Speaking of March Madness, who’s idea was it to borrow so heavily from the President’s brackets? All top seeds? All gone. Although I must admit, it’s made the games far more entertaining. I don’t usually find myself agreeing with Charles Barkley, but I liked his comment at the end of a drama-filled weekend of Elite 8 match-ups: “If you didn’t like these four games, you don’t enjoy sports.” Not that enjoyment of sports is a civic duty. For example, I don’t care much for the fashion industry. I think all Americans should be required to wear uniforms with our names sewn on our shirts… might help stop bullying. But I digress.
Let’s jump back to jump blues: Here’s an act I knew next to nothing about until I came across a post on the Hound Blog. The Treniers were identical twins Cliff and Claude from Mobile, Alabama, usually backed by assorted relatives and hired hands. And as you can tell from this clip, their stock in trade was tearin’ it up onstage – mostly in Vegas or Atlantic City lounges. “The modern world knows no equivalent of the Treniers, who like Louis Prima with Sam Butera & the Witnesses, were all about entertaining their audience,” The Hound wrote. “They didn’t need a dozen tractor trailer trucks full of crap like U2 carry around…” Here’s a wild performance from ’53 on a show called “Night Music” (anyone familiar with that one?).
One of my favorite jump blues artists is Amos Milburn, a wonderful piano player who also performed some top-shelf drinking songs, including One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer and Let Me Go Home Whiskey. Here’s another one, and Milburn plays it with a smile on his face, despite losing his happy home and having to borrow Paul Williams’ band.
Blues doesn’t get much better than this clip from “And This is Free: The Life and Times of Chicago’s Legendary Maxwell St.,” a cinema verite-style documentary filmed in 1964 by director Mike Shea with assistance from guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Robert Nighthawk was a fixture on Maxwell Street during the early Sixties, and this slow-burning original shows why legends like Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson couldn’t get enough of Nighthawk’s deep, dark blues. It’s strong stuff, as you can see from the very personal ways that people experience his music. And the video captures a time and place that’s long gone.
Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Magic Sam led the next wave of Chicago bluesmen. And tunes like Sam’s Boogie show what the fuss was all about – hard-driving, relentless, rockin’… Muddy wasn’t exactly running scared, but he was definitely paying attention. This clip starts out with a brief interview on a train as Magic Sam talks about his roots, playing the one-string “diddley bow” down in Mississippi. Then it moves to his signature song, All Your Love, followed by the show-stopping Sam’s Boogie. Essential blues – and amazingly, still available on youtube.
Couldn’t write much this week. Too busy taking side bets on my March Madness brackets.
When you know as little as I do about college basketball, you have to be fairly resourceful in filling out your brackets. I follow a simple rule: borrow heavily from an expert (in my case, President Obama) while making a few exceptions based on emotion. Last year, I picked my lowly alma mater, Ohio University, to win in the first round. And when the 14th-seeded Bobcats did, people thought I was a basketball genius… that is, until the second round, when all my other emotional favorites tanked. This year, I relied a bit more on the President’s picks. But I think he was slightly distracted by global issues of a non-basketball nature. Next year, I’ll use a more sophisticated approach – a system that ranks the teams based on total merchandising revenue divided by annual recruiting violations.
In the meantime, let’s check out a few vintage videos that our research team has deemed blog-worthy. And in this round, it’s the men vs. the women.
Don’t you love the fact that, back in the Fifties, guys like Big Joe Turner and Bill Haley were rock stars? What are the chances of that happening today? Zero… even if Bill Haley wore assless chaps and had Autotune surgically attached to his vocal cords. Another reason to treasure this video of Big Joe struttin’ his stuff live at The Apollo, ’55. Watch it now before youtube replaces it with a clip of someone’s cat watching TV.
Some of the great Louis Jordan’s videos from the ’40s and ’50s have kind of a minstrel show vibe to them… that eyes-buggin’-out shuckin’ and jivin’ that made Miles Davis vow to never smile in front of an audience. This one is fairly reserved by Jordan standards. Looks like the director wanted to recreate a late-night, backstage jam session. Although I can’t figure out why he decided to trot out the three white chicks at the end of the song.
