“They Just Don’t Make Music Like That Anymore”

October 13, 2022October 14, 2022 / greenpete58 / 14 Comments

Music has recently taken a back seat on longitudes. Most know that my first love is rock music (the good stuff, anyway). For this post, I’m profiling a jazz radio station I just discovered.

First, some quick history:

I’m a baby boomer, so I often struggle with the lightning-speed changes that occur these days, especially technological. In the 1960s, I was a stripling when “Top-40” pop music dominated the AM-radio airwaves. I reached puberty in the 1970s, when FM-radio “free-form” programming gave preference to album cuts over singles.

By 1976, record executives had sunk their largest claws into the music. I watched with dismay as stadium-rock acts like Boston, Foreigner, Journey, Styx, and Pat Benatar assaulted the airwaves, along with my ear canals. Concurrently, promoters were charging ever-higher concert ticket prices, and rock albums became alternately generic-sounding or pretentious. (Like it or not, that’s when Punk Rock sprang into action, which gave way to New Wave and Alternative Rock and beyond.)

Plastic, plastic, take the modern way…

Convenience, everything is clean and easy

—Gentle Giant, “Convenience”

The technology left me equally dizzy. First it was 45 rpm singles, which had replaced 78 rpm records. Then 33 1/3 albums. (We didn’t need the distinction “vinyl” back then.) Then we were conned into buying clunky 8-track tapes for our cars. Cassettes replaced 8-tracks and were a distinct improvement, especially if you collected bootleg Grateful Dead. Then the revolution of compact disks, which claimed to have better sound, convenience, and indestructability. Then MP3s…the format was now invisible!

Now? Invisibility through Bluetooth, I guess, accessible anytime and anywhere you want. But in the whirlwind of convenience and digital blips, something intangible disappeared. That almost personal relationship with the artist and their music became lost. Which, I guess, is why we’re now returning to vinyl.

Anyway, to get to the point: despite the return of vinyl, it’s an incontrovertible fact that most of today’s rock music sucks (“today” for me being anything after the early 1980s). My Toyota Prius agrees with me, since it came equipped with neither a cassette deck nor CD player (despite my dashboard resembling an airplane cockpit). Basically, if I want music while driving, it’s either neatly packaged crap delivered by robots—the occasional public radio station notwithstanding—or the extremely limited options now available on SiriusXM Satellite Radio.

Thankfully, and without having to cross paths with Howard Stern, I discovered a good Sirius station: Real Jazz.

What is “real” jazz, you ask? Who the fuck knows. But I think this label is used to distinguish the music from “Smooth Jazz,” which is more lightweight and poppy and closer to Easy Listening than jazz, and aimed at less-discerning listeners. Smooth Jazz became popular in the 1970s with songs like George Benson’s “Breezin’” and artists like Chuck Mangione. Suddenly, jazz began sounding like TV show theme music. This trend peaked (or bottomed out) in the early 1990s with much-maligned saxophonist Kenny G.

“Real” jazz dates back to the early 1900s. It encompasses Dixieland, Big Band, Swing, Bebop, Hard Bop, Cool Jazz, Modal Jazz, Latin Jazz (including Bossa Nova), Jazz-Funk, Free Jazz, and Jazz Fusion. It’s the kind of music my dad loved (Big Band, Swing, and Bossa Nova) and which I discovered in college, deejay’ed in the ’80s, and still enjoy (Bebop, Hard Bop, Cool, and Modal). All these styles are on Sirius XM, depending on the show, which depends on the day and time.

I’ve been listening to Real Jazz regularly for several weeks now, and unlike rock or Smooth Jazz, I’ve yet to hear the same song twice. Part of this might have to do with the fact that good jazz is improvisational in nature. There are established charts and written arrangements, but these are just blueprints that allow the musicians to “blow,” or exercise their individual creativity.

Rock/pop, on the other hand, discourages studio creativity. Rock has a fan base exponentially larger than jazz, therefore there are more cooks in the kitchen—agents, managers, producers, record execs, broadcast affiliates, lucrative contracts waving in the air—to make sure artists toe the line and keep things musically dumb…and to maximize profits and feed the beast.

There are always exceptions. But you won’t hear them on the radio, unless you occasionally strike gold at the left end of the dial.

Most of the Real Jazz I listen to is on weekdays while tooling around between grocery store, library, and soccer games. I’ve established close personal relationships with hosts Nicole Sweeney and Andromeda Turre (love that name).

Yesterday, while visiting the music store and library with my granddaughter, Rory, I was treated to Bill Evans’s classic “Peace Piece.” If you haven’t heard this understated but lovely solo piano piece, click the digital blip below. Be prepared to wipe a tear.

It’s been said many times, but I’ll say it again: They just don’t make music like this anymore.

Critiquing the Critics

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022 / greenpete58 / 13 Comments

The Wall Street Journal not only honored Jack Kerouac’s 100th birthday (see my last post), but the same issue had an article entitled “Why Millennials Want Their Parents’ Vinyl Records.” The sub-title was “Sales of LPs soared during the pandemic as younger listeners discovered their nostalgic and sensory appeal.”

For years I’ve tried to get my millennial son to understand this. Maybe it’s finally kicking in.

On that note, when I was even younger than Nick is now, I made the discovery of music appreciation books, guides, and encyclopedias. They assisted me when, as a teenager, I began compiling my (now massive) record collection that I hope to one day bestow on Nick. They helped me peel back layers to reveal all sorts of juicy musical fruit under the outer skin.

