All the way from Memphis

In the pantheon [Steady on - Ed] of instrumental pop, there can be few acts more iconic [You've been warned - Ed] than Booker T & the MGs. 

The rhythm section of the Stax label house band, they recorded a track called "Behave Yourself" during some down time in the studio in the summer of 1962. The label's president, John Stewart, was in the control room at the time and loved what he heard, suggesting it would make a good A-side. The band then played him what would eventually become "Green Onions" and Stewart thought it would make a good flip side. However, following a chance broadcast of the acetate of "Green Onions" on local Memphis radio station WLOK, which attracted huge listener response, the sides were switched, the record became a massive hit and the rest, as they say, is history.

Here's the MG's guitarist Steve Cropper with the full story behind "Green Onions".

Of course, an album followed. To be frank, however, I find it rather a disappointment, mainly because it consists of covers of popular hits. This was a furrow the band would continue to plough with later albums, with one exception - the often  'difficult' sophomore  second [Don't push it - Ed] album. 

It took until 1965 for the second Booker T album to be released, although the intervening years saw several of its cuts released as single A and B sides, combined with tracks from their debut long player. However, unlike their debut, the album, "Soul Dressing", only had one cover amongst its dozen tracks and sounds far less 'polite' than anything they recorded before or since.

So what makes me consider this the band's best album?

Well, it's stripped down to basics - Hammond organ, guitar, bass and drums, with no overdubs that I can hear, and just one track with a horn section. No one overplays, which is surprising given the age of soloists Steve Cropper - in his early twenties - and Booker T Jones - still in his teens. The slightly older Al Jackson Jr on drums and Lewie Steinberg on bass are rock solid, providing the foundation for the younger men to build on. Of special note is Jackson's superb cymbal work throughout - it's where most of the swing comes from!

 Jones - Cropper - Jackson - Steinberg

Highlights? Well, every track is excellent, but here are my particular favourites.

"Jellybread" swings steadily as Cropper unleashes a nasty biting solo - a simple 12 bar blues, it reverts to a one chord vamp at the end as Jones plays about with pedal notes.

Cropper plays a very odd solo in "Plum Nellie" which has two passages of strange tremelo picked notes and then concludes with a manic strangled run, which a friend once joked was due to Cropper getting his cuff links caught in the strings. This track has horns.

Once again, on "Aw Mercy", it's Cropper who gets you raising your eyebrows. This time with his quivering, almost discordant, double stops. Jones ends the track neatly towards the fade with the pedal note trick going on again, whilst the rhythm moves about under him.

"Outrage" has become a popular cover track, with versions by Georgie Fame, Pete Bardens (with Peter Green) and Soullive. The original is the best, however, with Jones' agile Hammond alternating between  the main theme's descending minor riff and the bouncy major section.

Today, only Jones and Cropper remain from the original quartet, but both are still playing and releasing albums. What they achieved with the MGs was enough to secure their place in the R'n'R Hall of Fame, but that's before you factor in the performance and composition credits with everyone from Dylan to Neil Young and Albert King to Otis Redding. 

Unfortunately, very little video exists of the band, but here's a clip showing them playing a couple of set staples - "Green Onions" and "Booker Loo" - on French TV in 1968 that shows how tight they were live and how well they could jam. Donald "Duck" Dunn was on bass by this time.

Booker T and the MGs - so much more than "Green Onions"...

A fresh helping of "Soul Dressing" can be yours if you answer the one simple question in the comments below.

Woodwork squeaks...

...and out come Ozzy Osborne, Mel Tormé, Doug Fieger (The Knack), Mitch Ryder, Marshall Crenshaw and Wayne Kramer. But what do they all have in common?

Well, they all appear on Was (Not Was)'s sophomore [Puhlease - Ed] album "Born to Laugh at Tornados". Released in 1983 on the ZE label - notable for its attempts to straddle dance pop and the avant-garde - it didn't quite break the band into the big time and they had to wait four years for major record success with the hit single "Walk the Dinosaur". However, it's my favourite album in their meagre five album output. 

 

Sweetpea Atkinson - Dave Was - Don Was - Sir Harry Bowen

Formed in Detroit in 1979 by the Was Brothers - David Weiss and Don Fagenson, who weren't brothers - Was (Not Was) performed a seemingly irreconcilable mixture of pop, rock, disco, beat poetry and jazz using a core band which was comprised of crack local musicians. As well as the people mentioned above, guests on other albums included Leonard Cohen, Syd Straw, Kris Kristofferson, Booker T Jones, Iggy Pop, John Patitucci, Marcus Miller, Al Kooper and The Roches. The sheer diversity of  the aforementioned contributors more than hints at the eclectic nature of the band's music.

So, "Born to Laugh at Tornados"...

