Between the bubblegum and the bullets

This is almost a companion piece to ART58Koen's Elvis screed in its way, but here the truth is stranger than the fiction... 

If forming a band is like getting married, then 10cc had a more interesting courtship, relationship, divorce and later life apart than most. Of course, marriages don't usually involve four people, but 10cc managed to embrace the concept of the "odd couple" during their time together.

Creme, Gouldman, Godley & Stewart

For eight years before the band was formed in 1972, the future members - Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman - came together and flew apart repeatedly in a dizzying and increasing number of projects including bands, compositions and recordings. None of this came to much, but it did provide a sound basis for all the participants in the crafts of recording and writing, even though artistic satisfaction was hard to find and, for some, initial commercial success even harder. Above all, it established the relationships which eventually combined to form 10cc.

To cut a very long and involved story short, 1969 found all four members of the future 10cc working together regularly at Strawberry Studios in Stockport. Gouldman - already a very successful songwriter indeed - was contacted by American bubblegum pop writer-producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz and commissioned to write and produce bubblegum songs. Gouldman agreed, and eventually all this material would be produced at Strawberry Studios over an intensive three month period using Godley, Creme and Stewart as musicians.

Mr & Mr Bubblegum

Gouldman carried on working for Kasenetz-Katz, but came together occasionally with the other three future 10cc members who were continuing to record, produce, engineer and write, and thus gain valuable experience working with other artists, of which more later on in this screed.

However, it was the first album the four of them produced with Neil Sedaka which galvanised them into forming a permanent band.

As Gouldman put it: It was Neil Sedaka's success that did it, I think. We'd just been accepting any job we were offered and were getting really frustrated. We knew that we were worth more than that, but it needed something to prod us into facing that. We were a bit choked to think that we'd done the whole of Neil's first album with him just for flat session fees when we could have been recording our own material.

In fairly short order 10cc was formed and the rest, as they say, is history. Four years of chart success followed for the quartet, and their complex and arty songs performed in a broadly pop style hold up really well, even today. 

In Strawberry Studios

The original foursome fell into two camps - Gouldman and Stewart were very pop orientated, whilst Godley and Creme were more "experimental". Initially, the four managed to reconcile and merge their different musical inclinations, but eventually it became obvious that the inherent dichotomy was irreconcilable, and Godley and Creme quit.

To cut yet another long story short, Godley and Creme went on to score hits of their own and become heavily involved in pop video production. Gouldman and Stewart recruited new members, and had even more success with 10cc until Stewart left to work with some bloke called Paul McCartney, and then go on to record a handful of solo albums. Gouldman still tours 10cc, makes solo recordings and recently joined Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band,

The whole 10cc story deserves far more detail than my treatment of it, but it's complex and goes off at so many tangents. It's certainly a tortured tale that this blog will revisit in the future, but for now I've chosen one very brief but extremely bizarre episode from their past.

Kimberley Barrington Frost was born in 1934 to musical parents. His father was a tenor and his mother played piano to accompany silent movies. He was called up to the Royal Air Force and eventually became a PT instructor. He completed his national service in 1960, and eventually settled to working as a plumber by day and jazz singer by night. In 1968 he claimed to have been visited, whilst driving to a plumbing job, by the spirit of the Pharaoh Ramesses, who told him that he was the pharaoh's earthly reincarnation. He remodeled his Sheffield home in Egyptian style, shaved his head and started dressing in long flowing silk robes, and also persuaded his wife to change her name from Dorothy to Selket, whilst he became Ramases (sic). The couple finally committed to this change of lifestyle by taking up a joint career in music, as commanded by the Pharaoh's spirit.

Walk like an Egyptian...

So, Ramases (band or solo act - who knows?) was formed and this is where the future 10cc comes on the scene.

Needing an outlet for telling the World about the Universe - the ultimate mission according to the Pharaoh - Ramases signed with a couple of labels and released a couple of singles which proceeded to sink without trace.

However, Vertigo Records signed Ramases in 1971 and the new act recorded an album called "Space Hymns" at Strawberry Studios with Godley, Creme, Stewart and Gouldman as backing musicians, arrangers and producers.

Roger Dean was hired to produce what was his most lavish album art to date, with a six panel fold out cover showing Stockport's St George's Church steeple lifting off into space.

We have lift off!

Why a church? Ramases explains: "The rocket ship shape of churches probably dates back to Moses' visit to speak to God on the mountain and what he saw there."  

Right...

