Holding pattern

Yes, I'm still clinging to the surface of the planet, sometimes scurrying about upon it. I have thought of posting, then haven't. I have some substantial vintage Stones bits uploaded and waiting to add to my clippings collection earlier here, and I scanned in a load of early Peter Green/Fleetwood Mac stuff for a chat area about same I could dump here. Yet I hesitate...

I've been tempted at times to get political here but then come to my senses. Outrage follows upon outrage while most people don't want to know, in other words 'twas ever thus. Well, back to gafia-land as the old sciffy fans used to say, but I'll be back like Waylon Jennings in that song, even if I won't always be around.

Bit of a Jennings type lyric here, don't read anything serious into it though, not sure where it's going...

What started out as a wild impulse,
turned into something tangled, something else,
'Cause your love and my love aren't the same,
can't you see, it's a mystery without name.

Raeside calling.

One of my favorite things most days is to find a new Adrian Raeside editorial cartoon in the local paper here. This has been a favorite thing for me verging on thirty years now I suppose. He was just on the radio call-in show today for a short stretch promoting his new book (linked below) and unfortunately I missed calling in myself, but it made me want to help maybe turn people on to this major original cartoon talent...


Here is a favorite from a couple of years back.



Here is another favorite... I always love to see his bears as they have a gormless yet lovable quality to them (he often does the same for our politicians). His dogs are similar if a little wiser, and recall the New Zealand cartoon strip Footrot Flats in character. It was interesting to learn that Adrian was born and grew up there, perhaps Koko is a distant relative of Murray Balls' sheep farm Dog?

Byrds is the Word!

I had a blast typing recently with Trina about the scene around the Rising Sons and early Byrds in L.A. For those who don't know she was part of the scene around Ciro's on the Strip right when Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke were making a fabulously new noise combining strains of folk and what was later called country roots with Merseybeat! Vito, Franzoni and their crew came in and started freaking on the dance floor and the U.S.A. would never be the same! Dig Crosby reading one of those cheapo Pop Art Productions... yeah, the Byrds read comic books as well as sci-fi mags, popular expression was being redefined all over the place by thoughtful cats like The Beatles, The Kinks, The Zombies, The Animals and The Rolling Stones in England, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Fugs and The Velvet Underground in NY, and The Sons, Love, The Beau Brummels and the Byrds out in California!

Erik has performed and recorded some of Jesse Lee Kincaid (of the Rising Sons) original creations, and I remember I bugged him into buying a Dillards LP with She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune.

Here's a great early Byrds track not officially released back in the day (written by Gene Clark) but ought to have been a perfect theme tune for some Shindig or Shivaree type tv show...



In honor of the huge Byrds kick I've been on I figured I just had to have a shirt to go with the books and records. Behold!



The Rising Sons only got one single out the door while they were active, but if you take a trip to Wolfgang's Vault you can listen in to some of their early appearances at the famous Ash Grove in 1965 with Ed Cassidy (later of Spirit) on the drums...

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-rising-sons/ There are also two original Jesse Lee compositions to be found previously unknown, and Taj Mahal was a great frontman! Mick Jagger had nothing on him, nor Brain Jones on Ry Cooder's guitar work. Gary 'Magic' Marker is on bass and gets his turn to vamp on a couple of outros. How this group wasn't huge I can only mutter 'hoo nose'! The Charlatans were another influential ground-breaking group that barely got anything out on vinyl at the time. Their 'Amazing' collection on the Big Beat label is essential '60s stuff (plus I'm just plain weird for Ferguson, wish I could've met him).



Gary, Jesse Lee, Taj, Ry Cooder and Kevin Kelley (later a Byrd during Gram Parsons' stint).

Here's mah mayin mahan doin' his thang on a Friday night at Darrell's Tavern. This is a Zappa number 'Willie The Pimp', with backing by the group Thee Of (dig those Les Pauls). Video by Sandy Buchner (of Randy Hicks Band)...



Also, there's a documentary about the historic Funhouse club in Seattle in the works. There's a taster promo courtesy of Ryan Worsley.

The Great Bill Cowsill

This is where the pure gold is. If you like great vocals and great songwriting, especially if your preferences run along Gene Clark, Everlys or Hank III lines. In case you don't know about Bill let me try to hip you...

