Tuesday, April 3, 2012

MUSICAL TIME-LINE CHAPTER 4 - The Whirlwind

The chronology gets a bit mixed at this stage - lots of different things overlapping. I hope it makes some sort of sense.

I suppose, if I`m honest, I was never really a typical anything. I'm not one of those who deliberately goes out of his way to be different, but my major interests are seldom completely mainstream. In music, I have always disliked the tendency to classify things, to pidgeon-hole them. I referred in Part 3 to the attitude in the UK in the mid-60s that there were, at most, three kinds of music; classical, pop and jazz - and even then, sometimes the lines got blurry.

I only started to have a problem with this as the sixties whizzed, tripped and span their psychedelic, hippy way towards the 70s. Most of my contemporaries picked up genres like "folk" or "rock" while I liked bits of all but clung firmly to the original wider definition of "pop" for the rest of the decade - in fact, truth be told, I still do.

I have long maintained that what Americans know as "The British Invasion" HAD to be just that; an invasion. They could not have come up with it themselves because to get played on US radio, even then, you had to fit the format of one set of stations; Popular, Country, Blues, "Race" etc. Sound different and nobody plays you. We had the BBC, Luxembourg and the pirates and they all played everything. Doesn't matter how different it is - in fact it helps if it is. If we think people will like it, we'll play it.

So, for the first couple of years, 1964-5, it really was an invasion, with no defences. The Beach Boys, perhaps, were the exception, but that's about it. Motown, Stax, Chess and the rest just kept on being Motown, Stax and Chess and waited for things to get back to normal; which of course, they never did. No alternative. When new American groups did start to appear, it was because they had formed in order to imitate a new genre that had been created elsewhere, just as Cliff Richard and his contemporaries, following the tradition of Joe Loss and HIS contemporaries, had done in the UK in decades previous.

The early ones, like Gary Lewis & The Playboys, were just copying - and often covering - what they heard from across the pond. Only when some more creative types like The Turtles, The Loving Spoonful and Simon & Garfunkel broke through did they start to contribute and steer things in a more American direction. If I'm honest, though, even later, when people around me started to take an interest in the likes of The Byrds and The Doors, I found most of them derivative und uninteresting.

Enough of all that ponticication, this is a dyary, dammit. Let's have a word or 300 about the Beach Boys. After the UK success of "I Get Around", they had had little luck with "When I Grow Up", though I liked it and had it on my tape, then rather more with "Barbara Ann" which, until I came to understand the story of the "Party" album much later, I always thought an odd choice. Around the time I was due to buy another album, they had the double "A" side, "Sloop John B / God Only Knows" on the UK Top 10. I had taped both sides at different times but knew nothing of "Pet Sounds", Brian Wilson's troubles, or any of that. Browsing in Mrs. Thorpe's shop one day in 1966, I came across, not "Pet Sounds" but "Best Of the Beach Boys", at a good price. Seeing that it had the two recent hits and "I Get Around", I bought it. I knew nothing of surfing or drag racing. As far as I knew till that day, the Beach Boys had been new at "I Get Around". This album was a revelation. From "Surfin' Safari" to "Good Vibrations" in half an hour, calling at "Fun Fun Fun" and all stops between.

I said in Chapter 1 that Phil Harris had captured my attention despite, or perhaps partly because of, the inpenetrability of his lyrics. It happened again here, for the first time since. I knew the term "T-Bird" from my dabblings with toy cars but what on earth is a "Dooscoop", a "Surfin' Safari", a "woodie"? It even took me a while to work out that a "Lie- brerry" was a library - which we pronounce "Lie-bree". I was hooked - mostly by the harmonies, but also by the strange world of which they sang.

I turned 14 about this time and had started to earn a little money. I would help out in the shop where my mother worked and do the odd paper round for it when somebody got sick or quit. I sold primitive lottery tickets door to door for Tooting & Mitcham United Football Club (Come on you Striiiipes!) and sold programmes at their ground on match days. As I said in the last chapter, I also began to lose interest in the tape recorder. I continued to make tapes of other people's records for some time but the collector gene kicked in and I wanted to own the records. I also discovered that I could get "ex-jukebox" records easily and very cheaply in a local shop and filled in a lot of gaps with them.