Just recently I revisited an old book that I’d once pored over while wasting time in Walden Books at the local mall. It’s called Rock Critics’ Choice: The Top 200 Albums. It was compiled way back in 1978 during the Pleistocene Age, when the publication of rock music books began catching up with magazines like New Musical Express, Melody Maker, Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, and Creem. The compiler was a venerable BBC presenter named Paul Gambaccini (an interesting man, in more ways than one).

Rock critics you say? Someone once called them frustrated rock musicians. Musician Lou Reed was more succinct. He called them “scum.”

I wouldn’t go that far, but as with everything, there are good ones and bad ones. In their defense, rock critics provide potential purchasers with insights into music that circumvent “record company advertising (and) the squeals of the loudest fans.” It’s nice to have a temperate and unbiased guide before one contributes one’s hard-earned cash to Artie Fufkin of Polymer Records.

Most rock fans, especially in the U.S., get their music from the radio or television. But deejays and “veejays” have always been at the mercy of their employer, or corporate wankers like Fufkin.

Rock critics cut through the hype (sometimes) and were helpful when I became a serious listener in the 1970s. Rock Critics’ Choice in particular introduced me to artists I might otherwise never have heard. The other book so beneficial to me over the years has been The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, compiled by Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden of New Musical Express.

(Last month, during one of my late-night vinyl appreciation sessions, I joyously re-listened to Edgar Broughton Band’s album Oora, which Illustrated Encyclopedia had led me to. Talk about a great unknown record.)

Anyway, back to Rock Critics’ Choice…compiler Gambaccini queried about 50 of his print and radio colleagues, asking them to list what they consider the ten greatest rock albums, in order of greatness. He defined “greatness” as whatever criteria the particular critic wanted to use. He permitted “Best Of” and “Greatest Hits” collections. (Not sure I’d allow that.) For fair and diverse representation, he consulted critics who were male, female, young, old, white, black, American, British, Canadian, French, Jamaican, and Eskimo.

He then tallied the results and assigned points to each album. (I assume an album in the first position got 10 points, and tenth position got one point.)

Unlike those ubiquitous Rolling Stone lists, quoted everywhere and which are heavy on mainstream rock and dripping with set-in-stone conceit, Gambaccini’s book is looser and more democratic. It permits diversity (both critic and music) and honors both rock establishment (i.e. classic rock) as well as cult artists.

I found his ultimate Top 200 list predictable in some ways, but surprising in others.

Predictably, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones dominated the top positions. Also predictably, older critics leaned toward early rock ‘n’ roll (Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the like). There were a lot of soul records, ala Otis Redding, the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, etc. Some choices teetered over the boundaries of rock (Huey “Piano” Smith, B.B. King, Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew).

The book also had some truly oddball choices. For example, a minor South African actress named Genevieve Waїte (note deliberate umlaut over the “i”) made one and only one album in 1975 called Romance Is On The Rise. It made two critics’ lists, clocking in overall at number 98. It’s actually more of a John Phillips (Mamas and Papas) album with his then-wife doing the singing. She sounds like a disco version of Cyndi Lauper trying to imitate Billie Holiday. I concluded Genevieve must have been a flavor of the moment.

Michael Nesmith, who got off to a dubious musical start with the Monkees, actually had talent. One critic, however—as his number one greatest album of all time—selected Nesmith’s solo country-rock effort And The Hits Just Keep On Comin‘. Though I’ve yet to hear it, this offbeat choice also raised my incredulous eyebrow.

Another critic chose as his list topper a collection by the R&B group The “5” Royales (note deliberate quotation marks around the numeral). I appreciate certain fifties music from a historical perspective, but this elicited more head scratching. My guess is that the Royales’ song “Dedicated to the One I Love” might have been playing in this particular critic’s Buick Roadmaster the first time he got laid.

One cheeky rebel without a cause listed a bootleg album, by Bob Dylan and the Band.

The book’s lone Canadian critic, for both his number one and number three picks, listed Supertramp albums. Yes, you heard right. Respectfully, sir, I have to take issue with your thinking.

Another critic, the late Robert Shelton, had no less than three Bob Dylan albums in his top ten. But considering Shelton virtually launched Dylan’s career in 1961 with his New York Times review of a performance at Gerdes Folk City—and considering it’s Bob Dylan, not Supertramp—I can forgive Shelton’s zeal.

Rock Critics’ Choice is an enjoyable little book—great bathroom reading—and like I said, when it came out in 1978 it prodded me to explore music I wouldn’t otherwise have explored. The book’s only negative is its vintage. Although punk bands like the Clash and Ramones are represented, it was published before new wave, alternative, indie, thrash, grunge, rap, hip-hop, and other assorted popular flavors of rock.

But if you’re a baby boomer like me whose era was the late fifties through the mid-seventies, this book provides pleasurable non-think entertainment, and spurs one to make one’s own list. My own top 10 “greatest” list had five albums that made the top 20 of Rock Critics’ Choice: Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan (ranked number 3 in RCC), Rubber Soul by The Beatles (number 5), Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys (number 12), The Velvet Underground And Nico by the Velvet Underground (number 14), and Forever Changes by Love (number 16).

My champion pick, The Velvet Underground And Nico, was listed by many of Gambaccini’s cohorts and made number 14, but only one picked it to top her list: New York critic Lisa Robinson. Lou Reed and I like her.

Of course, the term “greatest” is entirely subjective (excepting Muhammad Ali, who truly was The Greatest). But if you have a pre-1979 rock album or albums you consider deserving of this descriptor, and wish to share them here, leave a comment and I’ll see where they rank in Rock Critics’ Choice.