I was lucky enough to simply stumble upon Bill with Jeffrey Hatcher live with the Blue Shadows group at an outdoor event during some local or provincial holiday back around 1993. It was a hair-raising sound they were laying down, and unforgetable. When their first album was released shortly after I made sure to get the cassette shiny new at the same Sam the Record Man I bought my fave Velvet Underground, Los Lobos, Dwight Yoakam and Doug & The Slugs tapes at (that's what I was into those days). On The Floor Of Heaven... what a masterpiece then and now! I'd actually heard eastern Canadian Jeff Hatcher and The Big Beat before, they'd had a song Man Who Would Be King that was very rockabilly cool but not in any Stray Cats, Neil and The Shocking Pinks or Razorbacks show-offy way (supercool though all those cats were). In a way I'd heard Bill before as well, through an oft spun 45 single of Indian Lake.

There just is not one weak song among the twelve originals on that first album, On The Floor Of Heaven. It has to rank as one of the greatest debut recordings for a group bar none. It would be damning with faint praise to describe If I Were You, a Cowsill/Hatcher collaboration, Byrdsian, that's because had those five cut this wistful number back in the day not only could they have not done it any better, it might well be thought of now as their best song among many greats. No lie. Then you have Deliver Me (check the video at the bottom), written by Jeff but mainly sung as high and lonesome as it gets by Bill. He always seemed to wear a Star Trek badge but it failed to get him beamed up whatever night inspired this killer performance. A Thousand Times and When Will This Heartache End are sweetly pained songs even the Everlys would've loved to have recorded I think, and On The Floor Of Heaven or The Fool Is The Last One To Know could've kept even the Louvins together a bit longer. Seriously, you can't believe you're hearing another stone classic when you (lucky you) put this album on for the first time. I Believe would've a feather in Carl Perkins' cap, and closer Is Anybody Here the same in Roy Orbison's. But who needs any of those stars great as they are or were, because the Blue Shadows based out of Vancouver will never be topped for the definitive renditions. That's why it's such a shock, even after going down a storm at SxSW at the time how the darn album was not released in the U.S.! It makes me want to apologize for Shania Twain if her decent pop made masterpieces chock filled with adult human feeling plus musical chops and hooks galore unmarketable to the big wig Columbia fools of 1993-1994. I'm also sorry it has taken me this long to rave here about these musical treasures.

"To my mind, that is the finest piece of work I ever did. It is just so good. The writing is so good. The production is so good. It is a nice little piece de resistance." - Bill Cowsill (1948-2006)

Bill Cowsill, fired from his family pop band for smoking the devil weed... the best was yet to come. Prior to The Blue Shadows forming Bill was a member of another Canadian combo called Blue Northern. His fantastic Vagabond appeared as a B-side with them and they released one EP and an LP.The follow up to On The Floor Of Heaven, Lucky To Me, has some ace tracks as well, and there equally astonishing rarities and outtakes on second bonus disc that comes with the reissue of On The Floor Of Heaven...



http://www.bumstead.com/theblueshadows/

The Trina Tornado

I found out cartoonist/scholar/herstorian Trina Robbins was going to be in Victoria in relation to a documentary film she participated in (Wonder Women), so despite some currently taxing health issues I went downtown to see her. We talked old cartoonists for awhile and I gave her a CD with my cartoon cover. I learned a mutual friend of ours (Barb Rausch), had died though, that's the risk in catching up.

Trina is a great and positive person, more active than me and she's 74 now! I guess that means she must have been my age when I first met her way back. Her 1985 history book (shown left, Eclipse, 1985) done with Cat Yronewode (top Will Eisner scholar) about women cartoonists really got me interested in the work of almost forgotten 1910s-'40s comics creators like Nell Brinkley, Rose O'Neill, Ethel Hayes, Gladys Parker and Tarpe Mills. I did know Tarpe Mills before this thanks to an Archival Press collection of black & white strips which was released circa 1978 (shown below), and why I ever sold it or the many Fiction House comics I had accumulated with women artists like (the still living) Fran Hopper, Marcia Snyder, and Lily Renee in their pages I sometimes wonder about, but they had all become too expensive for me to justify keeping at a critical point in my life. Miss Fury is considered by many the first Superheroine, predating Wonder Woman, Mary Marvel and, (probably the second ever) Bulletgirl. Growing up I loved seeing Batgirl on tv riding her Batcycle, somehow the female body looks better in tights and capes whereas usually the male body just looks dopey or silly, which almost makes me want to splurge on the Phoenix of the X-Men costume on Ebay so I can strut about in shiny boots like I'm all that and a packet of crisps!