I became something of a Beach Boys nut. I found a copy of "Surfin' USA" at Mrs. Thorpe's and bought "Pet Sounds" to make THREE albums. Someone at school was selling off records to buy a bike and I got a stereo (my first, though I still had Teddy's original mono player so wouldn't it in stereo till 1972!) copy of "Shut Down Volume II" from him. I bought "Smiley Smile" when it came out and was hugely disappointed with all except the two singles, "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes And Villains". Faith in them was restored with "Wild Honey" and by early 1969, I had NINE Beach Boys albums, in a total collection of probably no more than 30, including a very rare "Surfin' Safari" and a german import stereo copy of "Surfer Girl".

I kept up with The Beatles too - all the singles from "I Feel Fine" onwards and albums from "Rubber Soul" I filled in the rest later and replaced the whole lot with the "Collection" box sets of albums and singles in the 70s. From late 1967 to mid-1969, I was also known as "THE EGG MAN". I delivered "Quinney's Fresh Farm Eggs", on a bike, for about eight hours every weekend and did very well on commission. So the records poured in.

Things were changing fast. As the Beatles and Beach Boys went, so followed just about everybody else. Many of the established groups fell by the waysdide. I was still a fan of the Hollies and Kinks, became a fan of the Small Faces, but bought only singles of all of them. All three seemed to be doing their OWN thing, as valid as anything the Beatles were doing, just different. Most others who tried to follow SOUNDED as if they were following. I lost interest in the Stones, buying only the occasional single.after the excellent "Ruby Tuesday". I maintained an interest in the more poppy side too, buying singles by the Tremeloes, Dave Clark Five and even Herman's Hermits as late as 1969.

I liked the new sounds of sitars, phasing, fuzzed and distorted guitars (in moderation, I was never a Hendrix fan) but only when used cleverly. George Harrison is credited with bringing the sitar into western pop and I approved. When Traffic used it in "Hole In My Shoe" I thought (and still think) it was wonderful. Too many others, though, seemed to add it just to be "cool" and, consequently, failed.

My left-over interest, after the "big two" went mostly to new names. The Monkees were probably the first of these, late in '66, and I cared not a hoot when the whole "but they don't play their instruments" scandal broke; I liked the music and the TV show and that's what they were all about. I was, by now, savvy enough to have recognised that they were not playing live on the TV show anyway. But hot on their heels came The Equals and The Move. I liked the early singles of both but really took notice after seeing them live. My exposure to live performances previously had been limited and disappointing. I had seen The Animals at Mitcham Carnival in 1964 - presumably booked before they were famous - and was not impressed with the sound at all, it was horrible. I'd seen and heard a few groups, mostly unknown, at Streatham Ice Rink, where I misspent much of the late 60s, and been similarly underwhelmed. Then The Equals came to the Ice Rink. They sounded good - just like the records. This was more down to their engineer than the band, I'm sure, but at the time I thought "Wow these guys are good". The music was very simple pop stuff, "Baby Come Back", their biggest hit, "Softly Softly", "Hold Me Closer", "Michael and the Slipper Tree", loud, bassy and basic. But the POWER, the delivery! Even playing in front of a crowd of skaters and in horrible accoustics, Eddie Grant, the leader who would become much more famous under his own name a dozen years later, performed superbly. I was impressed.

Then, a friend and I "won" (they were just giving them away really) tickets to the "Carl Allen Awards" at the Lyceum Ballroom, Leicester Square, a now defunct event sponsored by Mecca Leisure who also ran the ice rink. We went, of course, and most of the acts on the bill were well known but, to me, forgettable. I remember P.P Arnold was there, a Motown group that I didn't know from all the other Motown groups (never liked Motown) and The Move!. Magnificent.

I already had ex-juke box copies of their "Night Of Fear" and "I Can Hear The Grass Grow" and now bought "Flowers In the Rain", one of the best of the "new sounds" records to date. It coincided with the end of pirate radio. I had not listened to these stations very much simply because the poor reception we got in Mitcham ruined my attempts at home taping but I favoured Radio London (BIG L 266) over the bigger, more famous Radio Caroline. When they were closed down by "The Man" in August 1967, I was at Mitcham Fair - a travelling amusement park that came every Summer - where all the radios were tuned to "Big L". They closed with the Number One song - "Flowers In the Rain", just as the BBC's new "replacement for the pirates", Radio One, started with it a little later.