Here’s another one of those wonderful American Folk Blues Festival videos – this one from 1965 with Big Mama Thornton backed by the legendary Buddy Guy. I totally agree with one of the comments following the video – a sentiment that was reiterated last week on CBS Sunday Morning by the guys who wrote Hound Dog, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller: Why would Elvis screw up something this good?
Two years later, Koko Taylor was filmed during another AFBF tour performing Wang Dang Doodle with Little Walter and Hound Dog Taylor. It’s one of only two live clips I’ve been able to find on youtube featuring Walter (we included the other one in this post). 10,000 videos of cats doing flips, but only two of the world’s greatest blues harmonica player.
Although it may seem like we’re careening out of control now and then (“Thankless Jobs”), I started this blog with a simple, basic premise.
Over the years, I’ve collected a whole lot of music. And I haven’t always done it through legitimate means. So I finally figgered, I write good… I know a little bit about a lot of this stuff… I can’t possibly listen to all these tunes in one lifetime… and I probably should find something to do to offset all this bad karma I’ve taken on for file-sharing and other forms of digital thievery.
The solution? Rubber City Review. To use the parlance of shitty cinema, it’s just my small way of “paying it forward.” You’re welcome. (Speaking of compensation, don’t forget to purchase some of this music legitimately through the “picks” we provide at the end of each post… Mama needs a brand new pair of shoes.)
Hitting play on my iTunes library is like holding a small cup in front of a wide-open fire hydrant. So I use playlists to help me navigate through this teeming metropolis of artists and genres. Not all of these playlists make sense to other people (e.g. “Off Da Hook” and “Sausage”). But one of my favorites, “Sixties/Garage,” seems fairly bullet-proof – that is, until you open it up to debate among an entire universe of music nerds.
What exactly is garage rock? Is it rock music primarily conceived in a garage? Wikipedia defines it as “a raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to 1967.” But let’s face it, the garage itself originated in early-20th Century England. So do you include the early sixties recordings of The Rolling Stones and The Kinks? I do… so throw me off the next panel discussion.
I view garage rock as a predecessor of punk; an antidote to a lot of the swill that seemed to find its way to the top of the pop charts in the early Sixties. Here’s just a short list of some of those hit songs:
Not exactly what you’d call the golden age of rock ‘n roll – unless you include all the “nasty bits” (as Tony Bourdain would call them) floating just beneath the surface on both sides of the pond. Songs often performed by rank amateurs with a sense of abandon that had nothing to do with state-of-the-art studio equipment, string sections, backing vocals and constant tinkering by nervous producers trying to keep their jobs at the major labels.
Of course, like any other vital sub-genre of rock, garage had its glory years and at least two or three revivals – including ‘70s “garage punk” (Iggy Pop, The Ramones) and whatever you want to call contemporary bands like The Hives, The Vines and The Strokes. But we’ll focus on the first wave of garage rockers – and, of course, just the stuff that resides in my playlist. You gotta problem with that?