As for the music...well, it seems to straddle some sort of largely uncharted territory between trippy psychedelic folk and Hawkwind style space rock. I'm not going to attempt to describe it in any depth, although I'll just say that it sounds very much better than it deserves to, after taking all the reincarnated pharaoh mumbo-jumbo into account. A few tracks have a sort of pop/folk rock vibe which works well with Frost's songs. Indeed, a couple of them wouldn't sound too out of place on an early 10cc album.

Needless to say, "Space Hymns" stiffed - as did a second album cheerily entitled "Glass Top Coffin". This didn't feature anyone from 10cc, but used members of the Royal Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestras instead.

Discouraged by his lack of success, Frost apparently took his own life in 1978, leaving an unreleased album which gained partial release on a six CD box set retrospective, despite reports of his widow's jealous second husband burning Frost's surviving tapes.

Phew!

To hear "Space Hymns" - you know you want to! - just answer the risibly simple question in the comments below.

The King goes reggae

An ART58Koen exclusive for the Hole!

 

In 1972 Elvis Presley was busy preparing rehearsals for his upcoming Vegas shows, but at the same time getting more and more frustrated by Colonel Parker’s rules. 

 

In the very early 70s Presley had heard some of the Marley written tracks sung by Johnny Nash and was intrigued. Unbeknownst to the Colonel, Presley had even contacted Johnny to find out more about this new Jamaican sound. Nash was of course happy to oblige, invited him to come over to Studio One and check it out. And that’s exactly what he did during a break of a few days! 

 

How he managed to travel incognito to Jamaica without the Colonel noticing remains unclear, even the dates of this visit are lost in time, but he did enter the studio and met the musicians! They decided to cut 2 oldies; Crying in the Chapel with The Wailers and In The Ghetto with Sound Dimension. After this 1 day session, Presley had to return to the States as the Colonel was getting very suspicious about his whereabouts. 

 

 

Of course details of Presley’s Jamaican adventure eventually reached the Colonel who went ballistic. He threatened Studio One with massive lawsuits if the 2 songs were released and insisted on the master tapes being delivered to him asap. This duly happened BUT a very small number of 45s had already been pressed and delivered to a few local record shops.

However in classic Jamaican style, there had been some spelling mistakes and the few Elvis Persly records didn’t cause any waves, but instead sank without a trace…

Fast forward to 1998, during a break from teaching I was wandering through the alleys of Bangkok’s Chinatown and out of habit stopped by an old dusty record shop. I browsed through stacks of 45s and started laughing; Elvis Persly?! You gotta be kidding! But for 100 baht I bought it out of curiosity, only to be blown away much later once I learned about the background of this mythological 45…

 

I’ve managed to remove most of the scratches/surface damage and ripped it for the faithful followers of The Good Old Major’s Hole!

 

ART58 Koen will be along in a while to ask you a question should you wish to hear this rare recording...

Age is an issue of mind over matter

It was sad to hear of the recent passing of Savoy Brown's lead guitarist and vocalist Kim Simmonds - the one constant member of the band since its formation in 1965. 

 Kim Simmonds 1947-2022

Although the band never quite reached the heights of John Mayall and Fleetwood Mac in the UK, they were one of the leading lights in the British blues scene of the second half of the 1960s and even managed to find success in the States, although not to the degree that several members achieved when they splintered off to form Foghat in 1970.

As far as listening goes, I always find myself coming back to the pre-Foghat albums, and one in particular, "Blue Matter", which was their third LP release and the first that I bought.

A very groovy cover!

It's a rather "bitty" affair, with one side studio and the other side live tracks (not to mention two credited bass players). Two bass players? Well, the band was never the most stable outfit and "Matter" catches them in a typical state of flux, with shifting personnel.

Faced with an upcoming US tour and needing an album to promote, the band decided to add some live tracks to a handful of studio cuts, and a gig at Leicester's College of Education was chosen for recording. The band played for free in return for being allowed to record there, but this didn't quite pan out the way everyone had hoped. Lead singer Chris Youlden came down with flu or tonsilitis (depending on what you read), lost his voice and was unable to perform.

However, rather than pull out of the gig, the band went ahead and rhythm guitarist "Lonesome" Dave Peverett took over on lead vocals. It's not too much of a reach to suggest that the seeds of Foghat were probably sown at this point.

But first, Blue Matter's studio tracks... 

