NYS Music 202​1

Category: Book Reviews

  • Stars and Behind-the-Scenesters Trace the Rise of the “Rock Concert” in New Oral History

    Like rock music itself, the rock concert has very humble, homegrown origins. It started way back in the later 40s/early 50s when radio DJs and record store owners saw them as a way to generate more bucks from the racy new musical style that was igniting the passions of a new, monied class of teenagers. Over time, rock concerts would explode in size, scope and cultural and revenue impact.  They evolved from quaint “hops” at high school gyms to a circuit of psychedelicized theatres, then onto sports arenas, stadiums and, ultimately, multiday outdoor festivals. In 2019, before COVID-19 blew it to smithereens, the live music business was a $136 billion-a-year global juggernaut.

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    With his new book Rock Concert (Grove/Atlantic Press), veteran journalist Marc Myers has marshalled an army to tell the free-wheeling story of the growth of this entertainment staple. Like Legs McNeil’s punk history classic, Please Kill Me and Frank Mastropolo’s recent, Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock History,  Myers’ book is a well ordered oral history weaving through decades of fascinating facts and anecdotes. It is told by some of rock’s most iconic stars including Alice Cooper, Ian Anderson, Steve Miller, Roger Walters, Angus Young, Hall & Oates and Bob Weir, as well as an A-list of promoters, managers, songwriters, producers, photographers, sound and lighting techs, filmmakers, fashion designers, roadies and fans.  These are the people who witnessed many watershed concerts firsthand, from the days of L.A.’s proto-rock R&B scene through to 1985’s Live Aid, the final event before the era of corporate sponsorship and out of sight ticket prices took hold. 

    Myers goes back 3,400 years to set the stage for his story. In the book’s preamble, he introduces The Hurrian Songs.  This is the world’s oldest known sheet music, tablets from ancient Syria containing tunings and tablature for lyre music meant to be performed before a live audience – the first historical evidence of what would become today’s concert spectaculars.   Also noted in the deep history are two Big Band-era pop concert events – Paul Whiteman’s 1924 performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at NYC’s Aeolian Hall and 1938’s Carnival of Swing on Randall’s Island, the first outdoor jazz fest headlined by Benny “King of Swing” Goodman which drew over 20,000 white and black fans.

    rock concert

    As stated earlier, the real genesis of the first era of rock concerts is credited to radio DJs.  In late 1940s Los Angeles, musician/radio host Johnny Otis commenced his Barrelhouse Club shows in Watts featuring R&B stars of the day. This was followed by shows at additional sites on Central Avenue, many headlined by the original “honking” sax man, Big Jay McNeely, including Hunter Hancock’s popular Midnight Concerts.

    The true “rock concert” commenced in Cleveland when Rendezvous Record Store owner Leo Mintz partnered with radio DJ Alan Freed, the man who coined the term rock ‘n’ roll, for events like his Moondog Coronation Ball.  With Freed’s move to NYC and radio giant WINS in 1954, he introduced the big concert concept to the Big Apple, with huge shows that ultimately settled at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theater.  Myers also quotes the recollections of rockabilly great Wanda Jackson to bring to life the frenzy around Elvis Presley’s early barnstorming tours of the South. 

    The modern-day rock festival is traced back to George Wein, who inaugurated his annual Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, which included a performance by bluesman-turned-rocker Chuck Berry in its 1958 edition. Wein followed this with the inaugural Newport Folk Festival in 1959, whose headliners like John Baez and Peter Paul and Mary recall performing at what truly might have been the forerunner of Woodstock, the March of Washington. This event which attracted over 250,000 to D.C. in 1964 to hear the political folkies and, more importantly, civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

    The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein are given their due for pioneering the modern stadium tour, beginning with their August 1964 cross country swing to the Hollywood Bowl and their famed Shea Stadium concert in 1965.  Of the latter, photographer Henry Diltz relates anecdote about him and Lovin’ Spoonful having to be whisked into the dressing room with the Beatles at the frenzied show. This was when the Spoonful’s lead singer, John Sebastian, was mistaken for Beatle John as they sat in the audience of 50,000 plus.  With the help of folks like stage manager-turned-record producer Joe Boyd and folk star Peter Yarrow, Myers clarifies some of the erroneous beliefs around Dylan’s famed,  audience inflaming “going electric” set at the Newport Folk Fest in 1965.

    Myers then takes readers through the era of the rock theater. This section chronicles the rise of Fillmore’s West and East, the Boston Tea Party, The Avalon, Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, Philly’s Electric Factory and more, and the many innovations they brought in lighting and stage craft and the role emerging FM radio played in their success.  There are more great details about how the Bay Area’s Beat poets and their “Happenings” helped usher in the hippies, leading to events like the Human Be-In and the first modern rock festival in 1967, Monterey Pop, another offshoot of a jazz fest inaugurated in 1958.  This comes with some great insights from both Monterey Pop filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and Steve Miller, who was inspired by Hendrix’s musicality but turned off by his and The Who’s guitar bashing antics.

    Monterey Pop then led to 1968’s Miami Pop Festival, where we meet Michael Lang, a failed headshop entrepreneur who later play a key role in Woodstock.  Myers also relates info about some fests you may have never heard of including Washington’s Skyriver Festival, one promoted by dropping a piano out of a helicopter, along with Atlantic City Pop, which featured 29 acts over three days and drew an audience of 120,000, with no advertising, two weeks before Woodstock ‘69.  The author spends a good deal of time clarifying the history of the Woodstock Fest and some legends about how the crowd narrowly escaped mass electrocution during the torrential rain and the importance of the 1970 film to cementing it in history about all other rock fests.  There are some great firsthand memories from Blondie-to-be Chris Stein about his experiences at Woodstock.  There is also eye-opening details from Abbey Road cover photographer Ethan Russell about his time with the Rolling Stones’ at their disastrous attempt at a Woodstock knockoff, Altamont in December 1969.

    After Woodstock, everything changed and escalated and somehow gets more formulaic – less fun but way more profitable.  Myers then traces the move to sporting arenas and stadiums.  There is a great discussion here on band branding with Nick Fasciano, the man who created the Coca-Cola inspired logo and album cover art for rock/jazzers Chicago and with the Rolling Stones’ famed “lips logo” creator John Pasche.  Now technology and spectacle come to the fore, with stars like Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, Alice Cooper, Roger Waters and Bob Weir going into their need for dazzling props, lasers, confetti canons, wireless guitar packs and having to create and truck their own custom staging, lighting and sound systems – all to have an impact on audiences that could now be a football field away. 

    Fashionistas will enjoy the recollections of famed designer Norma Kamali. She is the woman who outfitted everyone from Robert Plant, Keith Richards, Sly Stone and The New York Dolls in their glam looks.  Also notable is the discussion of the charity rock concert, with intriguing backstory on George Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, No Nukes in 1979, the various Farm Aid events and 1985’s Live Aid.

    Deadheads will enjoy the chapter titled “Concert Maximus.”  In this, Myers chronicles the true rock concert superfans, those of the Grateful Dead.  These all-in devotees would follow the band to all sites on their tours, including July 1973’s Watkins Glen, which attracted over 600,000 to hear the Dead, The Allman Brothers and The Band.  Also included is a discussion of Wattstax, the August 1972 concert/movie/album created by the Memphis-based soul label which drew an audience of 90,000 to the Los Angeles Colosseum. Former label chief Al Bell describes the many obstacles overcome and how this massive event came off peacefully, without a police presence, with a security crew headed by none other than actor Melvin Van Peebles.  The author also touches on the mega-sized ABC-TV broadcast event California Jam, with Deep Purple, ELP and Black Sabbath. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URnQzst6Y1U

    The death knell to this era of rock came with a few final factors.  First is the rise of solitary listening with the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1979. This was followed by the rise of MTV and the accent on visuals. Lastly is computerized ticketing which only served to rapidly increase the price of entry for music fans. As mentioned earlier, Myers wraps it all up with Live Aid, the August 1985 event spanning stages in London and Philadelphia, with a TV audience of 1.5 billion.  It was the final event where ticket prices were within the reach of everyone ($35.00), before everything was scaled up with the help (or harm?) of massive corporate sponsorship.  It’s an event famed artist manager and Live Aid eyewitness Shep Gordon called “the end of innocence.”

    As you can see from this review, Myers is a music journalist who digs deep and tells a tale clearly. If you enjoy this book, check out his regular contributions on music and culture at The Wall Street Journal and his award-winning site, JazzWax.com.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqEVYNTdc3c

  • Musicians and Crew Recall the Glorious 3-Year Run of The Fillmore East in New Oral History

    The Fillmore East was called “The Church of Rock and Roll” for good reason; between 1968 and 1971, promoter Bill Graham made music history as he brought the cream of rock royalty to New York audiences in astounding triple-artist bills with ticket prices ranging from $3.50 – $5.50.  Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana and The Allman Brothers were just some of the stars that graced the stage, with several recording classic live albums at the Lower East Side venue.

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    Fillmore East: Photo © Jeff Rothstein

    Interestingly, Graham also served as a catalyst for expanding the tastes of impressionable young music lovers in New York and abroad.  He accomplished this by using the popular rock headliners to introduce audiences to the more eclectic artists he loved and booked as show openers.  These were the cutting-edge names in jazz, soul, R&B and folk music, from Miles Davis, Buddy Rich and Mongo Santamaria to B.B. and Albert King and The Staple Singers.  It all ended when rock became a big business, when concerts and Graham himself moved onto larger stages.