(And the vinyl just keeps on spinnin’…)

Top 10 Desert Isle Albums

February 24, 2021February 24, 2021 / greenpete58 / 13 Comments

Image result for velvet underground and nico

Why ruin a good thing? Last time I listed the ten songs I would want on a deserted isle. Now it’s time for the top ten albums.

I came of age in the rock era, so my list is skewered toward rock music. But I also snuck in some jazz, blues, country, and even Easy Listening. After all, one needs a well-rounded diet to supplement the coconuts and sand crab.

Drum roll, please…let me know your thoughts, yea or nay, and some of your own choices!

Mom saw this in 1966 and wanted to know why I couldn’t dress like the Beatles

The Beatles, Beatles VI. Several of my favorite Beatles songs are on this collection of singles, B-sides, and album cuts on the North American Capitol label: “Yes it Is,” “Eight Days a Week,” “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party,” and my fave Beatles cover song, Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love.” It also has sentimental charm, being the second rock album I ever bought, and every time I listen to it I’m transported back to my salad days.
The Beatles, Rubber Soul (Capitol). The first rock album I ever bought. Like above, it’s a North America-only release with shuffled songs, but it’s another personal time machine. I could be pressured into substituting the official EMI Rubber Soul that contains “Nowhere Man,” but I give this Capitol version a slight edge due to the inclusion of “It’s Only Love” and “I’ve Just Seen a Face.”
Velvet Underground, Velvet Underground and Nico. I don’t doubt that if Lou Reed had died in 1970, he’d be ranked with John Lennon and Bob Dylan. The best word to describe this record is “uncompromising.” This is serious rock music for adults, filled with beauty, danger, and poetry. The “banana album” directly influenced dozens of later, more successful artists, yet it was so daring and intense in 1967 that it was totally ignored.
The Doors, The Doors. Like the record above, a thrilling debut album that threatened the peace and love vibes of the time, and where every song is a knockout. The Doors made a lot of great music after this, but never attained the same heights.
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. After the 1960s he continued to make good music (especially Blood on the Tracks) but his creative peak were three albums in the mid-sixties: Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. This is my favorite of the three (not surprisingly the first Dylan I ever bought, back in college). Try as you might, there’s no way to categorize this ragged hybrid of rock, blues, folk, and free-form verse that churns like a rickety steam engine and will be talked about as long as recorded music exists.
Beach Boys, Pet Sounds. Actually a Brian Wilson solo album with the group name slapped on it, he was trying to top the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, and when Beatle Paul heard it he hatched the idea for Sgt. Pepper. Four of Wilson’s greatest songs are here: “Wouldn’t it Be Nice,” “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” “God Only Knows,” and “Caroline No,” plus two beautiful instrumentals. The only wrong move was inclusion of “Sloop John B,” which is starkly out of place, but acceptable on a desert isle.

Image result for brian wilson — Brian Wilson and a friend

Burt Bacharach, The Look of Love. A three-CD boxed set. Until buying this in 2008, I mainly associated Bacharach with his popular Dionne Warwick songs and film work (and the dentist’s office). His Warwick songs are legendary, but just a few keys on his grand piano. There’s a thing called “The Bacharach Sound,” and you can hear it on everything from “The Blob” (theme song to the 1958 cult monster movie starring a young Steve McQueen) on up to his 1998 collaboration with Elvis Costello. The best description of this Sound came from his late daughter, Nikki, who said experiencing it is like “going to heaven on a velvet slide.”
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. Lots of jazz experts call this the greatest jazz album ever. I’m more into rock, but I have a modest jazz collection, and I’m not going to disagree. Kind of Blue was a studio improv experiment for Miles that explored modality, setting the stage for John Coltrane’s later work. Like Joni Mitchell’s records, it’s best appreciated alone, late at night, in a dark room, with no distractions.
Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings. I also have a modest blues collection, and there are few musical experiences as wrenching as a listening session with the king of Delta Blues. He was an anomaly, dragged to only two recording sessions during the Great Depression when very few black musicians were active, then dying mysteriously. Not only was Johnson a guitar virtuoso who sang like he was wrestling with all sorts of crazy demons, but as a blues lyricist he’s unparalleled. He’s as close to an existential experience as you can get in blues.
Paul Groueff, Vest Pocket Soul. I’m cheating here. This guy actually hasn’t released a record (yet). A few years ago I accidentally discovered his online Myspace page. He’d uploaded 11 demos there, and after listening I was so impressed I wrote to him, then managed to find an app to extract and download his tunes to my computer, then ripped them to CD. Groueff is hard to describe: a cross between Tim Buckley and Gordon Lightfoot might come close. He’s not only an extremely talented guitarist, he’s also a fine writer/arranger, and his voice often ascends to a plaintive falsetto, creating what I call a “high, lonesome, Montana” sound. I think his Myspace page is now defunct. And since he lives in an isolated cabin with no address on a mountain outside Bozeman, the only way to get his music is through Longitudes Records.

Honorable Mentions: Hank Williams, 40 Greatest Hits; Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon; Small Faces, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake; Kevin Ayers, Joy of a Toy; Neil Young, After the Goldrush; Zombies, Odessey and Oracle; Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland; Love, Love; Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas; Steely Dan, Katy Lied; Pentangle, Sweet Child; Bill Evans, The Village Vanguard Sessions; Lindisfarne, Nicely Out of Tune; Genesis, Foxtrot; and any of several Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, and additional Beatles, Dylan, and Velvets albums.