The album kicks off with what many rank as the band's finest track - "Train to Nowhere". It's a blues, but with just two chords over 16 bars, and way more interesting than that description implies.  Chris Youlden has one of the most distinctive voices of any UK blues singer and he's in fine form here. There's a brass section, but it's composed of five trombones (count 'em!) and this gives a sort of New Orleans sound when they join in with the prominent bass drum. Kim Simmonds adds some tasty lead guitar and the whole thing ends with the rhythm guitar playing a brief snatch of the Bo Diddley rhythm going into the fade out. It's one of the most distinctive tracks to emerge from the British blues scene at that time and more than worthy of the praise it still garners.

"Tolling Bells" is next - a slow minor blues which doesn't even move from the root chord until almost half way through the track, and even then it's not your normal chord progression, although it does go into the usual three chords and 12 bars later on. This features piano from Bob Hall and Kim Simmonds, as well as a subtle solo from the latter that sounds rather Peter Greenish.

Track three is a jazzy swing blues called "She's Got a Ring in his Nose and a Ring on her Hand" which has two great guitar solos from Simmonds - the second of which is played over a walking bass in the coda.

"Vicksburgh Blues" features Youlden's vocal and Hall's piano - no one else plays. It's a straight blues that sounds as if it could have been recorded in a much earlier decade. More New Orleans influence here, with Hall channeling Professor Longhair.

The studio side ends with a driving but respectful interpretation of John Lee Hooker's "Don't Turn me From your Door". Youlden plays some very effective guitar on this gutsy cover and it avoids some of the politeness that Hooker's songs often received from white musicians at the time. 

The Savoy Browns

It's hard to think how the band could have been more diverse when it comes to these five studio tracks. Each one is highly distinctive whilst remaining within the blues form. No one grandstands and everyone plays just what is needed for the song.

And here comes the live side...

I have to admit to being a little underwhelmed by it. At the time, I loved it, with lots of guitar and a long jam, but I eventually found that it doesn't say anything new, as opposed to the studio side, which was varied, thoughtful and innovative - especially "Train to Nowhere". 

A "Lonesome" Dave original starts proceedings but it's a pretty standard slow blues in C and although Simmonds solos well, it's all a bit "meh".

Muddy Waters' "Louisiana Blues" is given an extended treatment and Simmonds gets lots of room to solo, but overall it's disappointing. It probably helped if you were there. And pissed. Or stoned. Or both.

The last live offering is "It Hurts Me Too" - another slow blues. Simmonds' soloing is rather more thoughtful here but, to be frank, he goes on rather too long and takes up most of the track's 8 minutes.

So, an excellent studio side, but a rather lackluster live side - a shame, as side one shows a band very keen to push the blues boundaries a little further than many of their contemporaries.

I referred above to Savoy Brown as not having a very stable line up, and in fact, Simmonds would see 69 musicians pass through the band!

This is where it gets sort of personal as I played in a band, the T-Bone Boogie Band, for several years with one of Savoy Brown's original 1965 members - pianist Trevor Jeavons. He'd long since stopped playing professionally full time and had become a qualified teacher, branching out into art therapy with children, and he's still active in that field as far as I know.

The T-Bones 30 years ago...

Trev was a great player - very knowledgeable about blues and jazz - and blessed with a really zany sense of humour. The T-Bones were the most fun I've ever had playing in a band and the repertoire comprised a real mix of songs - all the way from "Three Little Fishes", "Dr Jazz" and "Red Hot Nuts" and  then through blues, R&B, vaudeville and swing to "Shake Your Money Maker", "Hoochie Coochie Man" and a totally insane version of "Mama Don't Allow". We played for all sorts of audiences, but went down particularly well with bikers. Good times - really good times. I can't remember ever playing a duff gig.

A question to gain your own helping of Blue Matter will appear below in the fullness of time...

Merry Whatever...

If there's one word that epitomises how Christmas is spent here in the good old Major's Hole, it's 'class'.

There are fine beverages from his capacious cellars - the Buckfast 2022 and Thunderbird 2022 are particularly fine vintages - and uncommon victuals from his vast pantry - squirrel fricassee and stuffed badger are our featured festive menu favourites. (All meat guaranteed fresh roadkill)

 

However, it's music in which he really excels and here's some real class tuneage to which you are cordially invited to shake your booty and strut your funky stuff.

First of all, let Frank, Dean and Sammy guide you through some seasonal tunes - some real chestnuts for you here. All the great Rat Pack Christmas melodies are present and correct for your listening pleasure. 

 

For those groovy cats of a more beatnik nature, there's also some sophisticated Yuletide jazz music - with Miles, Duke and many others making sure your evening starts off hip and just keeps on getting hipper.

