Roth.

David Lee Roth greets a fan, 1981.

Which is to say, Roth is probably one of the oddest people in rock'n'roll, particularly when you figure how he is perceived. I'm sure people think he is some bubble-perm 'I-really-mean-it' phony like Jon Bon Jovi - not even close...

When he was at the height of his fame with Van Halen he was always doing things that seemed quite un-rock'n'roll - expeditions in the Amazon (see pic below) and the Himalayas. Ballet and bagpipe lessons, and so on.

In Amazonia, 1983

Seeing as I have quite recently been in the archives, so to speak, I will leave you with this, from a 1984 interview:

What did the guys in the band think of your ballet lessons?
I'm always taking lessons. I've taken millions of kinds of lessons. I've been doing martial arts since I was 14. I took singing lessons for a couple of years. It obviously didn't help me sing any better, but I didn't lose what I had. This year I took Portugese three times a week. I finished 27 hours of helicopter ground school.

Why?
It's just something new. Fill up the bucket, y'know.

Roth is apparently making an album with the Van Halen brothers, Eddie and Alex. They toured together as Van Halen back in 2007-08, for the first time since 1984, and - as the pic below shows - were still making it look like it sounded. This was all despite the fact that they were by this time in their mid-fifties. Eddie Van Halen had by then survived cancer (and claimed to have found the cure for his own cancer in a research lab he set up and staffed out of his own pocket). Some years earlier he had undergone relacement surgery on a hip that had been worn out as a result of his onstage acrobatics.

Most curious of all, though, was that Eddie - and not David Lee Roth (shock!) - ended up seemingly flirting with the porn industry, scoring music for some movie that was shot on his property in the Hollywood Hills.

But, contrarian to the end, he maintained that this was 'art', not porn. As he said to infamous shock-jock, Howard Stern: 'You may call it porn, but I call it sex. And if it wasn't for sex there wouldn't all these dweebs even asking me about it.'

Way to go, Ed. But, who would've thought it, really - Ed Van Halen in porn movies and Dave Roth herding sheep ... seems the wrong way around, somehow.

Eddie Van Halen (left) and David Lee Roth, 2008.

The last album to appear under the the Van Halen name was 1998's disastrous VHIII, on which Eddie even ended up singing - like a confused Tom Waits, in fact - on one gravelly-voiced piano tune that I will speak of no further. Many who have followed Van Halen (me included) count their last album as 1983's MCMLXXXIV/1984. It was their best-selling album, but also - due to the circumstances of its making and aftermath - the album that would kill them off.

The last music that was heard from Roth was in 2007 - on some recordings by his ex-guitarist, Jeff Falkowski. He sang a Portuguese tune - in Portuguese, naturally - titled 'Take Sarava'. There's a bit of youtube about it (in Portuguese) below, but if you want to listen to the track it can be heard in much better quality at Falkowski's website - it's the first song that plays when you land on the site.

Two degrees in bebop, a PhD in swing ...

2010-08-31T03:02:00.001-07:00

Richie Hayward, drummer of Little Feat - one of Reverberations' favourite bands of the early-to-mid 70s period - died recently at the age of 64. Here's an obituary from The Guardian. I hope you enjoy this clip of the Feat from BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, doing the swampy 'Rock'n'roll Doctor', on which Richie sounds particularly funky.

...and Hendrix from Outer Space!

2010-08-28T06:12:00.005-07:00

We're on Hendrix overload here at Revereberations today. A rather different take now, but one that really should be shared, by the brilliant Robert Harrison (below) - Dante scholar and professor of Italian at Stanford University - who sees neither London nor New York (never mind Jimi's birthplace, Seattle) as the places that can really inform our apprecition of Hendrix.

No ... no, no, no. Jimi, you see, was from Outer Space. I am going to post the audio here - there's a play button at the bottom of this post. Don't be put off by the fact that Prof. Harrison dips into the thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas now and again. It all makes perfect sense in the end. Here is a flavour of his take, which was broadcast on his show Entitled Opinions (Stanford University Radio, KZSU):

[Jimi's] obsession with outer space; his obsession with everything that had wings - be it birds, be it angels, and be it flying saucers - all this seems to me enourmously interesting. But there's very little in the biography that can account for it. Could the elements account for it?