Off to the dentist’s office on a velvet slide…

The Small Faces, “Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake”

May 20, 2018January 16, 2019 / greenpete58 / 17 Comments

50 years

cover

Longitudes certainly enjoys 50^th anniversary specials. But can you blame me? I was a nipper in the 1960s, so I have fond memories of that time. And in 1968, I lived in Detroit, Michigan, when Motown music ruled the world, and the Detroit Tigers took the World Series. I can claim that I actually knew hitting legend Al Kaline, because his kid got shot up by the same allergist as me.

1968 was a violent year in America, but there are some good things that occurred.

However… this latest installment in ‘60s nostalgia boards the QE2 to sail “across the pond.” It profiles a record by a Brit band that pulled the difficult trick of marrying style with substance, which are usually mutually exclusive, and very few rocksters have been able to combine both. Elvis, the Beatles, James Brown, Hendrix, Bowie, Roxy Music, and the Clash come to mind. All made great music but were also visually dazzling.

Another is the Small Faces, a limey band that literally “carried the colours,” at least in England, for the mid-’60s British Invasion jump-started by the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Four working-class geezers, three of whom hailed from London’s rough East End, the Small Faces were the prototypical Mod band.

The Small Faces. L to R: Kenney Jones, Ian McLagan, Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane

“Mod,” short for modern, was an English youth movement that began in 1959, similar to American subcultures like beat or hippie, but smaller, and less threatening to the status quo. Mods wore flashy clothes, drove Vespa scooters, listened to soul music, and took speed drugs. Mod gave an identity to English working-class kids. Pete Townshend documented Mod culture with the 1973 Who album Quadrophenia.

The Small Faces were Mod to the core, but could also play instruments. The band members were lead singer/guitarist Steve Marriott, bassist Ronnie (“Plonk”) Lane, drummer Kenney Jones, and organist Ian McLagan (who replaced Jimmy Winston early on). All four stood under 5 feet 5 inches tall. (Eric Clapton, upon meeting them for the first time, said they all looked like little “haw-bits.”) Their short stature, mischievousness, and stylish Carnaby Street threads made them the most eye-catching band in England for a time, especially beloved by screaming young girls (“birds”).

For music fans, between 1965 and 1968 the songwriting team of Marriott-Lane churned out a basketful of sophisticated pop hits in the UK, one quasi-hit in the U.S. (“Itchycoo Park,” which reached #16 in ‘67), and one LP masterwork, released in May ‘68. Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake is considered a classic by “those in the know,” but often overlooked when classic rock albums are bandied. I could give several reasons, but I’d rather just rave on.

Move over, Lennon-McCartney

The first evidence that this record is a cut above most is the packaging, as visually arresting as the band’s Mod bob haircuts, tangerine and lime-green blazers, and winklepicker shoes. Ogdens’ was the first record released in a round sleeve, designed to resemble an old tobacco tin, and the name parodies an 1899 brand of tobacco. The sleeve unfolds to four circles with moody black-and-white pics of the band members (photographer Gered Mankowitz).

Musically, Ogdens’ is equally mind-blasting. After the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, Ogdens’ was the first “concept album,” preceding both S.F. Sorrow by the Pretty Things and The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by several months. The second side is a Ronnie Lane-inspired musical fairy tale about “Happiness Stan,” who goes on a quest, assisted by a friendly fly, to find the other half of the “dangly” moon. Linking various musical snips is daft narration by English comic Stanley Unwin, who combined the Small’s cockney slang with his own nonsensical “Unwinese” speak. (Unwin supposedly influenced John Lennon’s absurdist lyrics and poetry.)

As “knees-up” as side two of Ogdens’ is, the heavy hitters are on side one. The title song opener is an instrumental that explodes with Lane’s thunderous bass, McLagan’s altered Hammond organ, and sweeping woodwinds that include cello.

“Afterglow” showcases ace-Face Marriott’s wailing voice. In a non-racial world, Marriott’s soulfulness would be held in similar regard as Ray Charles and Otis Redding. I know what some of you are thinking: he’s bloody white, mate! But I say: bollocks, mate! Great pipes is great pipes. None other than Keith Richards and Ozzie Osbourne have cited Marriott as one of their favourite singers, and those two blokes know something about singing (amongst other things, wink-wink). small faces 2

“Long Agos and Worlds Apart” is one of only two numbers Ian McLagan wrote with the band. (The other is “Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire.”) Like the Who’s John Entwistle, McLagan wasn’t prolific, but his two songs are highlights of the band catalogue. He has a world-weary voice that contrasts Marriott’s full-frontal assault. This song has a loping instrumental line that I can’t determine is organ or guitar. But it’s an intoxicating arrangement, with a dollop of appropriate psychedelia.

“Rene” is an ode to a waterfront prostitute, “groping with the stokers from the coast of Kuala Lampur.” Marriott, as cockney tour guide, leads us into working-class East London. If you think you’ve suddenly ducked inside an English music hall, it’s because, before discovering rock ‘n’ roll, Marriott was a precocious child actor/singer who starred as the Artful Dodger in the London stage musical Oliver! (He was also in several films, one of which starred a pre-Clouseau Peter Sellers.) “Rene” is a rousing singalong tune, the second half a chugging instrumental where our hyper tour guide goes berserk on distorted guitar and blues harp.