 

The album kicks off very strongly with a poppy rock & soul track - "Knocked Down, Made Small (Treated Like a Rubber Ball)". It features regular band vocalist Sweetpea Atkinson and a great guitar solo by (I think) ex-Kiss shredder Vinnie Vincent. It's a tale of child abuse and its effects in later life. A Was Bros original, it's indicative of the quirky and often dark places they tended to visit with their lyrics.

Mitch Ryder takes the vocals next on a song which sounds like an R'n'R standard, but is actually a Tom Brzezina original. All I know about him is that he's from Michigan, so probably a pal of Don & Dave Was. It's an ideal song for Ryder and evokes his Detroit Wheels era perfectly - think "Devil With a Blue Dress On"!

"Betrayal" features a Doug Fieger vocal against a more obviously electronic backing, although guitars and a sax keep the vibe quite organic. Again, the lyrics are downbeat with the protagonist asking if their betrayer has any qualms about what they've done. Not one of the strongest track on the album, it has to be said.

Ozzy's up next with "Shake Your Head" - but only in the chorus. The verse lyrics are very much David Was, who seems to be responsible for the more surreal and beat elements of the band's compositions. A little more electronic this time with a sequenced Moog bass although, once more, the guitars keep it "real".

 

 "I walk the line with Johnny Cash"

More of a poem than a song at times "Man Vs. The Empire Brain Building" - has all manner of lyrical and musical references: Miles, Johnny Cash, African township music, funk, electronica and beat poetry. What's it all about? Fucked if I know.

The band's other lead vocalist Sir Harry Bowen is featured on the next track - "(Return to the Valley of) Out Come the Freaks". This is the second in what became a trilogy of versions of the same song and they all share the subject of extremely unpleasant people and very bad situations. Sung in a sort of "Drifters" style, it lilts along as it describes exhibitionism, a disowned daughter, male inadequacy and loneliness. The contrast between Bowen's gentle delivery and the grim subject matter is marked and extremely effective.  

So who's this "Professor Night" Bowen's singing about next? He seems to be someone who thinks he has a certain way with women but always ends up going home alone after a night out clubbing. It's quite a light and bouncy arrangement that is, once again, at odds with the subject matter. Good poppy stuff with a dark heart.

One of David Was' nods to beat poetry next with "The Party Broke Up". It's hard to say what the two "verses" are really about. Personally, I think it describes a really boring party that Was went to, but that he embroiders with bizarre events to make it sound more interesting than it was. There's a manic guitar solo in between the verses - could it be Wayne Kramer?

Doug Fieger gets a second shot at lead vocals on "Smile". For an out and out pop number, there's a lot of paranoia here, with the constant exhortations to smile when you think "they" are watching you. When you're sure they're not, you can stop smiling. Lots of twangy guitar from Marshall Crenshaw. Once again, upbeat music is pitched against lyrical angst.

 

The Velvet Fog

The album ends with what might be the most unusual track on offer here. It's Mel Tormé singing to the piano of Mike Renzi, with a subtly mixed string section in the latter part of the song. "Zaz Turned Blue" tells the story of teenage horseplay which went wrong, the subsequent brain damage, a tour of duty as a Marine and then coming home to an aimless existence that could have been so different. It's a remarkable track and Tormé sings it beautifully. I guess its subject matter has prevented it from becoming a standard, but Tormé liked it so much that he made it part of his live set for the rest of his career. It's a stunning performance.

The band continued to make good albums, but when the hits came the music got a bit less quirky and more dance oriented, not to mention more "electronic" as the 1980s progressed. Both of the Was Bros went on to become successful producers, but a brief tour in 2004 and a comeback album in 2008 were the last hoorahs for the band. Sweetpea Atkinson went on to join the superb Boneshakers - Was (Not Was)'s regular guitarist Randy Jacobs' new venture. (The Boneshakers are so good that they'll have a post of their own soon.)

Writing in Detroit's 'Metro Times', Brian J. Bowe described Was (Not Was) as "an endearing mess....a sausage factory of funk, rock, jazz and electronic dance music, all providing a boogie-down backdrop for a radical (and witty) political message of unbridled personal freedom and skepticism of authority."

Yup, that was Was (Not Was) that was!

Specially flown in for us - a sessions gorilla on vox humana

Some carefully curated creations from the Major's capacious cabinet of curiosities for you. All with one thing in common - the human voice - but all very, very different indeed.

 

Young Scott - old Scott

First up, an album that I stumbled upon in my (then) local library's LP section many years ago. Nowadays what Scott Johnson did on this album is very easy to do - courtesy of digital sampling technology - but back then, in 1982, it was far trickier. He made recordings of speech into tape loops which were then dubbed onto a second tape machine in order to replicate the repeated passages in linear form, so that multitracking could proceed. Not only that, but Johnson perceived pitch and melodies in the spoken passages and then transcribed them into guitar parts. So, by making various loops out of one brief spoken passage such as this...

