OBIT: Dan Hicks, 1941-2016

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Dan Hicks might not be as well known as some of the rock mainstays who have left us the past few months, but never-the-less, Hicks, leader of the seminal Bay Area Gypsy Jazz/Rock-a-Billy/Jug Band/Folk troupe, “Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks,” passed away February 6 from Cancer.

Hicks’ band involved a country swing core (violins) along with guitar, bass, and three vocals–Hicks and two women singers–but he certainly was a wordsmith, as well as a man who carried his bay area sensibilities to heart.

I remember in 1973, seeing the Kinks at Winterland, with Hicks and Licks playing second on the bill. His band turned in a great set, but Hicks spent a few moments sort of happily sneering at the crowd that he knew the audience really couldn’t wait to “see the motherfucking Kinks” (who were on tour supporting Everybody’s In Showbiz). Still, the band (both in fact) were great.

I Scare Myself, might well be Hicks best known tune, and this great clip features Hicks on his 60th birthday, playing the Warfield in The City, with virtually all the musicians who had graced his band at one time or another.

But, my favorite was the uber-clever, How Can I Miss You (When You Won’t Go Away).

One less funny irreverent musician on the planet.

Dan Hicks Died.

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Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks made four records back in the late 60s and early 70s that I wore out. Dan was a jazz guy, he liked novelty songs and the sounds of the 30s, though he started out as the drummer in the somewhat psychedelic Charlatans, a forerunner of the SF bands of the second half of the 60s. One Charlatan ended up in the Flamin’ Groovies, even.

Hicks didn’t play drums in his band, he played guitar, and he played with terrific fiddle players and acoustic bass and, of course, the Lickettes. They always sound a little crazed, mad with joy or fear or whatever bit of gut and smile they’ve got going in one of Dan’s terrific songs. All of them sound like they’re going to spin out of control, but they never do, at least not unless it’s on purpose, and the reward is a collection of great songs that are made even greater because of Hicks’ thoroughly delightful commitment to them.

This first clip is a promotional film featuring the first Hot Licks band in 1969, lip synching to their recording of the the Jukies Ball.

Here’s a silly party song with the Lickette’s out front from the Flip Wilson show.

His greatest song has all the same elements, yet isn’t silly at all.

Back in those crazy early 70s I listened a lot to Dan Hicks and Commander Cody, another funny band playing old music not for nostalgia’s sake, but because the songs are catchy and great, especially when played straight, as if the sound of before was a perfect fit for today. There were plenty of other bands mining this same vein of ore, not rock, but for me the others felt false and lacked the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. They were playing old peoples music, while Dan and the Commander were delighting in their eternal youth.

Until this week.

 

 

Allman Brothers, Leave My Blues At Home

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I read a cute story today about Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi in the New Yorker, which for some reason got me thinking about Idlewild South, the second Allman Brothers Band album. The one before Live at Fillmore East. The record was kind of a bomb, but you have to wonder why.

I like this cut, which should be an amiable shuffle, but somehow turns all the good feelings inside out. Leave ’em at home? Sure, but they’re coming with you. That’s how it sounds to me.

 

 

Give Me Spotify, or Give Me Death?

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whiteI recently initiated my own hashtag: #iambecomingabesimpson.

Mind you, it is not that I desire to become the sometimes senile, emotionally bankrupt, confused denture wearing sire of Homer Jay Simpson, it is just that I am getting old.

My next birthday, my family will be able to sing When I’m 64 to me, and while it is true I am aging, I am trying to adapt.

I do have an IPhone 6, and I score my golf on it, do my banking, retrieve my boarding passes, text a lot, do Twitter (@lawrmichaels in case you are interested) but in some ways I am not so much resisting aspects of the future and technology that have already run amok it seems. It is more, I am just not interested.

For example, I have an MFA in literature with a specialty in 19th Century British authors. That means I know a lot of George Eliot, Charles Dickens, the Brontes, and for sure Jane Austen.

So, when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was released last week, all I can do is shake my head, cupped in both hands, and wonder why the fuck someone would even try such a thing let alone how it could possibly be any good? (And, if they were thinking, they might have considered Austen’s first novel, Northanger Abbey, which holds literary vehicles from the Gothic novel, in that there are castles and mysterious hallways and personages, all perfect for bloodsucking.)

More to the point: How did we seem to run out of story ideas?

But, I digress.

I do have this IPhone, but Lindsay (and her sister Kelly) always give me gentle shit because I have 116,000 un-deleted emails (my baseball mates here on the site will probably attest to the amount of stupid industry spam and such we get), or I cannot figure out how to turn the horizontal view on the phone off.

But, Lindsay is my music mate in the family, and she has been on me to to get Spotify for over a year now, and this last Saturday, I kind of relented. That is, I downloaded the app, made an initial favorites list (The Who, The Kinks, Mick Ronson, Richard Thompson, Yo La Tengo, and Wilco) and streamed on my way to the golf course. Mind you, no money has exchanged hands as of yet, for I get the free service, with commercials.

My conundrum is I am not sure just how much to commit to Spotify.

For one thing, I really like listening to the radio. I love two stations–KTKE, and KEXP–both off the wall independent ones just like I love listening to baseball on the radio. It is something I grew up doing, and somehow the commercials (I can so hear Vin Scully talking up “Farmer John’s sausages”) don’t bother a lick within those contexts.

Another thing, though, is I started buying albums in 1963 (Surfin’ USA) and did so until the 70’s when 8-track, and cassettes burst onto the scene. In the end, though, the tapes were not reliable, so most of the stuff I bought on tape I wound up repurchasing on vinyl.

And, then came CDs, meaning now 25 years into their existence I have about 800 albums and 800 CDs, and probably 15% I cross own. For example, I think of the Beatles White Album.