 

Whether you're desirous of cutting a rug or just sacking out in front of the one bar electric fire here, there's plenty of class music for you to enjoy. So, just spin these hot platters on your Victrola and Christmas will be copacetic!

 

No question this time - links will be posted later!

Plug It In or Plug It Out?

ART58Koen's latest screed for your delight and delectation...

 

For most of you probably the concept of unplugged songs began on TV with MTV in 1989, but for me it started earlier…

In the late 80s living in Thailand, I was desperate for music info and depended on friends/acquaintances to bring me copies of the Dutch music magazine OOR and through those I learned about something new - a radio program called 2 Meter Sessies, as the first CD of those recordings was advertised there. The next time my parents came over to visit, they’d brought Volumes 1 & 2, which quickly became my favorite CDs for quite a while.

 

The show was conceived in 1987 by Dutch radio presenter Jan Douwe Kroeske when, on his popular national radio show, he persuaded the New Zealand band Crowded House to play a short set of their popular songs. The response of the public was so great, that 2 Meter Sessions quickly became a household name in The Netherlands. Almost a million 2 Meter Sessions CDs were sold in the Netherlands.
 

In 1993, the show made a successful transition from radio to television, quickly becoming a nationwide phenomenon. The TV edition of 2 Meter Sessions aired for over 10 years, with video sessions of new talent, breakthrough acts, and arrived career artists. The show made several comebacks on national television, the most recent one in 2020 by filming with Dutch acts to help them reach an audience during the pandemic.  

 

 

More background info: https://2metersessions.com/ & https://www.youtube.com/@2metersessies

 

Over the years I managed to collect most of their CDs, by now there are 11 volumes plus various collections, CD singles, samplers, etc. Artists - both international as well as Dutch - dropping by for a 2 Meter session incl. Nirvana (1991), Radiohead (1995), Foo Fighters (1999), Counting Crows (1997 + 1999), Coldplay (2000), James Taylor (1994), Ben Howard (2011), James Vincent McMorrow (2013). And more recent: DMA’S (2020), Marlon Williams (2022), and Cate Le Bon (2022).

 

I must admit that by now my enthusiasm has declined a bit for the series, but there are some excellent performances among those sessions.

Answer ART58Koen's question below and win yourself a swell prize!

Let the atoms collide!

I recently read an article which described Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters as one of rock’s “elder statesmen”. 

Now, as much as I like the guy and his early albums with the Foos, I don’t think he really qualifies as such - not yet, at least - although I know a man who does…

 

...Lenny Kaye.

 

Best known for his association with Patti Smith and, in particular, her iconic “Horses” album, Kaye has had a long and varied musical career, also playing with REM, Jim Carroll, Eugene Chadbourne, and The Fleshtones, as well as producing Suzanne Vega, Soul Asylum and James.

However, it’s his many other music-related pursuits which really mark him as a significant figure in rock history - an elder statesman, if you like.  The thing is, he’s not just a musician, he’s also a music fan - a rabid one. Reading about him, I've come to the conclusion that he's just as interested, enthusiastic and caring about other people's music as he is about his own - possibly more so. This is what I think sets him apart from a lot of other musicians - the music comes before the ego. What’s more, he’s also a writer: a good one.

He’s worked in record shops, including Bleecker Bob's Golden Oldies, been an avid record collector, written reviews for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Creem and Melody Maker, worked as co-editor of Rock Scene magazine, and also compiled the original “Nuggets” double album. This last achievement was the result of a direct approach by Elektra label founder Jac Holzman, and just shows in what high regard Kaye was held by the music business at the time. "Nuggets" is one of the most successful and seminal retrospective anthologies of all time, and whilst there have been many expanded reissues, imitations and cash ins, the original double album is an almost perfect introduction to psychedelic music.

 

"Those records belonged to a lost underground until Lenny Kaye compiled Nuggets,” says Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie. “He kept that music alive and ensured it would be passed on."

 

And all this whilst he was building a musical career that would cement his leading role in the 1970s New York punk rock scene…

 

Not that Kaye has kept his sights trained exclusively on rock. He’s co-authored books about Waylon Jennings and also 1930s crooners and this particular way of expressing his love for music brings us to his latest book, “Lightning Striking”.

 

Taking ten “transformative moments" in rock and roll from the the early 1950s to the early 1990s, Kaye doesn’t chronicle musical history per se. Instead, he takes each of his chosen moments and expands on it. So, for example, the inevitable coverage of the Beatles embraces Lonnie Donegan, Joe Meek and Rory Storm, amongst others, often tend to get overshadowed by the main protagonists and ignored in other writers' accounts, but serve to provide context and perspective in Kaye’s.

