TRIBUTE BANDS

   “SNOB”, usually directed at me by my friends, hopefully in a loving fashion. I’m the guy who will rate your record collection by searching out the “Donny Most’s Greatest Hits” at a party and proudly hold it up for everyone to see while announcing, “A true collector’s item, this guy has eclectic taste, a Donny Most album, now how many of you guys have this rarity?” I also judge your concert attendance, “Fuck The Doobie Brothers, they ain’t brothers and where’s JEFF “Skunk” Baxter, TIRAN PORTER?” “Who are these NEW brothers?”.

   A few months ago I posted my rant about BLOOD SWEAT and TEARS answering the question of a friend with tickets who tried to

entice me/my bride to attend the show with them.  I didn’t have the heart to tell them their evening would be a “Night of Blood, Sweat & Tears” music played by guys who were probably not born when the first/second album hit the stands as BS&T has no “original” members.

   Then, the pandemic…

   It has been a long time between shows, my last being March of 2020. Over 700 documented shows with countless bands from 1965 to 2020. I know what I liked but now, it has been far too long. So, to all my “friends” I beg forgiveness, call me, please, I will go see the “tribute band in full costume” you so like. I’d even say “yes” to the American Floyd band doing THE WALL, shit, I’m in for “1964: THE TRIBUTE”, should I wear my Ringo jacket?Please, call…

to be continued…

ON THE TURNTABLE- Best of 1969

ON THE TURNTABLE -1969:

Putting out my BEST OF for this past year made me nostalgic in a way. So I dug out some listings from yesteryear and over the next few weeks I’ll post a few.My brother and I actual compiled lists of our favorite records but this listing is from most of the records I bought that year, in no particular order or preference.

It’s 1969 and my record collection was growing in leaps and bounds. Seems like the more money I had the more records I bought. However, my stereo was not what one would expect of a serious record collector.  I was using an old split speaker (in a case) record player propped up on my desk. But hey, the sucker did the job. That and my portable single speaker cassette player tucked along side my portable PANASONIC AM/FM stereo radio made up my “sound system”. I also had an AM/FM radio bedside. A friend had a huge stereo unit, one with humongous speakers,a turntable with a “stylus” no less, but alas he had virtually no records, always borrowing mine.

Records In My Rotation throughout that year included:

The debut album from LED ZEPPELIN “Led Zeppelin”, I bought this early on in the year after a recommendation from my work buddy, Pete, who saw this “unknown” band open for IRON BUTTERFLY. This album was amazing and it took me a few days to realize that this JIMMY PAGE was the same JIMMY PAGE from THE YARDBIRDS. Later, in the year after its release and after seeing the band live twice I copped LED ZEPPELIN II. Geez, these recordings were unique, and the band was …WOW.

THE BEATLES “Abbey Road” was and still is a hard listen for me, yet when it first was released I played it continuously, usually picking out a song or two before moving on to some other record .It was probably the Harrison tunes that I liked the most.

THE WHO “Tommy” is another difficult record to listen to all the way through, but that year I did see the band perform “Tommy” in its entirety twice, and I must say, live WHO was better than any record.

KING CRIMSON’S “In The Court Of The Crimson King”was/is a great record, one that for its time was truly original. This band blew me away when I saw them in the fall of 69, opening for FLEETWOOD MAC and JOE COCKER. After their 34 minute set, I bought the album the next payday. Speaking of FLEETWOOD MAC “Then Play On”( their 3rd album) drew me to see them live and I became a PETER GREEN fan that night. This collection showed the originals of the name sake take their blues influenced and mostly refurbished recordings a step further. I must have recited the opening of  “Oh, Well-Part 1” a million times to friends, to the point where I was annoying. I still am, say some. And JOE COCKER’s “With A Little Help From My Friends” which I grabbed in the early summer after hearing some of his tunes on the radio and before seeing him and THE GREASE BAND open for The AIRPLANE at FILLMORE EAST was a goodie, but again, live he was a trip.

Also, there was NEIL YOUNG’s masterpiece “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, along with FRANK ZAPPA’s “Hot Rats” which help change my musical perspective and soon led me to CAPTAIN BEEFHEART  “Trout Mask Replica”.