    New light is now being cast on this institution’s brief run and lasting impact in an in-depth and soulful new book by veteran journalist Frank Mastropolo, Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock History. 

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    Like Legs McNeil’s punk history classic, Please Kill Me, Mastropolo’s new work is an oral history told by 90 of the musicians and crewmembers who lived through the fast times at this pioneering concert hall. Roger McGuinn, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Robert Lamm, Dave Davies, John Lodge, Nils Lofgren, Dave Mason and Steve Miller are among the 19 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees who contributed to the book, along with Fillmore crew like lightshow pioneer Joshua White and East Village scenesters like media prankster/artist Joey Skaggs. The book also boasts dozens of remarkable performance photos (many taken by the author himself), along with posters, letters, buttons, contracts and memorabilia, many never before published. 

    Mastropolo begins with backstory and history of the theater that would become The Fillmore East, The Commodore, and its place as a centerpiece of Yiddish Theater and vaudeville beginning in the 1920s. Rock enters the picture in 1967, when it becomes The Village Theater and hosts a handful of rock concerts by Cream, Procol Harum, The Yardbirds and The Grateful Dead.  With the success of his San Francisco-based Fillmore West, Graham decides to buy and re-open it as The Fillmore East. The debut show comes on March 8, 1968, with a triple-bill featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, blues great Albert King and folk rocker Tim Buckley. 

    The heart of Mastropolo’s book are the remarkable first-person reminiscences of the artists who played there and their contrasting memories of the mercurial empresario who ran it. 

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    Janis Joplin: Photo by Frank Mastropolo

    Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug Clifford recalls a night where the audience demanded a remarkable 17 encores. It was an unprecedented occasion, one that Graham commemorated by gifting each member of the band an inscribed gold watch.  Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico recalls Graham’s initial reticence about booking his band, saying of the Fillmore audience: “My people don’t dance!” Then teenaged Television guitarist Richard Lloyd recalls how easy it was to get past the virtually non-existent security to visit Jimi Hendrix, in his dressing room. Chicago’s keyboardist Robert Lamm is one of many artists in the book who think the Fillmore East’s position as the first-choice venue of rockers was a product of its first-rate sound, lighting and staff. 

    Jorma Kaukonen credits the birth of his and bass player Jack Casady’s Jefferson Airplane offshoot, the acoustic Delta blues based Hot Tuna, to the Fillmore East. “I think the Hot Tuna as a band that the public saw was certainly born at the Fillmore East,” relates Kaukonen. “Jack and I had been messing around in hotels for years, with him playing his bass through a tiny amp and me playing acoustic guitar. My recollection about this is that Paul (Kanter) just out of the blue said – ‘Why don’t you guys go out and play an acoustic song?’  That’s how we were given the opportunity to play and display it in front of other people for the first time.”

    John Lennon and Yoko Ono with Frank Zappa and the Mothers: Photo by Dr. Arlene Q. Allen and Ben Haller

    Steve Miller recalls the tumult of one of his performances, when his band followed British novelty act Mungo Jerry of “In the Summertime” fame.  The fun-loving show openers made the not-so-wise decision of giving 500 kazoos to the boisterous NYC audience, who then jammed along uninvited during Miller’s set. Also recalled is the May 1969 concert where The Who performed their rock opera Tommy in its entirety.  The performance was briefly interrupted when a fire broke out at a neighboring supermarket and Pete Townsend attacked a police officer who was attempting to get on stage to command the audience to exit.

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    Jimi Hendrix: Photo by Frank Mastropolo

    Many of the musicians featured remark on the epic lengths of the shows, ones that would often culminate in jams that would go on until 6 a.m. and beyond.  Also remembered were the post-show meals at Ratner’s, the adjacent 24-hour restaurant manned by surly waiters made even more so by the paltry tips given by Fillmore staff and its cash-strapped young audience.  Also are the first-person memories of the many live recordings made at the venue. This just begins with classic sets by The Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix and his Band of Gypsys, Johnny Winter, Taj Mahal, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds and New York’s own mighty Mountain. 

    The backstage crew who cut their teeth at the Fillmore East, including managing directors John Morris and Kip Cohen and stage manager Chip Monck, would go on to play important roles at various record labels, radio stations and, especially, with other huge concert tours and festivals including Woodstock.  

    Graham and the above were at Woodstock.  There they witnessed how rock was turning into a very big business, where he couldn’t compete with a 2,700-seat theater. 

    Pete Townsend of The Who: Photo by Frank Mastropolo

    In the book, Mastropolo relates the math.  Where an artist could command $75,000 for a single show at Madison Square Garden, Graham could only provide $25,000, for four performances over two days.  According to the book, Graham also didn’t care for the new generation of bands like Kiss and Alice Cooper and their cocaine-fueled attitudes and demands and their “stockbroker” greed.  He and his staff were also tired of “cleaning up vomit,” something produced by the Fillmore audience’s switch from weed and psychedelics to red wine and downs.  There was also sadness that Graham could not replicate the 1968 opening lineup for the June 1971 closing weekend, as both Janis Joplin and Tim Buckley were both gone.

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    Allman Brothers Band: Photo by Ben Haller

    The book concludes with a tour of the afterlife of the Fillmore East site.  This included a brief attempt to resurrect the name as NFE (The New Fillmore East) and The Village East. There was also its eight-year stint as the site of the gay disco, The Saint, followed by its life as an Emigrant Bank and, finally, the condo of today.

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    Frank Mastropolo in Greenwich Village, 1968: Photo by Tony Gulisano

    Mastropolo’s book will provide a boatload of memories for those lucky enough to have been there and a motherload of info for those too young to enjoy rock’s most classic temple of sound.

  • Acclaimed Guitarist Marc Ribot Unleashes Another Power Solo in his Literary Debut

    Throughout his 40-year career, guitarist Marc Ribot has defied expectations and genre boundaries at every turn. He’s been the go-to guy serving up a singular fusion of rootsy Americana meets outré noise jazz meets Cubano swing with everyone from Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, Nora Jones and Diana Krall to John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, the Black Keys and the inexhaustibly productive John Zorn.  Now with Unstrung: Rants and Stories of A Noise Guitarist (Akashic Books), Marc Ribot is stepping into the spotlight with his literary debut.  And it is one as fresh, fiercely focused, unpredictable and delightfully disorienting as his masterfully knotty guitar work.

    First off, this is not a musical memoir per se. It is a collection of darkly funny stories and essays that, in good part, touch upon his thoughts on guitars, amps, touring, composer’s rights and iconic musical partners like punk guitar icon Robert Quine, free jazz legends Derek Bailey and Henry Grimes and producer extraordinaire Hal Willner. But this is a collection that spreads its wings far beyond the world of music. It is a razor-sharp playlist of far-reaching modernist literature, one that puts a Dadaist spin on everything from iPhone failures to treatments for absurdist films that will only ever exist in Ribot’s fevered imagination.

    In the first section of the book, “Lies and Distortions,” the guitarist turns his attention to his instrument. “My relation to the guitar is one of struggle,” he writes. “I’m constantly forcing it to be something else:  a saxophone, a scream, a car rolling down a hill… I bend them and they bend me.” Marc Ribot also pens a great ode to amps and distortion. In it, he claims his need to play amps at peak volume, to a breaking point that risks both his hearing and livelihood, provides to a guitarist “what makeup is to a drag queen.”  His love of distortion is also compared to the appeal of “vocal chords eroded by whiskey and screaming” and “the junked-out weakness of certain horn players” like Dexter Gordon or Lester Young. Ribot also pens a moving tribute to his first teacher, the renowned classical guitar master from Haiti, Frantz Casseus. Ribot’s distinct style may have been informed by his early lessons and lifelong friendship with this man, who like Bela Bartok, merged the folk of his native land with European classical tradition.  Ribot’s fierce defense of creators’ rights is illustrated in his discussions of Casseus’ hand-to-mouth existence, due to being cheated out of his composer royalties for decades until the literal last months of his life.  He also passionately tackles this issue in “The Attack on Artist’s Rights…and Me,” a much socially-shared 2014 essay first published in Talkhouse Magazine.

    Some of my favorite pieces in the book are Ribot’s generally observational ones. In “Animal Sounds,” his astute ears dissect a rooster scream, which is not a single scream at all, but a mindlessly repetitive three-part pattern, a sonic cage which is the “opposite of being free as a bird” to the author.  He also shares how a poetry exercise in 2nd grade taught him a lesson about both unconscious plagiarism and life losses.  There are also flights of fancy about a rocket scientist who dies because he can’t seem to learn how to tie his shoelaces properly and a boy, named Woody, who tries homespun horticulture to graft himself to a tree. There’s also a story where Botox leads to murder. This is all because a husband can’t detect the increasingly aggravated expressions on his wife’s newly treated and immobile face.  Like his ofttimes sensibly brief guitar solos, a good deal of the stories here are rendered in a single page or two. They have a darkly humorous, almost haiku style slapstick that brings to mind the work of the great Italo Calvino in works like Italian Folktales and Marcovaldo.

    photo by Ebru Ylidiz

    The fantasies continue in the third section entitled “Film (Mis)Treatments.”  In one, a past-its-prime avant-garde band on tour is not concerned with their performances, only where they are going to eat in each city.  When the tour is cancelled after a single disastrous performance, their manager wants to pull the travel and hotel accommodations.  So, the band kills him… and continues to eat its way across the Europe!  In “The Club Date Musician (Or Saturday Night Nausea),” he lays out the agonizing travails of the wedding band industry, for both the players and the people who hire them. He also observes how all society band leaders seems to take new names that are two first names, and waspy ones at that, like the fictional Nathaniel (Nat) Alexander in his story.