However, this is also Kaye’s own, often personal, story and some of the locations and events of the ten pivotal moments are observed and described by an author who was often there. When he’s not actually been present, he’s ready to go off at a tangent if he thinks it’s illuminating or informative in some way.

Kaye’s style is somewhat idiosyncratic and, at times, it’s hard to keep up with the sheer mass of references, allusions and sudden sidetracks. However, I got used to it and eventually this almost stream of consciousness approach just becomes part of Kaye’s unique delivery.

 

Of course, it’s helpful to have some idea of what the music Kaye discusses sounds like, so he’s compiled a double album to accompany the book.

 

 

What’s especially good is that many of the more obscure key tracks he mentions are included so you can hear what he’s writing about. There are also more familiar tracks and these have been carefully selected for this 48 track set. As a standalone audio primer of rock music, it fails. However, as an adjunct to the book, it works very well indeed, and also stands as a worthy, if very eclectic, even eccentric, compilation in its own right.

 

I'll leave it to Kaye to have the last word...

"...music is a way to transport yourself. If you listen to classic blues singers like Charley Patton or Robert Johnson in the right headspace, you can almost live it, because it sends you right back there to the corner of some San Antonio hotel room with the noise coming in from outside on the street. You can close your eyes and hear the atoms colliding.”

Well, I'll be Crammed!

Another guest post from ART58Koen - something very different this time...

Somewhere in the mid 1990s I received a pretty unusual CD from my Belgian friends: ‘The World According To Crammed’.

It turned out to be a cheapo CD sampler from Crammed Discs, a Belgian independent record label established by Marc Hollander in 1981.

 
This little disc exposed me to lots of new music, at times not that easy to listen to, but most of the time certainly intriguing. Musically it went all over the place, from jazz to Americana to experimental to dance to African and more, but that was part of the fun. Artists include Bel Canto, John Lurie, Zap Mama, Tuxedomoon, Hector Zazou, Taraf De Haidouks…

Pioneers of Romani music

Based in Brussels and resolutely cosmopolitan-minded, the label has kept reinventing itself, and has been constantly coming up with new blends, mixing elements of rock, world music, pop and electronica ever since its inception in the early '80s, often anticipating the musical movements which bloomed during the next three decades.
Although Crammed puts out records by artists from the four corners of the planet (from the Balkans to Africa, South America and the Middle East, as well as from Western Europe and the USA), the label doesn't see itself as a "world music label": it just happens to enjoy working with artists from around the world, some of whom sing in languages other than English…
Crammed's sub-labels have included the Made To Measure composers' series, world music collection Cramworld, electronic music imprints SSR, Language & Selector, and Ziriguiboom, a collection devoted to new Brazilian music. Nowadays, Crammed would like to believe that borders between genres are no longer indispensable, so most releases tend to come out under the simple "Crammed" banner. 

 25 Years Crammed Into 7 Minutes (Crammed from 1980 to 2004)

In 2007 Crammed issued another sampler with the wonderful title ’20 Ways To Float Through Walls’ which turned out to be even more eclectic and adventurous with such artists as DJ Dolores, Cibelle Feat. Devendra Banhart, Sussan Deyhim & Bill Laswell, Flat Earth Society, Konono N°1… 

Flat Earth Society

This silver platter too is the aural equivalent of high-quality ganja and might result in out-of-body experiences. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Both samplers are no longer available from Crammed and therefore I ripped them for your listening pleasure and education…

Just scroll down to the comments below, answer ART58Koen's question, and these specially ripped albums could be yours! 

Simple pleasures

There's a lot of food I like... 

...but, if pressed, I'd have to say that good bread with good cheese (and boy is the bread and cheese good here in France!) takes some beating.

And so it goes with my tastes in music - I like the complicated stuff, but sometimes it just has to be simple fare.

So, here's Mike Henderson and the Bluebloods live on "Later with Jools Holland" on BBC TV from 1997. Henderson's on slide guitar and vocals, Glen Worf on bass, Reese Wynans on keys and John Gardner on drums. OK, it's a blues with those same old 12 bars and those same three chords, but it's all down to how you play it, and they really play the crap out of it. 

Later With Jools Holland - BBC TV - 1997

Henderson's an interesting guy.