You know who's in New York?
You remember that guy... J-John somebody?
He was a-- he was sort of a--...

...Johnson was able to create rhythms and melodies from just one voice and his guitar. 

Dig those matching stage clothes...no...wait...

Next, something most people will have heard before, but not quite like this. This is Motown's finest, The Temptations, but with only the vocals and no backing. It's amazing how much there was going on which often just got buried in the finished mixes. You can really hear the various harmony parts and how much the Temps owed to the earlier a cappella vocal style. Interestingly, some of the psych-period tracks are more a cappella'ish than the earlier classics. "Runaway Child, Running Wild" is particularly fine when the instrumentation is stripped away - there's a lot going on here! The earlier "My Girl" is stand out, too, with some vocals in the chorus that trail off into subdued melisma in a way that's virtually impossible to hear on the full version.

 

Petra sells out!

Thirdly, some vocalese from Petra Haden - one of the late jazz bassist Charlie Haden's triplet daughters. She was given an eight-channel multi-track cassette recorder by a musician friend and it had a cassette of the Who's "The Who Sell Out" in it. She went on to use the gift to make an a cappella version of that album, multi-tracking all instrumental parts using her voice, as well as, of course, the vocal parts. When it works, it does so very well. "Silas Stingy" and "Tattoo" are particularly successful as their original mock baroque touches translate very well into vocal harmonies and counterpoint. Fortunately, there's a naive charm to Haden's voice which rescues some of the weaker covers, such as  "Relax" and "I Can See For Miles" although they still sound a bit like someone vocalising guitar lines while playing "air guitar" in front of their bedroom mirror.

 

They are what they is

Finally, some rather more conventional a cappella - courtesy of the Persuasions, who cover a variety of Zappa songs from various stages in the composer's career. The group really enters into the spirit of the music, with little humorous asides sometimes peeping through the flawless vocals. There are even some "Sheik Yerbouti" and "Lumpy Gravy" style interludes, complete with snorks and "piano people". Given Zappa's musical pedigree and influences, it's not surprising that the a cappella treatment works very well on the earlier songs, but it's also extremely effective on some of the later material - "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing" sounds as if it could have been written specially for this album. "Tears Began to Fall", of course, is an ideal a cappella group's number. A couple of instrumental guest spots from Zappa alumni aren't strictly a cappella, but as Frank himself would say, "What the hey?"

Somebody will be along shortly to dish out the load down link for these four vocal delights, although a qualifying question will be involved.

Babs' Cheap(skate) Christmas

Christmas comes early to the Hole, with this post from Babs! 

 

The other day, I was in shopping at Macy’s on 34th street here in “The Big Apple” [New York, Yew Nork - Ed] and noticed that even though it’s mid-October, Christmas items were on display everywhere, I mean, it’s not even freaking Halloween yet!  

 

As I was walking around the store, I stumbled across the Toy Department, so just for laughs, I thought I’d look around. Not having bought toys in several years, as my grandchildren are all now grownup, I wondered what were the hot toys for the 2022 holidays?  As I walked through the isles of toys I noticed that most toys require absolutely no imagination whatsoever, or for that matter, any type of physical exertion, except perhaps for the rapid movement of one’s thumbs.

After looking at toys, I went to the café, which is on the same floor.  While enjoying a double espresso and a chocolate croissant, I thought of a memorable Christmas in the late 50s, when I was around ten-years old.  My mother’s brother (Uncle Émile) and his wife (Aunt Avril), were coming down to Brooklyn from Quebec for the Holidays.  A few weeks before Christmas, Uncle Émile called us, and asked my brother and myself what presents we wanted.  When it was my turn to talk to him, I asked for a Pogo Stick, and he said, “OK, Babs, I’ll tell Père Noël” (that’s what French-speaking people call Santa Claus or Father Christmas).

 

 

What Babs didn't get from Santa

As an aside, did you know that George Hansburg invented and patented the Pogo Stick in 1919?  Hansburg claimed that on his travels through Burma, he met a poor Buddhist farmer.  The farmer had a daughter named Pogo, who was a devout little girl that wanted to go to temple every day to pray, but couldn't because she had no shoes to wear for the long walk through the mud and over the slippery rocks.  So Pogo’s father built a jumping stick for her, and Pogo was able to make daily trips to the temple.  When Hansburg returned home, he made a jumping stick of his own, attaching a spring to the wooden stick contraption that the poor farmer had introduced to him.  Another version of the Pogo stick’s origin is about a young bride named (you guessed it) Pogo whose father, hoping to spare her from soiling her wedding clothes in mud puddles, put a cross-piece on a post and had her jump across the street. Both are stories are far-fetched, but they are nice enough anecdotes.