As happens occasionally, it was the "B" side of that record that sent me out for the LP. I always played "B" sides at least once and have found many favourites amongst them, two in particular in 1967. The Move's "Lemon Tree", from "Flowers In the Rain" and "Act Nice and Gentle", on the back of the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset"

The Move's LP, just called "MOVE" was the weirdest thing I had heard to date, but I loved it, and still do. Almost all the lyrics are at least partially obscure, but only partially. A song about walking on water, one about being in an asylum, one about a dream (well, maybe they're all about dreams), one about a crazy neighbour running round a lemon tree in a silver bikini, and so on. It wasn't "Plasticine porters with looking-glass ties", but it was a long way from "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" as well.

What Douglas Adams later called the "Fundamental interconnectedness of all things" slapped me in the face about now. I deliberately avoided talking about Sergeant Pepper until this point. When it came out in mid-67, it was a first for me in many ways. To everyone, it was the first album to have the lyrics printed on the sleeve. Wow!

It was also my first gatefold sleeve. Wow! It was also the first time I'd bought an album on the day of release so, not only unheard, but unseen too. Wow! I was marvelling at the sleeve before I had even walked the two minutes home from Mrs. Thorpe`s. Taking the record out of the sleeve, there are no track gaps.....huh? What? I'd only ever seen that on an LP once before; on my "Flintstones" album. Surely, there can't be only one song on each side? No, wait a minute, I've read the back of the sleeve, there are the words to at least a dozen songs there, What the????.

OK, play it, stupid. I did. I sat on the little bed in that spare room, listening and following along on the sleeve. It just sort of flows! Wow! One song runs into the next, but they're all so different! And when it was over, it didn't stop; it just kept repeating about two seconds of......of what? What IS that? What are they SAYING? I played it right through again, and probably again. Before long - can't remember, but no more than a couple of weeks - I'd memorized the whole thing. I really cannot express what a huge leap this was. Music had changed so much already in my roughly ten years of paying attention but now, with one record, there was another whole world opening up and, for the second time, out of three, it was the Beatles who had opened it.

Even to me, whose first five years following new music had taken me from "Putting On the Style" to "Please Please Me" and whose next five were just ending, this was radical. It's hard to imagine today. Think back ten years and describe what has changed in music since 2002. OK, I'm waiting..... Anybody? Mmmm Thought so.

Allow me to demonstrate. On the left, here are some of the UK Top 20 singles in July 1967. On the right, roughly equivalent place holders in July 1957.

A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum                        All Shook Up - Elvis Presley

Alternate Title (aka Randy Scouse Git) - The Monkees  Putting On the Style - Lonnie Donegan

She'd Rather Be With Me - The Turtles                         Little Darlin' - The Diamonds

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles                             We Will Make Love - Russ Hamilton

Carrie-Anne - The Hollies                                             Around the World - Ronnie Hilton

See Emily Play - Pink Floyd                                          Yes Tonight Josephine - Johnnie Ray

San Francisco - Scott McKenzie                                   A White Sport Coat - The King Brothers

Paper Sun - Traffic                                                       When I Fall in Love - Nat "King" Cole"

Okay! - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich             Around the World - Bing Crosby

Here Comes the Nice - Small Faces                              Butterfingers - Tommy Steele

And dammit, Petula Clark (Part II) doesn't want us to sleep in the subway. Mr. Wonderful - Peggy Lee

Thanks for spoiling my point, Pet.

From Johnnie Ray to Pink Floyd, in just 10 years - well, OK, Except for Petula Clark (Part II). And then comes Sergeant Pepper. I was asked a short while ago - you getting this Sam? - whether I thought at the time that the rapid change would continue and whether I had any idea where things would go next. I struggled to answer at the time but now, having written all this, it's crystal clear. YES, of course the change would go on. it always had (not true, but it seemed that way to me) and it always would. Did I think I knew where it was going? NO. No more than I could have predicted "See Emily Play" from hearing "Yes Tonight Josephine". Impossible. Young though I still was, I realised that, I'm sure.