If I were to stay true to the form, I’d probably just pick 6-7 songs from the much-heralded “Nuggets” compilation assembled by Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records, and Lenny Kaye, before he played lead guitar for Patti Smith. “Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968” was released as a two-record set back in ’72, and Rhino Records expanded it into a box set issued in ’98. And it’s hard to argue with gems like this one, from Boston-area band The Remains: Don’t Look Back
But I’ve decided to play fast and loose with the whole garage label, hence the “Sixties/Garage” title. I always found it interesting that stateside bands like the Standells, the Beau Brummels and the Blues Magoos were heavily influenced by British Invasion bands like the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, which owed a huge debt to American blues. So where does the term garage apply? This next Jagger/Richards original from the Stones’ ’64 album “12×5” made my playlist, because it sounds every bit as sinister as tunes that groundbreaking garage-rock bands like the Sonics were recording at roughly the same time. And it signals one of the band’s first major departures from its blues-purist roots: Empty Heart
Speaking of the Sonics, no garage-influenced collection is complete without at least one song by this bruising quintet from Tacoma, WA. Gerry Roslie’s blood-curdling wail remains one of the great treasures of rock ‘n roll. And most of the band’s recorded output sounds like its members were whipped into a state of rage by a sadistic, maniacal producer. But I doubt that was the case, so I’ll just attribute it to grim weather and the logging industry: Psycho
Levon and the Hawks
Most people wouldn’t describe The Band as garage rockers. But they definitely gave off that vibe back in the early ‘60s, when they recorded as the Hawks with Canadian transplant Ronnie Hawkins. They also cut some tough-as-nails numbers without Hawkins – as Levon and the Hawks and, with this next tune, as The Canadian Squires. Pianist Richard Manuel handles the lead vocals on Uh Uh Uh, and to my ears, he sounds just like drummer Levon Helm. I also like Robbie Robertson’s throwaway harp playing on this tune. Never underestimate the power of a poorly played harmonica: Uh Uh Uh
Getting back to the Brits, the Kinks followed roughly the same trajectory as the Stones. They started out aping Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo and Jimmy Reed before realizing they could come up with a few decent songs of their own. And when Ray Davies started writing classics like Where Have All The Good Times Gone and Tired Of Waiting For You and this next one, the Kinks never looked back. Once again, we could argue til the cows come home if this qualifies as garage. Doesn’t matter… It’s my list, and the song stays: Til the End of the Day
My other favorite form of rock from the era is surf. And I think of guys like Link Wray and Lonnie Mack as the common ground between surf and garage rock – just like Freddie King blurred the lines between surf and blues. When you listen to an instrumental like Big City After Dark, it’s easy to imagine it being performed in the same space that’s used to store power tools, gasoline, motor oil and toxic bug spray. It’s from a ’62 single on the small Mala label under the moniker Ray Vernon and the Raymen (Link’s brother Vernon, who played rhythm and bass guitar and usually manned the 3-track Ampex recorder). This stunning act of depravity is from a collection of Wray rarities on the Norton label, whose proprietors describe it as “ultimate crime-inspiring whangery that spits, sweats and swaggers.” Amen: Big City After Dark
Lonnie Mack is probably too accomplished a musician to be considered “garage,” but he makes the cut on my playlist simply because rock music in the early ‘60s didn’t get any better than songs like Wham and Memphis. This next number also appeared on Mack’s ’64 release on the Cincinnati-based Fraternity label, “The Wham of That Memphis Man!” – an essential album by any standard. Here he covers a blues tune by Jimmy Reed. And even though it features background singers, Mack earns a pass by bringing in Gigi and the Charmaines, a rockin’ little R&B trio from the Queen City. If he had been signed to a big label, they would’ve replaced the Charmaines with Lily and the Whites: Baby What’s Wrong
If you like Lonnie, you’ll also dig “the Fastest Guitar Player in the South,” Travis Wammack. The native of Walnut, Mississippi, recorded his first album at the age of 11, and scored a minor hit in ’64 with the instrumental Scratchy when he was only 17. That scorching workout and 20 others produced by Sun Records session guitarist Roland Janes are included on “That Scratchy Guitar from Memphis,” a compilation on the German Bear Family label. Word has it that when Janes sent a copy of Scratchy to Chet Atkins, the Nashville legend sent it back with an unintended compliment: “This scares me. I pass.” Wammack went on to do session work in the ‘60s at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals and ran Little Richard’s band from 1984 until 1995. He continues to dazzle audiences today with his lightning-fast licks, but he can also slow it down to play funky numbers like this one (must’ve inspired the ’74 hit Kung Fu Fighting… garage soul, maybe?): It’s Karate Time
I’ll close with a tune that was recorded at the tail end of garage rock’s glory years, and it’s by one of my favorite rockers of all time, Doug Sahm (aka Sir Douglas). I had the huge pleasure of seeing Doug and band – including the great Augie Meyers on farfisa – perform at a small club in San Antonio in May 1999, only a few months before Sahm passed away from a heart attack. He was in fine form, bitching about the dot-commers up in Austin and raving about the Spurs (some things never change). But mostly, for two blessed hours, he turned that crappy little dive into a groover’s paradise. R.I.P., Doug: You’re Doin’ It Too Hard
Here’s a real time-suck – a series of videos on youtube titled “60s Garage, Surf, Freakbeat & Psychedelic Music,” from the mysteriously named GrimlyFormingPW. With respect for your time, I only included one. You’re welcome.
