Sam & Jerry Lee: Live Concert Gems

You a rock & roller?

Itching for a fight?

You’re hangin’ with pals who love the tuneage as much as you do.

Here’s a sure fire starter.

Throw out a declaration, a definitive statement, a proclamation that XXXXXX is The Best Live Album of All Time.

Here’s a suggestion. For your own personal safety.

But sure to take a step back.

Hell hath no fury — to coin a phrase — like a lifer whose favorite has been dissed.

Trust me, I’ve been in a few of these colloquies. Kevlar vest not a bad idea.

It really is very personal, mostly subjective, though technical and creative standards are relevant.

If we have bands we love beyond any other, and they’ve made a  terrific live album, it surely rock(et)s to the top of our list. Read the rest of this entry »

Ray Charles and Me: Rock & Roll Memories

The story’s been told before.

But it’s my favorite about Ray Charles and me.

The time I didn’t hear him when I intended to. At JazzFest.

As I’ve written many times over, one of the cool daily rituals during Fest has been the krewe gathering in the evening for some sumptuous meal, pulling out our cubes from the day and playing a friendly battle rock & roll one upsmanship.

How each of us would lord over the other some band we heard the others didn’t. How much they missed. Knowing of course they were hearing something just as special.

So that night when I’m looking at my schedule, marked with whom I heard and whom I intended to, I broke out laughing. and couldn’t stop.

My companions looked at me quizzically, as if to say, “Whaaaaaa?”

“Oh, nothing much. I blew off Ray Charles today. Didn’t realize it until now.”

Fortunately, I had heard him other times. Including another time at JF, if memory serves.

 * * * *

I was in high school the first time I heard him live. Read the rest of this entry »

Hail, Hail: The Chuck Berry Documentary

When I mentioned recently to a fellow rock & roll addict that I’d spent my early morning during breakfast revisiting the great 1987 documentary, “Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll,” he wondered how that came about?

A long and winding road for certain.

Serpentine. As my thought processes tend to be these days.

Briefly. Or as briefly as I am capable of.

I came upon an article in the New York Times, listing 13 transcendent Beatles covers by black artists.

One incredible tune I had frankly never heard before — or if so, didn’t recall — Al Green covering “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” I’ll imbed the video down below.

On the list was Ray Charles’s brilliant and soulful — Duh! — cover of “Eleanor Rigby.”

Which morphed into my memory of hearing him do it in the 80s at that summer “jazz” festival they’d put on at Riverfront Stadium in Cincy. I also went down the rabbit hole of the times I heard Ray Charles through the years, which I might write about at a later time.

So with Charles on my mind, I ventured to a conversation I had at Mosca’s once with Taylor Hackford, the director who fashioned the Ray Charles biopic with Jamie Foxx. And his talking about what it was like to work with Charles input.

Then I got in touch with how I’ve rued that I didn’t chat him up about working with the notoriously difficult Berry on the documentary he directed. So I tracked down an interview with Hackford about that experience, of which he has few fond memories of dealing with Berry.

Then I realized for four bucks and change I could rewatch the doc on Amazon Prime. Read the rest of this entry »

My Favorite Rock & Roll Cameo

I shall end up with a reveal of my favorite cameo in a rock & roll song, promise.

But it shall take some meandering to get there.

For context, and certainly appropriate for today’s date, let me start here, with what for me is an indelible if just imagined image.

The morning after the plane crash in ’59, Dion DiMucci learning the news, sitting forlorn somewhere in or near frigid Moorhead, Minnesota staring at Buddy Holly’s guitar. Which the tour headliner had given him for safe keeping because of weight restrictions for the plane that took down Holly and Richie Valenzuela and J.P. Richardson.*

*Sidenote. The continuation of that tour was the first rock & roll show produced by long time Louisville concert promoter Martin Cohn.

I’ve always sensed a bit of melancholy in Dion’s voice, along with his reverence for rock & roll’s origins and the days of his youth on the New York streets.

The romantic in me believes that perceived hint of sadness comes from the moment with Holly’s guitar.

 * * * * *

I’ll get back to Dion eventually. Read the rest of this entry »

My Day at Woodstock

No, I was never at Woodstock.

Though, given my open obsession/ addiction to rock & roll, many people have asked, so sure in their minds that I had to have been there.

I was at Atlanta Pop II in ’70, the ill fated (and ill named) Celebration of Life the following summer, plus a great one day festival at the ballpark in Evansville somewhere back around then.

Along with hundreds, oh thousands of shows through the decades.

But, no, I was never at Woodstock.

But the day the movie first showed in Louisville remains indelible.

And I thought of it recently when hearing the original version of what for me was the most gobsmacking performance, among the many in the documentary.

If memory serves — and it is becoming more unreliable with each passing day — Michael Wadleigh’s concert flick opened here sometime in May or June of ’70. (The official release date was in March, but as often happened back then, it took awhile for flicks to get here.)

I do recall it was on the day of my last law school final. Which was set for something like 6:00 in the evening.

I was not going to miss the first showing of the concert flick that afternoon, whether my future might have been altered or not.

Sat in the center of the third row, transfixed. Stone mesmerized.

Literally. Figuratively. Read the rest of this entry »

“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” A Review

The lede shall not be buried.

The sequel to “This is Spinal Tap” is not as good as the original.

It happens.

There’s only one “Godfather 2.”

Only one “Astral Weeks.”

Only one “Guernica.”

That settled, next question: Should there have been a sequel?

After all, the original is a masterwork. It essentially invented the category of Mockumentaries. It is hilarious, and nails the big rock scene. It holds up four decades on.

Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner are all quick witted, very clever improvisers with a reverence for rock & roll along with affection for its and foibles. So too their brilliant supporting cast. The original (and the sequel) are love letters to the music and culture that sustained my generation.

It was all there. Crank it to 11. Stonehenge. They’ve taken on new meanings in pop culture vernacular. Read the rest of this entry »

Mad Magazine: Blast from the Past

Impulsive compulsive consumerizer that I am, it doesn’t take much.

So, I was toast when the face stared out at me from the ‘zine rack by checkout at Jeff Bezos’ grocery store — purposely there to snare a dude with my predilection.

From the way back machine.

Someone I haven’t thought about for decades frankly.

Alfred E. Neuman.

The Mad Magazine “Golden Collection of Garbage” was in my cart with nary a second thought.

It was a significant part of my subteen years. Maybe a few more.

Have no recollection when I was mature? enough to move on? Read the rest of this entry »

“Thunder Road”: Fifty Years On

Screen door slams/ Mary’s dress sways/ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays

It is the opening line of the opening tune of Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 masterwork of an album, “Born To Run.”

A collection of eight short stories no less relevant and seminal than Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” or Joyce’s “Dubliners.”

“Thunder Road.”

My firm belief — subjective of course, not an absolute — it’s the singular greatest teen rock & roll anthem.*

*For Dylan, it’s “A Teenager in Love.” Like I said, subjective.

Which, because rock & roll at its essence is the chronicling of teen angst, a time to begin figuring things out, a longing to escape, a fantasy of hitting the road for new life changing adventure, a meeting THE ONE, a get out of jail card for preternatural high school loneliness, means the song is the great rock anthem.

Roy Orbison singing for the lonely/ Hey that’s me and I want you only

I was thirty when the album and song were released, remember exactly where I heard it for the first time. At my next door neighbor Johnny C’s apartment in the Triangle.

I recall that the spare less than orchestrated opening of the album version gave clearance for the resonant lyrical poesy to hit me like a shot to the solar plexus. Read the rest of this entry »

Cellphones: A Curse & A Blessing

My my my generation is one that grew up learning how to dial a rotary phone, which plugged into the wall with wires that ran to a telephone pole outside.

Some of us experienced the oddness of family lines, where several households had the same number and could listen in on the others’ calls.

True.

We remember when Ma Bell was deemed a monopoly and broken into regional monopolies.

We remember when we could buy our own phones instead of renting one from SC Bell.

And when push button phones became the norm. In colors no less.

We had answering machines.

Etc, etc.

You’re welcome for the quick trip back in the time machine.

Some of us were late arrivals to phones you could carry around in your pocket.

Guilty. Read the rest of this entry »

Celebrity Wedding Culture & the Antithesis

It has happened a few times recently.

A moment when I’ve been chided with something like, “You’re the Culture Maven, or so you say, but you don’t seem to be posting much about, eh, culture.

“The occasional movie review, or another blog about how much you love the Tedeschi Trucks band, but not much else.

“So, are you the Culture Maven or not? Fish or cut bait, dude.”

OK. Guilty.

I remain fascinated as ever by the passing scene, what Katy Perry’s up to, or the every once in awhile curiosity about Paris Hilton.

In fact, I’ll own that I’m been more curious than I should be about those nuptials over in romantic Venice. One of the world’s richest dudes. His shapely new bride. The A+ list on hand for the celebration.

Actually, and this is the truth, I mostly look at the photos. Lots of security protecting Oprah as she gets in and out of water limo.

I wonder. Is Jeff Bezos really friends with the Kardashians? If so, whatever might they talk about? Does Tom Brady chat them up, now that’s he’s single?

Plus, are the Kardashians really friends with  . . . anybody? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s A Beautiful Day

Triple entendre, that.

The title, that is.

First, simply literally.

As I was taking care of errands, motoring about the other afternoon, it was a poetic spring day.

Sunny. Short sleeve warm. Not too humid.

And, oh my, that sky.

Azure to infinity.

Lazy billowy Cumulus. Layered. Textured.

The sort of visual, like the Pacific at Big Sur, the verdancy of Cherokee in full bloom, or an August field of tall sunflowers in the Périgord which causes you to stop and marvel at the beauty of Spaceship Earth at rest in its natural state.

And figuratively.

I’m at the stage of life that while savoring the day, I had successfully completed two of my triad of medical appointments last week. Not that many over the norm for an octogenarian. Good news at both. Blessings. All that’s left is annual eye checkup. Easy peasy.

So, it would have psychologically been a boffo day even were Mark Weinberg on the telly huffin’ and puffin’ about some rotation hovering over my condo.* Read the rest of this entry »

In Praise of Little Feat

In the nature of rock & roll acknowledgment, it is a mistake, an egregious omission of the highest order.

A travesty.

For those like me obsessed with such matters, it is difficult to swallow. Thus, I hardly give a glance to the annual induction announcement from the institution that ostensibly is the chronicler of excellence in the genre.

I choose to ignore.

Until I can’t.

Yesterday, while putzing around my hacienda, I pulled Time Loves A Hero off the shelf.

As I was taking care of my tasks, bouncing around with a boogie beat to the syncopated rhythms, mesmerized as always with the masterful musicianship, smiling bemusedly at the astute clever lyrics, listening in wonder at the truly unique eclectic stylings, that cloud hovered.

As I am wont to do, I thought, even uttered out loud with disgust, LITTLE FEAT IS NOT IN THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME!

How can this possibly be?

How can this iconic band, comfortably in the conversation contemplating the best outfits of the Rock Era, have slipped through the cracks?

The R&RHoF inductee list is full of charlatans, unworthies. So many, to name but a few would be an injustice.

But no Little Feat.

What. A. Crock. Read the rest of this entry »