I believe there's no question Jimi Hendrix was an aerial spirit. That there was a spirit of the air - that out of the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) he had a special affinity with air ... I would be more comfortable with an elemental analysis of his music than a biographical one ... In the final analysis, I think it was this affinity with the air that made him believe that he had - himself - extraterrestrial origins. And we have to take him seriously when he suggests - in that weird language of his - that he actually came from elsewhere.

From one point of view he was entirely human: he was a kid from Seattle; he was the son of his parents ... but from another point of view things really aren't so simple. All we know for sure is that when Jimi burst on the London scene in the mid-60s it seemed to everyone in that city that he had come from another planet.

MP3: Robert Harrison on Jimi Hendrix (Entitled Opinions, 2009)

The programme lasts around one hour and features clips of Hendrix music, voices of various people (Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend), but mostly Robert Harrison doing what he does every week on Entitled Opinions - i.e., thinking aloud, waxing philosophical and bringing a measure of wonder back into the world.

... and Hendrix in New York

2010-08-28T04:57:00.055-07:00

This, today, in The New York Times about Hendrix's Electric Lady studios (in the pic above it is the shop front with the black curtains):

"Just down the street from the hot dogs of Gray’s Papaya, on a row of down-market Greenwich Village shops selling used CDs and a certain kind of glass pipe, 52 West Eighth Street is easy to miss. But a small sign marks hallowed musical ground: Electric Lady Studios."

You can read the whole article here.

Currently spinning here is Electric Ladyland - in mono, I should say (as it says on the sleeve: 'Stereo playable in mono'). This is not for any purist reasons, I should add - but simply because the main Reverberations turntable seems to be kaput, and we are back onto the 1970s portable bedroom job with one tiny little speaker ...

Hendrix in London

2010-08-26T02:04:00.002-07:00

The Guardian has a gallery of images related to a new exhibition about Jimi Hendrix and London that we here at Reverberations like. It doesn't include that one above - that's Jeremy Thorpe holding the guitar as Jimi looks on. Thorpe was 1968's Nick Clegg (i.e., leader of the British Liberal Party). I won't say anything about his scandalous downfall, which had a whiff of rock'n'roll about it (not unlike a number of more contemporary Lib Dems one could mention ...) because you are probably all too young to remember - or care!

That's the exterior of the house, above, in Brook Street London W1 (the white one). Next door was where George Frideric Handel lived, some 250 years before Hendrix arrived in London.

I know you also want to see moving pictures of its interior, so here you go, courtesy of The Telegraph. Contains adverts first, and annoying 'soundtrack' music.

Road songs

2010-08-25T12:30:00.011-07:00

I listened to an interview a few days ago with Rob Young, author the recently-published and very enjoyable Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music. During a discussion of this 'visionary' British music ('the tangled story of Britain's folk music and Arcadian dreams') he remarked at one point on the lack of road songs in British song / music. Well, as you can probably guess, we at Reverberations have a fairly loose idea of how we might understand place and its importance in music and song. The power of imaginary, mythical, and inhuman places (e.g., the desert, the sea) inspires and emerges in the work of numerous composers and performers.

And so too does the road song. Roads fall somewhere in amongst that mythical-imaginary-inhuman assortment of 'places'. But, I wonder, is music - particularly popular and folk song - that is concerned with the road peculiarly American? Maybe it is rather something to do with the vastness of a place, how its looms in the imagination in terms of possibility and futurity ...

Rob Young thought that this visonary British music could not help but reflect the fact that our island is relatively compact. We don't have, for instance, a past that was shaped by the openness of the American West. California, in particular, was a destination that loomed large in the American imagination because of the significant obstacle of the Great Basin - the desert - which, in the days before trains and planes, was the barrier to reaching that imagined Eden on the Pacific Coast.

But the thing is that songs in the British tradition seem to project the listener into an imagined place, a future, and so on, by directing their thoughts inwards; into the psyche of this nation, its places and its history.