Starting off in various blues bands, the last of which - The Snakes - strayed into hard rock territory, he moved on to become a staff writer for EMI after one of his songs for The Snakes got picked up for the film "Cocktail" with Tiny Tom Cruise. Along with some success writing for acts like the Dixie Chicks and Trisha Yearwood, he also picked up a lot of session work, playing guitar, mandolin and harmonica for Emmylou Harris and John Hiatt, amongst others.

Eventually, he got signed to RCA and cut an album, "Country Music Made Me Do It", that I can only describe as "radio-friendly Country" . It's OK and Henderson's guitar playing is impressive, but there's nothing that really stands out about the whole venture.

After being dropped by RCA, Henderson formed his own record company and released an album, "Edge of Night". It was in a similar vein to his debut, apart from the first track, "Wouldn't Lay My Guitar Down". This was a slide-driven up tempo blues track - rather at odds with the rest of the album - but it hinted at good things to come. 

Along with bass player Glen Worf and drummer John Gardner from the "Edge" sessions, Henderson hooked up with  keyboard player Reese Wynans, of  Stevie Ray Vaughan fame, and formed a blues band - Mike Henderson and the Bluebloods. So now it was back to the blues.

Henderson with trusty Silvertone

The Bluebloods cut three albums - all of which contain a mixture of blues covers and originals played with a freshness and vigour that lifts them out of the "let's form a blues band" rut. Their last album was recorded with a different line up and I have to express a preference for the first two Bluebloods albums recorded with Worf and Gardner, who really drive the whole band along. Gardner's drumming, in particular, can't be praised highly enough. When it comes to providing the power in the engine room, he's up there with the late Charlie Watts - especially with his snare work. He really is that good. The band's style is very much 1950s Chicago, with plenty of emphasis on a very rootsy feel. Henderson's guitar playing and vocals are suitably rough and ready and he blows a mean harp on occasion.

Somehow, amongst all this blues-based activity, he also found time for another band, The Dead Reckoners. They were very much country rock, although not as obviously commercial compared to his earlier forays into the genre.

Henderson on tour with Knopfler

Probably through longtime Mark Knopfler sidesman and ex-Blueblood GlenWorf, Henderson then toured in the ex-Dire Straits leader's band, following which he was one of the founding members of the very successful bluegrass band, The Steeldrivers, leaving in 2011. Since then, he's continued to gig and write, scoring a Country Music Association award in 2019 for the song "Broken Halos" written with Chris Stapleton, who was also in the Spikedrivers. Another CMA award followed in 2021 for "Starting Over".

So, that's blues, blues rock, country, blues again, country again, bluegrass and then country yet again, but it's Henderson's blues albums that really do it for me - no nonsense basic blues. 

Sometimes that's all you need to have a good time.

Havin' a riot with Sly and Babs

Another post from Babs - hi Babs! - and a look at a neglected masterpiece from "the founder of progressive soul" (Crawdaddy magazine)...

On November 1, 1971, Sly and the Family Stone released ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On’.  It was an album of dark funk that was a significant departure from the sunny disposition of the band’s earlier recordings.  Gone was the optimism to be replaced by pessimism.  And in the place of Sly’s extravagant showmanship and energy was the shell of a man who had retreated into his own world.  Many music critics and 60s revisionists, site the tired and done to death, ‘end of the hippy dream’ bullshit, brought on by the alleged breakdown of the civil rights movement, of Richard Nixon, of Altamont being the end of the 60s, of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and of Vietnam.  But the truth is Sly was a strung out from smoking angel dust (PCP), and mountains of cocaine.  The isolation, paranoia and bloodshot eyes are prevalent all over the record.  If there’s ever a song that warns you about the adverse effects of sustained cocaine use it is ‘Spaced Cowboy’, the track captures the sound of 4am delirium almost perfectly.

A few years earlier, Sly and the Family Stone were an interracial ‘family’ embodying all that was good about the hippy dreams of the Age of Aquarius.  They were an R&B band who embraced psychedelia, rock, and a band who couldn’t be anything but political just by virtue of their being.  They who wrote subtly brilliant political songs and got the party started with it.  You can make it if you try, they sang: black and white, boy and girl, rock and funk.  They were Everyday People. America loved them.

When Sly Stone was asked, “Who is family, in the Family Stone?”, he’d give a knowing smile and say, “We all are”. Sly and the Family Stone consisted of Sly Stone on vocals, organ, guitar, piano, harmonica, and vocoder, Fred Stewart on guitar and vocals, Larry Graham Jr. on bass and vocals, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet and vocals, Greg Errico on drums, Jerry Martini on saxophone, and Rosie Stone on piano.