But I digress

So, it’s Christmas morning, and Santa brought me a hula hoop, a paint by numbers kit, and a dollhouse.

Next to Émile and Avril were more presents, that I kept eyeing up, but none looked like they had a Pogo stick inside.  Émile handed me a present that was rectangular, thick and heavy, I quickly ripped the wrapping paper off, and to my surprise (and disappointment), it was a dictionary! I said to Uncle Émile, “This isn’t a Pogo stick!” “Babs, don’t be so rude.” interjected my mother. Uncle Émile smiled and said to me, “Yes, Babs, but Pogo stick is in the dictionary!” “Yeah, so is cheapskate!” quipped my brother. This caused my father to smack the back of my brother’s head, and ask him, “What did I tell you about being mister smart ass?”  My brother was, and even now at eighty-years old, is still a world-class smart ass. All my children and grand children fondly refer to him as “Uncle Smart Ass”.  My brother is aware of this, and is proud of his moniker.

Meanwhile, back in Macy’s, I finished my shopping, and took an Uber home.  When I returned home, I did a few hits of "OG Kush Breath" (for my glaucoma), and thought I’d play some Mose Allison, specifically a two CD retrospective called “Allison Wonderland: Anthology” which I saw earlier in the day on top of a few boxed sets.  When I picked up the Allison set, underneath it was: Donald Fagen’s boxed set “Cheap Xmas: Donald Fagen Complete”, which caused me to do a double take.  After looking around the room in my stoned state, and excepting to see Rod Serling across the room, I thought to myself: “This is going straight into The Good Old Major's Hole” [Yup, if it's cheap, it's just right for the Hole - Ed]

 

Don - looking as if he'd rather be anywhere else than in that room in front of a camera

Donald Fagen’s “Cheap Xmas: Donald Fagen Complete” is a five CD set, and was released in 2017.

 

Don - looking as if he'd rather be anywhere else than in that room in front of a camera

CD1 is “The Nightfly” from1982.
This is a long time favorite of mine, and to my ears, one of the best recordings released in the 1980s.  It is a classic, amongst classics.

CD2 is “Kamakiriad” from1993.
This is an album of slinking smooth sly witted jazzy funk, produced by Walter Becker, with audio that we’ve come to expect the duo.

CD3 is “Morph The Cat” from 2006.
More irresistible grooves, that you bop your head along with, even though the lyrics deal with alien invasion and death. This is the classic Steely Dan paradox, sugar-coated Cyanide. This record also has more guitar on it, since Steely Dan’s “Royal Scam” from 1976, courtesy of Jon Herrington, Wayne Krantz and Hugh McCracken.

CD4 is “Sunken Condos” from 2012.
‘Sunken Condos’ is jazzy, bluesy and as musically precise as anything Donald has recorded, with or without Steely Dan. No surprise, since many of the musicians have played with him in one form or another over the years. Most of the nine songs make room for efficient solos, tasteful backing vocals and a very clean production.

CD5 is “10 Extras”
A bonus disc, “10 Extras” features rarities such as demos, songs written for films and live tracks. My favorite track is “True Companion” which was recorded for the animated feature film “Heavy Metal”. It’s also the oldest song on this entire collection, and was recorded a year before “The Nightfly” in 1981. Musically, the first half of the tune is almost a mini guitar symphony for Steve Khan, on acoustic and electric guitars. The song also showcases Donald’s dense overdubbed vocal harmonies, he would go on to use again on The Nightfly‘s ‘Maxine’.

 

To qualify for this fabulous folder full of festive Fagen fare, just send the Hole a sample of your DNA (to be destroyed after we've cloned you) and answer the simple question that Babs is going to ask very shortly.

Tuning a mellotron doesn't

To quote a certain Mr F. Mac, "Heroes are hard to find".  

Certainly, in my experience, musicians who start off as personal heroes often become or do something, that makes me think, "Nah..." However, I've had one constant musical hero, and that's King Crimson boss Robert Fripp. 

Fripp

He's always had a certain single-minded intensity that makes me want to listen to each new musical venture, even though I might not always like it. Yes, he seems cynical, rather cold at times, and cerebral, but how much of this perception is due to a conscious attempt on his part to construct a public persona? I suspect it's quite a bit, especially when the mask completely slipped during his lockdown videos with wife Toyah. Or was that, too, a mask?

 

Many rock musicians were and still are poor businessmen, and sometimes their choice of people to handle their business affairs is equally poor. However, some of them seem to have emerged from the morass of contracts, agreements, rights, royalties and advances relatively unscathed, and continue to make a comfortable living, with control over their own creations. Fripp is one such example and has retained the rights to his back catalogue, rather like the late Frank Zappa did eventually.