I bought that on regular vinyl when it came out, and then again in the late 70’s when re-issued on white vinyl. But, I also bought it on cassette so I could listen to my player on my headphones at night when I went to sleep. Needless to say, I also own the White Album on CD, meaning I have purchased the rights to listen to Dear Prudence no less than four times.

And, now, in order to stream the White Album on Spotify, I have to pay a fee to listen again?

OK, so you could say the music moguls saw me coming, and it is not that I am against streaming or using my IPhone as such.

My old IPhone 4 had 1300 songs on it from all over the map, and that made for some killer streaming, but when I upgraded to the IPhone 6, I lost three-fourths of what was on my playlist for one technical reason, or another (never that I had not purchased the rights: more like I am too lazy to put the album information in anywhere).

But, I also have TuneIn radio, and stream KTKE and KEXP so I can listen to what I want when I want.

Lindsay, however, says all this will be wrapped into one nifty package–sans commercials–and that we can share playlists and songs without having to burn anything.

OK, that sounds like fun, but, how long till I have to switch when something falls out of favor (Napster or MySpace, anyone)?

I probably will wind up subscribing just to make life easier, and well, I love the fact that in Lindsay I simply have someone in the family who loves music as much as I do, so this is a small price for sharing something so wondrous.

Also, though I am getting older, it is not like I don’t want to grow or change, or stay open. After all, when I returned to the golf links after a 40-year layoff, I played in high top cons for over six months. My friends all said I should get some cleats, but I waved that off as such an affectation.

“When the grass is wet,” I was cautioned, you will see.

Sure enough, one fall morning I hit a tee shot on a par 3 into one of the bunkers guarding the green. It had rained a little, and the bunker was muddy, and as I stepped in to get ready to make my shot, I slipped.

I was able to catch my balance, and did not fall, but my planted left hip and leg, which was anchored, got tweaked and bothered me for two weeks.

The next day I bought cleats, and when Diane asked me why, suddenly, I said “I am getting older. I understand at my age if you break your hip in public, they just shoot you in the head where you are and leave you there.”

As Elvis Costello said:  “Don’t bury me cos I’m not dead yet.”

Song of the Week – Cover Girl & You Might Say, Browning Bryant

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

This weekend marks the 8th Anniversary of the SotW. Thank you for you continued support and feedback. It inspires me to keep on keepin’ on.

Back in November, shortly after Allen Toussaint died, music industry critic Bob Lefsetz dedicated one of his blog posts to his favorite Toussaint covers. It was a comprehensive list of great recordings.

A few weeks ago he posted this response by the great Al Kooper from his “mailbag.”

From: AL KOOPER
Subject: Re: Re-Allen Toussaint

Missa Lefsetz

I was kinda surprised that no one mentioned a rare WB album that Allen produced in the early 70’s self-titled it was called “Browning Bryant”. A young white kid who totally understood New Orleans musica. The opening track has always been one of my fave AT compositions. I told him so when we met at a concert in NYC where each act played just one Dylan song. It was about 8 years ago. I told him I loved that Browning Bryant track he wrote called “Cover Girl.” I wondered if he still recalled it. He started singing it to me and I joined in and we laughed. That was one of my favorite bump-into-somebody-you-cherish moments. Have a listen – Ya might like it.

Since I’d never heard of Browning Bryant I immediately did some research, besides listening to “Cover Girl.”

I learned that “Cover Girl” wasn’t the only Toussaint song Bryant recorded. I fact, his 1974 album had 11 cuts – 3 originals and 8 written by Toussaint! Further, the album was produced by Toussaint and used the New Orleans based R&B group The Meters as Bryant’s backing band.

Also of note, the 6’5” Bryant was only 15 years old when the recording began. I was shocked that I missed an album of this quality for all these years, so I’m presenting a second song this week – “You Might Say.”

If you liked Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees, this will be right up your alley.

Thanks to Al Kooper for exposing me (us) to this great, obscure artist and album. But this should come as no surprise since Koop has been doing this for a long time. In fact I’d recommend you check out his podcasts called New Music for Old People.

Enjoy… until next week.

OBIT: Maurice White (1941-2016)

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Once again a significant figure in the pop music world has passed to another plane, this time in the form of Maurice White, leader, songwriter, and force behind the dynamic Earth, Wind, and Fire.

My first real job out of college was spent as a social worker for the Housing Authority of the City of Oakland. That meant managing public housing units, and that meant my day was indeed spent on some of the city’s tougher ghettos.

I did always get on just fine in such circumstances, and though I was indeed into 801, Springsteen, and then punk when it arrived, I never backed away from soul, starting from the earliest days of Motown.

EWF, or “the elements” as my cool work mates referred to the group, were certainly a band at the time I really did like, but I probably would not have been exposed to White and crew in the same way had I not held my job.

But, my workmates turned me onto their Way of the World album, that featured the great Shining Star. And, though Shining Star is a killer cut, I chose the title track as my tribute to White, who passed this morning after suffering from Parkinson’s Disease at 74.

Way of the World is a love song that indeed features White’s strong melody and lyrical skills, his band at full skill, and this particular cut has a killer guitar solo, something we all love.

EWF are still the elements, and White is eternal. Sigh.

 

Afternoon Snack: My Morning Jacket “I’m Amazed”

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When I was going through yesterday’s mix disc that had Avi Buffalo on it, I also ran into a fave for a while in My Morning Jacket, Jim James’ band out of Kentucky.

I like them a lot–at least I love a pair of their albums, Z, and Evil Urges–which were in regular rotation and recommendations from Mojo, as was Avi Buffalo.

I will keep it short as the video pretty much speaks for itself, but how can you not love the pop, harmonies, reverb, and cranked guitar?