    There are also shades of what I assume is Ribot’s personal life outside music, and as a longtime New Yorker, in this brief but enjoyable book.  In one story, we learn how a 10-year rent battle with his landlord in the Lower East Side unexpectedly ends in his favor, earning him $170,000 from an escrow account and a move to leafy Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.  In “Kaddish for Joan,” we see how the slightly older artist cousin he so admired in his teens succumbs to pressures from her Jewish family – giving up art, the hippie life and going slowly mad in suburbia. A story that especially touched me was “Today I Did Something Remarkable.”  In this, Ribot stroll down memory lane and comes to the realization he is entering a new stage of life, as he slowly takes apart the Ikea loft bed his now-adult daughter used throughout her youth.

    For some musicians, talent is not limited to the world of sound and lyric.  Joni Mitchell, Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan and David Bowie are among the many musos who are pretty good painters.  Rob Zombie, George Harrison and David Bryne are among those who have produced or directed acclaimed films.  With Unstrung, Ribot is joining this boundary crossing crew, with a collection of diverse, wonderful stories that sing even when they are not about music.

    Check out Marc Ribot, as sideman and sideman, on this playlist. 

  • Frisell, Metheny and more Modern Masters Reveal their Creative Journeys in “Guitar Talk” by Joel Harrison

    Since 2010, the annual Alternative Guitar Summit has presented dozens of daring players who push the boundaries of this ubiquitous instrument to their most inventive, unexpected and beautiful extremes.  Now the festival’s founder, Brooklyn-based guitarist/composer Joel Harrison, is revealing the inspirations and creative journeys of 27 of guitardom’s most intrepid masters in a new book, Guitar Talk: Conversations with Visionary Players (Terra Nova Press). 

    Harrison’s overview of creative guitaring begins with some of the influential icons who emerged in the 1970s including Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser and the criminally-underrated Michael Gregory Jackson. Jackson is a multi-genre master namechecked as an influence by the likes of Metheny as well as Vernon Reid, Bill Frisell and Brandon Ross, who are also featured in the book.  Nels Cline, Julian Lage, Elliott Sharp, Ben Monder, Anthony Pirog, Mike and Leni Stern, Mary Halvorson, Wayne Krantz, Liberty Ellman, Dave Fiuczynski, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Ava Mendoza and Sheryl Bailey are also profiled in-depth. Harrison also explores lesser-known artists like Nguyên Lê, Rez Abbasi, Miles Okazaki and Rafiq Bhatia who are marrying the melodies and rhythms of their ancestral lands to the outer reaches of jazz.

    Joel harrison

    As evidenced with a listen to any of the above, an enormous, fast-expanding range of approaches and sounds now exist within modern guitaring. The instrument can howl, hum, scrape, scratch, scream, sing, pluck, grate and soothe. What stands out in this book is not so much the instrument itself, but rather the wonderful and idiosyncratic personalities of these bold souls. They are all united by their sometimes wild, often zigzagging and ultimately profound journeys toward beauty, meaning and excellence in their work.

    As an accomplished player who has known or collaborated with these artists over decades, Harrison is uniquely equipped to orchestrate these interviews. They are far more informed, revealing and absorbing than the ones you might read in general music media or hear on NPR. His intimate knowledge of their lives and creative struggles provides a unique perspective on this breed of musicians. They are the ones who take the road far less traveled to create artistry that never approaches cliche. 

    The book begins with a profile of Ralph Towner.  Towner was the man who brought nylon-string classical guitar and acoustic 12-string into jazz, along with a litany of rich classically-informed compositions, through his work with Oregon, Weather Report and his solo ventures.  He speaks about the impact of Big Band, Brazilian and Bach on his work. He also relates a humorous story of finding himself in folk singer Tim Hardin’s band at Woodstock ‘69, playing one of the “worst sets” of the legendary festival to a crowd of 450,000. 

    Many guitarists interviewed speak about the scene in Boston that grew up around the Berklee College of Music in the 1970s. It was an especially fertile one which launched players like Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Mike and Leni Stern and Pat Metheny to name a few. Metheny speaks about the development of his renowned sense of melody with his namesake quartet and also his lesser-known explorations to jazz’s far reaches with the Synclavier, Ornette Coleman and his Orchestrion records.  A name that comes up with Pat and several other guitarists is Berklee educator Mick Goodrick, a chordal master who taught many of these names and shared guitaring duties with a young Metheny in the Gary Burton Group.

    Harrison has a special reverence for the music of Michael Gregory Jackson. Jackson is a genre-hopping instrumentalist/improviser, as well as a later-day singer/songwriter in the R&B mold, who emerged as a teen in the mid-1970s NYC loft jazz scene with the Oliver Lake Group and groundbreaking solo records like his 1976 debut Clarity. Jackson packed influences ranging from Son House, Stockhausen, Hendrix, Albert Ayler and Stevie Wonder into his fast-evolving style, leaping from avant-garde to R&B to CBGB’s proto punk.  His searing melodic style and techniques, like his use of volume pedal swells, has been noted as an influence by Metheny, Frisell, Mary Halvorson and others.  The element of racism, the fact that the massively talented Jackson didn’t quite breakthrough to the big time, is sighted not only by the author but in interviews with Vernon Reid and Brandon Ross. After a quiet period, Jackson re-emerged in a big way in the last decade, recording acclaimed discs both here and in Denmark that are firmly rooted in his initial avant style.

    In his interview, Bill Frisell charts his development from his busier, fuzzier earlier style to what Harrison labels the “deceptively attainable haiku style” of current day. Like many here, Frisell credits his sense of melody and harmony to his study and friendship with the great Jim Hall, along with a love of pop songsmiths like Burt Bacharach, someone his younger self would’ve considered “way too corny.”  There’s also a fun story here about how his teenage R&B band beat one with future members of Earth Wind & Fire in a high school battle of the bands.

    The husband-wife guitarists, Mike and Leni Stern, speak frankly of their battles – in developing  unique and differing styles and with substance abuse.  Mike relates how his ill-fated jamming partner Jaco Pastorius was the unlikely figure who sent him to rehab, while Leni relates the challenge of being one of three women in a Berklee guitar class of over 200.  Mike also discusses the slings and arrows from critics for his now much imitated heavy metal bebop style introduced with Miles Davis on “Fat Time.” This was the searing opening track of Miles’ 1981 comeback album, a track titled for the nickname the trumpeter gave the then hefty guitarist.

    Nels Cline speaks of his light bulb moment of guitaristic inspiration: hearing Hendrix’s “Manic Depression” at age 12.  He also discusses the influence of artists as disparate as The Allman Brothers, early Weather Report and the avant-gardists of the AACM collective have had on his style. Cline is one of many musicians here who frankly discuss the financial struggle faced as a creative musician. He relates how he was about to quit full-time music and get a day job when he was called to join Wilco.  He laments how current listeners seem to lack the attention span of those of decades past and how much more challenging it is to create a 5-second solo for a Wilco song than an expansive jazz improvisation.

    Vernon Reid credits his interest in music to the now rare instrumental hits that made the pop charts when he was growing up, The Surfari’s surf standard “Wipe Out.”  He also discusses his shift from the avant-garde to MTV and stardom with his rock band, Living Colour.  Like Reid, Brandon Ross thinks the jazz university complex has maybe made for learned but less innovative musicians.  He relates the huge impact that hearing Joni Mitchell’s “Dawntreader” had on him as a second grader, something that has influenced his shimmering acoustic work with singer Cassandra Wilson and on his own solo records.  Ross also addresses the impossible financial challenges faced when festival bookers and A&R people can’t define a band and chose not to support adventurous bands like his edge-pushing trio, Harriet Tubman.  David Tronzo, the innovator who brought slide guitar into the Sun Ra-like avant-garde, speaks about how the financial woes facing musicians out of the mainstream has played a role in his decision to forsake the road for a teaching gig.

    Nguyên Lê is one artist who represents how jazz in evolving with the growing impact of non-Western musics and musicians, something evidenced in his album, Tales of Vietnam, and in the Indian/Cuban informed work of another interviewee, Rez Abbasi.  Young Brooklyn guitarist Ava Mendoza details how she is using free jazz, noise rock, ragtime, blues and punk to create wholly unique sounds –  in soundtracks, in collaboration with artists like John Zorn and works like her solo CD, Shapeshifters.  Veteran player and educator Dave “Fuze” Fiuczynski has been using his fretless guitar to explore the microtonality of world music for years.  Here, he discusses his journey to departing from even-tempered 12-note per octave scales for ones with 24 to 128 tones per octave.