“Song of a Baker” is a Ronnie Lane special. Though an inner-city lad, Lane had an affinity for rural life, and later moved to an isolated farm in Wales. “Song of a Baker” is a heavy rocker, but its heart is in the country. Some of the album’s best lyrics are “I’m depending on my labour / The texture and the flavour” and “So I’ll jug some water, bake some flour / Store some salt and wait the hour.” small faces 6

Side one closes with one of the band’s best A-sides, the theatrical “Lazy Sunday.” Marriott wrote it after his neighbors had him evicted for noisemaking. He was always trying to distance himself from his acting roots (which fortunately managed to slip through in the music), and didn’t want this song on the album, but Immediate Records had final say. It’s quintessential English, slice-of-life escapism. (Think “Penny Lane,” the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset,” the Hollies’ “Bus Stop,” the Zombies’ “Beechwood Park,” and the Smalls’ own “Itchycoo Park.”) The bouncy melody is broken by cockney-esque poetry like “Cor blimey, ‘ello Mrs. Jones, ow’s your bird’s lumbago?”

union jack

Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake reached #1 on the UK Albums Chart and stayed there for six weeks. (America had too much on its plate in ‘68, and missed the boat.) Due to the record’s complexity, including orchestration, the group never performed it live. This fact contributed to their demise. They knew they could never top Ogdens’. Also, Marriott wanted to get into guitar-heavy, R&B-styled rock and distance himself from the teen-scream scene (though one of the special things about the Small Faces was their playful irreverence). So, he quit the Smalls seven months after the album’s release. He joined with guitar hotshot Peter Frampton (ex-Herd) to form Humble Pie. The other three were briefly adrift, but eventually hired Ron Wood and blond, sexy Rod Stewart, both much taller and recently exiled from the Jeff Beck Group, to become the Faces. small faces 3

Whilst not as artistically satisfying as the Small Faces, both Humble Pie and the Faces achieved the popular success in North America that had escaped the Smalls.

Drummer Kenney Jones is the only Small left. Steve Marriott died tragically in a house fire in 1991; Ronnie Lane succumbed to multiple sclerosis in 1997; and Ian McLagan died of a stroke in 2014. If you fancy rock bios, you’ll be gobsmacked by McLagan’s book All the Rage, which is one of the best fly-on-the-wall rock bios I’ve yet read.

As for Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, it’s been rereleased several times, on CD and vinyl, with music and packaging variations. The original UK vinyl version with the round gatefold cover is the one to get. But you may have to put your home on the market, or place one of your children into indentured servitude to afford it.

union jack

NOTE: Perhaps you noticed I didn’t mention Hall of Fame (HOF) inductions or Rolling Stone (RS) magazine lists here. It’s become fashionable to do this—as if a coterie of music-critic aristocrats with crabs in their beards decide which music is worthy of being anointed for artistic posterity. Cor blimey, I’ve even cited their shite once or twice! But never again, mate. Inductions, lists, polls, rankings, and record sales are poor indicators for determining what is “good” music and what isn’t, by gor, and a lot of these HOF and RS critics are daft, anyway (and get dafter every year). Therefore, longitudes says “rubbish” to all of it.

By the way, I’m right chuffed to say that longitudes has deemed Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake the 19^th greatest rock record ever, Steve Marriott the 9^th greatest rock vocalist, Marriott-Lane the 4^th greatest rock songwriting duo, and the band is in the longitudes hall of fame as a separate act from the Faces, which was a totally different band, musically.

Now, are we all sitting comfy-bowl? Good, then I’ll meet you at the Crown and Anchor, mate. I’ll be wearing pink winklepickers.

small faces 5

Love “Forever Changes”

November 19, 2017May 29, 2019 / greenpete58 / 19 Comments

50 years

love story 3

Scanning my recent posts, I can see I’ve been laying on the hot sauce pretty thick lately: xenophobia, white supremacy, Vietnam War, religion… ouch.

Maybe it’s time for a music break.

Earlier this year I profiled four albums on their 50^th anniversaries. I picked them because I love good rock music, and these records are some of the best that rock has to offer. They include the debut albums by the Doors, the Velvet Underground, and Pink Floyd, plus that perennial list-topper, the Beatles’ SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND.

Now, I’d like to review a record that is far less popular than PEPPER. It’s not nearly as influential, either. But I consider the music just as good, if not better. It’s strange that so few people know about it.

The record is FOREVER CHANGES by a band called Love. It was released on November 1, 1967.

Sixties-era rock critics, who are getting fewer each year, justly regard Love as one of the great West Coast bands, right there with the Beach Boys, Byrds, Doors, and Grateful Dead. But for the past 50 years, Love has been all but ignored on American FM radio – where most American rock fans get their music. Like certain American jazz and blues artists forgotten in their homeland, Love is more popular outside of the states. And since the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame appears to show no interest in this great band, it’s up to cultists like me to spread the word.

Much of Love’s latter-day fame rests on the band’s third album, FOREVER CHANGES, considered by those in the know a psychedelic masterpiece. I’ll attempt to review it here, but I should probably first offer some biography, and (try to) explain why I love Love, from their evocative name to their unique mix of music and words.

***

Love was formed in Los Angeles in 1965. They were originally called the Grass Roots, until another (less talented) band stole that name. Led by an African-American named Arthur Lee, a former record producer who had worked with Jimi Hendrix when Hendrix was still “Jimmy,” Love was the first integrated rock band (Butterfield Blues Band was also mixed-race, but their music was closer to urban blues than rock).

Love was the first rock band signed to Elektra Records, a label previously known for its impressive roster of folk artists. In 1965-66, Love was one of the most popular bands on L.A.’s Sunset Strip. They performed at hole-in-the-wall clubs like Brave New World and Bido Lito’s, and crowds queued in the street to get in to see them. Neil Young (then in Buffalo Springfield) was a fan, and Jim Morrison cited Love as one of his favorite bands. Morrison later co-opted Arthur Lee’s brooding, punkish singing style.