In regard to Brinkley there are two books I can highly recommend; Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early 20th Century, McFarland 2001, and the lavish The Brinkley Girls, The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons From 1913-1940, Fantagraphics 2009, both authored by Trina. For Rose O'Neill I can point to Linda Brewster's Rose O'Neill The Girl Who Loved To Draw, Boxing Day Books 2009 while wishing for an even thicker revamp in the future. So nice just to finally see photos of these pioneering women! Sadly I don't know of any equally good books for Ethel Hayes or Gladys Parker, and very sorely wanted they are.

The Legends shop at which Trina was signing books had a display of often very lavish reprint books like the Tarpe Mills & Miss Fury, IDW Publishing 2011 one I bought for Trina to autograph. I could easily go into the red on just the old Felix the Cat collections and Eric Shanower Oz adaptations I saw. It's not quite a normal comic shop though, the glowering bizarrely muscled modern superheros were not nearly so prominently displayed as were local cartoonists works and vintage bagged funny books! There is a shop in Seattle over by a Dick's Drive-In that also struck me as more inviting to the general populace, but many are more foreboding and cultish much to the detriment of the form that is losing mass media status. In any case, I left feeling somewhat renewed and optimistic about the 'comic book world'. More Owly please, and less 'Owlman becomes a heroin addict and blows Smirky-villain up with frag grenade', or more Beanworld and less steroid-and-helium-boob-world!

Postscript: I once had an early Marvel comic (1949, shown) titled simply Cindy Comics (shown right) and it was filled with some of the most skilled and expressive cartooning I had seen but by an unsigned and possibly still unknown artist (I can rule out Al Jaffee, Dan DeCarlo, Mike Sekowski, and Ken Bald). Trina suggested it could have been Syd Shores, and going buy some of the more realistic art he did at that time I have seen I can almost completely rule him out on this, but other possibilities are Morris Weiss, Earl James or none of these fellows. Trouble is it is very hard to find representative cartoon work by all three. It's possible whoever the mystery artist was they had a connection to Harvey Kurtzman going by the proto Annie Fanny cover art. Again, I sure regret not keeping all my old funny books! I did see the same artist with single also unsigned stories in Patsy Walker comics of the time. I think of them as 'the good Cindy artist'. Patsy Walker is remembered where many other teenage characters are forgotten only because Marvel later made her into a Miss Fury style superheroine (wonder why Millie The Model wasn't similarly recycled). On the slim chance anyone has any examples of teenage strip art by the named cartoonists, or just solid Archie style cartooning from 1945-53 Marvel/Atlas comics, please consider me a fanatic for it.

Teddy Squad In Orbit

That's what I called this cartoon inspired by looking through old 1950s sci-fi magazines. Me probably trying to be a junior Virgil Finlay! It appeared in some fanzine years ago. I used to have hundreds of old digests, I guess my favorite would be a toss-up between Magazine Of Fantasy & Science-Fiction and Analog (formerly Astounding). Galaxy however had illustrations by Don Martin and Wally Wood (of Mad Magazine), and later by Wendy Pini who created the marvelous Elfquest comic books. The artists whose work I most liked to run across in the pages however were Hannes Bok and Edd Cartier who had a real Thomas Hart-Benton plasticity, but 'in outer space!' Kelly Freas was often amazing but very prolific so was easier to take for granted.

I keep meaning to get back into cartooning more and never seem to make the time (sigh). While I'm in a black & white mood here's a T-shirt design we've not gotten around to doing anything with so far, although it's always good to have a variety of merch at gigs, so hoo nose...

It's the same as that CD cover, except I thought to make it color-closed (if I ever get around to coloring it) I made the mic cord into a circle.

Expo, Expo, Read All About It!

1967 was an important year for Canada. It was the country's centennial, and the year Montreal hosted the world's fair called Expo '67. Many Canadian music groups performed on stage on this man-made island in the St. Lawrence following Prime Minister (and Nobel Peace Prize recipient) Lester B. Pearson opening it. This is where Cass Elliot discovered Three's A Crowd and brought them to Dunhill records, but before Canadian radio had to support Canadian music on our own airwaves. Some stations played local groups but with few exceptions the only way for Canadian artists to get cross country exposure was to make the charts south of the border.

This article appeared in Teen's Top Ten magazine late in the year. The Sparrow would soon be renamed Steppenwolf, David Clayton Thomas invaded Blood, Sweat And Tears, while The Paupers following a disastrous performance at the Monterrey Pop festival lost their star bass player and eventually led to BST styled mega group Lighthouse.