    No guitarist among the edge-pushing modernists in this book may be as busy as Mary Halvorson.  On the subject of being a woman in jazz, she says that many of her greatest role models and advocates have been men. But the danger for women is in the learning phase – when men might try and convince you that youcan’t play. Halvorson recalls her beginnings studying traditional jazz harmony and standards before burning out and turning to the more adventurous compositions and improvisational style of her teacher Anthony Braxton.  Her singular style emerged at this time, in part with her creation of unique intervallic exercises that are still a hallmark of her work.  Through a recent MacArthur Grant, she has furthered her work on several projects. This includes her three-woman/three-man Code Girl ensemble and a move into writing songs with lyrics, inspired by her love of Fiona Apple and Robert Wyatt.

    Harrison’s book concludes with a wonderful discography of selected listenings. You can also check out his recent CD Guitar Talk, a collection of solo pieces and duets with artists like Ben Monder and Steve Swallow.  The release was celebrated with a recent performance by at Brooklyn’s newest jazz institution, the wonderful Soapbox Gallery, which can be seen below.

  • Book Review: Memoir of “The Coolest Man on Earth” – John Lurie’s The History of Bones

    As anyone who has seen the TV series Painting with John can attest, John Lurie is a storyteller of the highest order.  In his new memoir, The History of Bones (Penguin Random House), Lurie weaves a gloriously gritty, informative and entertaining portrait of Downtown NYC in the 1980s. The universe below 14th Street was a creative cauldron where edgy musicians, filmmakers and fine artists – giants like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Madonna, Bowie, Eno and Jim Jarmusch to name a few – co-existed and often collaborated to create art that still casts a profound influence on today’s culture. As for Lurie, he ultimately emerged as a player in all these spheres. He was a uniquely stylish lout with the driest of wit, someone dubbed “The Coolest Man of Earth” by a host of style arbiters for a multitude of very good reasons.

    john lurie

    John Lurie was a true “It Boy” of this mythic era when Downtown NYC was cheap, dangerous and full of creative action.  He was co-founder, chief composer and the angular “face” of The Lounge Lizards – the sharp-suited, globe-trotting punk jazzbos who helped define the “No Wave” genre.  As his musical light started to shine, Lurie added a high-profile acting career to his creative portfolio. This came via scene-stealing roles in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law, Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and others. The relentlessly touring musician also somehow found time to score 20 films including 1995’s Get Shorty, which earned him an Oscar nomination.  And before he devoted his creative energies almost entirely to visual art in the early 2000s, Lurie garnered more limelight via romances with boldfaced names like model Veronica Webb and Uma Thurman, by cat walking for European fashion designers and in a vast number of interviews –  ones where he pulled no punches in his controversial assessments of his contemporaries and the entertainment business writ large.

    Like Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One, The History of Bones only tells part of this artist’s sprawling story. It concludes with a performance in Stuttgart on the New Year’s Eve 1989, as a new decade and artistic sensibility dawns in Downtown NYC. His subsequent years out of the spotlight due to chronic Lyme’s Disease, along with his development as a painter, his first TV series Fishing with John and musical ventures like his bluesman alter-ego, Marvin Pontiac, and his John Lurie National Orchestra, are only referenced in passing. But, oh what a story it is, even in part!  And unlike the mumble-prone Dylan, I cannot wait to get my hands, err ears, on the audiobook version of Lurie’s memoir. It is sure to be told in a comic deadpan that brings to mind the Godfather of Alt.Comedy, Steven Wright.

    Lurie’s book begins with his childhood, one spent mainly in Massachusetts. By 16, he had discovered the harmonica and jammed on stage with the likes of Canned Heat and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Lurie also graces readers with the oddball story of how he got his first sax. It came as a gift from a quasi-homeless man on a dark, empty street at 4 a.m., a man who claimed he was seeing statues turning into angels at the time. After his father’s death, teenage Lurie went a little off the rails. He became involved in petty theft and travelers’ check schemes before turning into a hardcore kundalini yogi and vegan. At this juncture, he would fast and practice sax for days on end, remain celibate (something that would quickly pass) and also ride his bike naked in the streets in the early morning. Lurie’s journey of lurid begins when he loses his virginity and gains a bout of gonorrhea from Crystal, a groupie who had reputedly slept with Jimi Hendrix the week before.

    Much of Lurie’s story involves his long affair with and dozens of attempts to kick heroin. His first taste comes courtesy of another famous 1980s icon, Debbie Harry. It’s one that will lead to a seven-year long habit that puts him in the company of junky jazz greats like bassist Sirone and drummer Bobo Shaw. It also leads him to the doorstep of the legendary Dr. Gong, the Chinatown acupuncturist who reportedly helped Keith Richards kick his habit.

    Even as his career as a critically-acclaimed musician takes flight, Lurie lives hand-to-mouth, due to the hunger of his habit and the petty wages paid to touring jazz musicians. His fortunes are buoyed by landing government support in the way of a monthly disability stipend and a $55 apartment on the Lower East Side, two things he wisely holds onto for years.  Unfortunately, his nicely priced abode is on a block he calls “Third Street Hell.” It was right across from a notorious men’s shelter. This leads to a few robberies, muggings and many a night spent sleepless due to the screams and fights unfolding on the street below.

    Lurie pulls no punches in his attempts to set a few records straight. Most notable is his beef with director Jim Jarmusch in whose debut film, Stranger Than Paradise, Lurie first gained acclaim for his acting. 

    According to Lurie, the original story idea for the film was his – that of a low-level gambler who has to take care of his visiting Hungarian cousin. When the movie comes out, Lurie’s expected story credit is nowhere to be seen, but he continues to work with the director anyway.  After working with Italian actor Roberto Benigni in Jarmusch’s Down by Law, Lurie writes a script for the Italian to star in. It’s inspired by a true-life story Lurie is told about an Italian cowboy who challenges and beats the legendary Buffalo Bill Cody in a cowboy contest.  Lurie’s script has Benigni traveling across a surreal Western landscape with a Native American. When he finishes the script, he sends it to Jarmusch for his input … and hears nothing. Later, when he is just starting to raise funds for his film, Lurie hears that Jarmusch is making a surreal Western with Johnny Depp and a Native American sidekick called Dead Man, a virtual copy of his premise.  Jarmusch’s film goes ahead; Lurie’s never happens.

    Lurie’s long and competitive relationship with his “best friend,” the late painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, weaves throughout the memoir. In its early days, Basquiat is homeless and crashing at Lurie’s pad for almost two years.  They spend much of their time painting together, and the then-unknown Basquiat looks up to Lurie as his Lounge Lizards begin to take off. Even with notoriety, the musician Lurie is still living hand-to-mouth. Shortly thereafter, Basquiat’s career takes off like a rocket ship. With it, Basquiat flaunts his money, fame, belongings and even competes for women with Lurie. Lurie also expresses the deep hurt over Basquiat using his idea for a poster for group show of their own – of him and Basquiat facing off in boxing trunks – as the image Jean-Michel uses for his famous collaboration with Andy Warhol. In the end, he laments the loss of this close, competitive friendship that helped both excel.

    Lurie has both praise and criticism for some of his musical collaborators, as well as many funny meetings with other Downtown NYC boldfaced names.

    He calls quixotic guitarist Marc Ribot a genius for finding a place in his and many of the other obtuse musics he has collaborated on. His comments on later-day Lizards’ six-stringer Brandon Ross are less in-depth and kind, basically only saying that his dreadlocks smelled funny! He tells a funny story about twisting the arm of a man trying to intercept a joint being passed to him at a party by actor Willem Dafoe…  only to discover it is that of David Bowie! He passes judgement on Knitting Factory impresario Michael Dorf by claiming that “dorfed” became a popular verb used by musicians of the era to express when they had felt ripped off. A truly funny story involves him going to Chinatown to buy a dead eel to photograph for the cover of the album Voice of Chunk.  Strangled, bashed about, it’s an eel that refuses to die…until taking a four-floor drop off his windowsill and crawling a half-block in the gutter.

    John Lurie

    An overriding sentiment of Lurie’s is that the acting overshadowed, or at least got in the way of people fully appreciating, his music. Thought they toured extensively and most successfully in Europe and Asia, Lurie feels The Lounge Lizards never fully broke through or rose above the “fake jazz” label put on them in the early 1980s. Lurie took work scoring and acting in films to support his band and their original music. And at the end of his memoir, Lurie is using in excess of $100k of his own money to record the Lizards’ 1989 masterwork, Voice of Chunk, because no U.S. record company would sign them. In the end, it resulted in Lurie producing another memorable piece of art, a hilarious, 30-second, late-night TV spot to market the disc directly to consumers just like OxyClean, one that included four of his ex-girlfriends as models.

    The above just scratches the surface on the many colorful anecdotes and salient observations in Lurie’s book. You can almost picture him spinning these yarns around a cracker barrel fire in a metal trash can or dumpster on Avenue C. 

    This is certainly one of the best and least scrubbed clean memoirs coming from a Downtown hipster of the era, a place-in-time that is now birthing a motherlode of such books. I, for one, can’t wait for him to get us another installment, one charting his less profiled journey from edge-cutting musician through illness and solitude to the painter-raconteur-philosopher that he is today.

  • “Rainbow In The Dark: The Autobiography” – the Long-Awaited Ronnie James Dio book

    It makes perfect sense that the irrepressible Ronnie James Dio would be the one to tell his life story in a book completed and released 11 years after his death!  If there’s one thing this book demonstrates, it’s that the tiny but mighty Dio had the gumption to power through obstacle after obstacle in the pursuit of his many dreams. It was that tenacity married with a singular talent that has made him the most iconic and imitated voice in heavy metal – an indispensable ingredient in the mega-success of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Black Sabbath and, finally, his globe-conquering namesake band, DIO. 