Love’s first eponymous album included one of the first versions of the garage-band standard “Hey Joe,” as well as one of the first anti-drug songs, “Signed D.C.,” about the band’s original drummer, who was often too strung out to make gigs. The record also included a cover of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song “My Little Red Book,” which Lee had heard via English band Manfred Mann’s version in the movie WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? Lee’s version was less poppy and more sneering, though. Bacharach heard it and, not surprisingly, hated it. (Much, much later, Bacharach collaborated with Elvis Costello. What’s up with that?). love poster

Invited on Dick Clark’s popular music show American Bandstand, Love lip-synced “My Little Red Book” and “Message to Pretty.” For the performance, Lee wore sunglasses with different-colored, polygonal lenses.

The album LOVE featured a strong folk-rock, Byrds-ish sound, but there were also odd splashes of acid and surf. I interviewed two members of Love, at different times, and each admitted this record was merely their club act transferred to the studio. In my opinion, it’s one of the lost treasures of Sixties rock.

The band added a second drummer and a flute/sax player for their second album, DA CAPO, bringing the lineup to seven members. The second side of this LP has another first: a 19-minute sidelong cut, a blues jam called “Revelation” that Love frequently performed live. But the real goodies are on side one: “Stephanie Knows Who,” “Orange Skies,” “7 and 7 Is,” “¡Que Vida!,” “The Castle,” and “She Comes in Colors.”

I have a reputation for being frank, sometimes to my own detriment. I won’t stop now. I’ll frankly say that side one of Love’s album DA CAPO is one of the most perfect sides of music ever recorded (“Orange Skies” and “7 and 7 Is” are alone worth the price of a boxed set). Proto-punk, flamenco, bossa nova, free jazz, bubblegum, lounge, baroque pop, and acid rock all merge seamlessly on these six songs (and the categories”punk,” “lounge,” and “baroque pop” didn’t even exist then). For “She Comes in Colors,” Lee nicked part of the melody of the Rolling Stones song “Lady Jane.” The Stones heard it, then borrowed the lyrics of Love’s song for “She’s a Rainbow.” Trust me when I say “She Comes in Colors” far surpasses either Stones composition.

I could rhapsodize for hours about these six songs, but my stated goal is to review FOREVER CHANGES, so I’ll stop the blubbering. I’ll just say that “7 and 7 Is” became Love’s highest charting song, reaching #33 on the Billboard charts in the summer of ’66. It’s one of the few songs, along with the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out,” where the drums are the lead instrument. It took Lee and drummer Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer over 40 alternating takes to perfect the turbo-charged drum pattern, which may explain why the song ends with a recording of an actual atomic bomb blast. This song is punk rock with panache, conceived while Johnny Rotten was possibly still listening to the Monkees.

After DA CAPO, Love was right on track. The band had a minor hit. Lee was a colorful and confident frontman, and exceptional songwriter, with an intoxicating aura of danger and strangeness. Guitarist Bryan MacLean was also a talented writer, specializing in well-crafted songs about romantic love, chocolate, and orange skies, a sort of Paul McCartney to Lee’s John Lennon. Love also had the respect of its peers, and was making regular jaunts up the California coast to dazzle Haight-Ashbury stoners at the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom.

Other Los Angeles bands of the 1960s had become, or were becoming, household names: Beach Boys, Byrds, Mamas and Papas, Turtles, Buffalo Springfield, Doors. Arthur Lee and Love were just as talented as any of them.

But several things happened that kept Love locked in the underground:

First, they were unreasonably hostile to interviewers… when they allowed themselves to be interviewed.

Second, leader Lee had already been burned in the record business, and he was afraid of making the wrong moves, to the point where the band was paralyzed, never venturing outside the comfortable confines of the Golden State.

Third, although they’d been invited to perform at the seminal, career-making Monterey Pop Festival, they turned down the offer. (David Crosby of the Byrds acknowledged them while introducing “Hey Joe.”)

Fourth, Elektra Records was busy promoting its new act, the Doors, leaving Love to “sit here and rot,” according to bassist Ken Forssi.

And fifth, the band members were squabbling over royalties. (Lee had set himself up for the biggest cut.) They were also drifting into hardcore drug use.

When it came time to make a third album, as Forssi relates, “They had to find a time when we were not too high, when we could be found, when the studio was available.” At first, the only Love member present in the studio was leader Lee, surrounded by session musicians, including members of the famed Wrecking Crew. When the other four were finally gathered together (at this point, the band consisted of Lee, MacLean, Forssi, lead guitarist John Echols, and drummer Michael Stuart) … and they saw that session players had usurped their roles… they realized what they were about to lose.

Engineer Bruce Botnick remembers tears being shed. Forssi said they finally came to their senses and pulled together one last time to grind out what he called Love’s “white album.”

(As usual, I’ve rambled too long… please stay tuned for side two of my essay, when I’ll discuss the music on that white album, FOREVER CHANGES.

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Vanity in a Tin Can (Part 2)

June 27, 2017June 27, 2017 / greenpete58 / 12 Comments

(This is the conclusion of my two-part article about my experience as a jazz disc jockey)

Before long, manager Geoff hired me as a full-time, paid deejay. He was very encouraging:

“The whole trick is to put a smile into your voice.”

“Try to hit those peaks and valleys, like an easygoing rollercoaster.”

“Man, you sounded hot yesterday! Have you thought of this as a career? It doesn’t pay much, but you can make a living.”