If the Grammys had an award for Ridiculously Talented, Incredibly Versatile Roots-Music Wunderkind, Mike Henderson would be a hands-down favorite to win every year.
But here in America, 2011 – where fame is simply a measure of Charlie Sheen’s tweets and Snooki’s teats – Henderson remains a virtual unknown.
Here’s a guy who grew up in Independence, Missouri, playing garage rock on guitar and harp… then picked up bluegrass mandolin and fiddle while attending the University of Missouri… then toured the Midwest playing slide guitar and harp in a blues band, the Bel Airs… then moved to Nashville to pursue a career in country music as a distinctive singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist – throwing dobro into the mix along with electric and acoustic (flat-picking) guitar, harp, mandolin, fiddle… he probably shreds on the hurdy gurdy too.
I first found out about Henderson back in the early ‘90s, when I picked up a couple of albums by alternative-country artist Kevin Welch on Reprise. The material wasn’t exceptional, but Henderson already was building a reputation as a bold, fiery guitarist. His singular sound came from setting his strings relatively high off the fretboard on his mandolin. “You gotta crank the action up on a mandolin to get it to be loud, to sound out,” Henderson said. So as he gained strength in his fretting hand, he also began using heavier-gauge strings on his guitar (à la Stevie Ray Vaughan) to get a full, warm tone.
Henderson also began writing his own material and was soon picked up by RCA, which released his first solo album, “Country Music Made Me Do It,” in ’94. Although over-produced, the album featured ten strong originals including The Restless Kind, a tune that showed up on an earlier release by Welch: “Well I’ve seen the country and I’ve been to town; I’ve rode in limousines with the tops rolled down. I’ve walked down the roads where the rivers freeze… I know what it takes to do what I please.”
If anything, these lyrics anticipated Henderson’s next move. Later that year, he joined Welch and other like-minded Nashville artists – Kieren Kane of the O’Kanes, fiddler Tammy Rogers and drummer Harry Stinson – to start their own label, Dead Reckoning. Although Welch, Henderson, Kane and Rogers each released solo albums on the label, Dead Reckoning mainly served as a loose musical collective based on the artists’ shared frustration with the Nashville establishment and the sad state of country music. One of my favorite releases on the label is Welch’s “Life Down Here on Earth,” which featured all five founders along with other guest artists like Vaughan keyboard player Reese Wynans. Here’s some tasty guitar work by Henderson on a Welch original: The Love I Have For You/Kevin Welch
One of the better qualities of the Dead Reckoning albums is the way they blur the lines between country, blues and bluegrass – sometimes in the same song. And that mirrored the way artists like Henderson were leading their own musical lives, playing bluegrass at a local coffeehouse one night and then blazing through blues standards the next night at a corner bar. Henderson likens it to the music he heard on the radio as a kid in Independence – “the old Top 40,” as he calls it. “There was Slim Harpo, Ray Price, Ray Charles and The Beatles and everybody was on one station,” he said. “So, I grew up hearing a really wide variety.”
Henderson’s solo release on Dead Reckoning, “Edge of Night,” is especially eclectic, moving seamlessly from roots rock (I Wouldn’t Lay My Guitar Down) to blues (Nobody’s Fault but Mine) to honky tonk (Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin). And in his other role as producer, Henderson finally figured out how to capture the snarl and bite of his own guitar in a studio setting: You’re So Square
I love country music, but I’m flat-out hopeless when it comes to blues. So the Henderson albums that really pinned my ears back were the two he recorded on Dead Reckoning with his straight-ahead blues band, the Bluebloods. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with better examples of first-rate contemporary blues – which I know is akin to making one of those “highest mountain in Indiana” claims. But this band had the kind of swagger and soul that should be required to play tunes called Bloody Murder and Give Me Back My Wig.
The original lineup featured two Nashville studio cats – bassist Glenn Worf and drummer John Gardner – as well as Wynans on piano (replaced by virtuoso John Jarvis on the second album). And it came together as a casual side project, just four highly accomplished musicians blowing off some steam playing bar-band blues. The two albums, “First Blood” and “Thicker than Water,” have that go-for-broke spirit – and a level of confidence that you rarely hear from guys who don’t exclusively play Muddy’s music (not to mention one of the best rhythm sections in the business): When The Welfare Turns Its Back On You
Long-time Henderson fan (and former journalist) Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits offers high praise in his liner notes to “First Blood”: “There really aren’t that many people around who carry with them an understanding of the music, black and white, who can write, sing and play country and then deliver a cracking blues set without so much as a pause to buy another pack of camels.”
Henderson also blows some hair-raising harp on a few tunes – another strength that didn’t miss Knopfler’s attention: “When Mike asked me to write these notes, I took the tapes and played them. ‘Who’s playing that amazing harmonica?’ I asked Glenn. ‘It’s Mike,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t play it on gigs because he can’t be bothered to put his harp amp in the car.’ What do you do with a man like this??” Here’s a harp-driven original from “Thicker than Water” that proves the band isn’t afraid to stretch outside standard blues and conventional arrangements: Slow Your Motor Down
The SteelDrivers
If you’re lucky, you can still catch a rogue lineup of Mike Henderson & The Bluebloods rattling the walls at some joint in downtown Nashville. Or you might be able to find Henderson fixing guitars at Glaser Instruments. But his main gig these days is the SteelDrivers, a hard-driving bluegrass band that features his long-time accomplice Tammy Rogers as well as Muscle Shoals guitarist/singer Gary Nichols, banjo player Richard Bailey and bassist/singer Mike Fleming. Here’s a bluesy tune from their latest release on Rounder, “Reckless” (with former vocalist Chris Stapleton): Peacemaker
Henderson also remains a successful songwriter in Nashville, having written tunes for the Dixie Chicks, Garry Allan, Randy Travis, Tricia Yearwood, Travis Tritt and others. So although widespread fame may continue to elude him, he ain’t doin’ too bad.
Mike Henderson & The Bluebloods on video… Special thanks to Ray Fuller for slapping this on his facebook wall and reminding me to get off my ass and write this post.
The SteelDrivers live at The Station Inn in Nashville, 2008… I like how they laugh through Bailey’s flubbed note at the end of his solo. Great vocal by Stapleton; wonderful harmonies and fiddle solo by Rogers:
In this economy, I suppose any of us who are gainfully employed should be thankful. But have you ever held a job that made you question your very existence? A job that made “meth addict” seem like a more positive and fulfilling lifestyle choice?
I’ve had my share of thankless jobs over the years – mostly in my younger days. Pumped gas. Dug ditches for a construction crew. Handed out samples of Salt-Free Diet Pepsi at a grocery store (someday I’ll write a post about grocery store gypsies). Caddied for godless, egomaniacal trust funders. Delivered beer to college students at Ohio U.
I’ll never forget when I quit my job working construction. A couple of days earlier, I was sent inside the shell of a brand-new brick structure – with only a shovel and wheelbarrow – and ordered to lower the dirt floor by about six inches. So I spent roughly the next 16 hours taking load after load of dirt through the building’s only doorway and dumping it outside. Then my boss explained that he’d made the wrong calculation and I had to bring all that dirt back inside. I gave him a hard look, glanced at my shovel, closed my eyes, pictured a well-tanned Sisyphus playfully tossing his boulder up a beautiful hillside… and told my boss to go have sex with himself (using the non-business end of my shovel for visual clarification).
Luckily, I landed a job at a publishing company in Cincinnati a few days later.
Without question, the strangest job I ever had came right after my stint at the publishing company. At the time, I was dating a woman who hung out with quite a few colorful characters in the Cincinnati area. One of them (probably a meth addict) told her about a job selling frozen meat and chicken off the back of a parked, refrigerated semi trailer in a particularly dicey part of town.