The two are also rather similar when it comes to their flexible use of recorded output - both studio and live.

Like Zappa, Fripp's attitude towards live recordings is that they are simply performances and, as such, are just as worthy of manipulation as studio sessions. So, live recordings may form the basis of "studio" tracks, as long as the finished product is a good performance.  

However, not everything Crimson is a mixture of studio and live, and Fripp's willingness to release mega box sets of the various Crims line ups' shows reveals plenty of Crimson in its raw live state, without studio overdubs.

He was well aware of the problems involved in recording a live gig and, indeed, wrote a list of them for the booklet that came with "The Great Deceiver" live set.

It's long been my belief that King Crimson were the greatest ever improvisatory rock band, and that the 1973/74 quartet of Fripp, Wetton, Cross and Bruford was its finest incarnation.

Choosing an example of this musical apogee - because that's where we're going - is difficult as there's so much to choose from. The "Starless" box set chronicling the band from my favourite period ran to 23 CDs, as well as several DVDs and Blu-Ray discs that included surround sound mixes and other fripperies.

After much deliberation, I've chosen the March 20, 1974 gig at the Palazzo dello Sport in Brescia, Italy. It's quite loose at times but it's also very frenetic and heavy.

TV studio - Paris 1974

Highlights, of which there are many, include an explosive "Improv II" calming down and then segueing ethereally into "Starless" - only the second time they'd played it live - and "Larks’ Tongues In Aspic (Part I)", which opens with Cross playing a simple but rather sinister violin riff, Fripp using feedback and Bruford demolishing his kit. Wetton, as always, is absolute bass bedrock and his voice is still strong, as it's early days for this particular tour to start taking its toll on his vocal cords. There's even a mellotron with rather "suspect" tuning.

  The Crims - "Starless" Paris 1974 - same performance as the "green screen" still above

Unfortunately, as with many Crims gig recordings, even soundboards, the show is incomplete - perhaps Fripp should have made one of his aphorisms all about having enough tape for the whole show...However, there's more than enough here to keep a Crims fan very  happy.

By the way, I said above that KC were the greatest ever improvisatory rock band ever - note the past tense. Nowadays, Fripp just seems content to take a group of technically brilliant musicians on tour and play numbers from the band's history, but I think the spark has gone for now. Why he needs three drummers just mystifies me and I find the whole exercise overbearing and a bit predictable, although some of the older material still occasionally surprises me with the band's new interpretations. Perhaps a future Fripp project will bring new Crimson music? Who knows?

However, for about a year back in late 1973 and early 1974, there was absolutely nothing to beat the Crims. Listen and marvel...

Without no doubt, these are...

...the JBs!

Sometime in the mid 1980s, I was depping in a friend's band and at one of the gigs, during the set break, the DJ played a track which really made me prick up my ears. I asked him what it was and he told me it was the JBs' "Doing it to Death". I said how much I liked it and he told me that they were James Brown's backing band. He also said that he'd make me a cassette of this track and others by the same band and send it to me. I thought at the time that perhaps he was just being nice, but just a few days later the promised tape turned up in the post. Thank you Mr DJ!

The JBs

Sure, I'd heard James Brown before (although never really listened) but nothing prepared me for the massive dose of uncut funk that this cassette delivered. From then on, I made sure that I caught up with JB himself...then the JBs' Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, Jimmy Nolen...and then, via Bootsy Collins, George Clinton, Parliament, Funkadelic and all the various Mothership offshoots.

But back to the JBs...

From 1970 to the early 1980s, Parker, Wesley and Nolen, as well as Bootsy Collins, Fred Smith, Clyde Stubberfield and John "Jabo" Starks passed through the JBs' ranks. Along with many, many others, they comprised a virtual "Who's Who" of 70s funk.

 Maceo - looking sharp!

At various times - and this list is by no means definitive - the band went by the names of Fred Wesley and the JBs, The James Brown Soul Train, Maceo and the Macks, A.A.B.B., Fred Wesley and the New JBs, The First Family, and The Last Word; invariably with the participation of their leader, in some role or another. On several occasions, the JBs were given a new moniker for a one-off single release, in order to cash in on some new dance craze. So, sure, it was all about getting 'product' out as frequently as possible, but the standard remained high, and even the most obscure JB offshoot track was often a master class in funk's quintessential balance of rhythm and space.

Fred Wesley

The track "Doing it to Death" is actually credited to Fred Wesley & the JBs and features writer and producer JB on vocals, Maceo, the two Freds, Jimmy Nolen and Hearlon "Cheese" Martin on guitars, "Jabo" on drums and a large horn section. The lyrics, as such, never actually quote the title, and consist mostly of "we're gonna have a funky good time" and random interjections from Brown. Solos are taken - trombone, flute, guitar - over a simple vamp that becomes steadily more and more hypnotic over its lengthy course. I guess that accounts for the track's title.