I began taping my shows, hoping for that one perfect show (I came close, but never got it). Downtown Lowndes and I occasionally exchanged notes. One night, very late, we pretended we were two pompous Top 40 deejays:

“Hey, OK! Got the hot wax and the best tracks, my man Downtown!”

“Hey, OK, Pedro! What’s comin’ up here? Michael Jackson? Noooo, sorry… Chuck Mangione! Hey, OK!”

We figured nobody was listening, anyway, so we might as well stretch out.

Once in a while, I did get phone calls for requests. There was a college guy who always requested Charlie Parker, and nobody else. There was a teenage girl who didn’t care about music but only wanted to talk to the male deejays. She was referred to variously as “Miss Lonelyhearts” or “Jailbait.”

The most frequent caller was this drunk who hated any song unless it was an old, Big Band standard. Everything else was a “buncha crap.” (If he hated it so much, why did he keep calling? I think he was upset because the music had changed so much since “his day,” including the type of jazz being played.)

Alto saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker

One night, while gazing out the porthole at the city lights, I tried to reason with him:

“You should give it a chance. I know this is newer music, but it’s good jazz. It’s Branford Marsalis, brother of Wynton!”

“It’s a buncha crap!”

I gave up.

Because WNOP was a small, tight-knit affair, we sometimes got together outside of work. Brendan, Downtown and I visited local clubs to hear different bands. Eventually, Downtown got his own weekend blues show and became Rod “Blueshound” Lowndes, and his became the station’s most popular show. Whereas at one time he’d complain about not getting any phone calls, soon he was complaining that he couldn’t cue the records “with all these damn calls!”

At one company luncheon, he and I got into a friendly argument about African-American origins of blues music. Similar to “buncha crap,” I was a bit of a purist, so I preferred the primitive, country blues, while Downtown liked contemporary, electrified, urban blues. We went back and forth before someone finally looked at Val, our resident “hip black cat,” and asked for his input. Val’s perfectly timed response was “I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

The pinnacle of my time at WNOP was when I got my own avant-garde jazz show. It was still late at night, but it was my show, and I could play practically anything I wanted. I remember Glenn pulling me aside before my first show. He was musically knowledgeable, and he suggested I didn’t have to always play the really “black” stuff, meaning challenging and spiritually probing free jazz artists like Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders. It was a good tip, but I was already primed for a mix of dark and light, combining those artists with a little progressive rock, fusion, and ECM label.

Unfortunately, “The Vanguard Express” didn’t last long. Our Arbitron ratings dipped, and my show was one of the first casualties. The day after it happened, I received a personal phone call from Robert Fripp, legendary leader of King Crimson, who agreed to be interviewed for the show. I had to tell him.

“What?! You’ve been sacked!” Fripp said, as I struggled to recover from a hangover. I explained it wasn’t me that got fired, but the show, and he sympathized. So… no interview. Nevertheless, it was a thrill to get a morning wake-up call from one of my music heroes, even if I had cotton-mouth and crimson eyeballs at the time.

One night I showed up for work and noticed that the album sleeves in the library had colored tape on the spines. Red, yellow, blue, green, and brown. I soon learned that, in keeping with WNOP’s “jazz plus” format, this indicated varieties of jazz. Brown meant traditional jazz. Green was pop or rock with jazz elements (e.g. Joni Mitchell or Steely Dan). Red, yellow, and blue also had meanings of some kind.

Hereafter, all jocks were required to play a certain quota of each color per shift. Of course, the color brown, for traditional jazz, received minimal airplay. I worried about what “buncha crap” would say.

This is about the time I started losing interest in being a deejay. As with everything in life that’s free and untainted, people have to muck it up with manipulations.

It wasn’t long before programming director Chris was dropping by with comments like “Pete, you didn’t play much Red or Yellow last night. We’re trying to get the Arbitron ratings up, you know.”

Tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon

I told him I’d try to do better. But I really didn’t try too hard.

Instead, I went in the opposite direction. I’d cue up Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray’s “The Hunt,” which is a live, 18-minute saxophone apocalypse from 1947, then go out on the poop-deck to smoke a cigarette and watch the city lights shimmer on the water.

Things went from bad to worse. Like a lot of single guys who didn’t have girlfriends, I had a little dog to keep me company. One night during a long shift, I brought him to the station with me. He just lay there asleep on the floor, but one of the newer deejays saw him, then went and told the teacher.

“Pete, this is a place of business, and you really shouldn’t bring your dog here.”

“Sorry, Chris, but this is like a home away from home for me. The Jazz Ark is like an extension of my apartment.”

“Well, that’s very flattering, but we don’t allow animals in this ark.”

Not long after, I gave my notice. Chris was right, of course. The station wasn’t a playpen or home away from home. It was an office. And when I realized that fact, the fun disappeared.

WNOP’s jazz format lasted till the millennium, when The Jazz Ark became a Catholic Radio ark. I don’t know if Chris and Geoff’s Arbitron ratings ever spiked like they’d hoped. I saw Chris at a Pentangle concert, around 1992. During our time at the station, I didn’t think he had much taste in music. But maybe I pegged him wrong. Pentangle’s a damn good band.

The only other person I saw was my pal, Downtown. Appropriately, I saw him downtown, about eight years ago, after some function. It was about 1 a.m. He was serving drinks in a seedy bar and taking jukebox requests for the night owls. Same extroverted manner. I recognized him, but I don’t think he recognized me.

I debated whether or not I should reveal myself, but he looked a bit down on his luck, and I didn’t want to embarrass him. For all I knew, he owned a string of successful bars and restaurants downtown. But I didn’t want to take the chance.