Two debuts, one from CROSBY, STILLS AND NASH, a summer hit and Blind Faith’s one and only official release, which I thought was a mess, as was their show at MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. “Nashville Skyline” by BOB DYLAN was a pleasant surprise, even my POP liked it, well, it had JOHNNY CASH on it.THE FLYING BURRITO BROS “Gilded Palace of Sin” was a good pick up and  ISAAC HAYES’ “Hot Buttered Soul” arrived unannounced when I did not respond in time to a record company selection deadline but boy was I glad I got that gem. CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY’s debut double set before they shortened their name to CHICAGO, and coincidentally was the only record I ever bought by them. JETHRO TULL’s “Stand Up” was a mainstay on the turntable along with the profane MC5’s “Kick Out The Jams” which was played on minimal volume as not to upset the parents. And then there was the profanity nestled in JEFFERSON AIRPLANE’s “Volunteers” another record which kept a low profile when played.

I practiced my drums listening to  THE GRATEFUL DEAD’s “Live Dead” but was not enthused with The DOORS “Soft Parade”, and

PINK FLOYD’s Ummagumma was, well, just listen to “Careful With That Axe ,Eugene” and wonder why my Mom would yell, “What is that? Please, no more.” She didn’t particularly enjoy THE STOOGES “The Stooges”, either, no matter how many times I played it. Speaking of Mom’s taste, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND “The Velvet Underground” was more to her liking as was THE KINKS “Arthur”.

JOHN MAYALL’s “Turning Point” was bought the same day as PHAROAH SANDER’s “Karma”, late 1969. Both late night incense burning albums.

and of course, THE ROLLING STONES Beggar’s Banquet which never left my turntable and the follow-up release Let It Bleed (see blog Oct. 20, 2018)

PROCUL HARUM’s “A Salty Dog” which was actually my kid brother’s record found it’s way into my room many a night, along with his SLY and The FAMILY STONE’s “Stand” and JANIS JOPLIN’s “I Got Dem Ole Kosmic Blues Again Mama” but not any of his CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL or his “Odessa” by THE BEE GEES. Just the red felt cover on that one turned my stomach.

ON THE TURNTABLE: And the year is…1969

1969: Records in  heavy rotation in my bedroom included the debut album from Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, THE BEATLES Abbey Road (which is a hard listen for me-sorry Beatles fans), THE WHO Tommy (another difficult record to listen to all the way through), KING CRIMSON’S In The Court Of The Crimson King a great record,one that for its time was truly unique, THE ROLLING STONES Beggar’s Banquet which never left my turntable and the follow-up release Let It Bleed, NEIL YOUNG’s masterpiece Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, ZAPPA’s Hot Rats which help change my musical perspective, FLEETWOOD MAC’s Then Play On, CSN debut, Blind Faith’s one and only official release which is also a very strange record, Nashville Skyline by BOB DYLAN, The MC5’s Kick Out The Jams, Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul which arrived unexpectedly when I did not respond in time to a record company selection deadline and glad I got this gem,Chicago Transit Authority double set before they shortened their name to CHICAGO,  Jethro Tull’s Stand Up, Live Dead, The DOORS Soft Parade, PINK FLOYD’s Ummagumma, Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers, and PROCOL HARUM’s A Salty Dog which was actually my brothers record.

TICKETS TORN IN HALF:August 30,1975- DAVID BROMBERG/JANIS IAN/ERIC ANDERSON @Wollman Rink

TICKETS TORN IN HALF Aug 30,1975: DAVID BROMBERG/JANIS IAN/ERIC ANDERSON @Wollman Rink,Central Park This was an outstanding bill and a great show overall with DAVID BROMBERG playing his ass off.Funny as hell, too. This was David’s finest band and they shined with Mr. Bojangles, Will Not BeYour Fool, Send Me To The “Lectric Chair, Statesboro Blues,I Like To Sleep Late In The Morning,Geez, all good.

As we celebrate the 100th birth date of Leonard Bernstein, it should be noted that JANIS IAN’s first hit “Society’s Child” was written when she was 14 years old. It was recorded in 1965 and was released 3 separate times. It became a smash hit only after Leonard Bernstein introduced it on his television special “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution” and finally entered the charts in June of 67.Thanks LB. In 1975, at the time of this show Janis Ian had her second hit “At Seventeen”. During the interim she had written and recorded many other songs, all to my brother’s liking. He had most everything she recorded.

ERIC ANDERSON was a Sixties folkie which in 1975 became known as a singer/songwriter. He had toured and made a splash in the press when he toured Canada with The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin,and The Band on their famous railroad tour.