The Whirlwind in the title of this chapter did not start that day - it was already well under way - but it reached full force at this point and being a music fan became infinitely more complicated. Over the three years that the sixties had yet to run, we got a host of new styles, schisms, fads and words.

First, I think, came the split between "pop groups" and "rock bands". In essence, the division had been around since the days of deciding between the Beatles and Stones but now it took on new meaning. This derived not only from the rapid changes in the music but also because it now had two distinct audiences, with a large grey area in the middle in which I found myself.

The original late-teenagers who had bought "Please Please Me" in 1963 were now in their early twenties, either students or working. They had grown and developed with the best of their teenage heroes and were moving into the new world of albums, shunning singles, looking for meaning (often by over-interpreting the deliberately nonce words of the John Lennons and Van Dyke Parks's of the world). Like the jazz-heads of a generation before, they wanted to go deep - or in some cases, at least appear to. The American artists had now caught up and some of the best were starting to lead again. They were getting back into protest, political awareness, peace and the rest. In the US and UK, they also rediscovered blues - again - only louder, heavier and longer. In the late sixtues, my classmates were playing Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Fairport Convention, the seemingly bullet-proof but still off-key lyrical genius Bob Dylan, The Who, Yes, and dozens of other names ignored by folks only two or three years their junior. All this, with a few exceptions, was mostly bought on LPs. Led Zeppelin never even released singles AT ALL - unthinkable in 1969.

But the world was still making new teenagers. They were no different fom earlier versions except that they now had the Merseybeat as their ancient history instead of Lonnie Donegan, Cliff Richard or Glenn Miller. The more progressive of the old groups weren't playing to them any more - and the ones that tried were too old for them to relate to anyway. Something new was needed for them but what with independent labels and producers and an ever more diverse field of inspiration to draw on, there was little chance of consensus.

Those younger kids had their own styles and favourites but they, too, were splintering. The "skinheads" emerged around this time and oddly, granted the direction their successors later took, adopted Jamaican Reggae as their own. Some others adopted.Motown, Soul and other American pop forms which now had a resurgence. Some picked up the lighter side of the new "rock" with bands like CCR. Yet others, the more dance oriented, took to what became known as "bubblegum" - disposable pop singles by a huge array of one-hit-wonders and others who are rarely more than footnotes in musical history today.

In three years we got the terms Rock, Progressive, Teeny-bopper, Bubblegum, Reggae, Blue Beat, Ska, Concept Album, Rock Opera, and more, I'm sure, that don't spring to mind. I've just picked a month fom that period at random (May 1969) and done a quick analysis of the best selling singles in the UK. Here goes:-

UK groups from at least three years earlier - 4 (Beatles, Herman's Hermits, The Who, Manfred Mann)

Newer UK groups - 1 (Fleetwood Mac, the instrumental "Albatross")

Motown or Soul - 4 (Junior Walker, Isley Bros., Diana Ross & The Supremes, Bob & Earl)

Jamaican - 2 (Desmond Dekker, Johnny Nash)

"Old school" UK solo singers - 4 (Mary Hopkin, Clodagh Rogers, Tom Jones, Noel Harrison)

"Old school" US singers - 3 (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tommy Roe)

plus Simon & Garfunkel and the 5th, Dimension ("The Boxer" and "Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In" respectively).

The "Old School" artists had always sold well in the UK, to our Mums and Dads, but only ever appeared in numbers in the Top 20 when there was no "big thing" going on - when younger fans were divided or disinterested.

I continued to follow the Beatles and Beach Boys, through albums and singles, where different. I bought mostly singles of other favourites, even Jethro Tull and The Who, but absorbed a lot of the other styles, either from school, other friends or the ice rink. I would come back to much of the album based material much later but found it pretentious at the time..Much of it lacked the vocal harmony and the sense of fun which had always been what drew me in.