So I just requested an old blues song.

Lighting Fires in 1967: The First Album by The Doors

January 13, 2017January 16, 2019 / greenpete58 / 17 Comments

50 years

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception – Aldous Huxley

A year ago today I wrote about the year 1966 in popular music. 1966 was a watershed. Greying, traditional singers and song interpreters were being pushed down the record charts by young rebels sporting Beatle haircuts, paisley shirts, and leather boots, many of whom wrote their own songs. Blues, soul, surf, and folk music were colliding head-on with ringing guitars, creamy vocal harmonies, and an infectious rock backbeat. This musical amalgam was both fresh and exciting. But… just under the surface of this “jangle pop,” unknown forces were bubbling.

The leading lights in rock music – the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones – had sampled hallucinogenic drugs by 1967. In addition to being curious about mind expansion via chemical transport, they also wanted to explore the architecture and limitless tapestry of sound, language, and ideas. Instead of merely an affirmative “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” a lot of probing questions were being raised. Minds were floating downstream, and mothers were now standing in the shadows.

1966 was also the year the Beatles stopped touring to concentrate on recording, and the year of John Lennon’s incendiary (at least, in America) comment “I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”

January 1967 was ripe for revolutionary music like that of the Doors.

I was 9 when I first heard the Doors’ single “Light My Fire” on AM radio. Although a truncated, radio-friendly version of the album cut, this song’s hypnotic rhythms, exotic instrumentation, and potent vocals temporarily pushed the Beatles and Monkees out of my head (and it’s still my favorite song). But not until college, when I scraped some dollars together for the first eponymous Doors album, was I really able to grasp this band’s awesome power.

The Doors were maybe the world’s first “existential” band. They somehow were able to marry rock and blues music with Nietzsche, Blake, Freud, and Eastern mysticism, yet still managed to have hits and make teenage girls swoon… as well as older women. My mother heard me playing that first album one day during summer break:

“Peter, who is that singer?” she yelled down to the basement.

“His name’s Jim Morrison.”

“I love his singing! I haven’t heard a voice like that since Frank Sinatra!”

Engineer Bruce Botnick, producer Paul Rothchild, singer Jim Morrison. Botnick and Rothchild had a large role in the making of the first Doors album.

Before long she was joining me in the basement to gaze at the rock god pictured on my album sleeve, as well as listen to the songs – which include the climactic finale “The End.” If you’re familiar with the lyrics to “The End,” you’ll understand how awkward an experience this was for me.

Anyway, I could rattle on and on about the Doors and that first explosive album, a true classic, unleashed to the world on January 4, 1967. But others have reviewed it much better, and I only have so much space here. So here’s merely a quick song-by-song summation:

Break on Through (To the Other Side): the first single, and maybe the definitive Doors song. Beastly, guttural, and relentless, I’ve always thought of it as an aural interpretation of sexual intercourse. But that’s just me.

Soul Kitchen: sneering and funky, and a perfect follow-up to the opener. Something strange is being cooked up in this kitchen. Not sure what it is, but it’s pulling me inside.

The Crystal Ship: a gorgeous song. Drummer John Densmore has said it’s about Morrison’s breakup with a girlfriend, but there are many other interpretations.

Twentieth Century Fox: this song ties in Morrison’s and organist Ray Manzarek’s film studies at UCLA. But I don’t think Morrison is singing about Shirley Temple.

Alabama Song (Whisky Bar): written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, from their satirical opera “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” it’s the song that convinced Elektra founder Jac Holzman to sign the Doors, after seeing them perform it at the Whisky a Go Go in L.A. One of the strangest covers ever chosen for a rock LP, it nonetheless shows how eclectic the band was.

Elektra Records founder and CEO, Jac Holzman

Light My Fire: written by guitarist Robbie Krieger, the short version of the Doors’ second single climbed to No. 1 in July 1967, and the band never looked back. The album version, with both a keyboard and guitar solo, is far more riveting. José Feliciano later had a No. 3 hit with a Latin-tinged acoustic rendition.

Back Door Man: a lot of old blues songs were covered in the ‘60s, most not very well. One notable exception is Cream’s version of Robert Johnson‘s “Cross Road Blues.” Another is this Willie Dixon song, which the Doors made into their own. Morrison was still in the soul kitchen, only now he was sampling long-legged chicken.

I Looked at You/End of the Night/Take it As It Comes: I lumped these three songs together because they’re similar in tone and structure and seem to comprise three sections of one song, and they also provide a slow glide into the final song. Dark and sinister, the key song/line for me is “Some are born to sweet delight/Some are born to the endless night.” The universe can be a hostile and indifferent place.

Suddenly, we arrive at…

The End: I didn’t know what to make of this 12-minute epic when I first heard it. It’s less a song than a series of short poems set to psychedelic raga. Morrison sounds like he’s intoning a dark sermon, taking the voyeuristic listener on a weird journey into goldmines, riding on snakes and blue buses. The section about the killer walking down the hall is chilling (Truman Capote‘s seminal non-fiction novel “In Cold Blood” was published just before the song was recorded).

Unbelievably, “The End” was recorded in only two takes. According to Holzman, the second half of Take 2 was so intense that, as the closing notes faded, producer Paul Rothchild turned to him in the booth, and with a stunned look said “Jac, this is why we do what we do.”

(Thanks for letting me share one of my favorite albums… stay tuned, because in March I’ll be recognizing the 50-year anniversary of another classic debut: “The Velvet Underground and Nico”).

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