ROCK’S IN MY HEAD: Chapter 17-BIGGER THAN JESUS

Tags

CarnabyStreet, JohnSebastian, Lovin'Spoonful, REVOLVER, TaylorLaw, WOR-FM

John Lennon’s statement that The Beatles were “bigger than Jesus” caused quite an uproar with some radio stations refusing to play Beatles records. Living in liberal New York the noise of Anti-Beatledom was minimal, basically non-existent. As liberal as the politics of my home state might be, the radio stations were quite conservative, only playing the “hits” that had been tested in the minor markets. NY Radio would wait until others lesser known band’s song became a hit across the country before giving it a shot on the air. But not with The Fab 4 who seemed bigger than ever. The Beatles still had the instant hits.

REVOLVER was my most played album of 1966, and TAXMAN was a favorite song of mine from that collection, what a great opening tune. Years later I found that that song written as such still needed a hook during the recording process. Someone suggested, after watching an episode of the TV program BATMAN, that THE BEATLES replicate the BATMAN theme chant into TAX MAN. Hence, BATMAN became TAXMAN.

While the political innuendo of TAXMAN was not missed by me, ELENOR RIGBY did nothing for me. I later learned that not one Beatle played an instrument on that tune so that reason alone might subconsciously be why I didn’t care for it one bit. REVOLVER was the last album issued by Capitol with an altered playing order, that is one different from it’s UK counter part. In January of 1967 THE BEATLES had a new contract, one which specified Capitol records could no longer alter the tracks or the running order or remove tracks from Beatle approved albums. Just in time too, as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band could have been quite different if Capitol Records USA had still had control over songs, sequence, etc.

The fashion of 1966 was basically CARNABY STREET and with that style came the introduction of the “mini skirt”. Imagine being a 14 year old boy in high school at a time where girls were required to wear skirts in school. Then the mini skirt arrives. “Thank you, Lord” our prayers were answered. Keeping ’66 in mind, that same year Pampers were introduced and the Dow Jones year end average was 785. And of course October of 66, THE MONKEES debuted on TV, an ersatz Beatle-esk band, which caught on with the teeny boppers, as we were then referred as.

 

To recap the year, January 1, 1966 started off with the New York City Transit Strike, a 12 day event pairing a fiery Mike Quill the NYTA union leader against the newly installed Mayor John Lindsey. Lindsey was no match for the tough Irish union leader. The Transit workers received a 15% raise and The TAYLOR LAW was enacted the next year.

In July, MUHAMMED ALI once known as CASSIUS CLAY declares himself a CO, a “Conscientious Objector”. This brought more attention to the VIETNAM War and to the opposition to this “undeclared” war. I started to pay more attention to radio news reports. According to FCC regulations at the time, each radio station MUST present the news “on the hour” with updates “on the half hour”. The 6 PM and 11PM television evening news were quite visual in its coverage of the carnage in Vietnam, actually upsettingly so. In September the long running whitbread television program THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE AND HARRIET ended.

NEWSWEEK had a featured article in its December edition about BE-INS, as in Human “Be-ings”,  that were  called “happenings” in major cities, San Francisco being one such city. The author referenced the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE as “the most popular of groups”. This was duly noted in my brain.

The USA had 500,000 troops in Vietnam, NASA’s Gemini 10 left “Earth for 3 days in space”, cigarettes were required to carry a health warning on the side package, and Richard Speck killed 8 nurses in Chicago which the news of this scared the bejesus out of me. Speck was outdone a few months later by Charles Wittman who killed 14 and injured 31 by shooting from a tower at the University of Texas to the crowd below. Mass murders, Vietnam, all too much bloodshed on the news and in print.

We had sit-ins, be-ins, teach-ins and the popular films were THUNDERBOLT, DR. ZHIVAGO, and A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. I was 14 closing in on 15 and my world was changing around me, rapidly.

For me in 1966 The LOVIN’ SPOONFUL was a band I most desired to see, I even bought a vest and a yellow shirt because I saw John Sebastian wearing one on an album cover. At one point I almost wished my eye sight would fade a bit so if I needed glasses I could get a pair like Sebastian’s.

Those big band albums from Columbia record club that my dad had, and the little kid 45’ records that my brother and I had soon met their shelf mates including: 96 Tears, Summer In The City, Good Lovin’, Paperback Writer, 19th Nervous Breakdown and Gloria (Shadows of Night). The album collection expanded as well adding Revolver, Pet Sounds, Blonde on Blonde, High Tides and Green Grass: Big Hits, Fresh Cream, Love, Animalism, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Buffalo Springfield and of course the debut by The Monkees. That Monkees  phenomena was a story unto itself.

And then there was the beginning of rock music on FM radio in NY, WOR-FM, August of 66. I needed, I wanted an AM/FM radio.

