Month: May 2018

Little Richard

A voice that won’t quit. Richard Wayne Penniman… better known as Little Richard would be great in any era. Of all of his peers, he could belt a song out better than any other.

In the 50’s he was public enemy number one to many parents. Pat Boone would cover his songs and those are the recordings the parents would buy their kids…while the kids would sneak and buy the real Richard records and keep them hidden while their parents were around…

Others tried to imitate it but no one came close. Paul McCartney would try but didn’t have the rawness that Richard had/has… He was flamboyant, to say the least, and commanded a stage.

In 1957 at the peak of his career he retired to the ministry and gospel music only… that lasted a while but in 1962 he came back to Rock and Roll and toured Europe. The Beatles were really big fans of Richard and they opened some shows for him in 1962. His keyboard player was a young Billy Preston.

Little Richard songs just jump off of the recording right at you.

You can hear his influence on The Stones, The Beatles, James Brown, Elvis and his androgynous influence with Freddy Mercury, Elton John, and David Bowie.

I’ve always seen Little Richard as the hard rock of the fifties. The songs are raw as you can get and in your face.

Black people lived right by the railroad tracks, and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy, and I thought: I’m gonna make a song that sounds like that.  Little Richard

Little Richard and the James Gang in 1970

Shocking Blue with Mariska Veres

A band out of the Netherlands with a  sensational singer named Mariska Veres had a huge hit in 1970. She sounded like Grace Slick to me…maybe a little stronger. Robbie van Leeuwen was the guitar player who wrote the songs.

Their big hit worldwide was Venus that most people have heard. They had some great songs like Never Marry a Railroad Man, Mighty Joe, Love Buzz (which Nirvana covered). They were together from 1968-1974. They were known as a one-hit wonder with Venus but their other songs were hits in the Netherlands and were very good.

They were not smooth…they were raw hence why I like them. Venus is probably my least favorite…maybe because I’ve heard it too much and it’s been covered a few times by different artists.

I like finding  artists that have been largely forgotten. I never knew about Shocking Blue…with the exception of Venus until 3 or 4 years ago. I do listen to some new music on Youtube but I like digging and finding good bands that deserve attention.To me they are new…

Mariska sadly died in 2006. With her voice, I’m shocked she didn’t have a more successful solo career.

Venus

Never Marry a Railroad Man

Mighty Joe

Love Buzz

IT the Novel

I’m not writing a summary of the book…a good one is here… Just how IT affects me.

Everything I was scared of in childhood comes back to me in this book…vividly. What if it was really a monster in the dark like I thought?

I did a post on the old tv mini-series and the new movie but the novel is a great piece of work. I have read it at least 7 times. I keep coming back to it and visiting Derry and the kids that grew up together. After reading the book you feel like you know these people…or you have known people like them while growing up. It makes you think of the friends you had at 10-11 that you have forgotten their name and some of the things you did with them.

When I’m reading it I’m transported to Derry in 1957-1958 and then ahead to 1984-85 and then back to the 50s. King is so detailed that you feel like you have been in that town and know the townsfolk, the streets, the stores and the dirty secrets.  I always…always find things that I missed before because it is so massive.

It’s like learning about your town. The star of the book…isn’t Pennywise…it’s Derry. They are maybe one in the same but it holds the secrets of everyone in that town. The book is also about coming of age and the awkwardness that comes with it…for the kids and for the town.

Some things I feel while reading is:

Rage… The rage for Henry Bowers is something that the movie and the tv series does not halfway convey. He is the ultimate bully. Most of us had a form of a Henry Bowers to contend with…

Familiarity… the losers club is basically a bunch of misfits that blend together and all of them have talents that no one else outside of the group really notices but are used by the club. It’s a story you are familiar with and you may have been in a similar group as a kid.

Nostalgia… No, I wasn’t raised in the 50s or even close but the same things these kids were into as kids…rock and roll, curious about the opposite sex, exploring, still believing in magic… having no real responsibilities, the fun of being a kid and every day was new…is not era related.

I make it sound like a quaint little book about growing up… no… it is scary but what makes it scary for me is I can relate to most of the characters in the book…that makes it real. Stephen King is a master at that. He makes everything seem plausible.

Pennywise is one of the greatest monsters/evil entity ever. You get a vast variety of monsters that IT changes into also… if IT is not doing tha… it is busy influencing some of the weaker citizens of Derry.

The infamous sex “scene”… I’ve read reviewers talk it up like it is some cheap porn setup (I’m hearing the 70’s wah wah guitar in the background)…it’s not like that. It’s very innocent and they have no clue really on what to do. Was it a surprise when I read it? Yes…Was it erotic? NO it wasn’t at all… I didn’t know about it beforehand…I had to do a double take but I got King’s meaning. To find their way back out of the sewer they had to reunite and be adults and in a sense leave childhood behind…it was used as a bridge from childhood to being an adult. It was a different era (1980s) when he wrote this…he probably would not have written it the same way now.

