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.

1971: Lea Nicholson

I've never considered myself to be a huge fan of the concertina (you know, those wannabe accordian squeezeboxes), but how do you say no to a cover like that? Remember that line from Python; "Oh pantomime horse, I'm so bloody happy!" Well, I probably must have 'a thing' for pantomime hoses! The real clincher here however is checking out the contributing artists; Bob Pegg, Tim Hart, Maddy Prior, Terry & Gay Woods, Robin Dransfield, Mick Jones, plus a cover of the Bonzos' I'm The Urban Spaceman... I hadda grab it. This came out on Trailer in England and is predominantly Mr. Nicholson and various concertinas (sometimes overdubbed so he can, er, play with himself), his folksy singing (could've fit in with either Rab Noakes or The Yetties), and harmonium on most tracks by Barry Ruffell. Most tracks are by that Trad fellow, but there is a modern protest song by Mick Jones I quite like. What with the guests and the selection of material it's a great brit-folk album with enough variety to keep your ears happy as bearded oysters! I'm not sure but I don't think this has made it to CD so far so you'll have to check with specialist sellers or get lucky in the bins.

LP found at The Turntable, Fan Tan Alley, Victoria

Here's a new cartoon, inspired by the Garage Hangover site...

Stash De Rola's appearance in the latest issue of Ugly Things was a highlight; very entertaining and illuminating. I thought I'd share this piece from the September 1966 U.K. magazine Rave.



An interesting sidenote is this tidbit from the same magazine's 'U.S. Cable' section on the page opposite... "Rumors here are that John Lennon and wife Cynthia have started discussing a possible trial separation." Interesting as this is before the Maharishi, before the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream show, and before Yoko's exhibit at Indica?

Reading the new book Surf Beat published by Backbeat. It's a good overview and I'm enjoying it so far. Lot's of little nuggets of info (Gold Star studio related in particular) even if there are a couple of odd errors like 'England's Johnny & The Hurricanes'. Not sure if the author meant to reference the magnificent Ohio group or just got them mixed up with Rory Storm's band? Also, this looks like some sort of in-between proofreadings state of the manuscript, and I thought my typing was crap! Quality control at Backbeat/Jawbone has really crashed in that respect. The book is divided into three waves of popular interest in instro/surf-inspired rock, something I don't really understand and which may not hold water for readers in Europe. It reminds me of the three waves of interest in ska music without more fuzzy dividing lines for the last two waves. Looking forward to getting to the later stuff like Honk and Corky Carroll's recordings. Yes, there were surf-influenced recordings made post 1964 and into the '70s, and some of them are the most interesting! I remember playing a Shadows best of CD as background for a gathering once, and a genuine surfer dude from back in the day commented later he liked the old syrf music, so that's how ingrained the idea of all late '50s and early '60s instrumental rock being surf music goes, but really it's not, and of course the Shadows were thee premiere English group up until the Beatles came along. The actual surfers of the era were into all kinds of music as it turns out anyway, and jazz in particular more so than rock & roll guitar stuff. But most people agree that Dick Dale is the epicenter of whatever surf music means to you. I look at it as he was inspired by his experiences surfing in creating effects on his Fender strat. There were other pop records with themes of beaches and water sports, but they are only honorable mentions in my book if not this current one.



As a kid growing up in 1970s Canada one major source of entertainment for me was my Dad's record collections. It was really more of an accumulation though; gifts from a DJ friend with a hole drilled through every label, or obsolete mono thrift shop finds. I was surrounded by seemingly everything from a nearly complete Wilf Carter discography to your cheesiest sophisticated lounge performer. While reading Surf Beat, a handful of Dad's records float to the surface of my memory. Foremost perhaps is the original Del-Fi Ritchie Valens LP, the one with the sparkly curtain background and back cover copy with the words "will continue". Ricardo Valensuela is still one of the most exciting rock & roll guitarists and singers I've ever heard! I must've played 'Come On Let's Go' from this album a hundred times. Along with a couple of singles from Eddie Cochran this is the music that really put California on my music map, that plus how Gene Vincent and Buck Owens recorded at Capitol studios in Hollywood. For further excitement I was also lucky to have access to not one but two all time classic surf albums from the crest of that first wave in 1963; 'The Ventures, Surfing' and 'Surfin' With The Astronauts'. After all this time I still don't think either has been bettered nor equaled for instrumentals evoking that liquid sound of summers never known. The Ventures were heavily represented in Dad's library of vinyl, but their lone surf themed album of mostly originals could well be their greatest achievement, one of a handful of perfect LPs ever made. Due to the presence of a couple not-so-inspired covers the Astronauts misses that perfect ten rating by a toe, but what a wonder their reverb drenched sound rising from mysterious black grooves was and still is to me! I feel lucky that the copies of these were great early stereo editions, the kind with too much separation, but all the better for me to focus on the individual elements! But mono had it's place too, like on the first beach Boys LP. Who needs stereo on a stomper like 'Surfin' (is the only life, the only life for me)'. Dating from 1962 this is more historically important than fully satisfying due to the presence of a few not so bitchin' tracks co-written with Gary Usher, although the presence of the aforementioned Eddie's 'Summertime Blues' makes up for it a little. Guitarists Carl Wilson and David Marks could shred when given a bit of room to; when David left the Boys got unbalanced in favor of the vocals as far as I'm concerned. Other records I had access to included Arthur Lyman Hawaiiana, but also a generally overlooked LP from the cheapie Crown label; 'Hawaiian Tattoo' by The Hawaiians, no doubt some generic California studio creation, had a killer uptempo lead guitar on 'Hawaiian War Chant'. There were also a couple of fascinating tracks on a tv spin-off various artists LP on ABC-Parmount, but maybe the Terorotua and His Tahitians tracks weren't actually recorded in Cali? They could authentic field recordings I suppose, but who ever is hammering on that hollow log could've taught even Mel Taylor a couple of things. These are the LPs reading Surf Beat brings to mind. In the book's definitions of first wave, second wave and third wave I guess I'm a 'didn't-catch-a-wave' as I latched onto the California instrumental sound all on my own schedule before any Nightriders or Pulp Fiction revivals. The only revival I was aware of was when fellow Canadians Shadowy Men From A Shadowy Planet burst upon the local University station's airwaves followed by Man Or Astroman.

I drew this...

I've contributed some cartoons to this new CD from Vagrant Records of Seattle, and also the words and music to one song performed by Howlin' Houndog and band! That song is 'Have You Got Soul', and is already getting a little airplay I'm told.





Like Syd and Greeny in the late '60s I fell out of the saddle for a long time. I'm hoping my stoke for doing stuff will come back.



Update: Here are two cartoons for the interior booklet...