See you next time….Chapter18: AND THE JUKEBOX KEPT ON PLAYING… . Comments? jazzbus@gmail.com

Vinyl Siding

Years ago I was a vinyl junkie that being an obsessive collector of vinyl recordings. The first record I ever bought was a single 45 rpm back in the late 1950’s. Played that sucker to death on a sonically deficient record player, you know the kind that had one tiny built in speaker. The resembled a small suitcase.  Dad had” The victrola” as he called it, which was off limits.  Oh well, I digress again.

The 45 rpm recording led me to my first long player (lp) JOEY DEE AND THE STARLIGHTERS-LIVE which was proudly placed on the shelving storing my father’s Big Band and blues collection , a total of about 15 records mostly purchased by him from the COLUMBIA RECORD CLUB.

With just my one lonely record sitting on that shelf, Joey Dee next to Dad’s Big Joe Turner and The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, there was plenty of room for more. And then it happened. Over time there were thousands.

Awhile back I wrote about my first obsession with vinyl recording and my collection’s ultimate demise due to a hurricane. An execution by water it was. Thousands of records had fallen from their perches, totally soaked in water, the cardboard falling off, and mold on the label-less vinyl. With tears streaming down my face all were black bagged and tossed out. Only a few could be saved or preserved. And my space had to be professionally de-molded. I was reluctant to ever collect again, hey we had the “cloud” to store stuff, so why not go digital. “It’s a new dawn”, as Grace Slick stated.

But….recently, October exactly,  I am back (obsessively) collecting vinyl, my renaissance so to speak. Since the first “newbie” arrived by mail my collection has grown substantially to the point where even the mailman or Fed Ex guy shakes his head while making the almost daily deliveries. I even got one on a Sunday which in a way is sacrilegious I believe. Anyway here they are:

New Discs: mostly180 grams(plus), some colored vinyl, others picture discs, many collectables.

Gregg Allman:SOUTHERN BLOOD (pic disc)

The Baseball Project: PART 2

The Beatles: SGT PEPPERS (pic disc)(still shrink wrapped)

The Beatles: SGT PEPPERS

The Beatles: REVOLVER

Tommy Bolin: ENERGY

David Bowie: LOW

David Bowie: HEROES

David Bowie: LODGER

David Byrne: AMERICAN UTOPIA

Dave Brubeck: TIME OUT

Jeff Buckley: LIVE AT SIN-E’ (4lp set)

John Coltrane: BLUE TRAIN (color vinyl)

The Dream Syndicate: LIVE AT RAJI’S

Flamin’ Groovies:GREASE (color vinyl)

(Rory Gallagher) Taste: LIVE AT ISLE OF WIGHT

Jeff Lynne’s ELO: LIVE AT WEMBLEY

John Wesley Harding: THE SOUND OF HIS OWN VOICE

L.A.M.F. (The Heartbreakers) LIVE AT THE BOWERY ELECTRIC

Richard Hell and The Void Oids: BLANK GENERATION (40th)

Robyn Hitchcock: LOVE FROM LONDON

King Crimson: IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING

King Crimson: IN THE WAKE OF POSEIDON

Living Colour: SHADE (pic)

Living Colour: LIVE FROM CBGB’S 12/19/89

Los Straightjackets: WHAT’S SO FUNNY ABOUT PEACE,LOVE…

Los Straightjackets: SING ALONG WITH…

Richard Lloyd: THE RADIANT MONKEY

Charles Mingus: MINGUS AH UM

Morphine: LIVE AT THE WARFIELD 1997

Morphine: GOOD

Nazz: THE FUNGO BAT ACETATES

Procol Harum : THE ONE & THE ONLY (color vinyl)

Otis Redding: LIVE AT THE WHISKY A GO GO 1966

Lou Reed: ANIMAL SERENADE

The Replacements: LIVE AT MAXWELL’S 1986

The Rolling Stones: BEGGAR’S BANQUET

The Rolling Stones: EXILE ON MAIN STREET

The Rolling Stones: ON AIR

Leon Russell: LEON RUSSELL

Nina Simone: SINGS THE BLUES

The Soft Boys: UNDERWATER MOONLIGHT

Soul Asylum: LIVE FROM LIBERTY LUNCH 12/3/92

Television: ADVENTURE (color vinyl)

Television: LIVE AT THE OLD WALDORF 6/29/78

Television: MARQUEE MOON

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: LIVE IN 1960

Wilco: AM

Wilco: LIVE AT THE TROUBADOUR L.A. 1996

Steve Winwood: GREATEST HITS LIVE

The Yardbirds: YARDBIRDS ’68

Neil Young: HITCHHIKER