Let me briefly describe the business model: The trailer was parked in the lot of a transmission repair shop, right around the corner from the government office where qualifying residents could pick up their food stamps – usually during the first week or two of the month. On my way to work, I’d pick up an elderly black gentleman who was hired to pass out flyers to those waiting in line for government assistance. Many of them would end up making the short trek to our trailer, food stamps and flyers in hand, to purchase boxes of frozen hamburger patties, steaks, chicken breasts, sausage, ribs… By the middle of the month, the lines were gone along with most of our inventory – and I was staring at a big wad of cash, with two weeks off before I had to report back to work. Not a bad gig.
But not a particularly glamorous assignment either. In the morning, the manager of the transmission shop would pull into the lot with a huge German Shepherd in the back of his station wagon – the meanest, nastiest dog I’d ever seen. The dog would take one look at me and get so agitated that it would start gnawing big chunks of foam rubber out of the back seat. I was convinced that if it ever got loose I’d be reduced to a skeleton within seconds.
Also, my body never fully adjusted to the refrigerated trailer, so I’d be fighting off a cold during the hottest days of the summer. And since I was a product of lily-white Catholic schools, I initially ran into some problems communicating with many of my customers. But after a few months, I started talking like a Beastie Boy from the Queen City (which simply meant that if I didn’t understand you, I’d say “yo, please?”).
Of course, the best part of the job was the relatively brief amount of time I spent doing it. So I became sort of a wandering meat baron, heading south nearly every month to spend time with my brother in St. Augustine, Florida. A few more months and I probably would’ve bought a doublewide near Bunnell and maybe one of those “bubba trucks” with big knobby tires. Life was good… work was relatively easy… lots of playtime… few worries… then I ran into a slight complication.
I came back from one of my trips south to find my boss waiting for me at the trailer. He rarely showed up at all – and when he did, it was usually to gather the cash and then shoot the shit in his typically snide, smarmy, prepster-gone-bad way. So I was a little shocked to see him there before any cash was collected, with a look of great concern than seemed to clash with his cheery sweater vest. He was joined by a scruffy-looking young man I’d never met.
Meat dress (items sold separately)
“I have reason to believe you’ve been stealing from me,” he said.
That explained his accomplice, who was there to take my job. We wound up in a brief shouting match, which ended with my now former boss challenging me to take a lie detector test.
“Sure, asshole, bring it on!” I said in the back of my mind (I think my actual response was something closer to “if you insist”). And before I knew it, my trip to the lie detector lab had been arranged.
After the dust had settled, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Was I one of those perpetually anxious individuals who could never pass a lie detector test, even if asked whether I enjoyed the musical stylings of The Captain and Tennille? Would I need to take a tip from a hard-core ex-con, like putting a tack in my shoe that I could press down on to mask my nervousness? Or should I just pack my shit now for the trip to Hamilton County Jail?
I arrived at the lab for the scheduled test, and within a few minutes I was completely wired for failure. The “truth technician” (another interesting occupation) then asked me if I could roughly estimate how much I’d actually stolen from my boss. “Have you ever taken a stray steak or maybe even a few sausages lying on the floor of the truck?” Obviously, the answers to those questions were “yes” and “yes,” but I had been accused of stealing several thousand dollars. So we had to agree on a capped question that I would feel comfortable with – something like “have you ever taken goods and/or cash with a combined value of more than $40 from a soulless, sweater vest-wearing preppie chump?” Sounded about right to me. As firing squad victim Gary Gilmore famously said, “Let’s do it.”
I got through the test without much incident, although I’m sure I looked like some lying weasel being grilled by Stone Phillips. Then I had to wait an agonizing few days for the results. Finally, I got a call from the technician: “You passed with flying colors, although you might want to consider paying for those spoiled hamburger patties you ran off with.”
My next phone call was to my former boss, who became the target of the most hateful language I’ve ever hurled at another individual. I think I even threw in a catty comment about the sweater vest and accused him of having sexual relations with my replacement. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking straight – but it felt pretty damn good.
