I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore… So Quit It!!!

Once upon a time, there were actually live bands at high school dances instead of DJ’s… and if you were a kid in a cover band, you had to know your Rascals tunes. Here’s the original “Young Rascals” as seen on TV in 1965 (gotta love Dino Danelli on the drums) along with some “next-generation covers”. The Divinyls perform their version from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie soundtrack. From the hair today-gone tomorrow files, check out “Angel” glammin’ it up. More versions and plenty of commentary on the way.

The Young Rascals -

The Divinyls (Video)

Angel -

The Divinyls (LIVE - at 8:45 in the morning!)

We Thought We Were SOOOOO Cool!

(J.D. Stetson) I remember (vaguely) my late teens and early twenties.  I was beyond cool.  At least that’s how I remember it sometimes.  I was on my own, living in a time and place where I basically had a license to do anything I wanted.  My life was cool; my music was cool; my friends were cool; even my ’65 Dodge Dart was pretty cool – well it DID have an eight track!  It was a time of peace marches; of REV-O-LU-TION; mind-altering parties; incredible fashion (can anyone say tie-dyed T-shirts and bell bottoms?); incredibly progressive music (in the real sense of the word); and burgeoning political power to the young.

I remember:  John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., H. Rap Brown, Abbie Hoffman, and the Berrigan Brothers.  I remember Jimi, Jim, Janis, the Beatles and all the others that made our music new, exciting and relevant. 

This all started kicking around in my mind as I watched the various clips that have been loaded onto “CRF-TV” at CLASSICROCKFOREVER.  I’ve gotta tellya that I had to laugh at the costumes, the frenetic antics while the bands pretended to play and the audiences tried to look cool while go-go dancing away on little mini-stages or stairways.  The music is still as good as ever or at least a lot of it, but the rest failed to live up to my memories.  Failed completely.

 

Being twenty-something is a very cool time of life.  We are growing, trying to “find ourselves” and trying to understand our place in this great big world.  We are stepping beyond the controlled world that we’ve always known as “home” and trying to define what will become the home of our future.  It is a time of successes and failures.  It is a time of trial and error and experimentation and finding out our limitations and our willingness to push out beyond those limitations.  It is a time before all the responsibilities of maintaining a home, supporting a family, striving for promotions and looking toward retirement tend to wear us down and out.  So we look back at our youth with nostalgia, and the memories become somehow more and better than the reality.

 

Yes, we are older now, but we can still push at the limits.  We have experience now to add to our energy and imagination.  Many of us now have the resources to help define what will become of this “home of our future”, this planet earth.  As I listen to some of this music that still reveals such great composition, encouraging lyrics and musical virtuosity I realize it can either bring me back to a past that I remember fondly, but that is more imagination than reality, or I can continue to push at the limits of what I can do.

 

You and I can still make a difference.  In fact, we now have experience to add to our energy, imagination and purpose.  It is just a matter of choosing to keep on being really cool.  What’s your choice?

We Built This Site On Rock And Roll - Welcome To The ClassicRockForever Community

Do You Feel Like We Do?

While you’re never too old – or too young – to rock, if you are part of our ClassicRockForever community there’s good chance that you are a Baby Boomer.

You believe that “The Wonder Years of Rock” started in the 60’s with the Beatles and started fading away in the early 80’s.  After that, fewer bands and artists kept your attention - maybe U2, Tom Petty & Heartbreakers or Guns & Roses. 

You know that music can’t be formatted and packaged as neatly as “the biz’ would like it to be.  Yes, the same person can handle The Who, Earth Wind & Fire, Loggins & Messina, Elvin Bishop, The Ramones… and all in one day.

You might have checked out of the music scene for a decade or two while you pursued a career and/or raised a family.   You knew there was probably some great new music happening out there… in fact, even today… but, sorting through the media clutter makes finding it a chore.