Late in 1967, a school friend who was an electonics whiz started a little side business building record players and radios to order for his classmates, I was one of his first customers and he made me a replacement for my now tired and tempramental old machine. The two big enhancements I wanted were an autochanger and a headphone jack. He lived some way away, in Ewell, and I had to take a train there one Sunday to collect it - and have "tea" with his family, then, very gingerly, take it home on the train. It was flashy by comparison with the old one - white and sky-blue; twice the power (I now understood such things, at least vaguely, 4 watts instead of 2). I moved it and my records into my own bedroom and could now lie in bed at night with eight albums stacked on the turntable, headphones on and, in complete and utter silence apart from a "clunk" every 20 minutes or so, listen until either:-

a) I fell asleep or

b) one of the discs started to slip on the one beneath it or

c) two and a half hours or so went by..

There's a little piece of commentary that sits squarely between this chapter and the next one. It covers the few months across the end of 1968 into early 1969. I'll put it here.

In 1968, I was spending most of my spare time at the aforementioned Silver Blades Ice Rink in Streatham, London SW16. I formed a loose gaggle of informal friends there including a girl of my age whom we shall call "G". I was still at school, doing "A" levels but she, although my age, had left school to work in her grandparents' greengrocer's shop in Bermondsey, almost in Central London. Although most of my admissions to the rink - I normally went four times a week - were covered by either winning tickets for sillyness, doing odd jobs there or just being waved through because the guy on the door THOUGHT I was working, she had far more disposable income than I did (it seems it was a very good greengrocer's shop) and liked to go to concerts and, occasionally, London's famous Marquee Club, for which we were both underage. She liked to take me because I was tall and old looking and never got challenged in pubs or by the bouncers at the Marquee.

Her musical tastes.were varied and; to me, they bordered on odd. She was a huge fan of Tyrranosaurus Rex, before abbreviation and electrification; need I say more? So I got to hear and see some strange gigs in those few months and got my first real introduction to live performances. At the Marquee, over about four or five visits, we saw Blodwyn Pig, Fleetwood Mac, Yes, Brett Marvin & the Thunderbolts (about whom more next chapter) and a host of others whose names I don't recall. In concert we saw Creedence Clearwater Revival, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends featuring Eric Clapton and (separately) Ravi Shankar.

I enjoyed the Marquee more for the "derring-doo" of the whole caper than for most of the music, although it was good to see Fleetwood Mac who had already hit with "Albatross" and I really enjoyed the very messy but fun set by BM & T. The others, I'm afraid, missed me; too heavy. Of the concerts, CCR were great but the sound in our side-of-stage seats was awful; mostly bounced from the back wall of the Albert Hall. It was a huge experience to WATCH them though. Delaney and Bonnie were good but I knew only one song - "Comin' Home" and lost the plot at a certain point; too many long solos by wailing guitars again. Ravi Shankar was, for the first 15 minutes or so, highly educational and fascinating. The last 2.39 fortnights of the concert (seemed like, anyway) just left me behind.

At the ice rink itself, I saw a host of unknown groups, the only names of which I remember being "Cashbox" and "Dr. Marigold's Prescription". Occasionally, though, a "name" played there and, as a casual, general factotum employee, I was always there on those nights, whether I cared about the music or not.

I saw Amen Corner (awful! Saxes out of tune, both times they played there), The Equals (also twice, with Eddy Grant, already mentioned), Bill Haley & The Comets (yes, in 1969, part fabulous history and part sad), Status Quo ("Pictures of Matchstick Men" era, psychedelic but not the same without all the effects), Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band (great fun), the Herd and Love Affair (both dreadful). I'm sure there were more and if I think of any, I'll add them later.

Also in 1969, two other things happened which would change my direction for all time. I started to get the hang of the cheap guitar I'd had for about three years and I joined a youth club. But those stories are for another day.

2 comments:

Dyve said...

Apologies for the screwed up spacings in my attempt at a table. I guess you'll work out where it's supposed to be.
This kind of thing drives me NUTS!

Unknown said...

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/count_basie/blues_by_basie_f3/


This set is still in the original folder and it is in great condition. (this set includes disk 3) I was wondering how much does this set cost?? Can you please help me out here. Email me back at volk531@yahoo.ca