In the comments about Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime the other day, I told a story about riding down the road to go to Long Beach (in my hometown of Smithtown NY) riding in my buddy Bobby’s brother Gary’s convertible, in the summertime, while hearing Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime for what may have been the first time.
Then, this morning, I found on Facebook, a videopost by a woman named Amy Raulli that was a drive down that same road! Now, her video was shot in the winter, so there are no leaves on the trees, and when she arrives in the parking lot there are no cars, only puddles. And I don’t get she has the same keen excitement that we 14 year olds had back then of embarking on an adventure involving girls and small bathing suits. Plus candy and ice cream. But otherwise it is exactly the same thing!
Oh, and playing on the radio as she made the drive to the beach was Boston’s More Than A Feeling, which I have scrubbed, because there is nothing right about that.
To get the full experience, click to start the Mungo Jerry clip below, then click to start the drive to the beach video and scroll down to watch it alone. Better than Imax! Almost like being 14!
This is a clip from a live show of the Allman Brothers band at Stony Brook University in September 1971. My first rock show was the year before, also at Stony Brook, with my buddies Big Jim and Bobby. The Allman Brothers opened for Mountain. We were fans of Mountain and had never heard of the Allman Brothers before my mom dropped us off. Wow.
I so loved the punk movement. I was 25, and actually in London the week of the Stiffs Live. I remember getting on the Underground to go back to my Grandmother’s in Finchley and the punks who had been at the shows that featured Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Larry Wallis, and Ian Dury and the Blockheads were on the same train.
Blue Mohawks-crap, any Mohawk on a white kid in the fall of 1977–and pierced tongues and such were still a little outrageous in the states where ELO and ABBA ruled. In fact Roxy Music, 801, The Tubes, and Queen were about as far as I could push the envelope before that fateful trip to London to visit my Granny and cousins for the first time on their turf.
What a great time I had! I remember sleeping on a boat hostile in Amsterdam with a bunch of other kids, and getting up in the morning to eat some yogurt and fruit and cheese (remember, I am in Holland) with Marshall Tucker’s “Can’t You See” blasting in the dining area.
As previously noted, that was the first time I heard the Sex Pistols: in the tub in my Granny’s home, listening to my Aunt Hedda’s tinny transistor radio, tuned to John Peel and Top of the Pops. “Anarchy in the UK” blasted out and life would never be the same for me.
I came home hungry, riding the new wave as it broke here, a pierced (yep, did my ear the first time right after I got back), tattooed (long story, but that was actually a couple of years earlier) ever the long-hair who still fit right into his Berkeley community.
I saw as many of the English and New York bands as they arrived as I could, and being near San Francisco, that was pretty easy to do, and it was cheap, too. $3.50 or $4.00 to see three bands at a great venue.
Anyway, Gene commenting on (I’d go the) Whole Wide World, that “punk opened things up” suggesting Eric would not have happened in 1972 is so dead on. But, with the Pistols and Malcolm McLaren and the Clash, all bets were off.
Never prior to John Lydon did any band ever seem to consider that there was the radical difference between singing harmoniously and being an effective vocalist had suddenly fallen away. In fact, I remember arguing similarly with my life-long friend Karen Clayton at the time about Elvis Costello. Karen called Elvis a lousy vocalist, and I noted that maybe he was a lousy elocutionist, but he was a great lyricist and voclalist.
Enter Ian Dury, and Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll, a really wonderful song: funny, self deprecating, and yet brutally honest.
But, because Sex and Drugs… seemed more like a gimmick song, it was hard to take much else by the Blockheads seriously. In fact it was hard to take Sex and Drugs… seriously.
Too bad, because they were a pretty tight band, and if you know the song Sweet Gene Vincent, you know this to be true. Not just a great song that links the same attitude of Little Richard and Chuck Berry to that of the punks, the song moves to that place using Vincent–Mr. Be-Bop-A-Lula and maybe THE original punk–as a vehicle.
This version of the song is from the The Concert for Kampuchia, and joining in the Blockheads is the Clash’s Mick Jones, by the way. And, let me tell you, we are far from done with the subject.
Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, the chameleon of contemporary actors, was found dead Sunday, ostensibly the victim of a self-inflicted heroin overdose.
At age 46, this is a sad loss as Hoffman was just a great talent, so able to look and act differently depending upon the role.
Hoffman did win an Oscar for his role as writer Truman Capote in the 2005 film, Capote.
But, there are basically three films Hoffmans, I really loved, all three of which had great music floating around in a direct or indirect fashion.
Boogie Nights-Hoffman played the sexually confused Scotty J, a sort of Gaffer in the world of porn film: an insecure nerd who has somehow stumbled into the dream world of the repressed voyeur.
The Big Lebowski-This time Hoffman plays Brandt, instead of a Gaffer, he is a gopher for David Huddleston’s other Lebowski, a wonderfully restrained brown-noser. My favorite line of Hoffman’s is “Well Dude, we just don’t know.”
Almost Famous-My favorite of Hoffman’s roles, as he plays the great–and also sadly late and nihlistic–rock critic Lester Bangs. Bangs, who penned the iconic definitive rock critique book Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, died of alcohol and drug abuse, and now Hoffman has followed.
Folk great Pete Seeger passed away today, ideally peacefully, at the age of 94.
Seeger might not be thought of as a rocker, but he represented the spirit and attitude that any serious musician–or artist, for that matter–held and spoke, unashamedly about any cause.
Seeger was a founding member of the Weavers–who recorded probably had their biggest hit in the 50’s with Goodnight Irene by Lead Belly–some of whom were blacklisted during the McCarthy era for their beliefs.
However, in the 60’s, with the emergence of Bob Dyan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, Seeger found company and even a mentor-ship as his songs If I Had a Hammer, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, and Turn! Turn! Turn! found their way to radio play.
Seeger, who played with Woody Guthrie as well as Lead Belly (with whom he co-wrote So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You along with fellow activist and musician, Lee Hays) was a pioneer in roots recording, and equally important, the Civil Rights Movement that grabbed hold in the 60’s, and is really still going on.
Seeger was a great gentleman by all accounts, and a man dedicated to humanity and equality and freedom for all human beings: something I like to think all artists, and especially rockers, strive for.
But, in thinking about Seeger, I could not help but think of the clip of him in Martin Scorsese’s fabulous American Masters documentary about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home.
Seeger is so sweet and perplexed and definite about wanting the cables to the electric guitars of Mike Bloomfield and Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, in 1965, that it is funny to think how we all as human beings have our limits and adjustments.
For, Seeger was indeed a progressive politically. And, as a guy who quit the Weavers because they had signed an agreement to perform a cigarette jingle, he was certainly principled. But, I guess some progress, like cranked up Mike Bloomfield blues licks were hard to take for a middle-aged banjo player.
The world was a better place with, and because of Pete Seeger. And, it is sadder with him gone.
I did try to find the clip from No Direction Home, but couldn’t (although I highly recommend the movie and soundtrack) but, I did find this lovely clip of Seeger performing Dylan’s Forever Young.
And, well, remember, attitude does not have to be in-your-face Ted Nugent. A quiet message is always the most powerful, and Seeger was the purveyor of just that.
When I was in college, my friend Robin lived in an apartment in the village. Her neighbor was a guy named Jeremy Steig, one of those guys about whom there is a lot to know.
Jeremy’s father, the New Yorker cartoonist William Steig, is famously known at this point as the creator of Shrek. (Jeremy played the Pied Piper in the movie Shrek Forever After, Wikipedia tells us.)
Jeremy had a motorcycle accident long before I met him, which left him half paralyzed. He had to teach himself again as an adult how to play the flute, and uses a special mouthpiece in order to play.
In 1968 he formed Jeremy and the Satyrs, an early jazz-rock fusion band, with the bassist Eddie Gomez, the pianist Warren Bernhardt and others that made the eponymous record Mean Black Snake is from.
He later made a number of jazz albums, and one of his songs was used as a sample in the Beastie Boys single, Slap Shot (I know this from Wikipedia, too).