On Sunday, August 17, 1969, at 3.30am Sly and The Family Stone took the stage at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair Festival, their lives and careers changed forever.  Almost knee-deep in mud and worn low by the ravages of a weekend of intoxicants and little sleep, the crowd was revitalized by the surging, infectious performance the band gave—a lengthy, exultant “I Want To Take You Higher” lit the fuse, and the band never looked back.

But everyone loves to hear of the fall rather than the rise, so here’s the question: how, after just five years, did Sylvester ‘Sly’ Stone find himself holed up in a secret studio behind a bookcase, strung out on cocaine, PCP and more, muttering into a mic, fiddling with a simple little drum machine, slowly piecing together a load of seemingly half-finished, unstructured songs with the Family Stone almost nowhere to be seen?  And how – and this is the amazing part – and just how is the resultant muddle one of the most beguiling masterpieces pressed to wax?

As the dawn of the new decade arrived, of the 80 concerts his band had been scheduled to play in 1970, Sly had missed 26 of them.  His increasing unreliability and drug induced erratic behavior had understandably created divisions within the band.  And these circumstances only worsened when he left San Francisco for Los Angeles.

Recording sessions for There’s a Riot Goin’ On didn’t take place as soon as the record company wanted—they put out the greatest hits album in 1970 while they waited impatiently for new material.  Sly moved into an in a $12,000-per-month Bel Air mansion owned by John Phillips, from the Mamas And The Papas.  It had a secret studio behind that bookcase, details of the recording are hazy at best.  Most of it was done alone by Sly, or members of the band recording single overdubs – despite the track, this is no Family Affair.

“There was nothing but girls and coke everywhere,” Miles Davis remembered in his autobiography. “I told him I couldn’t do nothing with him. Then I told Columbia I couldn’t make him record any quicker. We snorted some coke together and that was it.” Miles wasn’t the only star to show up at Sly’s door, though. With the majority of his band left behind in San Francisco, apart from trumpeter Cynthia Robinson and saxophonist Jerry Martini who moved in with him, the sessions took on a free form structure.  The likes of Bobby Womack and Billy Preston helped Sly record whenever the mood took him.  They were usually the only ones left around. Band members flew over intermittently to record their various different parts.  But these contributions were often just recorded over by Sly, which gave the album its distinctly worn sound.

And then there were the internal band tensions that had been present since almost day one. Larry Graham and Sly tussled numerous times as the former challenged Stone’s authority. There were also rumors of Graham having affairs with Rose (Sly’s sister) and Sharon (Sly’s brother Freddie’s wife)—hardly a cocktail for healthy relationships and dynamic musical brotherhood.  The upshot of all that was that Graham barely appeared on There’s a Riot Goin’ On, instead bass parts were played by either Stone himself or Rustee Alan who was more in line with James Jamerson’s (uncredited bassist on most of the Motown Records hits in the 1960s and early 1970s) luxuriously smooth bass playing than Graham’s slap bass techniques that had contributed so memorably to the song 'Stand'’s success.

With the group essentially disbanded, and a host of big names acting as Sly’s own personal backing, he needed to get creative with his song arrangements.  The drummer, Greg Errico, had quit part way through the Riot sessions, which led the frontman down an entirely new avenue of instrumentation.  Utilizing the new Maestro Rhythm King drum machine, Sly found a key component of his new sound.  The Maestro Rhythm King MRK2 had preset patterns that he would use in a new, exciting way.  Greg Errico in an interview said grudgingly, “The machine was a lounge instrument that the guy at the bar at the Holiday Inn might have used.  Sly took the ticky-tacky, which started on the ‘tick’, and he inverted it, turned it inside out, into something the ear wasn’t used to.  He took the texture and created a rhythm with it that made it very interesting.”

The music on Riot is funky, very funky, but it is of a totally different ilk to the funk others offered.  Take James Brown’s work of the time with his new lineup that included Bootsy and Catfish Collins.  Their brand of funk was expansive, punchy and danceable.  Here the funk is wearing a straitjacket—the movements it provokes are limited in scope and scale, instead the neck bears the brunt of the groove. It’s lonely, claustrophobic, woozy, dirty, sleep-deprived, anxious and strung out 4am funk.

‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On’ is not an easy listen. However, with repeated listening, it’s easy to see why it turns up regularly on so many ‘greatest ever’ lists.

Babs will be along shortly to ask you a penetrating question and frisk you for any illegal drugs - we're running low on them here in the Hole...

The night I popped my cherry...

 ...at Bedford Corn Exchange.