You know there are killer tunes that have disappeared from the radio.  Contrary to what your kid (or local Classic Rock station) might think, J. Geils existed before “Centerfold”; “Can’t You See” isn’t the only great Marshall Tucker Band tune. The James Gang did “Funk #49” AND “Funk #48”.

Back In The Day

Music was an important part of your life. You went to every concert you could, you bought every album you could afford.  However, you weren’t what they now call a “fanboy”.   Close To The Edge might have been the last Yes album you bought.  Van Halen may have been the last band where you knew the lead singer’s name — and then they had to go mess with that.   Basically, you didn’t cross the line from Star Trek fan to Trekkie.

You stood in line (or you would have if you were a kid back then) to see a Hard Days Night and HELP!   You were blown away by the “triple split screen” effect in Woodstock.  And, if you didn’t actually go, you seriously considered attending the midnight shows for “The Song Remains The Same” and/or “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Beyond the music there were certain movies, TV shows, comedians and entertainment events that, well, there was something about them that stuck with you.  Some of them seem pretty goofy to you as an adult but, they still make you smile (or wince) a little inside.

Goldfinger, Thunderball, Love Story, Billy Jack, Walking Tall, Shindig, Hullaballoo, Vanishing Point, That Girl, All In The Family, George Carlin, Second City, Cheech & Chong, the first seasons of Saturday Night Live, Don Kirshner, Sam Kinison, Mod Squad…

The warped bottom line - whether it’s legitimate or not – you believe there are huge cultural differences in how you perceive the entertainment picks you have made over the years.  In fact, they’re part of who you are:

-  You’d rather be a Monkee – or heaven forbid – a Cowsill… before you’d become a member of the Partridge Family or the Brady Bunch.

-   You’d take a bit part in a Looney Toon before you’d take a lead role as a Disney character.

-  You actually wanted to know “Who Shot J.R.?”  but, you weren’t that concerned about Dynasty.

-  You “totally got” SOAP.  You really wanted to like Mary Hartmann, Mary Hartmann more than you did.

 

To be continued.

Where Have All The Lyrics Gone? Long Time Ago.

 

“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear”. *  Having lived and grown up (or maybe just aged a bit) in the late 60s and early 70s, I rarely listen to FM radio any more.  Most often the play list is significantly older than my kids (my oldest is going to be 27).  Then I look at the concert listings, and it seems that all the bands who are selling out the big arenas are in their 60s! The Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen or the Fab Faux.  Ian Anderson just turned 61 the other night!  ABBA is the background for a hit movie and Hair is making a comeback in NYC.  Yikes!

 

Don’t get me wrong, there were a LOT of crappy songs back in the day (remember “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies?) but there were plenty of songs that were substantial, or genuinely clever, or both.  But even the good ones… I mean, how can I still get excited over “Stairway to Heaven” or “Dust in the Wind” or… well, you get the idea.  Where is the Bob Dylan for THIS decade?  Or even Roger McGuinn?   Or Grace Slick?  Steven Stills?   Yeah, I know, they’re all still around, but they’re doing the same songs they did forty years ago.

I have always loved “Revolution” by the Beatles.  I love (and am convicted by) the interplay between the strong lyrics and the laid back tune.  Yeah, “we’d all love to change the world” along with the little “bop she do wop” background vocal.  It seems to be asking, “Can you be a revolutionary AND a cool dude at the same time?”  We seem to be a generation that started out to be revolutionaries but got lost in the “don’t you know it’s gonna be alright”.  Perhaps, while we are looking back and enjoying the music of our youth we can look into that music and find those elements that made it important to us in the first place.  What were the messages in the music that stirred our hearts and souls?  Why does so much of the music (and TV, and movies, and etc.) of today seem so insipid?

We seem to have set aside the revolution of our teens and twenties to build homes and businesses, to raise families, to enjoy the good life (Livin’ in the USA).  Maybe as we approach, or are already in, our 60s we could reassess where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going.