He was, when I met him a hyper man, constantly up and down, in and out of his, Robin’s and other apartments, working on ideas musical and artsy (he drew the cover art of the album), as well as taking care of the details of life. He was dramatic that way, but also a generous man, inclusive, engaged, funny, helpful, even if sometimes troublesome. It seemed, if I recall, that like a Satyr he was always horny, too, and talked about everything always.
At this time, in the late 70s, Jeremy had a girlfriend (Diana?) who was a belly dancer, and we went to shows in disco ballrooms in the Village, Jeremy and Eddie Gomez and a drummer or a machine backing up the belly dance with wild free-form jazz that sometimes morphed into a disco groove. It was nutty stuff, Jeremy passed his flute through a series of pedals that added delays and echo and looping, but it was not pretentious or hifalutin. Like Jeremy, the music was affable and soulful and handmade, very likable if you value more the exploration and the courage to do that in public than some preformed idea of what things should be.
I packed thirty-odd discs that I felt could comprehensively meet any likely musical desire…[but] I forgot our CDs in my mother’s garage in Washington, thousands and thousands of miles away…
..I was thinking about these CDs a few months later, when once again I was being driven to the brink of insanity by an ear-shattering, 120-beat-a-minute rendition of “La Macarena,” the only song ever played on Tarawa. It was everywhere. If I was in a minibus, overburdened as always with twentysome people and a dozen fish, hurtling down the road at a heart-stopping speed, the driver was inevitably blasting a beat-enhanced version of “La Macarena” that looped over and over again. If I was drinking with a few of the soccer players who kindly let me demonstrate my mediocrity on the soccer field with them, our piss-up in one of the seedy dives in Betio would occur to the skull-racking jangle of “La Macarena.” If I happened across some teenage boys who had gotten their hands on an old Japanese boom box, they were undoubtedly loitering to a faint and tinny “La Macarena”…
…As I continued to be flailed by “La Macarena,” I took small comfort in the fact that at least no one on Tarawa had ever seen the video, and I was therefore spared the sight of an entire nation spending their days line dancing…
…What finally brought me to the brink was the recent acquisition of a boom box by the family that lived across the road… sometimes for hours at a time, and I would be reduced to an imbecilic state by the endless playing of “La Macarena.” It was hot. My novel—and this is a small understatement—was not going very well. My disposition was not enhanced by “La Macarena.” I wondered if I could simply walk across the road and kindly ask the neighbors to shut the fucking music off… and I asked Tiabo if she thought it was permissible for me to ask the neighbors to turn the music down. “In Kiribati, we don’t do that,” Tiabo [the maid] said. “Why not?” I asked. “I would think that loud noise would bother people.” “This is true. But we don’t ask people to be quiet”…
…As the months went by and “La Macarena” was etched deeper and deeper into my consciousness, I became increasingly despondent that our package of CDs would never arrive. Then, one day the stars aligned, the gods smiled, and as I rummaged among the packages I saw with indescribable happiness my mother’s distinctive handwriting. Oh, the sweet joy of it. I claimed the package, stuffed it my backpack, and biked like the wind.
“Tiabo,” I said, full of glee. “You must help me.” She eyed me suspiciously as I plundered through our box of CDs. “You must tell me which song, in your opinion, do you find to be the most offensive.” “What?” she asked wearily. “I want you to tell me which song is so terrible that the I-Kiribati will cover their ears and beg me to turn it off.” “You are a strange I-Matang.” I popped in the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head. I forwarded it to the song “Gratitude,” which is an abrasive and highly aggressive song. “What do think?” I yelled. “I like it.” Damn. I moved on to Nirvana’s “Lithium.” I was sure that grunge-metal-punk would not find a happy audience on an equatorial atoll. “It’s very good,” Tiabo said. Now I was stumped. I tried a different tack. I inserted Rachmaninoff. “I don’t like this,” Tiabo said.