Right at the beginning, you get an intro from Danny Ray - JB's "cape man" - although this was recorded at a gig, rather than in the studio when "Death" was recorded.

The Cape Man!

"Ladies 'n' gen'lmen, there are seven acknowledged wonders of the world - yoooou are about to witness tha' eighth!"

What really lifts the track - apart from the steady pumping groove - is the key change about a third of the way through, The track starts off in F and then rather than modulate up - the more usual direction - it goes down a whole step and a half to D. "In order for me to get down, I gotta get in D." Much later on, a minute from the end, it returns to F - "for freedom" - and then stops abruptly without warning.

Alas, my cassette is long gone - junked or given away sometime in early 2010 when we were downsizing prior to moving to France. However, a rather splendid double CD anthology of the JBs (in most of their guises) is available and it includes the full 12 minute plus version of "Doing it to Death", which is what I'm listening to as I write this. It's actually one of the best anthologies by anybody that I've ever heard. It really doesn't let up, in spite of it playing the ace in the pack - "Death" - right at the very beginning.

If this stuff doesn't make you want to give the drummer some, pass the peas, give it some more, break into a cold sweat or get up offa that thing, you may need to check your bad self out...

Babs, Mark and Bill

Another guest post from Babs. I have to confess that I know very little about the subject, so I'm looking forward very much to exploring new territory.

 

At the age of six in Brooklyn Heights, I started taking piano lessons, with Mrs. Giordano, a local middle-aged Italian-American woman, who taught music to children. Teaching children was a funny business for her to go into, as she hated children. The lessons were not private, so every Saturday morning, I was with three other kids: identical twin sisters, and a strange boy whose name was Jacob, who always wore a bow tie, and when you looked at him, became agitated, and would scream “WHAT?” at the top of his lungs. The twins were named Ava and Grace, and wore the exact same clothes. They also played this game where they would switch identities, so when Mrs. Giordano told Ava it was her turn to play, she’d say, “I’m not Ava, I’m Grace” and Grace would follow suit. This usually caused Mrs. Giordano to go red in the face, and curse to herself in Italian.

After six or so years, and several teachers later, I could sight-read sheet music, and play things I heard on the radio by ear. The last of those teachers was Miss Eckert, who was retiring to Florida, and recommend a piano teacher named Mark, whom she described to my mother as “A colorful character”.

So I started taking lessons with Mark, who was an early 60s hipster complete with goatee, who had a very cool apartment, and owned hundreds upon hundreds of records that were scattered all over his apartment. The first time I was around people smoking weed, I recognized the smell from Mark’s apartment, where it always seemed to be lingering in the air, along with Camel cigarettes that he chain-smoked. My Mother thought Mark was a creep, I thought he was “dreamy”.

During one lesson, Mark told me “Don’t play the melody as written, instead, play a variation of it, improvise, play what you feel and don’t worry if it doesn’t sound good”. So I did my best with mixed results. Mark told me it was good for a first try, and said my light touch reminded him of Jazz pianist Bill Evans. With that, Mark searched through plies of records, and finally found the Bill Evans LP “Sunday at the Village Vanguard”, put it on his turntable, and it blew my mind. 

 Bill Evans

 

Bill Evans records led me to Miles Davis, which led me to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. One record led to another, so on and so on, all of which led to my lifelong love affair with Jazz.

 

Years later, in 1968 and 69, during summer breaks from Caltech, my husband Jerry (then boyfriend) and I spent our days on Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles County, surfing, smoking Michoacán, drinking Olympia beer, and dropping acid called “Orange Sunshine”. Our nights were spent in the cocktail lounge of the Casa del Mar hotel in Santa Monica, where I played piano (with an oversized brandy snifter on the piano for tips), while Jerry mixed cocktails. Every set I played opened and closed with “Gloria's Step”, the first track on “Sunday at the Village Vanguard”.

The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings

 

 Bill Evans’ “The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings” was released as a 3 CD boxed set in 2005. It was recorded on June 25, 1961, and documents each of their five sets from the final day of a summer gig at the Village Vanguard. Its influence has spanned several generations of musicians. 

 

The Trio - what a great sketch!

The Bill Evans Trio’s rhythm section was Scott LaFaro on bass, who, as you will hear, was a phenomenal bassist and writer, who played with an amazing fluidity, velocity, and melodic inventiveness on his instrument. Tragically, Scott would die in a car accident ten days after this gig. He was just twenty-three-years old. On drums, and equally phenomenal, was the legendary Paul Motian, who had a style that challenged your idea of traditional timekeeping, but could lay it down simply and solidly with the best of them. He often blended both approaches within one song, showing that traditional and avant-garde jazz could co-exist. He would continue recording until 2010, and passed in 2011 from Myelodysplastic syndrome. Paul and I lived in the same building for many years, and we were close friends.

Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian

Bill Evans is one of my favorite musicians, and one of the most influential and tragic figures of the post-bop jazz piano. He was known for his highly nuanced touch, the clarity of the feeling content of his music and his reform of the chord voicing system pianists used. Bill recorded over fifty albums as leader, received five Grammy Awards, and played on Miles Davis’ breakthrough album “Kind of Blue”.

Bill Evans passed on September 15, 1980, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was 51 years old.

Babs will be along shortly to take notes and ask questions...

 

It's a monster!

There are few things more joyous than watching a band getting high on just playing together.

Here's the Edgar Winter Band on the BBC's "Old Grey Whistle Test" in 1973 having a ball. 

The EWB and Frankenstein on the OGWT

 

So, who's in the band?

Well, Edgar obviously, on synths, sax and LA percussion, Rick Derringer on guitar, Dan Hartman on bass and Chuck Ruff on drums. They're obviously having fun - they're good and, boy, do they know it! It's lovely to see the eye contact between everyone - they're really getting off on each other's playing.

 

 

L to R - Ruff, Winter, Derringer, Hartman

And remember, they only come out at night!

Could you walk on water?

Compared to the Stones' career, that of the Beatles - a mere ten years - is almost the blink of an eye.  

Unbelievably, the Stones' latest tour - predictably called "Sixty" - celebrates sixty years in the music business.

Invariably, how you look back over a sixty year career is a matter of subjective interpretation, but I see it as having four main phases.

1. The early R&B years, with the Jagger/Richards songwriting team beginning to emerge as a major force.

2. The experimental years, with Jagger/Richards originals to the fore, increasingly sophisticated use of the recording studio, attempts at psychedelia and a rekindled interest in roots music.

3. The Mick Taylor years, which saw the band touring extensively and winning a well-deserved reputation as one of the greatest live rock acts of all time.

4. The Ron Wood years, which saw the band lose Wyman and Watts, as well as a great deal of their creative energy. It's also the longest phase, knocking on five decades.

Recently, I've been revisiting the Stones' back catalogue and one album really stood out, and it's one I've neglected for far too long - "Aftermath".

                  

Unused shot from December 1965 album cover shoot

According to my Stones career timeline, it sits right at the beginning of phase 2. It was the first album of all original material, with no R&B covers, their first true stereo release, and it also marked the increasing use of more unusual instruments and studio effects. Recorded at RCA Studios in Hollywood in late '65 and early '66, over a couple of sessions between touring, the album saw marked progress in production values, helped by ace engineer Dave Hassinger who encouraged the band to experiment. Added to this, the participation of Phil Spector's right-hand man Jack Nitzsche served to galvanise Brian Jones into using non-standard rock instruments such as the marimba, dulcimer and koto to vary the band's sound.

 RCA Studios - Dave Hassinger standing in the middle - no Brian

UK fans were far better served by the release prepared for the domestic market, with 14 tracks and no previous hit singles. The US version had only 11 tracks and one of those was "Paint it Black", which most fans would have already bought.

But what of the music itself?

It's fair to say that the tracks cover a wide range of styles, some of which were touched on earlier in the band's recordings, but not expanded on until "Aftermath". So, we have the inevitable nods to R&B, but also to more acoustic folk and country stylings, although now in the context of original compositions. There's a hint of soul and also Spectorish vibes, helped by the use of studio reverb and panning to create space and depth.

I'm not going to write about the album in detail, but here's a few of my personal standout moments...

"Think" is a very clever production job. It combines an acoustic guitar and a very clean electric with a fuzz guitar that plays horn lines, rather in the manner of the Satisfaction riff, but taken a bit further.

Keith with Paul

Several tracks have fuzz bass - courtesy of Keef - which adds texture but never intrudes.

"Flight 505" kicks off with Ian Stewart's bluesy piano panned hard right and drenched in reverb - a cheeky nod to "Satisfaction" then brings in the rest of the band.

Then there's "Going Home" - on sheer length alone (11+ minutes) it's a ground breaker. OK, it's a bit of a jam at the end, as the tape was allowed to run on after the song was due to finish, but it just shows how risks were taken and how they paid off. 

Above all, the album shows an awareness of how instrumental tones and textures are so important - the touches of marimba on a couple of tracks illustrate this perfectly.

Rather than just celebrate the album with the original UK or US version, here's something a little different. It's the Mickboy interpretation - "Only When it's Frozen" - which has the original album plus a few extras. This comes with a second CD which has a selection of mostly pre-Aftermath tracks presented in stereo. How "true" the stereo is is beyond the scope of this article. That's a whole separate rabbit hole to go down...