“No reason to get excited,
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”**

Maybe this could be a time to refocus on the messages that stirred our hearts in our youth, yet have become background music as we stir our specialty martinis here in 2008.  Why was Rock ‘n’ Roll so significant to us?

J.D. Stetson

*Buffalo Springfield – For What It’s Worth

** Bob Dylan – All Along the Watchtower

Sing Along With Mitch: Gimme Shelter

Did Mitch Ryder’s shortlived band DETROIT deliver the World’s Greatest “Gimme Shelter” Cover– ever? Hmmm, could be. You be the judge and check it out right here.  It’s amazing how this tune and the entire album slipped through the cracks in the 70’s.  It shoulda-been-a-contender.  Luckily for some of us… before their playlists became as prepackaged as Kraft Mac & Cheese…a few FM rock stations introduced us to tracks from this gem.  There was a time you could hear smokers from this record like “Long Neck Goose” and the Powered by Steve Hunter cover of Lou Reed’s “Rock & Roll” on the radio.  (Thanks Whistler… whoever you are… for putting this one out there for us).  We’ll definitely be checking in with Mitch again soon.

 

First Concert Recall: Jimi Hendrix & The Tijuana Brass

All grown up and there you are talking to your dentist about the Captain Beyond concert you saw in ’72.  He ups the ante by telling you about his three days of peace and music at Woodstock. You would have been there too but your parents wouldn’t let you go.  Hey, maybe brag about how you were “practically on stage” when the Allman Brothers played Summer Jam at Watkins Glen.  How’s he going to know you didn’t go?  Nah.

 

Truth is, every Classic Rock fan has a list of concerts burned into their brain that they’ll never forget. The most impressive, the wildest, the “legendary” show.   Sometimes they were so good that you forgot them. It’s the FIRST REAL ROCK CONCERT that always sticks with you though.  You can’t forget that one.  For some fans, “real” could mean musicianship.  To others it might have something to do with attitude or the coolness factor of knowing the band was never played on Top 40 radio.   There’s also something to be said for flaming Stratocasters and flying drum kits.

I think I was 15 when I saw my first major “live music event”…not counting being forced to see Lawrence Welk at a State Fair.  Oh the pain. The first big one was Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass.  Thinking back… it was probably a great show that my buddy and I didn’t have the patience for… and only as adults we were truly able to appreciate the music.  I remember he… and a zillion other boys… started taking trumpet lessons when “A Taste Of Honey” came out… and talking about the album cover as much, if not more, than the music.  Lots of wishful thinking going on about the coolness factor of playing the trumpet vs. lead guitar in the high school cover band.  Plus it was so much easier for most parents to agree to trumpet lessons.  Therein lies the problem. Parents liked the Tijuana Brass too… in fact my friend’s parents came with us to the concert.  Not good.

 

My first experience with musical culture shock came just a few weeks later at Woolsey Hall in New Haven:  Cat Mother, Terry Reid and Jimi Hendrix… and no parents.  We still can’t believe they used have rock concerts there, let alone Yale Bowl.  More on Cat Mother and Terry Reid to come later here and in “Lost Chords Found”. 

 

I already had the “Are You Experienced” album – almost unlistenable from picking up the tone arm on my record player a thousand times to repeat Purple Haze. I didn’t yet have a spare “$3.49” (or was it $2.99?) to buy “Axis Bold As Love”.   However, the kid down the street did – and he even had a STEREO.   Not a HIFI in the living room but a $149 Masterwork component system.  Speakers on wires and everything…  In HIS ROOM!  You could even watch the speakers move if you turned it up loud enough.  Some kids had everything.  Yep, he had color TV too.   Neither of us knew what REAL sonic power was until 3PM, November 17^th, 1968.  A matinee show… supporting the Electric Ladyland album.   We’re talking about Voodoo Chile “LIVE” before dinner.

 

More to come [Read more]