Thankfully, I landed a job in customer relations right after that.
Sewer cleaner (count your blessings)
In this next video, comedian Ben Miner asks people on the street, what’s the worst job you’ve ever had? (Oddly enough, this is a promo for a career website run by Staples, the office supply retailer):
When her dad bought meat off a meat truck, this young woman made a video to help sort through her feelings about it:
Since we got some of you to play along to “My First Album,” I decided to try something else along the same lines: What’s your most memorable concert experience?
The venue can be anything from a small club to an arena. And the experience can have little to do with the music being performed, as I’ll demonstrate shortly.
My concert-going years got off to a very auspicious start in the summer of 1969 when my older sister Mary took my sister Keena and me to see Janis Joplin at Blossom Music Center, an outdoor amphitheater nestled in the rolling hills near the Cuyahoga River valley. My 13-year-old synapses were fried by Joplin’s powerful voice and the Stax-influenced soul of her Kozmic Blues Band (only days after they performed at Woodstock). If we didn’t have front-row seats, we were damn close – and I distinctly remember Joplin taking several generous pulls on a bottle of Southern Comfort during the show. Opening act: Rod Stewart and the Faces. Cost of three tickets: $7.50.
A few posts back, I wrote about my good/bad fortune of seeing the Stones during their legendary ’72 (“Exile on Main Street”) tour. A month later – August 21, 1972, to be precise – I almost became an Altamont-like casualty when the Jefferson Airplane brought their traveling circus to the same venue, the Akron Rubber Bowl.
My favorite part of the show was the opening act – Hot Tuna, with Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady along with legendary blues fiddler Papa John Creach. Could’ve listened to that for about two hours: Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning Then the Airplane hit the stage and all hell broke loose. Everything was fine until about halfway into their set, when I suddenly felt like someone was choking me and gouging my eyes out at the same time. Apparently, the police had teargassed some kids at the top of the bowl, and the gas then settled on the field below, where a few thousand of us were blissfully unaware of the small riot going on nearby. Next thing I knew, someone on stage was urging us to “attack the pigs,” and then the show was over (thankfully, because I was ready to rip off my own head at that point).
The Akron Beacon Journal broke the news to all of our parents the next day with the headline at right. And it’s a classic piece of modern journalism. I’ll share with you three of my favorite items from this story:
First, when singer Grace Slick was confronted by Patrolman R.E. Gott in a basement office, she “reached out to grab his whistle chain on her way out of the office. Gott said she made a clawing motion for his face after he tried to prevent her from pulling his chain.” Slick and fellow Airplane member Paul Kantner were arrested for assaulting a policeman, since Akron had yet to pass a chain-pulling ordinance.
Second, the reporter quoted the band’s New York press agent by noting that “Miss Slick is not formally married to Kantner, but that ‘he is her old man.’”
And third, a local City Councilman who opposed rock concerts at the Rubber Bowl from the beginning said “I’m not against all kinds of shows. For instance, the Osman Brothers (sic) and some other shows were not at all bad.”
Good stuff. Apparently, Slick and Kantner had to return to Akron to negotiate a deal with local prosecutors. I don’t think they’ve been back since.
Did you ever attend a sold-out show with an adoring crowd and feel like everyone else was sipping on some special Kool-Aid that they forgot to share with you?
I remember going to Bogart’s in Cincinnati to see the pride of Cleveland, the Michael Stanley Band. My overall impression of the show was that a team of scientists had successfully come up with a perfectly bland and generic strain of rock. I also noticed that every time someone jammed a guitar into his crotch, the crowd would go wild (tried that later with my own band, but it didn’t seem to work as well).
I had a similar reaction when someone dragged me to see the post-punk band the Violent Femmes at the Newport in Columbus. Again, packed house, adoring fans. They kicked things off with some lame acoustic-sounding number and I thought, give it a chance – they’ll probably work their way into a complete frenzy later on. Well, that never happened (Violent Femmes… another inappropriately named band, like 10,000 Maniacs). And by the time the show was over, I was convinced I could walk out of the club, head in either direction and find a better band playing on the street.