Aftermath? Sounds more like a watershed to me...

Babs serves up the food of the Gods

This time [specifies Babs] I’m taking a break from Jazz and Blues, and instead looking at a long-time Prog Rock Favorite of mine.

Many of you may know the band Ambrosia, from their late 70s and early 80s slickly produced Yacht Rock/blue-eyed soul/soft rock hits below.

"(That's) How Much I Feel”

"You're the Only Woman”

 

"Biggest Part of Me”

 

 
While the above videos may or may not be to your taste, they are fairly harmless pieces of catchy fluff, with radio-friendly melodies, and aren’t bad by Soft Rock standards.

But did you know that Ambrosia started out as a Prog Rock band? Or that Ambrosia’s first eponymous titled album was mixed by Alan Parsons? Also, all four members of Ambrosia played on the first Alan Parsons Project album, “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”.

I came across Ambrosia one day in 1975, on FM radio, when I switched on my radio and heard:

Oh, a whirling dervish and a dancing bear
Or a Ginger Rogers and a Fred Astaire

Or a teenage rocker or the girls in France
Yes, we all are partners in this cosmic dance

I thought to myself, “Where have I heard that before?” Then the chorus came in with:

Nice, nice, very nice
Nice, nice, very nice
So many people in the same device

And then it hit me, it was from Kurt Vonnegut’s book “Cat’s Cradle”! The next day, I went to my local record store and bought it.

Whenever the subject of Prog Rock comes up, I always mention the first Ambrosia album, and I’m always surprised how many Prog fans are not familiar with it, but love it when they hear it.

Myself, I have an ambivalent relationship with Prog Rock.
On the plus side: the musicianship is often amazing, and the production is often just great.
On the downside: many times, it is overblown, pretentious, self-indulgent and just plain boring.

In the 1970s, I saw Keith Emerson driving knives into his Hammond organ and riding it like a rodeo bull, while Greg Lake played bass stood on his own private patch of Persian rug, and Carl Palmer played a seventy-eight-piece drum kit. Later in the show, Keith Emerson and his piano were lifted into the air, and did somersaults like it was some sort of amusement park ride. Other Emerson, Lake & Palmer (a name better suited to a law firm) shows I saw featured an orchestra, and a choir. All of which was very entertaining.

I’ve seen Yes several times, in one particular show, Rick Wakeman, Steve Howe and Chris Squire got into a loudness war, with all three trying to drown each other out, and in doing so completely made Jon Anderson’s castrato vocals inaudible. I’ve sat through a live rendition of Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans, an experience which to me was unintelligible and close to unbearable, like being read aloud a lengthy passage of prose with no verbs in it. That said, the musicianship was excellent.

I’ve been totally bored several times by King Crimson shows, which incidentally I seemed to be the only female audience member.  But, I love their records.

I’ve seen Pink Floyd’s 'Meddle', 'Dark Side Of The Moon', 'Wish You Were Here' and 'Animals' tours, which were constantly excellent. Pink Floyd might be the most popular Prog Rock band of all time, but I’ve always thought they lacked sufficient technical proficiency, and therefore not really Prog Rock at all (as always, your mileage may vary).

A friend of mine, once, jokingly told me:
“There was a time in my life when I considered the virtuoso thunder of Yes, Genesis, and my favorite, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer to be the greatest music on earth…. Then I turned 15.”

Ambrosia’s second album titled “Somewhere I've Never Travelled” released in 1976, was also Prog Rock, produced by Alan Parsons, and sold poorly. So in the late 70s and early 80s, they went strictly commercial, as did many other Prog Rock bands.

Genesis, having lost ultra-arty frontman Peter Gabriel, turned out to have been incubating an enormous pop star in Phil Collins.

King Crimson’s Robert Fripp achieved a furious pop relevance by, as he described it, “Spraying burning guitar all over David Bowie’s album”—the album in question being 1980s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps).

Yes hit big in 1983 with the genderless cocaine-frost [Blimey! - Ed.] of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”

So here’s Ambrosia’s first eponymous titled album, from 1975 with David Pack on guitar, lead and backing vocals, Christopher North on keyboards and backing vocals, Joe Puerta on bass, lead and backing vocals and Burleigh Drummond on drums, backing vocals, percussion, and bassoon.

 

Also, the album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording (other than Classical), so needless to say, it sounds excellent.

Enjoy!

 

[When Babs has finished tasting the new selection of vintage wines for the Major's bar - I've been assured that the new batch of Thunderbird is up to snuff - she'll be stopping by to ask a question that will qualify you for the load down link for this fine album.]