Having said that, there are road songs of a sort. There is, for instance, Ewan McColl's Songs of a Road, which a friend told me about just the other day. But this seems to be something quite different - it is about the building of the M1 in England and the labours of those involved in its construction. That is to say, it's not quite the same kind of imaginary-mythical-inhuman place as the American road often seems to be in song.

Well, what got me thinking of all this was that the Rob Young interview reminded me that some time ago I had an idea to write a book about 'nowhere', which in some of its parts would have been a book about 'the road', and our tendency in contemporary life to find means of disappeance - to seek oblivion, spirituality, awakening, etc. Erik Davis's excellent and lavishly illustrated book, The Visionary State, provides a fine example of how such 'landscapes' might be understood.

This 'nowhere' idea, though, was one that didn't seem to fly. I can understand why - tell somebody that you are essentially interested in nothing, and it seems too metaphysical, too intangible. Such a book could be about anything! So, people would say to me: 'nowhere? Are you mad?' Or even when they wanted to avoid implying that I was bonkers, they'd say things like, 'hey, there's a pub in Manchester called Nowhere, y'know'. Well, I have been to Nowhere. Yes, and not only in song - because nowhere is actually everywhere in the romanticism of rock'n'roll - but as a kind of state of mind that place can actually induce. If you don't believe me try reading the kind of books that William L. Fox writes (below); books that explore how we draw nourishment from the idea and the actuality of being nowhere, even if only for a short time.

And, like William Fox, I took a kind of philosophical-ethnographic road trip into nowhere - into the Mojave desert, about ten years ago - that was strangely enhanced by music. I was driving from Los Angeles to the great empty heart of nowhere - which is to say, Las Vegas - listening to Air's 1998 album Moon Safari, which amazingly seemed to have been made for driving through the desert. Under the spell of its shimmering washes of synthesizer and treated voices I felt like I was actually driving across some distant lunar surface.

MP3: Air - 'La Femme d'Argent' (Moon Safari)

But, okay, Moon Safari is not an album of road songs - but ... it illustrated to me music's ability to conjur up imaginative places, to enhance places, and even to induce a kind of virtual reality, however temporary its duration was. It's powerful stuff.

But, anyway, all that is my long-winded way of saying here's something I found about road songs on NPR, '95 songs for Driving on I-95' - I-95 is a road out of Philadelphia in case you are wondering. You can listen to the mix online, or download some widget thing if you have one of those smartphones and it'll do it all for you. But it seems mainly to be a playlist about cars and driving, rather than about the road as such. Songs about the road, it seems to me, are about possibility, or the attractions of a boundless future. The larger the geographical canvas on which you can mentally project such roads, the more interesting it seems likely to be.

Well, no matter - here's something else I did. This clip is from a BBC Arena programme about Bob Dylan and his song 'Highway 61'. But Dylan only appears at the end - the rest has some blues, and some other thoughts about that highway as a strange kind of place that links past and present, north and south and all kinds of other things.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note: The source of this film clip is 'Arena - Tales of Rock'n'roll: Highway 61 Revisited' (BBC 2, May, 1993; re-broadcast on BBC Four, 2007). 60 mins. Part of a series of four films about songs. This 5-minute excerpt is posted here for scholarly purposes, of course. If anyone at the Beeb wants it removed, just let me know.

We will begin reverberating soon ...

2010-08-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

Well, welcome to Reverberations. A new series of books about music and its relation to the times and places of its making.

If you happen upon this blog, you are probably wondering where it came from, what it is for and who is this guy doing all the posting. I ask myself questions like that, too. All will become clearer soon. But, in short, this is the place to find news and other related stuff (playlists, links to music, thoughts, previews, ideas, etc) about music we will be publishing books on in this new series, music that interests me for reasons related to the aims of the series - and music we would like to publish more books about.

The first books in the series will appear in 2011. There is a list of forthcoming titles in the series on the right-hand side. If you follow those links you will find short summaries of the books. I should say that we will be publishing on a very wide range of music-related subjects, and these first six titles represent merely a beginning.