Went looking at guitar amps the other day. The music store clerk said here’s a new, hot shit one - s’got phase > shifter/effects loop/reverb/digital delay/channel switching/master volume/amp modeling. And tremolo?, I asked > her…where’s the tremolo?,. S’not got tremolo, she said, that’s old school No tremolo, I said?…how ya gonna play > a Bo Diddley song?
[AUDIO/BED: “BO DIDDLEY”/BO DIDDLEY]
BO
This is Bo Diddley playing a Bo Diddley song called…um…Bo Diddley.
Do you hear that pulsing wobbulation on Bo’s guitar? That’s tremolo.
It started showing up as a built-in sound effect in electric guitar amplifiers in the late 1940’s, and it became > a key part of Bo’s signature sound after he recorded this tune on February 8TH, 1957.
Take one tremolo guitar playing just one chord, shake loose some eighth-notes and triplets from a couple of > pairs of maracas, and hit a tom-tom drum with the Latin clave rhythm that goes “Shave and haircut, two-bits” and > you’ve got the formula for what forever will be called the Bo Diddley beat. You’ve heard it a zillion times, > ‘cause it’s one of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest grooves…
Go ahead…I know you can’t resist shakin’ your ass around the room.
These guys couldn’t resist that beat either…
STONES
[AUDIO/BED: “MONA”/STONES]
These are the Rolling Stones playing a Bo Diddley song called “Mona, I Need You Baby.
I’d been listening to rock ‘n’ roll since I could turn on a radio, but I never became ‘one’ with a song until I > heard “Mona”. Instant new knowledge: tremolo heartbeat guitar, urgent maracas…this is the Mother Beat…and there > was gonna be sex in my life.
The Stone’s version was recorded live in mono on a Revox A77 tape recorder on Jan 3rd, 1964, at Regent Sound in > London, England. The Stones didn’t have much of a recording budget, and even less studio experience…but they > were super hot as a club act, and so it was time to put something down on tape.
Regent was considered a rudimentary studio where songwriters from up and down Denmark Street - London’s Tin Pan > Alley and home to the UK’S music publishers – could duck in and record a rough, quickie version of a new tune > (called a ‘demo’, short for demonstration record) for possible placement with the top recording artists of the > day. But Regent had some good mics and was the economy choice…plus, as die-hard blues fans, the records The > Stones loved were often raggedy-sounding.
THAT GUITAR
Time out for second so you can listen to this roaring guitar solo!
Do you hear how the amplifier starts to distort/sound fuzzy just as the musical phrase reaches its highest > notes? You have to set a vacuum tube guitar amp just right - somewhere between too loud and too damn loud - so > that the effort of bearing down on the strings pushes the amp to break up, adding an extra bit of sonic > excitement to the part. Raggedy yes…but oh so sweet!
According to most sources, Mona was the first song The Stones recorded for their first album, and trust me when > I say that the first song that’s recorded for any album project is the one a band feels the most confident > about. Which is unfortunate, because that first song is usually played over and over and over again until all > the life is drained out of it, because the first song is when the recording engineer is moving mics around and > adjusting the sound so that the band can then blow thru the rest of their tunes with a minimum of technical > interruptions.
But this recording has plenty of life in it…even more, I think, than Bo Diddley’s original 1958 version.
Get ready for a rather abrupt key change…
[AUDIO/BED: “MONA”/BO DIDDLEY]
To me, Bo’s version is…haunting and haunted. Underneath all the tape echo, I can hear real longing in his voice. > When he sings “without your love, I’ll surely die…”…i believe him.
I don’t believe Mick Jagger, but the Stones’ version is so much more “something to prove” aggressive and > emotionally distant…Jagger’s vocal sounds like a young punk’s threat vs. Bo’s deep adult yearning.
The Stones’ version might have been a rush job in a cheap recording studio, but I think the way the parts work > together - whether by intention or accident - is kinda magical… and I know this is heresy, but I think their > version is just plain cooler.
let me show ya what I mean…
THEIR VERSION EXPLAINED
[AUDIO: DEMONSTRATE AC30 TREMOLO SETTINGS]
1 = tempo/trem speed
So the first thing that makes The Rolling Stones’ version of this song great is the tempo of the recording…or > rather how the tempo was set. It’s the speed of the tremolo pulses that set the tempo of the song. At this point > in their careers, The Stones used English guitar amps, usually Vox AC30’s – I’m playing thru a vintage, early > ‘60’s one now – and the tremolo speed on these amps is limited to only three switchable variations –
slow,
fast,
and a middle, medium speed.
As it turns out, the/this medium setting beats evenly four times (1/16th notes) within a nice, easy tempo of > around 100 beats per minute. Playing in time with the pulse of the tremolo – using it as a metronome – gives the > recording a fantastically sexy, forward-tugging chug.
2 = drum
[AUDIO: DEMONSTRATE TUNING A TOM-TOM DRUM]
The next thing that makes this version so great is that the tom-tom drum is tuned very close to the same key of > the song = F#.
But tuning a drum to a fixed pitch is really hard to do…I’ll be back when I get this one in tune…
Ok…so that took me about 35 minutes. It’s not unusual in recordings to tune the drums to fixed pitches, > providing the drummer and the producer have the budgetary luxury to be that anal when the money clock is > ticking. So I don’t think Charlie Watts tuned his tom-tom to F# on purpose…I think it was an accident…a happy > accident!
So…now we’ve got a guitar part with the tremolo setting the tempo…
And a drum tuned to F# the key of the song playing the clave/Bo Diddley beat…
But that sounds a little stiff…a little starty-stoppy…we need something to smooth the rhythm out…we need maracas!
3 = maracas
[AUDIO: DEMONSTRATE MARACA PLAYING]
You can’t see what I’m doing right now, but I am dancing all over the room. I’m trying to play like Jerome > Green…Jerome Green was Bo Diddley’s maraca player, and he was a master. I still have my button from the Jerome > Green Fan Club…I was the only member, and the button was homemade. Jerome would shake ‘em on the 1/8th notes > like this = one & two &…, throw in triplets 1-2-3 1-2-3 and rolls…easy ones…and frantic ones…all the while > dancing and strutting.
4 = tambourine
5 = hand claps
Now, if I (or the Stones) wanted to make a direct copy of Bo’s original….we’d stop right here with just these > three elements = guitar/tom-tom/maracas – ‘cause those are the only instruments on his version.
But since both versions had no bass and only one guitar, that meant Bill Wyman & Keith Richards (and possibly > Ian Stuart – The Stone’s original keyboard player) had nothing to do. So somebody (probably Wyman) added a > tambourine on a counter-intuitive odd beat – the ‘two’ of “two bits”….DOWN DOWN DOWN UP DOWN
[AUDIO: DEMONSTRATE TAMBOURINE PART]
…and whomever was left, added hand claps on the “two bits”…and brilliantly…on the downbeat of the repeating > musical phrase, perfectly smoothing over the jerkiness of the groove.
[AUDIO: DEMONSTRATE HANDCLAPS PART]
GUITAR REDUX
…but let’s get back to that distorted guitar…
[AUDIO/BED: “MONA”/STONES]
This is not the polite plinky surf guitars of the Beach Boys, or even the wholesome, fuzz-free strumming of The > Beatles. And this is not Motown either, where a guitar might take the lead as in “My Girl”, but still sound…you > know…nice.
Tho Keith Richards was the band’s lead guitarist, here it’s Brian Jones – the Stones’ founder and leader - > playing the sole six-string on the track - a big fat ol’ Gretsch Model 6118 Double Anniversary.
Jones’ guitar is loud, raw…and dangerous. He’s got that Bo Diddley feel down…and when I first heard it as a > teenager, it knocked me out. Here was an internationally released song that I could play along with on my cheap > folk guitar. The few chords that I knew were enough to give me a feeling of damn…I could be a Stone! It was > figure-out-able! The F# key made it easy to add the 7th note by simply lifting up my index finger…and look! If > you simply slid you hand down to the first position, you got the E major chord without changing the chord > shape…and the lead solo forced me to play up the neck past the 12th fret = alien territory where the dumb folk > songs I’d learned from my guitar teacher would never go.
SIGNIFICANCE
And there was something else going on that was even more significant…tho I didn’t realize it at the time.
By 1965, the British invasion was in full swing, and white American kids were being exposed – often for the > first time and to the discomfort of our white suburban parents – to black American music. 10 years or so BEFORE, > Elvis Presley had shocked the hell out of white America with his real-deal take on the blues, but a > counter-offensive by music marketers of having tame, white singers covering black artist’s hits had dulled and > delayed the impact of this cultural miscegenation. Think Pat Boones’ bleached & gelded version of Little > Richard’s “Tutti Fruitti”.
[AUDIO: “TUTTI FRUITTI”/PAT BOONE]
A song that was definitely not about cookies or an ice cream flavor…
But the Brits had taken to Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent with a vengeance…the rough > edges included. And when they began to make records of their own, they went to the same sources that had > inspired their American heroes – Muddy Waters/Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley - and the other artists on record labels > like, Chess, Atlantic, Ace & Specialty – labels that aimed their product almost exclusively to a black, > segregated, inner city audience. But now all these white English kids were making blues and R & B records, and > had all but taken over mainstream radio and the music charts.
And in sock hops and teen dances across America, high school bands – mine included - started playing songs like > “Mona”, completing the feedback loop, and finishing what Elvis had started. When the Rolling Stones can have a > Number 1 single by recording a version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Little Red Rooster” – as gut-bucket a tune as they > come - well, something really revolutionary was going on.
[AUDIO: “LITTLE RED ROOSTER”/STONES]
And it’s not too hard now to make a connection between this discovery of black music & culture by American white > kids, and our growing sympathy with the rising civil rights movement of the time…because if you love the music, > you have to reject the racism and segregation that came chained to it.
But my high school band mates & I didn’t just love this music, we craved it…and getting our fill required some > classic teenage sneaky stealth…like telling our parents we were going to the movies while instead, heading > downtown to the black-owned record stores. Or using a Friday night high school football game as cover for seeing > James Brown at the Cleveland Arena.
DICK SUMMER
And thanks to the magical night time warping of the ionosphere that bounced radio signals way beyond their > normal range, we could listen under the bed covers to faraway stations like CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, and > hipster DJ’s like Butter Fat in Memphis, and Dick Summer’s Night-Light Show on WBZ, a 50k-watt monster of an AM > station out of Boston, that played the newest British Invasion records weeks before our Cleveland stations had > them…
And one spring night in 1965 – transistor radio held close to my ear – Dick Summer intro-ed a cut from a new > release. “these are The Rolling Stones,” he said, “with a tune called Mona, I Need You Baby”. And he played it. > After it was finished, there were several seconds of dead air…and then he played it again. And after it ended a > second time, there was another dramatic pause of dead air…and he played it again. And after it ended for a third > time, there was yet another pause of dead air…and then just a ppphhhhewwwww…before he cut to a commercial.
[AUDIO: “MONA”/STONES]
Dick Summer got it. Got the Bo Diddley beat. Got the…I dunno…primalmagicsomething that this tossed-off recording > captured so completely…and he parked it deep in my sleepy, semi-conscious, sub-conscious lizard brain where it > fermented and pickled and cured and…waited, I guess…until I had my own band called The Waitresses, and needed a > cool guitar sound for the solo in our song “Pleasure”…
[AUDIO: “PLEASURE”/WAITRESSES]
…and yes, the song is in the key of F#, and the amp I used was – you guessed it – a Vox AC30 with the tremolo on > the middle speed setting.
INFLUENCE?
And I‘ve often wondered who else was listening that night…and who else got it? Got infected with the Mona virus?
Was George Thorogood listening in Wilmington, Deleware…?
[AUDIO: “WHO DO YOU LOVE?”/GEORGE THOROGOOD]
or Iggy Pop…nee Iggy Stooge in Detroit…?
[AUDIO: “1969”/IGGY & THE STOOGES]
Did the signal bounce all the way to Ireland…?
[AUDIO: “DESIRE”/U-2]
…all the way back to the UK?
[AUDIO: “HOW SOON IS NOW?”/THE SMITHS]
… or OBNOXIOUSVILLE, USA!!!
[AUDIO: “MR. BROWNSTONE/GUNS‘N’ROSES]
BRUCE Ya know, it would’ve easily reached Jersey …’cause this guy definitely got it….
[AUDIO/BED: “MONA/SHE’S THE ONE”/BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN]
…and he was not shy about spreading it around.
Oh yeah, Bruce Springsteen got it…huge
On his late ‘80’s tours, he staged a phenomenal act of evangelical theater. This is the Mother Beat, it said, > this is you, me, us, life…everything!
Each night, as the end of the intro to She’s The One wound tighter and tighter to an insane tension point…
When the band came to this part of the song…anyone who was backstage… the crew, girlfriends, hanger’s on…anyone > who was not otherwise musically occupied…stepped up to the nearest microphone…and when that downbeat came, the > lights came up full white across the entire stage and everyone…10, 20, 30 people all had…maracas!
[AUDIO: “MONA”/STONES]
Mona, I need you baby…cause you’re The One…and without your love, I will surely die.
[EDIT: “Thanks for listening”.]
END.
Doya
‘Do Ya’ - the greatest really, really dumb rock song ever recorded.
there are rock songs and then there are dumb rock songs and then there are really, really dumb rock songs…> and The Move’s original version of “Do Ya” (written by Jeff Lynne… yes I know, I know) is—in my opinion—the > greatest really, really dumb rock song ever recorded. it’s one Big Duh - huge slabs of basic Book 1 chords, > inane lyrics, glaring guitar mistakes, double-tracked drums that are way out of sync, a Middle 8 cribbed from > a completely different song and non-sequitor ad libs that even massive doses of drugs can’t explain…and all > coming from one of the most musically erudite combos of the British Invasion era. in short, it’s brilliant…> and in its spirit, I bring you:
0:00 = start with The Move recording
(song intro)
(verse)
in this life, i’ve seen everything I can see, woman
I’ve seen lovers flying thru the air hand-in-hand
I’ve seen babies dancing in the midnight sun...
EDIT TO: CB
“well, I’ve seen a ten-mile, festering gash in the earth’s crust in Iceland.
it was a wound…all blood-red and yellow puss lava…horrible…it was flesh-earth…and painful to see but > impossible to look away…but we had to leave ‘cause a sandstorm blew in off the glacier and blotted out the > midnight sun.”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
and i’ve…seen dreams that came from the heavenly skies above
EDIT TO: CB
“well, I’ve seen Muhammed Ali.
I was the token white boy in an otherwise all-black soul band, and we were asked to play at the Black > Muslim’s Mosque #12 in Cleveland. I am The Devil in their theology and I was not made to feel welcome, but up > walks Muhammad Ali, chuckling, shaking his head and says “Now this boy’s got guts.” then he shakes my hand…> or rather, he wraps his hand around mine like a cave-in, an avalanche of callousses and scar tissue. then he > spies the PA mixing board and yells “Is that a radio? I wanna be on the radio,” and walks off. I can still > feel his grip to this day.”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
i’ve seen old men crying at their own gravesides
i’ve seen pigs all sitting witch-ya....picture slides
but I...I.....never seen nothing like....
EDIT TO: CB
“…what I saw in Hamburg, Germany in 1985.
I was stranded between trains, with not enough time to slide over to the Reeperbahn and gawk at the whores, > or even to grab a bite to eat. so I just walked around. I turned one particular corner, and stumbled upon a > big taxidermist shop, and in the display windows were hundreds of stuffed animals…only each animal was, in > fact, a combination of animals. There was a duck with a lizard’s head, a squirrel with duck feet, birds with > fur and weasels with feathers, and so on through every possible critterly permutation…and all were posed > picnicking in a mock-Wagnerian forest scene.
Behold the ingenuity of man!—I thought—although it wasn’t the sight of these recombinant animals that has > stayed with me (that was some bent, Germanic attempt at black humor), but the brilliance here was that > we—unique among all of earth’s creatures—have the ability to slap some goo between two things > and—miraculously!—make one new thing.
Glue! It’s glue that truly sets us apart from the squiggling, squirming biomass that surrounds us. It’s glue > that has enabled us to make everything from pencils and pyramids to envelopes and rocket ships. I am aware of > some animals that use adhesives to stick their houses together or cling to slippery rocks, but I ask you—does > a spittle-built termite mound look cozy? or have you ever seen a barnacle playing Scrabble?
And the social anthropologists are all wrong. Forget about tool- making…even a monkey will use a stick to > bust-up a beehive to get at some honey. And forget about fire…according to Greek mythology, Prometheus got > into a hell of a pickle by stealing a flame or two from the gods and slipping ‘em to us. I’ll grant that fire > did give us an edge on other species, but this glue idea is something we came up with ourselves (as opposed > to simply re-purposing a fortuitous lightning strike)…and this ability to reorder the shape and structure > of our world is truly a skill normally reserved for gods and the forces of nature. If we—in our infinite > wisdom—survey our surroundings and see that something isn’t right, that two things that don’t go together > should go together…if we want a weasel with feathers…well, we and we alone on this planet have the power > to make it so.
Ecco homo glutium!”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
“yes, i’ve seen wonders…”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
“i’ve seen criminals… but…”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
I...I...never seen nothing like you.
(chorus)
do ya, do ya want my life...woman
do ya, do ya want my love, i’m saying
do ya, do ya want my face...i need it
do ya, do ya want my mind...
(verse)
well i’ve...heard the choir singing out of tune
as they sat....and sang Auld Lang Syne by the light of the moon
I heard the preachers banging on the drums
but I...I.....
EDIT TO: CB
“I saw Dave Hamilton drop his hair.
In 1965, high school was class war…the Collegiates—rich, preppy and college-bound—versus the Greasers, who > like me were lower class, third- generation immigrant kids new to the suburbs, deflected onto the vocational > track and destined for trade schools, autobody shops or—if we were lucky—the Army.
And Dave Hamilton was our Leader…the King Rack, the top, full-steam- ahead Hood. But no mere thug he…Dave > was a Continental Greaser, an elegant breed that favored neon mohair sweaters over crisp, white button-down > shirts, slit pocket-ed, cuffless gray gaberdine trousers with a small belt on the butt back, Banlon socks, > Stacy Adams lace-ups or anything with Cuban heels. Mandatory accessories included a large, pink rat-tail comb > in the rear pocket, a silver I.D. bracelet and always…always a black leather car coat.
Note that that’s Hamilton…not Hamiltono or Hamiltoni. We had the vowels—he had the Irish redhead pompador, > and it crowned him so gorgeously that we dark, stumpy Italians could never come within a ‘Vette’s-length of > this much class.
And that hair was everywhere…in the boy’s john glowing in the center of a puff of Camel smoke…in the > window of the principal’s office where Dave was once again sent for some surly infraction…and out in the > school parking lot bopping to the Four Season’s latest as he held court after detention. Cursed with a high, > squeaky voice, his leadership style was silent and passive…he just did…he just was…and through his > total resistance to any kind of authority and non-compliance with their rules, we got our cues as to how he > was parsing the world into ‘cool’ and ‘not cool’.
Both the Collegiates and the Greasers had their pet bands. I played drums with The Disciples, and since we > had a beconked black lead singer with a Harley and Buddy “De Bug” Vincent on sax, we played all the Greaser’s > parties, bike runs, car club rallies and funerals. Great gigs…lots of beer and slutty Catholic girls who > were keen on all kinds of rebellion. And nobody seemed to mind getting their James Brown or Link Wray through > our homemade speaker cabinets.
The Collegiate’s band was The Rebel Kind. They played strictly British Invasion through rich parents > signed-for, store-bought Vox and Sunn amps and got their stage clothes on Carnaby Street via weekend trips to > London. They were Jagger skinny and Daltrey pretty and we kicked their asses on a fairly regular basis. It > didn’t matter…their haughty, fabulous girls remained unimpressed, and there was no crossover contact that I > can recall…except once when at a Battle of The Bands, Kathy Worthington tripped over a guitar cable and I > caught her by the tits.
Hamilton, of course, considered this whole long-haired thing to be a pile of pussy shit. Nevermind that > moptop culture was becoming huge…it was a threat to everything manly, blue-collar and Elvish. It had bumped > surf music off the radio. It enabled our high school’s lowliest squid to acquire some status by merely > donning a polka dot shirt. And our parents thought The Beatles were cute. Cute?…rock ‘n’ roll?. This was a > disaster…the established teenage hierarchy was crumbling, and the noble Greaser was rapidly becoming an > anachronism.
Then one day Dave Hamilton showed up at school with his hair combed down . His clothes, his shoes, the chip > on his shoulder…everything else about him was exactly the same, but this shocking, apparent capitulation to > the new pop culture brought lunch trays crashing to the cafeteria floor and teachers to lose their places in > their lesson plans.
…and brought even more heat down upon him. Suddenly, Hamilton’s hair was the most important thing in the > world. This was not submission after all…it was subversion. In one brilliant move, he had co-opted a > threatening cultural trope and redefined it as a symbol of rebellion. He was immediately suspended, the high > school banned long hair and one ex-Marine gym teacher with a buzz cut started patroling the halls with > scissors and going after any boy whose ears he couldn’t see. Both Collegiates and Greasers who’d let their > hair grow dropped out to attend Griswold Academy, a trade school in downtown Cleveland that didn’t have a > dress code. One family sued the school—they were Quakers, and to them, long hair on their kids had religious > significance.
Dave peaked early, I guess. I saw him a few years later, after he’d fallen asleep, drunk and drugged, and had > burned off one of his arms to the elbow. He’d been working for several years in a car scrap yard near > downtown, then met and married a girl named Ellie and had moved to a house trailer in a one-intersection > village half way to Youngstown. Dave liked the isolation and lived for the local fishing, but Ellie could’t > stand the isolation, so they split and she moved to Florida. His parents got divorced when his father > declared himself gay.
Dave still had all of his red hair, tho.
yes, i’ve seen geniuses…”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
“yes, i’ve seen wonders…”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
“i’ve seen marvels…”
but…
EDIT TO: MOVE
I...I...never seen nothing like you
(chorus)
do ya, do ya want my life...woman
do ya, do ya want my love, i’m saying
do ya, do ya want my face...i need it
do ya, do ya want my mind...
(middle 8)
in the country where the sky touches down on the field...
EDIT TO: CB
“I saw heroin roll throw my lily-white suburban neighborhood house-by- house.
oh Freddy, Freddy my crazy cousin…lover of so many women for four years you kept a full time job, went to > college at night, and had a $100 dope day habit…jeez what courage…now that was a man!…‘til his folks > came back from vacation and found him hanging in the basement…
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
he lay her down...
to rest in the morning sun
EDIT TO: CB
“I saw Vikki Singleton cum.”
she was the most sexual woman i’ve ever known. one time we were hanging out in her backyard. hot sun. hot > day. she said “hey…wanna see something?”, I said “uh…sure” and she took off her jeans, lay back on a > lounge chair, turned toward the sun and spread her legs. in a few minutes, she came…hard….”the sun fucked > me,” she said.”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
they come a’running just to get a look
just to feel, to touch her long black veil
EDIT TO: CB
“i saw myself be sick for eleven years over a priestess.
she was everyone’s art-babe-muse…oh i was so in love!…twenty years later i hook back up with the guy who > married her (my best friend, of course)…called him up…i was so nervous…“WHAT” she snarled into the > phone…“um it’s chris butler (pause…no response) “uh…is Steven there?”…“STEVEN” she shrieked…and > drops the receiver…nothing…not a word to me. and i got shock treatments because of this cunt???