Of course, all of this is just the way it affected me.

Get the book and read it…or reread it.

 

 

Janis Joplin

I cannot say how much I love this woman. Janis had the most powerful voice I have ever heard. She could sing with beauty and she could sing with a sound like Southern Comfort pouring through razor blades. There was soul, confidence, strength, and vulnerability in her voice that came through in every song.

She moved from Texas to San Francisco and became part of the San Francisco music scene with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Her influences were Billy Holiday, Bessie Smith. Big Mama Thornton, Odetta, and Leadbelly.

She played with Big Brother and the Holding Company who were as raw as you could get and they played at Monterrey and broke through. She went solo with a couple of backing bands The Kozmic Blues Band and the Full Tilt Boogie Band.

There are few artists who give everything they have all the time. Bruce Springsteen is one…Janis was one. On film it comes through…she gives everything she has and more.

My favorite songs by Janis are…. well I could hear her sing the phone book and I would be happy….but some I really like are…Down On Me, Summertime, Piece of My Heart, Ball, and Chain, Try (Just a little bit Harder), Maybe, Little Girl Blue, Cry Baby, Me and Bobby McGee, Mercedes Benz and anything live she did with either band…She could sing the blues and she lived them…

Her nickname was Pearl and that was the name of her last album. She left $2,500 for her wake…. 200 guests were invited with invitations that read…”Drinks are on Pearl”…

I only wished she could have survived and been alive today. Much like Jimi Hendrix, I hate to think what we missed out on.

Influence of the Monkees

I debated on whether to write this or not. When the Monkees are mentioned some people cringe but they have a place in my 5-year-old self…plus how many bands can say that Jimi Hendrix opened up for them… though maybe the worst pairing ever.

While writing this I’m not saying they deserve to be remembered as a top rock group. Not at all but they do need to be recognized for their influence on a couple of generations. They influenced a lot of kids to form bands…mostly because of their weekly prime-time television show and ensuing hit singles. In the 80s they had a big comeback with a tour and massive airplay on MTV… I got to see them then…without Nesmith though.

When I was around 5-6 years old and watched the Monkees in syndication many years after they did the show.  I loved them. I thought WOW… I must be in a band one day. Little did I know that being in a band was not living in a cool place at the beach and having adventures at every turn…not to mention everyone getting along…it doesn’t happen. They had fun songs and influenced me…After I went through the Monkees faze I discovered the Beatles, The Who, Stones, Kinks…anything British but I have a soft spot for some of the old Monkees songs.

The Monkees basically took A Hard Days Night movie humor and made a television show around a life of a mid-sixties rock band. Kids wanted to form bands after seeing them romp around the screen with girls…who wouldn’t want that gig? Michael Stipe from REM is one that states he was influenced by the Monkees.

They were not allowed to play on their first couple of albums…only sing…The Monkees were put together by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider for Screen Gems with two real musicians in the band…Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork… Micky Dolenz (he did sing in cover bands before The Monkees) and Davy Jones could sing and act…. and Mickey quickly learned drums.

When news came out that they didn’t play on their albums they were roundly criticized in the 1960s. They fought Don Kershner who controlled what they sang…. and won… The funny thing is many sixties pop bands didn’t play on their records and the Monkees actually started to play their own instruments on their third album (Headquarters)  and writing some songs for every album afterward.

In the second season of their tv show they started to gain more control there also… Some of those last episodes are very pot influenced…especially the episode called “The Frodis Caper”… The episodes started to get surreal and break the fourth wall…the second season is worth a watch…all of them are fun but the 1st season is more formulaic.

HEAD The Movie…they made a trip movie called Head that Jack Nicholson helped to write… Personally, I like it but I like 60s movies like this. The one song that stands out is The Porpoise Song. The movie tears down the Monkee myth… One song/chant is the “Ditty Diego “… The first lines are “Hey, hey, we are the Monkees You know we love to please A manufactured image With no philosophies“…They didn’t take themselves seriously at all…they knew where they were at as far as a band goes. When they made the movie they knew it would destroy their image…that was the point.

I do still like some songs by them…anything wrote by Michael Nesmith (famous also for Elephant Parts), Pleasant Valley Sunday, Randy Scouse Git, Steppin Stone and Saturday’s Child.

All in all, they ended up singing and playing on some of the best-known sixties pop-rock hits….plus they drove one of those cool sixties tv cars…the Monkeemobile.