 

Although I was born in Derby, I spent most of my childhood and then adolescence in a town called Bletchley, about 50 miles north of London, in the very north of the county of Buckinghamshire.

With the advent of the railways and then the establishment of the brickworks in the 19th century, Bletchley had grown from a village into a small town, and it expanded even further after the Second World War, when it eventually became a designated London overspill area, with businesses relocating there into new premises, and lots of houses needing to be built for the workers.

So it was to Bletchley that we went to live in the mid 1950s - a nondescript place, with a cinema, a dance hall, a swimming pool, a small shopping centre and, very quickly, swathes of new housing estates which sprawled haphazardly over what used to be farmland. The whole Bletchley area and lots of other nearby towns and villages would eventually be absorbed into the new city of Milton Keynes - population currently about 270 000.

 

Bletchley town centre c1965

 

Ask anyone what they know about Bletchley and you might get a few people citing the top secret WWII cypher centre in Bletchley Park. This was where the German Enigma code was cracked - a success which was pivotal in the struggle for the eventual Allied victory. You might also get someone telling you that it’s the home of the world famous Marshall Amplification factory - an interesting story in itself, but one for another day, perhaps.

As a teenager, recently bitten by the music and guitar bug, there was a burgeoning local music scene to explore, but if you wanted to see more “famous” bands, you had to travel a little further afield, in spite of the local dance hall occasionally putting on some well known acts - including the Stones in 1964. I was 14 when I first started going to gigs but I’d never have been allowed to go to a local one at the hall.

Fortunately, a local coach (bus) company began to put on trips to venues in other towns. They advertised in the local paper and listed forthcoming gigs, quoting a price which included coach fare and gig ticket.

For some reason, it was OK with my parents for me to go to a gig out of town on the coach. I guess they thought as it was “organised”, it was safe. Looking back, I'm amazed that they let a 14 year old kid go to see a band in a town about 20 miles away.

But they did!

Anyway, on September 10th 1966, I found myself on a coach with some of my school friends on the way to my first big gig - The Who at Bedford Corn Exchange!

 

 Bedford Corn Exchange

 

Corn Exchanges were built in many large towns in the 19th century as places in which to buy and sell grain of all sorts. The  one at Bedford was quite large, having also been planned to serve the town as a concert hall and community centre. I’d actually played there myself when I was younger - about 8 - as part of a recorder ensemble at a schools music festival.

To put this Who gig into context, they’d only made one album, “My Generation” up to then and “I’m a Boy” was at number one in the Melody Maker chart (but only number two in the nationals).  So, this was pretty much a “small” gig, but with the band charting regularly and poised to tip over into the big time. Indeed, they'd soon cut their UK tour short and head off to the States.

 

 Promo film for "I'm a Boy"

 

The gig itself? A bit of a blur, to be frank - this was 56 years ago, after all. However, a few memories remain…

First of all, the crush of the crowd - my first experience of anything like that. Then there was the volume - twin Marshall stacks (about to be made in my home town a year later!) at full chat. I’d never heard anything so loud. 

 

The Who at the Pier Pavilion, Felixstowe, Suffolk - just two days before I saw them! 

 

Of course, being a budding guitarist, my attention was mostly trained on Pete Townsend and there was also the expectation of a guitar being smashed, of course. Towards the end of the gig, a roadie appeared on stage, took Townshend’s Rickenbacker off him and handed him another. Townshend flipped it over and you could see that the back was broken and held together with Meccano strips. He stuck his finger through one of the gaps in the wood and was rewarded with a high pitched farting noise which was absolutely deafening. 

 

Meccano - very similar to the US Erector construction toy  

 

Whatever he was doing didn’t seem to matter much one way or the other, as the band almost immediately crashed into “My Generation”. Inevitably, and to the crowd's delight, the Rick got smashed and I doubt a spare “sacrificial” guitar for the next gig could have been salvaged very easily from what was left. 

 

Did they play well? I honestly can't remember and would it really have mattered if they hadn't? It was all about just being there,,,the music, the crowd, the volume and the sheer spectacle of it all!

So, that was it. My first big gig. A great one to start with, and the first of many, but the few memories which are left of the Who at Bedford Corn Exchange are amongst the most precious.

 

As for the Who, I lost interest in them as an album band with "Tommy", although I liked many of their subsequent singles. And Pete Townshend? If ever there's someone who should have taken Zappa's advice to "Shut up 'n' play yer guitar", it's Pete.

 

Of course, there's going to be a question in the comments below - but it's a very obvious and very easy one!