Now we were getting somewhere. “Okay, Tiabo. How about this?” We listened to a few minutes of La Bohème. Even I felt a little discombobulated listening to an opera on Tarawa. “That’s very bad,” Tiabo said. “Why?” “I-Kiribati people like fast music. This is too slow and the singing is very bad.” “Good, good. How about this?” I played Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. “That’s terrible. Ugh . . . stop it.” Tiabo covered her ears. Bingo. I moved the speakers to the open door.
“What are you doing?” Tiabo asked. I turned up the volume. For ten glorious minutes Tarawa was bathed in the melancholic sounds of Miles Davis. Tiabo stood shocked. Her eyes were closed. Her fingers plugged her ears. I had high hopes that the entire neighborhood was doing likewise. Finally, I turned it off. I listened to the breakers. I heard the rustling of the palm fronds. A pig squealed. But I did not hear “La Macarena.” Victory. “Thank you, Tiabo. That was wonderful.” “You are a very strange I-Matang.”
The two pictures I’ve posted here are of famous rock bands back in the 80s that I found in a post at the Internet K-Hole. It seems that every few months babs posts a collections of snapshots from the 80s, mostly, of kids on skate boards, bands, kids at dances, kids surfing, an occasional nude, kids hanging, kids wearing band t-shirts, kids at the beach, kids with guitars, etc. The pictures are captionless, without context, sometimes adjacent ones relate to each other, but often they come from across the country at seeming random, certainly taken by different photographers, but they seem to tell one artful story, a memoir of a generation, about what it was like to be 16 and 20 and 24 back in the 80s.
Diane just advised me that the wonderful British actor, Peter O’Toole has passed away.
I get this is a rock’n’roll site–or at least largely a music site–but often music and film are inexorably linked.
Although, I must admit, not so much in O’Toole’s case.
It is more of a case that his face is as iconic as the roles he played.
Among those films of his I love:
Lawrence of Arabia (1962): O’Toole’s mesmerizing film debut (also Omar Sharif’s) was in arguably one of the greatest cinematic achievements ever. I think the first half of this film is as fine a piece of film making–as in script, photography, acting, and music–as has ever been assembled.
The Lion in Winter (1968): Incomparable historical piece with O’Toole as Henry II to Katherine Hepburn’s Elanor of Aquitaine, with a witty and intelligent a script that allow the brilliance of the actors to shine (this time Anthony Hopkins made his film debut).
The Ruling Class (1972): As dark as dark and funny can get, O’Toole plays the mad 14th Earl of Gurney. O’Toole thinks he is Jesus (he has a big wooden cross on which he roosts from time-to-time) although he likes to be referred to as either “Bert” or “JC,” though his given name is Jack. The catch is his relatives want to seize the assets that are Bert’s, but in order to do that, he has to be declared insane and a threat. So, they marry him off to his uncle’s mistress so they can have a child/heir, and thus simplify the insanity process. Of course nothing goes according to plot, but ultimately Jack is forced to jettison his loving and happy-go-lucky Jesus alter ego, and assumes that of another Jack, as in The Ripper.
The Stunt Man (1980): O’Toole as an autocratic film director who pushes a walk on stunt man (Steve Railsback), who is on the run from the law, into going further and further on a limb with the stunts. O’Toole is great at this–roles on the verge of losing it–and this film is no exception. Also filmed around the lovely Hotel Del Coronado, in San Diego, where Some Like it Hot was also largely set.
My Favorite Year (1982): A lovely sentimental comedy about TV in the 50’s, ostensibly based upon Mel Brooks’ early days writing for Sid Caesar and his Show of Shows. O’Toole plays Allan Swann, an Errol Flynn-like swashbuckling star of the 30’s who can still give women wobbly knees. He accepts a role on a TV show in order to earn some extra moolah and even himself out with the IRS. This movie, directed by comedian Richard Benjamin, is as sweet as they come.
Amazingly, O’Toole was nominated for the Oscar for all five of the above (I did not realize that when I picked them as my faves as I was thinking about it) and had a total of eight nominations (also Becket, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Venus), but never actually won for those films. Rather, he did get a lifetime achievement award from the Academy in 2003.