And, of course, there’s Jimmy Buffett. Has anyone else made an entire career out of phoning it in? Then again, if you continually play in front of thousands of fans who know every lyric to every song you’ve ever written, why would you bother breaking a sweat? I mainly remember being pissed off by the long lines at the margarita vendors, because I was convinced that being shitfaced was the only way to truly appreciate this experience… or at least tolerate it.
Of course, we don’t drag ourselves away from our home theater systems to be routinely disappointed by live music. And I’ve seen plenty of powerful, life-affirming shows over the years. I’ve already touched on some of those performances in this blog – Lowell George with a fine, funky band at Bogart’s, only two weeks before his untimely demise… Danny Gatton at U.S. Blues in NYC, schooling every guitar player in the crowd… Gatemouth Brown at Stache’s in Columbus, serving as both the main act and bouncer… Bo Diddley at the Cincinnati Gardens, with yours truly backing him up on harp…
I also feel blessed to have seen Muddy Waters at the Cleveland Agora (must’ve been around ’76, with Pinetop Perkins on piano, Jerry Portnoy on harp and Bob Margolin on guitar). Even though Muddy was past his prime, I felt like I’d found my way to the blues mountaintop… the amazing sound of that voice still haunts me today. And I’ll always treasure the night that bro-in-law Chuck Auerbach and me watched Delbert McClinton and his red-hot band turn New York City’s Lone Star Café into a Texas roadhouse. We were practically giddy (as opposed to “geddy,” the feeling one gets at a Rush concert) driving through the empty streets of Manhattan at 3 in the morning – high on honky tonk soul and R&B.
More recently, I’ve watched Chuck’s son Dan and his bandmate Pat Carney destroy countless stages across the country as The Black Keys. One of my favorite Keys shows was in Manhattan at Terminal 5, with opening act Heartless Bastards. Granted, the Bastards’ Erika Wennerstrom ain’t no Janis, but she won me over with her soulful voice and tough little band as they tore through great originals like this one: The Mountain/Heartless Bastards
Then there’s West Coast Latino-rockers Ozomatli, who turned the floor of Cleveland’s House of Blues into the world’s hippest drum circle (this next cut is from their album “Embrace the Chaos”)… Suenos en Realidad/Ozomatli
I’m sure many of you can add about 20 more to this list – and I hope you will. That’s why we still drag our asses out of the house, because we never know when we’ll get that giddy (or geddy) feeling again.
Some random concert memories from family members…
Brother Jack recalls the “anything goes” ethos of the Sixties at the folk music capital of the Midwest, Ann Arbor, where he saw Jim Kweskin (without his Jug Band) going through a strange phase: ”The philosophy seemed to be that performing is bad. It’s fake and separates the audience from the performer. So he just went up onstage and sat. He chatted with the audience for a little bit but mostly just sat there. Occasionally, if he felt like it, he would pick up the guitar and play a song. In the end it was a piece of performance art. It got people talking. Some folks would say it was dreadful, boring. Others would say it was just a matter of expectations. ‘We expect too much of performers… Just go in not expecting anything and you will be satisfied.’”
Keena had an unsettling experience at a Lou Reed show at Akron’s beautiful Civic Theater. “I turned around and some guy behind me was masturbating. Should’ve been my first clue that Lou Reed was gay. I guess I was too young to pick up on the subtle nuances of Walk On The Wild Side.”
Dan tells a great story about bandmate Pat Carney (pre-Black Keys) trying to promote his fledgling music career at a performance by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Carney took a cassette tape of some of his original music to the show, hoping to hand it to Spencer. He worked his way to the front of the crowd during the band’s set and placed the tape on the stage. Without missing a beat, Spencer leapt in front of Carney and used the heel of his boot to smash the tape into little pieces. Thankfully, Pat’s dreams of rock stardom didn’t die along with it.
The floor is open… Let’s hear about some of your favorite concert experiences.
Janis Joplin at Woodstock… only days before she brought her Kozmic Blues Band to Blossom:
