A gift of Mr. Jones



Here're a few pages of vintage Brian Jones... (from Beat Monthly April 1964 above)



From the January 1965 Rave





From the April 1964 Rave



From the July 1964 Rave



From the February 1965 Rave





and lastly from the June 1966 Beat Instrumental

Wishing you an 'appy chrimbo, and may all yer stockings get stuffed!

I just got through giving the new Green Pajamas CD a spin and I'm liking it a lot! It's hard to find the words to get across what a quality production this album is (album in the best sense of the word), it's unlike so many modern releases that try so hard and polish so much that they shoot themselves in the foot artistically or become a stillborn gimmicky pastiche. This however is a beautifully balanced album, Byrdsian in it's hooks but with a genuine identity; every original song (and they all are originals) brings something to the whole! Jeff Kelly's lyrics rival Robert Hunter for making me wonder about possible realities underneath, and the variety of instruments are complimentary, never introduced to prop up a swaybacked composition.

Oh heck, enough trying to think in rural metaphors, I just really dig this set! I think it'll be a grower too; if only the robots that program 'country' radio would slip any of these tracks into their playlists people like myself who tuned them out about when Shania Twain rode in might just come back like when Foster & Lloyd or The Mavericks were charting. I'm glad this great group took this particular detour, and if the PJs were to continue on this same trail I can't imagine anyone being too disappointed. 'Father, Father Do You Wait' is my personal fave track so far, while 'Last Night Was Like The End Of The World' comes a close second.

Available from Green Monkey Records

or via the Green PJ's Secret Day website.

Trouble In Hippieland!



This Newsweek cover has become iconic of the end of flower power and the dreams of the summer of love. Inside are a number of stories detailing the progression from LSD and marijuana to speed and heroin and the aggression, paranoia and violence that went with that. Rather than just focusing on Haight-Ashbury there is also coverage of the scenes in Boston, The East Village and L.A., the cover couple were found living in a communal apartment NYC digger style.



There is also this story focusing on one so-called Hippie, although there are many like her in our society today and they don't seem to have any fashionable label or hip credibility, they're just the homeless and underemployed.

Portobello Pages

from the Dec. '66 Rave; don't you wish you could hop on a bus and head there?

Did you ever buy an LP with genuinely good music despite exploito graphics and text? Well, here's one to rival all the late '50s African drum albums with the lame jungle savage thing exagerrated to the hilt! It's tough being a non-ironic appreciator of polynesian music, just check out the back cover text, and yet the recordings are both authetic and accomplished. Probably some office suit shmuck with too much time to daydream wrote this tripe! There is some hep log bangin', some awesome vocalising and tasteful guits, I'm told most 49th State label records are as worthwhile.



I picked it up recently at a funky side street vinyl emporium that was packed with some great '50s R&B/Blues, and I also snagged a Gabor Szabo set there (and a Stick McGee CD for Erik).

LP found at Mossy Bottom Records, Brooklyn Ave., Seattle

Back To School: '67

Here are some fun fashion pages from the August 1967 'In' magazine. I like the shade of red and the then current LP covers!

I know I ain't no fashion icon but hopefully I'm not quite hopeless either, here is a sort of montage of snaps... guest appearances by Erik & Hidey Bear...

Stone Age Part 1

Perhaps the earliest photo of Brian, Mick and Keith together (at a Chuck Berry show).

Here are some of the earliest mentions of Andrew Loog Oldham and the Stones in Pop Weekly and Beat Monthly magazines. Early coverage was also given the group in Record Mirror from whom Oldham heard about the group before the piece was even published.

Pop Weekly started with this small news clip (May 4th, 1963)...



Followed with a not bad review (June 8th, 1963) from someone who found Johnny Cash's 'Ring Of Fire' monotonous...



in a late June issue came this tidbit...



and an early look... 



followed a month later by this announcement...



although the official story is that Oldham was co-manager (with Eric Easton) prior to the first single being recorded, but maybe Pop Weekly was catching up?

a week later they are on the Everlys tour...



The July Beat Monthly gives the group a full page...



...and the first single a review...



the first single enters the chart (helped by Oldham's buying some copies through fans in the shops that counted, smart feller)...



peaking less than a month later...



peering over the Pop Weekly fence...



firing that second shot (?)...



inside front cover of the September Beat Monthly...





 ... big headline in the October 5th Pop Weekly...



...cracks begin to show...



but stealing the show anyway (Oct. 12th, 1963)...



another great Rave pin-up (from September 1964)...



If you haven't read it, Andrew Loog Olham's book 'Stoned' (St. Martin's Griffin, 2000) is a great read and the Stones don't even appear until halfway through! Another goody is Alan Clayson's 'Origin Of The Species' (Chrome Dreams, 2007).

Stone Age Part 2

Here are four early full page write-ups on the Stones in the English magazines Pop Weekly and Beat Monthly; October 1963, November 1963, December 1963, and January 1964 respectively. Prior to this they had garnered a few blurbs and smaller photos (above), and a half page in Beat Monthly (due to a clued in Sean O'Mahoney a.k.a. 'Johnny Dean').










A new pocket sized magazine called Teen Beat also featured them...



Also here is a nice colour page from the October 1964 Rave, no doubt a favorite with the Brian's group crowd...

I finally got around to visiting the Experience Music Project in Seattle. There is an exhibition of Nirvana stuff there right now which struck me as somewhat creepy, maybe being of that generation seeing shirts worn by Kurt Cobain in lighted glass museum cases is just too much for me? I did kind of like how familiar the wall of albums that supposedly influenced Nirvana was for me, and some of the snapshots of happier days were nice. I don't know though, I pretty much had my fill of it in five minutes, and anyway, I was looking for the main reason to visit... no, not the smashed pieces of Jimi Hendrix guitars or famous outfits he wore, but the Paul Allen memorial Guitar Gallery! Man, there are some wonderful instruments from the entire history of recorded music in there and a really nice video presentation of a wide variety of influential pickers to boot! This exhibit while also a graveyard is pretty much worth the admission price to see as far as I'm concerned. They should publish the thing in book form with accompanying CD and DVD even. As it was I had to buy the EMP produced book titled Listen Again in the gift shop upon seeing chapter one being about Bert Williams (mentioned in an earlier post)! I would have photographed everything but wasn't sure if that was the thing to do so I just limited myself to this one snap of one of Bo Diddley's signature cigarbox gits...



At the Fremont street market a day or two later you could buy an actual guitar made with a cigar box, so the form still lives, even if Paul Allen's guitars look to never live again. And yet, they loan out Stradivarius violins to working musicians don't they? Wouldn't it be nice to see and hear that 1953 Fender Telecaster actually played, at least at a special event? Just an idea. And another thing, I kind of expected a permanent PNW exhibit beyond Hendrix or Nirvana. Raiders, Sonics, Wailers, Frantics, and Dynamics, oh my! There was a promo photo of the original Ventures duo Don & Bob in the Guitar Gallery, but come on, the land of Bolo, Jerden and Dolton not enshrining and promoting our part of the continent's music history? Not that I care about say Sir Mix-A-Lot or Queensryche, but you gotta be more inclusive! There was however a surprise bonus for me in that there was a Battlestar Galactica exhibit on the top floor where I got to meet this old friend for the first time...



The main reason I was in town this time however was for my very own father's studio recording debut! More about that later perhaps.