    Co-written with British music journalist Mick Wall and Dio’s widow and longtime manager Wendy, Rainbow In the Dark: The Autobiography follows the metal maven from his childhood in a close knit Italian-American family in upstate New York to the pinnacle of his solo band’s success, their Madison Square Garden debut in June 1986.

    rainbow in the dark

    For me, the most interesting chapters in most musician biographies come from their striving days, and Dio has a tale of failures, tragedies and restarts that is hard to match. 

    His musical life began with the trumpet, inspired by big band icon Harry James. It was an instrument his father made him practice four hours a day starting at age 6, the axe with which he would soon begin his non-stop gigging lifestyle playing at school and social events. His love of popular music then led him to forsake the brass for the bass, then vocals, in his pursuit of a professional career.  Talk about failure?  His first serious band, Ronnie and the Prophets, scored 10 flop singles between 1962 and 1965. A later band, the Electric Elves, hatched three more duds. An overnight sensation, he was not.

    The road has taken the life of many musicians and Dio had his share of close calls. In his pre-fame days, there were three crashes he recounts in dramatic detail. The first was when his band’s car was totaled in a collision with a mule!  Far worse was the second which took the life of his guitarist Nick Pantas, his closest friend and musical partner in several early bands. A third destroyed his band’s equipment. This was when a just-hired roadie named Igor was trusted with and promptly crashed their new truck on its inaugural run. 

    rainbow in the dark

    Things finally started to turn up in 1972 when Dio’s band Elf was signed by Purple Records, a label headed by Deep Purple’s Ian Paice and Roger Glover. This led to opening slots on huge tours for the likes of Alice Cooper and Deep Purple.  When the latter band’s masterful and mercurial guitarist Ritchie Blackmore decided to go solo, it was with most of Elf’s members, including Ronnie on vocals and as co-songwriter/lyricist. Together, Blackmore and Dio would pioneer a fusion of hard rock, heavy classical and fantasy lyricism that would define a most popular style of metal.

    Some of the more entertaining parts of the book are Dio’s memories of the prickly Mr. Blackmore. This includes him ordering the diminutive Dio to “sit on a pillow” as he is meeting, for the first time, his wife- and manager-to-be Wendy at The Rainbow, the L.A. rocker haunt from which the band would take its name.  Also detailed are some spooky seances led by Blackmore when the band was recording in France at Château d’Hérouville.  At these, he reportedly summoned the spirit of Mozart (who appeared in a mirror), Thor (who made it thunder) and the pagan god Baal (who wiped some sessions from their 24-track tapes).  For all their success in recording, co-composing and sell-out touring, Dio’s time with Blackmore ends badly – with him broke, without his due royalties and stranded in L.A.

    It is through Wendy’s friendship with Sharon Osborne that Dio came to the attention of Black Sabbath leader/guitarist Tony Iommi.  With Ozzy out of Sabbath and the band in limbo, Iommi was considering a solo project. He met with Dio for a jam which morphed into a miraculously writing session that produced the iconic “Children of the Sea.” Together, Iommi and Dio would go on to write much of what would become Black Sabbath’s career-revitalizing album, 1980’s Heaven and Hell.  It was a platinum-seller that triggered a rebirth of not only the band but the heavy metal genre as a whole. 

    rainbow in the dark

    In the book, we also learn how Ronnie’s Sicilian grandmother helped give birth to “the Devil’s Horns,” the now ubiquitous hand signal of heavy metal brotherhood, one usually deployed along with a firm headbang!  His grandmother called this ancient Sicilian symbol “the Maloik” and said it would protect young Dio from “the Evil Eye” and other ill omens. Dio started flashing it at Black Sabbath shows, as his answer to the peace symbol former front man Ozzy waved.  It caught on not only at Sabbath shows but across and beyond the world of heavy metal fandom.

    Dio goes on to describe the highs and lows of his time with Sabbath and in working with Iommi, another genius but often intractable guitar god. This portion provides the most VH-1 Behind the Music-styled dish on drugs and egos and how it finally led Dio to take the plunge and start his own band, in partnership with his wife/manager Wendy and Sabbath drummer Vinnie Appice.  Once again, Dio shows how his singular commitment and personal sacrifice, now aided by his wife’s business smarts, created one of the most loved and enduring marquee acts of 1980s. Dio then goes on to the many peaks and valleys of his own namesake band, from its debut album featuring the classic “Rainbow in the Dark” through various personnel changes, breakups, reformations to their 10th and final album, 2004’s Master of the Moon.

    Ronnie began writing this manuscript several years before being diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2009.  To bring the book to completion, Wendy fleshed out unfinished sections and added some of her own observations, from her decades knowing and working with Ronnie. Journalist Mick Wall had interviewed Dio countless times and was brought in to add more detail and finalize the manuscript. With all that, the book has a casual, conversational tone that is all Ronnie.

    Not covered in this book are Dio’s later years and his inspirational battle with cancer. While there are no solid plans for a second installment, Ronnie left Wendy notes for many stories that he wanted to tell about the years beyond where this book leaves off and his final struggle with can.

    To celebrate the publication of the book, Wendy Dio will participate in an hour-long LiveSigning.com event produced by Premiere Collectibles on Wednesday, July 28 beginning at 3:00PM (Eastern time). Those who have pre-ordered the book here will have the opportunity to submit questions in advance for Wendy to answer during the event, which will stream live via the Ronnie James Dio Facebook page.

  • Summer Reading- Easy-Listening Acid Trip: An Elevator Ride Through ‘60s Psychedelic Pop

    With his 2004 book, Elevator Music, Joseph Lanza laid out a lovingly comprehensive history of the much-maligned, mood-altering musical genre also known as Easy-Listening.  Lanza’s treatise was ballsy in that it made the entirely logical connection between the background music pumped into shopping malls, restaurants and, yes, elevators, and the soothing experiments of ambient artists like Brian Eno and The Orb. Now with Easy-Listening Acid Trip, Lanza is digging deeper into a very specific niche of moodsong. He is showing how the psychedelia-informed hits of The Beatles, Donovan, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Procol Harum, Jefferson Airplane and others inspired easy-listening arrangers to reinterpret them as instrumentals that were sometimes more surreal than the originals.

    easy-listening acid trip

    But first, a quick primer on easy-listening music. Easy-Listening was a style most popular in the ‘50s – ‘70s, when large orchestras recorded lush instrumental versions of the vocal standards of the ‘30s and ‘40s and, ultimately, the hits of the day. The most obvious trademark was their soaring string sections.  It was something that gave name to some of the idiom’s most popular artists, like the 101 Strings and the Percy Faith Strings, which also launched one of the most popular formats on FM radio. 

    Easy-Listening was an outgrowth of Muzak©, a patented brand of scientifically modeled background music that originated in 1934. The Muzak Corporation created thousands of hours of music that was deployed into offices, shops and the like to alter mood – to either increase the pace and productivity of workers/shoppers or, as with NASA astronauts and bored suburban housewives, to calm and reduce stress.  The music was programmed into playlists designed to “lift” the spirit of the listener (hence, the term Elevator Music). And though these works were designed to be lightweight, inobtrusive sonic wallpaper, it’s important to remember that they were crafted by many of the best arrangers, conductors, engineers and session musicians in the business.

    Lanza’s Easy-Listening Acid Trip is a journey through the countless reimagings of psychedelic pop standards by the swamis of orchestral schmaltz – from Mantovani and Henry Mancini to Ray Coniff and Jackie Gleason (yes, the mucho excitable guy from The Honeymooners TV show).

    easy-listening acid trip

    Lanza kicks-off with a chapter providing a pocket history of easy-listening and a delineation between the two types of psychedelic music: the concise whimsical, effects-laden pop songs (ones which ready-made for good moodsong remakes) and the aggressive, jamming of bands like the Grateful Dead (that were not).  The author then dedicates individual chapters to the different psych tentpole that arrangers took to reimagining. This includes St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Light My Fire,” The Lemon Piper’s “Green Tambourine,” Donovan’s slew of mystic hits and the musical Hair.  There’s also a chapter dedicated to that brief shining moment in 1968 when easy-listening artists like Paul Mauriat and Mason Williams scored chart-topping hits with their own originals, “Love Is Blue” and “Classical Gas.”  Lanza also shows how the exotica instruments and arrangements of easy-listening  ultimately infiltrated original rock on string heavy offerings like Love’s orch-pop masterpiece, Forever Changes, and The Left Banke’s “baroque pop” hit “Walk Away Renee.

    Lanza spends a good deal of time on the Hollyridge Strings, Capitol Records’ own studio orchestra. They waxed well over a dozen “Songbook” albums smoothing out the hits of their psych-minded label mates, The Beatles and The Beach Boys, which included haunting versions of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “I am The Walrus” and “Good Vibrations” to name a few. He also tells how the otherwise hard rocking Lemon Pipers came to record psych-pop’s most confectious song, “Green Tambourine,” and the saga behind 13 easy-listening versions, from the likes of Trombones Unlimited, Mariano and the Unbelievables and even Lawrence Welk. 

    Read (and YouTube your ears through) 16 elevator-informed versions of “Light My Fire,” most of which took the lead from the bossa nova flavored cover by guitarist/singer Jose Feliciano rather than the original.  Lanza also details the 21 lush interpretations of Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” by 101 Strings, Big Ben Hawaiian (cool steel guitar on this one!), Italy’s Caravelli and his Magnificent Strings, Living Guitars and more.

    easy-listening acid trip

    My favorite chapter is “A Wail of Illusion.” This explores how the sitar/raga fad came to hugely color easy-listening. This started right after Beatle George introduced the Indian stringed instrument into pop with the 1965 recording of “Norwegian Wood (The Bird Has Flown).” 

    Two men, English session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan and American Vinnie Bell, were responsible for the finest (and I mean that!) sitar-driven covers around.  Big Jim left a lucrative recording and TV gig with crooner Tom Jones to record the album Sitar Beat (1967), then coronate himself Lord Sitar on the self-titled follow-up.  On them, Sullivan adds an Eastern twang to covers of psychedelic pop stands like “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman,” “I am the Walrus” and “Eleanor Rigby.”  

    Brooklyn-born Vinnie Bell was not only a monster session guitarist but an inventor, who played an important role in the creation of the Danelectro 12-string electric and the Coral Electric Sitar, still the choice of prog musicians like Yes’ Steve Howe.  His 1967 album, Pop Goes the Electric Sitar also covers “Eleanor Rigby” and Bell would also lend his sitar talents to other artists’ covers of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Within You, Without You.”  More widely known are his sitar star turns on chart-toppers hits The Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine,” B.J. Thomas’ “Hooked on a Feeling,” Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love,” Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold” and The Box Tops “Cry Like a Baby”.

    Lanza also serves up numerous hilarious anecdotes. One regards how just weeks after the Strawberry Alarm Clock released their hit, “Incense and Peppermints,” Muzak recorded an instrumental version by Charles Grean and His Orchestra, one that kept the electric guitar but re-contoured the tune with harps, horns, flutes, a tambourine, and other effects for offices, supermarkets, and of course, elevators.  My favorite tale may be from 1989.  This is when gonzo rocker Ted Nugent made an offer/publicity stunt to buy Muzak for $10 million, with a promise to wipe out its entire library of master tapes. Muzak responded by recording an odiously fey version of his psychedelic whirlwind, “Journey to the Center of Your Mind,” with woodwinds and a sonic meadow of strings replacing his screaming guitar.  Point and set, Muzak!

    If you are a musician who wants to learn more, especially about arranging, you should check out this genre, with Lanza’s two great books serving as your guide. 

    You think easy-listening is not worth your time? 

    Maybe John Lennon can change your mind. 

    In the early ‘70s, Lennon disparagingly called his partner Paul McCartney’s solo work “Muzak.” But by 1980, in one of his final interviews, he was humming a different tune. 

    When asked about his favorite listening choices at the time, Lennon said: “Muzak or classical. I don’t purchase records.  When I was a housewife, I just had Muzak on, background music, because it relaxes you.” 

    If it’s good enough for him, it should be good enough for you.

  • The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know

    You will know them by their wrists. 

    These are old school music lovers. The obsessive Boomers who spent way too much of their youth flipping through tons of heavy vinyl, the literal and figurative. In used record and department stores.  At yard sales, stoop sales and flea markets. In church basements and Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. Anywhere an obscure gem could be unearthed for less than the price of a cup of Joe or can of Tab (the original diet soda introduced in 1963, just ask your grandmother).  Along the way, they developed wrists of mighty girth from all the light-speed musical flipping, much the same way today’s generation has thumbs overdeveloped from swiping through the limitless universe of sounds on Spotify, Pandora and the like and hook-ups on Tinder.

    White Label Promo Preservation Society

    Now a duo of these music obsessives and a host of their friends have put together a book about their most memorable finds. With a reading and some deep listening, it will give you a doctorate degree in the deep cut music that matters most. These are the hidden gems of doo-wop, sunshine pop, psychedelia, progressive rock, soul, early metal and proto-punk, ones that are left out of rock’s big history books.

    The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know is a delicious new deep dive written and compiled by Sal Maida, NYC-born bassist for Roxy Music, Sparks and ‘70s power pop combo Milk ‘n’ Cookies, and veteran rock journo and A&R exec Mitchell Cohen. The duo recruited for their “society” a gang of esteemed music obsessives – musicians, label executives and journalists –who chose favorite albums from the ‘60s and ‘70s to rave about. The only criterion was that the albums never made the top 100 on Billboard’s LP Top 200. 

    As Sal and Mitchell write in the book’s introduction: “These are the albums you might not read about, except here. No one needs to tell you why Pet Sounds, Revolver or Blonde On Blonde are essential parts of any decent record collection or guide you towards classics – or even somewhat lesser efforts – by the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry or the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Or which Pink Floyd album is indispensable (hint: the debut; you can stop right there). Although we have strong opinions about pantheon artists like Led Zeppelin and Marvin Gaye and are happy to share those views with anyone within earshot, that isn’t what The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know is about. We aren’t here to challenge or endorse rock orthodoxy. Neither is the mission to, once again, assert the brilliance of Skip Spence’s Oar, of such artists as Nick Drake, Big Star and the Velvet Underground, whose influence, despite the lack of any commercial success in their time, has been thoroughly – one might even say exhaustively – documented elsewhere.”

    To help tell this story, Sal and Mitchell called upon an impressive team of two dozen guest essayists. They include Patti Smith Group guitarist and writer Lenny Kaye, producer Russ Titelman, scenester/singer Bebe Buell, journalists Jim Farber, Peter Keepnews, Ira Robbins and Mike Stax, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, NYC’s chameleon chanteuse Tammy Faye Starlite and many more.

    What you will find here?  Stories like how with Evie Sands made one of the most confident and accomplished albums by a female singer-songwriter, Any Way That You Want Me, two years before Carole King waxed her 1971 platinum-selling masterpiece, Tapestry. You’ll also hear how county crossover star Bobbie Gentry followed up her monster single “Ode to Billie Joe” and the LP of that title, with a haunting, mysterious concept album that defies description and still surprises with listens today.   In all likelihood you will be introduced to the quirky New York folk-rock duo of Bunky & Jake, to the art-rock of Ars Nova, and to the entrancing psych-pop of Blossom Toes. Georgie Fame, Joe South, the Hollies, Jackie DeShannon, The Impressions, the Everly Brothers and Nico all pop up here, often in ways you might not expect. This is a book for everyone who has gravitated to used record stores, garage sales and flea markets and is willing to take a risk in on something simply based on the cover pic, the liner notes or the vibe/impulse to take it home.

    As with his bass playing, Maida has a wonderful flow and emotional drive with his words.  In The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know, he demonstrates his authority and love for the deep cuts of British pop and American psyche like The Hollies’ Here! Here!, the Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll’s Open, The Bonniwell Music Machine, Curt Boettcher and The Millenium’s Begin, the debut by the Jeff Lynne-led Idle Race and Tomorrow’s self-titled debut. Cohen’s contributions span the stylistic gamut from the vocalese of DJ Murray the K’s Gassers for Submarine Race Watchers comp, the folk treasures in Tim Hardin’s debut and the off-beat pop of Lovin’ Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanovsky’s obscure debut, Alive and Well in Argentina. Cohen also tackles the progressive soul of The Impressions’ The Young Mods’ Forgotten Story, the sharp twang of Merle Haggard’s Pride In What I Am and Laura Nyro’s Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, with some smart comparisons to the work of another R&B inspired tri-state NY collective, The Rascals.

    The work of the many “society” contributors also sparkles, with musical knowledge and a resonance of the emotion these ofttimes unknown offerings still trigger in them.

    Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley provides a heartfelt tribute to the lasting impact of the hard-to-find 1966 bossa nova classic Os Afro Sambas by Baden Powell and Vinicius De Moraes, while drummer/reissue maven Pat Thomas reintroduces Seize the Time, an obscure 1969 disc by Black Panther Elaine Brown which chronicled the movement in song. One of the most fun is bassist Eva Gardner’s (Cher, Pink, Moby) recollections of her father Kim’s work at bassist for legendary British mod poppers The Creation and The Birds.

    Proving my own worth as a rock anorak, I was familiar with a good deal of the artists covered, while maybe not the particular discs upon which the writers chose to expound.  There were a few fab exceptions that I had no idea of, ones that sent me scrolling through YouTube and Wikipedia to discover .

    Jim Farber, an excellent music writer who traffics in elevating obscurities these days for the New York Times and The Guardian, explores the spirituality laced folk of Rachel Faro’s 1974 album, Refugees. It’s a should’ve been classic of the Blue-era Joni Mitchell idiom, one produced by John Simon (The Band, Van Morrison) for an artist who disappeared by the end of the decade.  Journalist Jim Allen raves on the one album recorded by Paul Siebel, a popular Greenwich Village folkie, 1971’s Jack-Knife Gypsy. Paul was a great songwriter and performer who called it quits after this one offering. 

    An album cover I encountered repeatedly in ‘70s but never listen to, Baby Huey’s Living Legend, gets the proper praise from Cohen. Produced and with three songs by Curtis Mayfield, it featured the powerhouse 400-pound singer fronting a full throttle band of session aces (Leon Russell), a band compared to James Brown’s JBs meets the Vanilla Fudge. After a blitz of press, Huey’s story ends sadly with an overdose before his album is released. His tune “Hard Times” lives on as a sample in the works of rappers like Ice Cube and A Tribe Called Quest. Well worth many listens.

    There were just a couple of puzzling entries in the book. Mega-producer Russ Titelman (Randy Newman, James Taylor) wisely chose Judee Sill’s self-titled 1971 debut, one featuring the classic “Jesus Was A Crossmaker.”  But he only goes on for a few short paragraphs about it and the singer’s star-crossed life and career. Songwriting ace Marshall Crenshaw takes on an unexpected choice, Soft Machine’s decidedly avant-garde, self-titled 1969 debut. After complaining about the garbage sounding drums, bass, and a Lowrey organ played with fuzz through a Marshall stack and ear-splitting jamming, Crenshaw somehow concludes about how much he loves it. I might have preferred he discuss something that had a more logical impact on his work, but perhaps, that really isn’t the spirit of the book and his contribution.

    If that’s not enough for you, the book concludes with Sal and Mitch’s recommendations of 150 more great albums that failed to crack the charts.  Their suggestions include artists like Irma Thomas, Alan Price, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Kaleidoscope, Spooky Tooth, Taste, Jack Bruce, Grapefruit, The Move and more. 

    I had the pleasure of tackling The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know  on long a cross-country drive. Like me, it is one you will want to spend a lot of time with.  With open ears, open mind and a long drill down the YouTube wormhole, it will help you discover a boat load of astoundingly cool retro sounds, ones whose impact can last a lifetime, just like they have for these intrepid vinyl scavengers.

    For more great reading, dig into Sal Maida’s memoir, Four String, Phony Proof and 300 45s.

  • Mike Greenblatt talks latest book, “Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm”

    He went to Woodstock ’69… and he took the brown acid.  Fifty years later, veteran music journo Mike Greenblatt decided to put it all down in a book, one of the most personal, soulful and informative chronicles of this once-in-a-lifetime smorgasbord of sound, spirit and myth.

    Greenblatt’s Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm offers a front-row seat to what many believe was the most important live event in rock history (well, the Boomers at least).  It forever changed the lives of the 500,000 who attended and the business of music. 

    Half of Greenblatt’s book is memoir. It’s a compendium of his own colorful recollections and those of many other young people who found their way to Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in remote Bethel, NY  for three days of “nothing but fun and music.”

    Mike Greenblatt

    Greenblatt was a music- and pot-loving 18-year-old who made the trek from the Jersey suburbs with his straight-arrow best friend Neil.  He survived losing all the food and supplies he carefully packed and made it through almost all of the three-plus days of sun, sounds, rain, mud, skinny dipping and, oh yes, a wooly trip courtesy of the legendary brown acid attendees were repeatedly warned not to consume by the concert’s stage announcers. 

    The book also provides an in-depth view of the making of the festival. This comes from the event organizers, the musicians who played as well as many of the good-hearted volunteers and locals who somehow surfed an unending chain of chaos to make it happen, all without a single reported incidence of violence. 

    Greenblatt has also sleuthed out many never-before-heard stories from backstage and put a good deal of the focus on some of the quiet giants of the festival, like sound guru Bill Hanley and festival booker/logistics man/stage announcer John Morris, whose contributions have tended to get short shrift in earlier telling of the Woodstock ’69 story.  Did you realize that Woodstock creator Michael Lang wanted Gene Autry, the singing cowboy from 1930s movie Westerns, and not Jimi Hendrix, to close the festival?  Or that Iron Butterfly were disinvited, at the last minute while at a NYC airport, for unreasonable demands?  Fun trivia like this abounds in the book.

    Music fans will drink up the blow-by-blow of the 32 performances, including the career-making ones of Santana, Melanie and Ten Years After and the derailing ones of Bert Sommer, Tim Hardin, Sweetwater and Quill.  The 224-page book is lavishly illustrated with some of the best-known photos from the fest.  It also covers the aftermath, from the legal battles over rights to the riches it would generate in films, recordings and off-shoot festivals to the museum and concert venue that now stand at the site.

    As the 52nd anniversary of New York State’s most mythic musical event draws near, we could think of no better person to provide context.

    Mike Greenblatt

    Sal Cataldi: What inspired you to write this book, and why did you wait 50 years to do so?

    Mike Greenblatt:  I never intended to write a Woodstock book. I was working on my memoir of all my rock star interviews ironically entitled “Nobody You Know” (that’s me), but my good friend Pat Prince, editor of Goldmine magazine, always loved my Woodstock stories. The Goldmine owners had a book wing that had put out a 40th Anniversary book that sold well so when the 50th Anniversary came, Pat suggested me. They made me an offer and I stopped working on my memoir.

    SC:  Who were some of your favorite performers at the festival, the ones who really connected with the audience.  And who disappointed you and the audience most?

    MG:  Best was Sly & The Family Stone, Mountain, Johnny Winter, The Band and Canned Heat. Worst was Grateful Dead, Incredible String Band and Tim Hardin.

    SC:  Why do you believe that Country Joe McDonald was the true soul of the festival?

    MG: Because he performed solo on the spur of the moment and nobody was listening at first. Then he did the fuck cheer and had us shout out those letters over and over and he yelled “What’s that Spell? Five times. You don’t know how liberating, hilarious, revolutionary and communal yelling FUCK at the top of your lungs with hundreds of thousands of others can be!  It represented pure unvarnished FREEDOM.

    SC:  Creedence is an interesting story. They were the first major artists to sign on to the bill yet weren’t represented in the album and movie. Why?

    MG: Because John Fogerty refused. He thought they sounded bad. He was wrong.  

    SC:  There were some other artists who did great sets like Johnny Winter who did also weren’t included in the film?  What was the reason with these?

    MG:  Johnny Winter’s manager, Steve Paul, forbade it, for some reason. He was wrong.

    SC:  You have a special affection for the performance by Bert Sommer.  What was his story and why didn’t Woodstock catapult him to fame?  And what other performers suffered a similar fate, folks who didn’t get a big boost from playing the event.

    MG:  Bert should have been propelled to fame if only for his tear-jerking version of Paul Simon’s “America.” Woodstock was so quiet during his set. We were listening. He was transcendent. Not making the movie sent him into a downward spiral which he never recovered from. Sweetwater and Quill just weren’t good enough. Tim Hardin was so damn high on heroin, he was awful.

    SC:  Your book is interesting because it puts a good deal of the focus on Bill Hanley and John Morris?  Why do you think they were the real unsung heroes of the festival, from the organizational side?

    MG:  Hanley isn’t known as “The Father of Festival Sound” for nothing. He had to make sure the people way up high on the hill could hear without blasting those of us in front and he did! John Morris persuaded Gov. Rockefeller not to send in the troops to disburse us after the stories of drugs and nudity reached his office Saturday morning.  Morris persuaded diva Sly to get the hell onstage. Morris soothed our fragile eggshell minds during the storm Sunday with his avuncular stage presence. Morris put out so many fires during the course of those 5 days that he alone is the MVP.

    SC:  Your book spends of good deal of time talking about your own experiences at Woodstock and those of other attendees.  What are some of the best stories, from the audience perspective, covered in your book?

    MG: Well, taking the Brown Acid of course and falling in love, twice!  Also, the realization that we were all in this together and we damn well better help each other and realizing that the whole world was watching.  Also getting excited over the rampant rumor that Dylan would show up and finding people who were also anti-war, pro civil rights, pro women’s lib, anti-Reagan and anti-Nixon. Most importantly, the concept that as long as the music was playing, everything will be alright. That has stayed with me my whole life. The toughest part was when the music had to stop for four hours during the rainstorm and we were tired, wet, freezing, hungry, thirsty and had to go to the bathroom.

    SC:  Anyone who has listened to the album or watched the movie knows that there were lots of warnings not to take the brown acid. But you did!  What was that like for you?

    MG: I loved it. It made the Sunday monsoon exciting like a disaster movie. Had I not taken it, I would have been most likely bumming out as my friend left me alone for what amounted to hour after hour looking for a phone booth to call our moms and I started to panic. But tripping, I became “everyman” and talked a blue streak to my friendly neighbors. When the announcement came warning about the brown acid, I shouted, ‘OH NO, I JUST TOOK IT” And it never wore off. I did it at the start of Joe Cocker’s afternoon set and by the time we left at 2:00 a.m. the next morning, I was still tripping.

    SC:  I never heard the conspiracy theory that Woodstock was really just a way to gather all the hippies in one place for some kind of possible attack.  What was the rationale and how widespread was this belief?

    MG:  It was a fringe conspiracy theory that had no merit. I don’t remember it being a real fear. I never even heard anyone speak of it there that weekend. More real was the fact that we knew when we got home, we could be sent against our will to fight in an immoral and illegal war halfway around the world in Southeast Asia. We were all living with that fear in the back of our minds. I was planning to go to Canada.

    SC:  The rainstorm at Woodstock was legendary.  But you say there was some concerns that it might be the biggest mass electrocution in American history? 

    MG:  Yeah, the topsoil frayed during the monsoon Sunday. That’s why the music stopped for so long. There were live wires underneath us. NYU Professor Chris Langhart, another behind-the-scenes hero, checked it out during those four silent hours and concluded that it wouldn’t have been fatal, but it would’ve been quite the shock! Power was reverted to another source and the music continued. But John Morris, at one point, did indeed think he might be responsible for the biggest mass electrocution in American history and even thought if it happened, he would have killed himself.

    SC:  Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an epic moment. But your book tells how his agreement to move to a Monday morning slot enabled four other acts to perform, acts who would’ve been told they couldn’t if he went on at midnight Sunday as planned?

    MG:  Yeah, Johnny Winter wound up with the prime-time Midnight slot. Had Jimi taken that offer, Blood Sweat & Tears, CSNY, Paul Butterfield and Sha Na Na would never have played. The concert would have ended with Jimi. That factor was a main part of Jimi’s decision to close no matter what time it was. 

    SC:  You say Woodstock changed the music business forever and even made Bill Graham decide to close the Fillmores. How did it change the concert game?

    MG:  Bill Graham was sitting on the stage looking at the massive crowd. He instinctively knew right then and there that the years of small theaters like the Fillmore would give way to stadium shows and gargantuan tours. He was right. He closed Fillmore East within two years after that.

    SC:  The story of Max Yasgur, the man who lent his dairy farm as the site of the festival, is both celebratory and sad.  How did he go to bat for the concert and how did he suffer as a result of it?

    MG:  The townspeople did not want us at all. We had already been kicked out of Wallkill just weeks prior. He stood his ground and told the town fathers at a big meeting that we had a right to put on our concert because of the freedoms Americans fought and died for were at stake. He was a lifelong conservative Republican but he knew in his heart to let us play on his property. The cops couldn’t believe how well-behaved we were. 500,000 stoned-out semi-naked hippies with not enough water, food or bathrooms? There was not one reported instance of violence. That’s improbable. Impossible even. But we proved our peace’n’love credentials. Afterwards, Yasgur was ostracized. No one would buy his milk. He had to move to Florida where he died from a heart attack at 53. He is the Patron Saint of Woodstock. 

    SC:  What did you think of the other Woodstock Festivals and the efforts to do a 50th anniversary event, one that didn’t come to be?

    MG: Attempts to emulate Woodstock in the ‘90s were miserable failures. Arson, rape, violence, all occurred. The 50th actually was held at the site of the original fest at the Museum and had some great acts on a much smaller scale. 

    SC: Will there ever be another event like Woodstock?

    b: You cannot ever replicate Woodstock. It was a cosmic accident. Imagine getting that many people together nowadays? It’s a different world now. It will never happen again. It was a moment-in-time wherein all the elements conspired to make it a disaster, but we fed each other, kept each other high, warm and happy. Back then, the longhair sitting next to you was your brother. No longer. The girls bared their breasts and nobody got molested. Hard to believe. Guys I would be scared to meet on a dark street corner wound up building fires and feeding me. The sense of communalism that permeated the weekend is long gone.

  • Book Review: Joel Selvin Dissects Rock-n-Roll High School LA-style in “Hollywood Eden”

    One of rock journalism’s most experienced, insightful and productive writers, Joel Selvin, has created a fresh take on the telling of the birth of L.A. pop and the California dream of the ‘60s with his latest book, Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars and the Myth of the California Paradise.

    hollywood eden

    When it comes to writing about rock music, and writing about it very well, few can match Selvin. From 1969 – 2009, he was a rock music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as a contributor to Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, the Los Angeles Times and many more. He has written or co-written excellent books on artists like Ricky Nelson, The Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone and Sammy Hagar, events like Monterey Pop, The Summer of Love, Altamont and the birth of the dance craze The Peppermint Twist at one of the pioneering NYC club scenes, The Peppermint Lounge. 

    Joel Selvin, author.

    With his masterful 2014 book, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues, Selvin rescues from obscurity one of the most innovative producers/songwriters of the ‘60s, a man who was largely forgotten after his death in 1967 at age 38. Berns was the man who brought Latin swing to rock with his first hit production, “A Little Bit of Soap,” in 1961, as well as the architect of many of Atlantic Records’ early hits for R&B stars like Solomon Burke, Esther Phillips, Ben E. King and Wilson Pickett. Berns was also the writer of classics like “Twist and Shout,” “Piece of My Heart,” “Cry Baby” and “Hang on Sloopy,” and the producer of mega-hits like the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk,” Barbara Lewis “Baby I’m Yours” and Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”

    If all his books have one thing in common, it is Selvin’s skill as a storyteller.  His books read like someone spinning a long yarn around a campfire. They are incredibly rich in fact and scene-setting details, and compulsively readable. Hollywood Eden is cut from the same mold.

    Selvin’s latest tells the story of a group of young musicians who came together at the dawn of the ‘60s to create the lasting sound that powered the myth of the California dream. Central to the saga is a group of sun-kissed teens from the University High School (Uni High) Class of ’58, which included surf music pioneers Jan and Dean, bizarro rock impresario Kim Fowley, drummer Sandy Nelson, Nancy Sinatra, the Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston and Kathy Korner, the petite teen surfer who inspired the book and movie Gidget. They came of age in Southern California at the dawn of a new era when anything seemed possible. These were the kids who created the idea of modern Southern California, complete with surf music, hot-rods and electric guitars, that the rest of world saw as a teenage paradise on earth. 

    hollywood eden

    The forward to the book sets the Rock-n-Roll high school scenario by also listing the alumni of other schools, like Hawthorne High (Brian Wilson) and Fairfax High (Phil Spector, Herb Alpert, Wrecking Crew sax man Steve Douglas and songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri), sound-obsessed youngsters who would go on to revolutionize pop music. Some of the Angeleno legends referenced were native New Yorkers or had Big Apple connections, like the Mamas and the Papas and Phil Spector. With all their glorious accomplishments, some of the stories here end with the characters getting burned, for flying too close to the sun or driving too fast and crashing. The latter was the case for Sandy Nelson, who had a smash hit with the drum solo-driven instrumental “Teen Beat” and especially Jan Berry of Jan and Dean.

    Berry is the worthy centerpiece of the story, another legend whose accomplishments are getting lost with the passing of time. Tall, blonde, handsome, athletic and with a magnetic personality, Berry’s adventures in music started in the late ‘50s, when he formed a doo-wop group called The Barons, which included folks like Sandy Nelson, Bruce Johnston, actor-to-be James Brolin and, of course, his partner-to-be Dean Torrence. 

    hollywood eden

    With his father’s gift of an upright piano and two Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders, Berry set to experimenting in his garage. He started bouncing tracks and stacking vocals to create a sound that would become the signature of the sunny California dream, it would also serve as the template for a legendary musician he would come to work closely with, Brian Wilson.

    When Torrence was conscripted into the army, Berry teamed up with Arnie Ginsburg and scored a hits, including “Jennie Lee” and “Gas Money” as Jan and Arnie. By 1959, he was back in business with Dean scoring a Top 10 hit with the Herb Alpert-produced “Baby Talk.” Even though he was attending medical school, Berry also had the energy to write and produce for other artists like The Rip Chords, The Matadors and actress-turned-singer Shelley Fabares.

    Jan and Dean’s commercial peak was from 1963 – 1966, when they scored sixteen Top 40 hits, many in collaboration with Brian Wilson like the Wilson-Berry penned “Surf City,” along with “Drag City” and “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.” Berry’s fate would be presaged with his #8 hit from 1964, “Dead Man’s Curve.”  In April 1966, he would crash his speeding car right near this very curve and suffer serious brain damage and paralysis that would essentially put an end to his creative career.

    Also noteworthy in Hollywood Eden is the fascinating career of Bruce Johnston. A child of privilege from Bel-Air, Johnston also made some major strides while still in high school, playing with Richie Valens, The Everly Brothers and Eddie Cochran and producing and playing on  Sandy Nelson’s “Teen Beat.” He also produced the Rip Chords and his own string of surf and car singles, with future Byrds producer Terry Melcher. In 1965, he joined the Beach Boys and was featured on some of their classic albums like Pet Sounds, Sunflower and Surf’s Up.

    Drummer Sandy Nelson’s story is another interesting one that was, like his good friend Berry’s, derailed by driving too fast. Nelson served as a session drummer on early hits by Phil Spector and the Hollywood Argyles, before scoring a million-selling, Billboard Top 5 hit with the drum solo driven “Teen Beat” in 1959. Nelson pounded out two more Top 10 hits, including “Let There Be Drums,” before a 1963 motorcycle accident led to the amputation of his leg.

    Readers will also be intrigued by Selvin’s telling of the story of Nancy Sinatra. He tells how Ol’ Blue Eyes’ little girl went from nowhere in her singing career by playing the “good girl” before scoring a worldwide #1 as the “bad girl” who snarled  “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” 

    Selvin’s latest provides tons of enlightenment on the careers of more L.A. legends like performer/record company head Herb Alpert, the Mamas and the Papas and their producer Lou Adler, Phil Spector, Kim Fowley and, of course, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. The book ends with the release of Wilson’s crowning achievement, “Good Vibrations,” and beginning of his decline with the commercial failure of Pet Sounds and its abandoned follow-up Smile.

    With America hopefully finally coming out of the long Covid-19 quarantine, Selvin’s Hollywood Eden will be a great summer read for music-lovers who want to experience the sunshine sounds and some California dreamin’.