Stuff from old magazines and whatnot

[Charlie O.]

Imagine 20 years from now, if every teenager could sit in his bedroom with a computer screen and terminal (with stereo speakers attached) and call up anything he wanted, from Billy Ward & The Dominoes to Ed Banger & The Nosebleeds - see what they looked like, read extracts from fanzines and historians who wrote about them, cross-referenced to other artists and sources, and above all to hear the music, and maybe even see film footage if any exists.

(Not sure where this was originally published - I just saw it in an e-mail from BOMP! Records)

R.I.P., Greg (January 1949 – October 19, 2004)






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[Charlie O.]

Yet more Hit Parader - March 1969 issue (on sale late November '68!)...


John Sebastian (speaking to Pete Johnson):

But there are a tremendous number of groups who have broken up, and they're all of a very peculiarly common school. And what's happened is, seeing that they were all friends anyway, they're getting together, but not in groups.

The sessions aren't always in the studio any more. The sessions are in that room over there a lot (he gestures at a small room off his living room). For example, Graham Nash is staying with us now. Graham's from the Hollies. He sings on the top, really high. He knows David Crosby. Because he knows Cass [Elliott] and he knows me, he knows David. So David introduced him to Steve Stills one day over here. He and David had been hanging out and singing together and saying "Ooooh, what a nice noise!" And David and Stephen had been hanging out together. So all of a sudden yesterday there was a fainter of a trio in there, one of the most incredible vocal sounds I've ever heard. We just sat around while they sang some tunes of Stephen's and some tunes of Graham's and some tunes of David's.

It was beautiful and immediately they started saying "Well, gee, let's make a record. Why not?" There's the kernels of a scene. And Stephen, of course, has been thinking of hundreds of other plans. [...] Graham's still with the Hollies and shows no signs of quitting, because the Hollies are together. They are a very popular group in England. Although it might be crossing Graham's mind, I don't think he wants to do that quite yet because he still has a point of communication.

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John Kay of Steppenwolf, shortly after that band's first album (the writer is uncredited):

"I want to eliminate musicians.," he says, "but not all musicians. There always will be some who want to perform, and they should perform. There is always the problem of communication between musicians... a constant hassling that goes on trying to get one musician to understand what another musician in the same band wants to play. The answer to this is machines."

Machines and electronic music, that is. John wants to incorporate oscillators, theremins, octave dividers, computers, synthesizers - the vast array of gadgetry available to today's engineer - in the sound he already has. The complex machinery makes it possible to create, and record, sounds and rhythms that may not have been heard before.

"I want to create a new kind of music," he says. "Not the sort that sounds cold and remote. The emotion must remain. But I want to make music that is unlike anything that you've ever heard before, music that will take you away from earth."

It will be some time before John gets all of this magical machinery assembled. Hopefully, he says, Steppenwolf's fourth album will feature it.

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[Quaco]

I wonder what Kay thought of the Silver Apples. They sounded like what he might have done with those machines.

[Charlie O.]

I wonder what Kay thought of the Silver Apples. They sounded like what he might have done with those machines.

The whole thing is fascinating to me, because not only did Steppenwolf's music not go in that direction (obviously) - but I can't even think of an example of a synthesizer or electronic effect of any kind on a Steppenwolf or John Kay record, bar the explosion at the end of "Earschplittenloudenboomer". Maybe he was just fantasizing, without really knowing anything about the technicalities of it (that's kind of how it reads to me); maybe he did try to get something like that together, but found it too difficult and time-consuming (especially with the record/tour/record/tour grind that band was on back then). And it's hard to imagine what kind of songs he would have come up with for that format - the whole thing seems so alien to his style.

In any event, it's interesting too that the band has only recorded one album (in four days!), it's a hit, and he's already alluding to communication problems between the members!

[Quaco]

And he clearly knows what's going to be on albums no. 2 and 3 already?

[Charlie O.]

I took that to just mean that he knew it was going to take a while to get it together.

But in the same interview he does talk about the suite that ended up on side two of the second album!

[Charlie O.]

Another thought: John Kay was German. He could have been in on the ground floor of Krautrock!

[bobzilla77]

In an article about Beatles Fan records in BOMP!, it stated that Ringo was by far the most popular choice for tribute songs ala "I Want Ringo Under My Tree For Christmas."

It went on to say that to date, there were no known George tribute songs.

No wonder his songs are all so grumpy.

[Charlie O.]

In an article about Beatles Fan records in BOMP!, it stated that Ringo was by far the most popular choice for tribute songs ala "I Want Ringo Under My Tree For Christmas."

It went on to say that to date, there were no known George tribute songs.

No wonder his songs are all so grumpy.

I'm struggling to think of more than one pre-assassination John song - that one that Sissy Spacek did pseudonymously (which, technically, wasn't a tribute so much as a protest). And I can only think of one Paul one - "Saint Paul" by Terry Knight, a Paul-Is-Dead exploito record (not much of a tribute either, really). Maybe George was lucky, come to think of it.

But yeah, there were a few Ringo ones!








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[Charlie O.]

April '69 issue, this time...


Neil Young, around the time he was finishing up his first solo album (talking to Pete Johnson):

"I never wanted to be in a group. I came out here to make it as a single and all of a sudden I was in this group and the group was so good I couldn't believe it. It was fun. It was fantastic, finding out about everything. That's when the group was good, at the Whiskey a Go-Go. [...] But that whole scene is so strange. It really doesn't have anything to do with music. That's where you meet people who are supposed to be the connection for you to make it, you know.

"Johnny Rivers was playing at the Whiskey and I really thought that was great. 'Johnny Rivers? Out of sight, I've got to go in.' Then we played second to Johnny Rivers. We were really down to earth then, we were really natural. Stephen and I did something that neither one of us would do now. We sat up there in front of Johnny Rivers when he was on stage and Steve and I were really digging Johnny Rivers, really getting into Johnny Rivers. Yelling and clapping when he took guitar solos." He pauses in his enthusiastic reconstruction of the scene and adds in a near-undertone, "It's not hip to be there, I guess. Know what I mean? You can't do that kind of thing and survive, apparently. That's a really funny scene."

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From an otherwise voluble and ultra-positive conversation between Sly Stone and Ellen Sander:

HP: Hey, after having met you, I can't believe that you were making "obscene gestures" to passers-by from your car. I read that in some newspaper. Is it true? What were you doing?

SLY: This [holding up two fingers in a "v"].

HP: A peace sign! That's what they consider an obscene gesture?

SLY: [silence, a grim smile crossed his face and he didn't say much]

********************************************

George Harrison (talking to Alan Smith):

You never really wanted to go to school, you wanted to go out and play or something. So when some record came along like Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel", and you had this little bit of plastic... it was so amazing. Now, it's hard to realize that there are kids like I was, where the only thing in their life is to get home and play their favorite record, and maybe it's ours.

We know Elvis is great. We know he is. He stopped being a rocker, and they made him go into the Army and by the time he came out he was a clean healthy American doing clean healthy songs and films. But basically, he's got such a great bluesy voice.

It would be great if the Beatles and Elvis could get together for an album. It really would.

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[Charlie O.]

This bit from a 2001 New Yorker appreciation of The Bill Evans Trio's legendary 1961 Village Vanguard recordings speaks to something I've long felt, not just about jazz but about popular music in general - namely, that the music we think of as "timeless" is really timeful, and that - even disregarding nostalgia - that's a big part of its value to us.

"All jazz records," [producer] Orrin Keepnews said, "have two lives, one in their time and another twenty-two years later. What no one could have imagined was that the second life would be so large."

Why has that afternoon lasted so long?

"You know what I like best on that record?" [Evans' drummer] Paul Motian asked. "The sounds of all those people, glasses and chatter - I mean, I know you're supposed to be very offended and all, but I like it. They're just there and all." Perhaps that's it, or part of it. Though we're instructed to search for "timelessness" in art, it is life that is truly timeless, the same staggeringly similar run of needs and demands and addictions, again and again, which blend one year into the next and one day into another and February's gig in Detroit into March's in Toronto. It is art that puts a time in place. Art is the part of culture that depends most entirely on time, on knowing exactly when. The emotions it summons belong to the room they were made in, and the city outside the room when they were made. Not a timeless experience of a general emotion but a permanent experience of a particular moment - that is what we want from jazz records and Italian landscapes alike. The gift the record gives us is a reminder that the big sludgy river of time exists first as moments. It gives us back our afternoons.

http://www.billevanswebpages.com/gopnik.html




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[bobzilla77]

Robert Hilburn reporting on Cal Jam 2 in the LA Times:

"To discourage rock fans from trying to hook up with their favorite acts, the Jam 2 staff asked the manager of its headquarters hotel in Ontario to put this message on the facility's freeway-facing marquee: 'WELCOME CHIEFS OF POLICE ASSN.' It worked. Hardly any young people showed up."

[Charlie O.]

Cash Box Magazine, June 29, 1968:

[Geezee]

Vox, August 1994 - first interview with Oasis: "I can't explain it," says Liam, but when I saw The Stone Roses on stage, it did something to me. They were real people, doing it from the heart and they just treated everything about themselves dead special, which is right." "When I saw the Roses," says Noel, "I just thought, I could do that." "Well you would though, you cnt" interrupts Liam. "Of course I would," continues Noel "And I did, didn't I?"

[Charlie O.]

[Neige]

[Charlie O.]

A short item from the December 1980 issue of Trouser Press Magazine: