Sunday, April 20, 2003
You can probably guess I didn't buy a lot of rock records or go to a lot of rock shows (and never have) but I have seen hundreds of music shows of all kinds. I got to hear the tail-end of West Coast jazz in small beach town nightclubs, to the brand new surf music at what was billed as the first surf contest ever at Huntington Beach pier in 1960. Frank Zappa playing in his own little coffee house in Pomona he called "The Circle of the Zodiac" before the espresso machine blew up one Tuesday night and he moved to north to "The Pit". I may have even have accumulated some sort of pop credentials for having seen a few of the Dick Clark American Bandstand Roadshows when they rolled through L.A. And hippy-dippy credentials for having seen the Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company on the same bill in their own environment of a rented ballroom, complete with balcony seating, strobe lights, a primitive gelled light show and all, but I couldn't tell you what they were even playing as I was so unfamiliar with their music and the scene.
Some are crummy memories (see my post below about that English group on my only stadium rock experience). Some are mere snippets of a special moment of recognition that can be a glimpse into the dynamics of the music being played (Jino the bassplayer going up on stage to play even though he was really, really mad at Earl Hooker -- or Charlie Musselwhite woofing a bit, and standing on stage about to begin a set, when he suddenly played unamplified while staring straight at a fellow at a front table, just to say something to him. Then he stopped, nodded his head like "Take that and chew on it" and soon began the show)
Funny snippets of memory suddenly spark alive in front of my eyes, bringing the distant rooms back to life. Why do I think about these?
Clifton Chenier was genuine magic, there's no other word.
Lightning Hopkins onstage in Los Angeles in 1964 or so. He was playing his hard blues, then drifted into something else and was beginning to edge into his rare never-recorded folksy rhyming about the people in the room but he was interrupted in flow. He was distracted by an overexuberant young black guy who was gesticulating, testifying, shouting out encouragement, saying "Yeah" too loud and things like "Tell it like it is" and Lightning just looked at him and laughed and went straight back into his regular sort of show. During intermission, I ran into some friends and asked rhetorically, "Who was that guy?" They knew who I meant, but they liked him, he was one of their friends I could tell as they remarked with a smile, "That's Taj." "Oh," I said perhaps too politely, I had heard of him a bit around L.A. and so recognized his name, but that evening Taj Mahal was a bit in his cups. "Learning to talk black" I later sneered to my companion on the drive back home, but only when we realized the enormity of what we might have missed and would likely never see again. I saw Hopkins perform maybe three times and while I sometimes wish it could have been more, three times is precious.
Another is like the strike of lightning. There was this lap slide guitar player that Charlie Musselwhite had added to his group in the late '60s. His name was Freddy Roulette and he sometimes was so brilliant when he popped everything up into a higher wilder octave that you’d see stars and then he’d just casually move into something else that would just fill up the whole room with this big fat sound.
God, it was like a transformative experience to hear him. There was nothing like that man's playing, he just would pull stuff from some place so beautiful it seemed not of this earth and slide it into the blues. Well, this was so good I could hardly believe it. I wanted to tell someone right away. I felt it had to be shared and instantly, and my mind was racing, I thinking of people who I could call and get them down to the club to hear this. Then I remembered some people I knew were playing up the street and I was absolutely compelled to run out of the club in between sets, hightail several city blocks to another club and tell them about this.
I can't even remember what I said, I was so excited. But I actually pulled a musician (that was David Lindley) and his wife out of there, and down the street from where he was playing. David listened for a bit and then turned to stare at me in disbelief. He was standing by the jukebox and I was behind the counter of the bar. His mouth was slightly open and his ears beginning to tingle. He suddenly turned again and fleeted down the aisle and up to the stage and stood stock still and listened some more standing at the edge of the stage. Satisfied he was really hearing what he was hearing, he began saluting Freddy by giving “ah shalom, master - ah, shalom, master - ah shalom, master” series of bows. David and his band came back to play at Mandrakes one time, a wild bazongo show of thousands of foreign sounding electrified strings complete with a pregnant belly dancer, and David Lindley began searching out lap slide guitars in pawn shops to begin practicing and has in the past thirty years become a fine lap slide player himself. He must have heard Freddy before, though.
I mean, that Freddy Roulette ... that was some powerful playing (and to my way of thinking he has never really been recorded decently, though he is most deserving, but hopefully that will change someday soon.)
The memories just roll into each other like waves. Others are of strange nearly unbelievable encounters, like when I was walking in a park in Honolulu and spotted what seemed like a bona fide hallucination, a older black man sitting on a park bench and playing guitar to keep himself company (and in Honolulu, you can't help but notice), but it was really Brownie McGhee who I had not seen or talked to for twenty years ... and he had settled in town.
But all of those I've seen, the ones who moved me, I genuinely feel privileged sometimes. Just given the time frame and population ratios, I suspect most people alive today didn't see or hear these people, or if you did it might have been in a little different way than I did, and this is a way of sharing (before those memories become ossified or irretreivable.)