Mandala's guitar ace Domenic Troiano bounced along through a number of groups such as The James Gang, Bush, and The Guess Who, as well as recording some excellent solo albums with various studio cats in L.A. The British Modbeats singles are particularly hard to find, but well worth hearing when you do. It's interesting that vancouver's The Painted Ship are mentioned and not The Collectors (later Chilliwack) who were becoming quite well known on the west coast, or Terry Jacks & The Checkmates.

Lust and Death.

Lucky us! Jeff Kelly and The Green Pajamas have musical bones and have provided more cruel velvet riptides (I arrive fashionably late) with their Death By Misadventure CD. It comes melancholic spirit haunted. Spiral stairways lead into the audio mansion of the first part, 'The Fall Of Queen Bee' while outside a storm-threatening atmosphere breaks to allow beams of light on the garden, then a breeze blown complex military infiltration leads to a teddybear tea bazaar and a 'those were the days' style eulogy. Or something like that. Will I ever return?

The blood gets flowing for the second story, more dreams. Maybe others will want to get this one and the CD edition of stone classic Summer Of Lust (circa 1984, I remember some of those colored paper-cut times, though not a major 'zine or casette-head); http://www.greenmonkeyrecords.com See the interesting videos from the new (ish, it sat on a pile for awhile) album!

I love Sooty! And I'm just wild about Harry too...

I was charmed when at the end of the documentary film The Peter Green Story (Man Of The World), the famous guitarist when asked something along the lines of whom he compared favorably to mischievously boasted of being better than Sooty, and then added, but maybe not Sooty with Sweep. No doubt this statement would entirely baffle most non-Brits unaware of ace toy xylophonist and nascent anarchist bear puppet Sooty. But Sooty has been around for over sixty years now!

Puppeteer Harry Corbett was a brilliant puppeteer, if you look him up on youtube you can discover the wonders of how he brings a simple bear puppet to life (by as one child is said to have remarked by putting his hand up Sooty's bottom). You can also (if you can play region 2 PAL format DVDs) watch a number of vintage "lost" episodes http://www.thesootyshow.com/shop/index.php on two new releases well introduced by the current archivist and presenter of the Sooty Show, Richard Cadell. The sheer dexterity Mr. Corbett brought to bear as it were is inspiring; Sooty plays well enough to be hailed the Hendrix of the toy xylophone, and in a sort of spoof of industrial films goes from typing to removing specs and answering the telephone with a magician's skill. Aside from Greeny, Slade's Noddy Holder is another admirer (there is one scandalous photo of the two icons in bed together), and I have to think Johnny "Rotten" Lydon of the Sex Pistols may've learned a thing or two in biting the hand that feeds you from our Sooty!

With Sweep, an irrepressible squeaking dog puppet sidekick, Sooty is still entertaining the young and young at heart today.

For further blog reading check into:

http://aquariumofvulcan.blogspot.ca/2011/07/sooty.html

http://allbear.blogspot.ca/2008/10/izzy-wizzy-lets-get-busy.html

A must read!

The Bonzo Dog Band once asked, Can Blue Men Play The Whites? Hoo nose, but I do believe whites can play, and sing, the blues! Alongside those to make me a believer such as Brian Jones, Mike Bloomfield, Peter Green and Jo-Ann Kelly, I must include Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson. Wilson is best remembered for two widely known cuts made as a member of Canned Heat in the late '60s.

Rebecca Davis Winters' Blind Owl Blues book is the first in depth investigation of this multi-instrumentalist irregular lead singer's brief career. Like fellow Canned Heat band member Bob Hite, Alan had an intense love for old shellac, particularly with the Paramount label, listening through any surface noise to become transported into an intoxicating world of sound and human expression. He ended as one of the earliest inductees into the 27 club, accidentally OD'ing on some kind of street acquired downers on the even of a big European heat tour. Wilson had already made his mark in a number of areas however. He helped neglected blues legends like Son House back into performing and recording, contributed to the preservation of agricultural and arboreal diversity through seed collection and exchange, and was a major light in moving the blues expression into the future. He combined a Skip James style vocal delivery with electric backing and Eastern drone with On The Road Again, playing most of the instruments himself using studio overdubbing. Although he could mimic at as high a level as anybody, he successfully developed his own personal phrasing on An Owl Song. His most famous creation, Going Up The Country, effectively fuses hip flute (ala California Dreaming and Herbie Mann) with an almost Appalachian high lonesome flavored longing for release and escape; the song that would become emblematic of the 'Woodstock generation' and which still turns up in advertising aimed at a baby-boomer demographic.