(That was May 28, 1965 I saw Lightning Hopkins at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Per Wolfgang's Vault, this is one of the tunes he performed, which I recalled, so I'll share that here. I think that was the only time I ever went to the Ash Grove. I wasn't big on clubs or the scene in Los Angeles. I may have been to half a dozen of them, one time and one time only). ¶ 4/20/2003 11:06:00 AM
Some are crummy memories (see my post below about that English group on my only stadium rock experience). Some are mere snippets of a special moment of recognition that can be a glimpse into the dynamics of the music being played (Jino the bassplayer going up on stage to play even though he was really, really mad at Earl Hooker -- or Charlie Musselwhite woofing a bit, and standing on stage about to begin a set, when he suddenly played unamplified while staring straight at a fellow at a front table, just to say something to him. Then he stopped, nodded his head like "Take that and chew on it" and soon began the show)
Funny snippets of memory suddenly spark alive in front of my eyes, bringing the distant rooms back to life. Why do I think about these?
Clifton Chenier was genuine magic, there's no other word.
Lightning Hopkins onstage in Los Angeles in 1964 or so. He was playing his hard blues, then drifted into something else and was beginning to edge into his rare never-recorded folksy rhyming about the people in the room but he was interrupted in flow. He was distracted by an overexuberant young black guy who was gesticulating, testifying, shouting out encouragement, saying "Yeah" too loud and things like "Tell it like it is" and Lightning just looked at him and laughed and went straight back into his regular sort of show. During intermission, I ran into some friends and asked rhetorically, "Who was that guy?" They knew who I meant, but they liked him, he was one of their friends I could tell as they remarked with a smile, "That's Taj." "Oh," I said perhaps too politely, I had heard of him a bit around L.A. and so recognized his name, but that evening Taj Mahal was a bit in his cups. "Learning to talk black" I later sneered to my companion on the drive back home, but only when we realized the enormity of what we might have missed and would likely never see again. I saw Hopkins perform maybe three times and while I sometimes wish it could have been more, three times is precious.
Another is like the strike of lightning. There was this lap slide guitar player that Charlie Musselwhite had added to his group in the late '60s. His name was Freddy Roulette and he sometimes was so brilliant when he popped everything up into a higher wilder octave that you’d see stars and then he’d just casually move into something else that would just fill up the whole room with this big fat sound.
God, it was like a transformative experience to hear him. There was nothing like that man's playing, he just would pull stuff from some place so beautiful it seemed not of this earth and slide it into the blues. Well, this was so good I could hardly believe it. I wanted to tell someone right away. I felt it had to be shared and instantly, and my mind was racing, I thinking of people who I could call and get them down to the club to hear this. Then I remembered some people I knew were playing up the street and I was absolutely compelled to run out of the club in between sets, hightail several city blocks to another club and tell them about this.
I can't even remember what I said, I was so excited. But I actually pulled a musician (that was David Lindley) and his wife out of there, and down the street from where he was playing. David listened for a bit and then turned to stare at me in disbelief. He was standing by the jukebox and I was behind the counter of the bar. His mouth was slightly open and his ears beginning to tingle. He suddenly turned again and fleeted down the aisle and up to the stage and stood stock still and listened some more standing at the edge of the stage. Satisfied he was really hearing what he was hearing, he began saluting Freddy by giving “ah shalom, master - ah, shalom, master - ah shalom, master” series of bows. David and his band came back to play at Mandrakes one time, a wild bazongo show of thousands of foreign sounding electrified strings complete with a pregnant belly dancer, and David Lindley began searching out lap slide guitars in pawn shops to begin practicing and has in the past thirty years become a fine lap slide player himself. He must have heard Freddy before, though.
I mean, that Freddy Roulette ... that was some powerful playing (and to my way of thinking he has never really been recorded decently, though he is most deserving, but hopefully that will change someday soon.)
The memories just roll into each other like waves. Others are of strange nearly unbelievable encounters, like when I was walking in a park in Honolulu and spotted what seemed like a bona fide hallucination, a older black man sitting on a park bench and playing guitar to keep himself company (and in Honolulu, you can't help but notice), but it was really Brownie McGhee who I had not seen or talked to for twenty years ... and he had settled in town.
But all of those I've seen, the ones who moved me, I genuinely feel privileged sometimes. Just given the time frame and population ratios, I suspect most people alive today didn't see or hear these people, or if you did it might have been in a little different way than I did, and this is a way of sharing (before those memories become ossified or irretreivable.)
Listen to more Lightnin' Hopkins at Wolfgang's Vault.
(That was May 28, 1965 I saw Lightning Hopkins at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Per Wolfgang's Vault, this is one of the tunes he performed, which I recalled, so I'll share that here. I think that was the only time I ever went to the Ash Grove. I wasn't big on clubs or the scene in Los Angeles. I may have been to half a dozen of them, one time and one time only). ¶ 4/20/2003 11:06:00 AM