To learn as much as there may well be to know about this important artist you need to get this book!

Howlin' goes nuts?

Here is a clip of the Houndog at The Walnut Festival in Walnut Creek... The band is Lari Peterson-Lead Guitar, Jane Tyska-Bass, Pete Gascoyne- Drums, John Douglas-Tenor Sax & Mark DeSimone on Trombone. It was a fun gig. I think this footage was posted by Pete Gascoyne (of Groovy Judy) And now back to maintaining radio silence.

Style '65 (Part 2 of 2)

More cool fashion pages, this time from the March 1965 Rave magazine. This will be last post for awhile, thank you all for visiting!

Scene Report: The Funhouse



In the shadow of the now fifty year old Space Needle stands a monument to all that is robust in Seattle's music scene. Even the loss of it's previously green giant clown face has not kept it down, but now developers have their eye on more profitable condos and so this punk/d.i.y. landmark's days may be numbered.

http://www.thefunhouseseattle.com/schedule.html

The green room with the green couch...



One week ago "The Night Of The Wild Men" invaded. Deathbed Playboy opened the set impressively, stomping and making righteous with the steel guitar.



Howling Houndog, joined by Dean Frasier (late of Southbound Union) on slide, were impressive in combination on House Of The Rising Sun and (cough) Hello Kitty Blues. Then James Hunnicutt burst onto the stage with tuneful (and original) lamentation to please the faithful.



To cap the night off The Slow Poisoner unveiled a set that featured new song Macabre (also set down in Studio V earlier the same day along with Green Chair).



At Studio V with an SG:


But something more wicked this way comes. Can The Funhouse be saved?

SaveTheFunhouse

http://www.cityartsonline.com/issues/seattle/2012/04/love-letter-crusty-punk-rock-dive

And be sure to check out the new Slow Poisoner album!



This has been Scene Report with beccabear reporting in memory of three PBRs...

Style '65 (Part 1 of 2)

John Stephen & Barbara Hulanicki meet Twinkle and The Pretty Things

Here are some cool pages from the February 1965 Rave magazine. The following month they ran a great photo feature on Carnaby street which I will endeavor to load up for April.

The Great Erik 4-A

Here are a couple of great songs by Erik before I ever knew him. The first is from 1990 when he was still a student at Evergreen College in WA and is an experimental low-budget type of thing and I really love it! Before this circa 1986-89 Erik had been in and out of various Seattle scene combos (The Bass-ics, The Mongrells, The Surrealists), you know how that is...



Ain't that just more fun with ties than you could ever imagine? Next up is from 1999 as part of The Long Faces. They did this Seattle music show called 29 Live. The studio broadcast tower was actually hit by lightning the night they were on and the station went off the air for a number of seconds... perhaps why the band ended up dissolving, bad mojo! But a great song and a odd performance (that's Otto D. Struct on the other guit, the group's other songwriting talent).



But the best was yet to come of course, which is happening right now ; four Howlin' Houndog CDs so far and more to come. Erik has a lot of great original songs and I just wish more people would discover them!

The Great Gene Clark

There are some great clips of Gene Clark on YouTube but here are two of my personal faves from when Gene & The Firebyrds were out my way to promote their fantastic LP of the time (which has the definitive recording of Mr. Tambourine Man in my opinion). He was in great form as you can see...



I'm not sure about how not afraid of flying he ever was but the details about Eight Miles High are great to hear right from the originator's mouth! Harpo's was a venue in downtown Victoria that has since closed. They appeared on CKVU's general interest Vancouver show shortly after...



Thanks to mcd220 for uploading this great material, and Erik for leading me to it!

P.S. You can tell that the interview comes from the same VHS tape and machine as the clip from the Vancouver show. Also Gene even has the same turtleneck and jacket on! There was a cable access show in Victoria at the time covering the music scene weekly and so I am sure this is nothing to do with a Detroit Harpos club.

New York Public Library Oz collection on-line.

I love the work of illustrator John R. Neill, but vintage or even recent quality editions of the Children's books (The Sea Fairies and many Oz titles) he worked on can really add up, but here you can download adobe or other versions of the books to view on your PC screen or tablet...

archive.org-New York Public Library (Baum)

You can also find downloadable vintage magazines and comic books at archive.org, try searching for Smash Hits or Photoplay for example or maybe Ha Ha Comics are more your speed?