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
they don’t give a damn...
(reintro = x 2 for nothing)
(plop!/ x 2 >hold x 3)
ahhhh.......
(chorus)
do ya, do ya want my life...woman?
do ya, do ya want my love, i’m saying
do ya, do ya want my face...i need it
do ya, do ya want my mind...
(verse)
well, now I think you understand what i’m trying to say to you, women
that is…i’d like to save you for a rainy day, yeah
i’ve seen enough of the world to know, baby
that i’ve got to get it on, to get it on tomorrow
EDIT TO: CB
“WHAT???
well, i saw a beach with pink sand that was so soft that you’d sink in up to your shins.
…but i also saw my brother-in-law smashed on magic mushrooms think about taking a swan dive off a cliff > onto the jagged coral…”Don’t worry,” he said, “the rocks are my friends.” And this was after i’d spent the > entire day snorkling and playing tag with a parrot fish that was - I think - in a good mood. can fish be > happy? can a fish have a sense of humor?
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
and i saw a Jehovah’s Witness blow his chance at The Rapture.
…by selling me a used car and lying about its condition. who better to trust than a JW, I thought? he said > his job was translating The Watchtower into German. “Yep…lotsa good miles left in that car…lotsa good > miles.”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
“and i saw the club I was playing in burn down in the middle of a song.
my band had just replaced all their gear after everything was lost in another fire barely a month before in > the club next. door. “Not again,” we said, and grabbed gear and cables as the flames came up throught the > floor. the harp player just made it out with my bass amp as the buyilding crashed down around him. we hauled > everything three flights of stairs to an apartment across the street, but sparks landed on the roof and soon > that building was on fire, too, so we dragged everything back down the back fire escape to a music store. we > stayed up all night soldering stuff back together, found another club by noon the following day, built a > stage that afternoon and played that night with our shoes sticking to the wet paint. we won…now that was > courage!”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
“I saw the searchlight in Antibe harbor…
…from the balcony of a little house in a medieval village up in Les Alpes Maritimes…and smelled the > Mistral, fat and moist with thyme from the Rhone Valley and pine from the Swatzwald and thought…it doesn’t > get any better than this.”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
“and I saw a rainy moonrise…
…while standing in the doorway of a warehouse in Nyhavn, Copenhagen, with two great friends and have never > felt closer to anyone else ever…and thought it doesn’t get any better than this”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
it doesn’t get any better than this
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
D CHORD FROM INTRO
EDIT TO: CB
no…it doesn’t get any better than this
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
(drum plop!)
(chorus)
do ya, do ya want my life...woman?
do ya, do ya want my love, i’m saying
do ya, do ya want my face...i need it
do ya, do ya want my mind...
ahhhh....you bother me...
(stop/drums x 3 +1!)
EDIT TO: CB
“…and I saw The Move!”
EDIT TO: THE MOVE
(chorus)
do ya, do ya want my life...
do ya, do ya want my love...
do ya, do ya want my face...
do ya, do ya want my life...
look out baby there’s a plane a comin’!
Fool
“A Certain Kind of Fool”
A CONVERSATION IN WALTER’S CAFÉ
KENT, OH, 1973
Photo: Dennis Rein
Photo: Eric Muehling
A CONVERSATION IN WALTER’S CAFÉ KENT, OH, 1973
- between Alanna Kellon & Chris Butler
SONG: “A CERTAIN KIND OF FOOL”/THE EAGLES
Setting: A chatter-filled bar in Kent, 1973, night. I’m talking with a woman while the juke box plays an > Eagles song over and over.
Characters: Alanna Kellon – a petite, plain-but-pretty blond woman dressed very straight, “tightly wrapped”, > air of sadness about her…but strength, too. Chris Butler – hippie-artsy, high strung, a good guy, equal parts > sure of himself & confused.
[AUDIO: BAR AMBIENCE] [AUDIO: TAIL END OF THE SONG] [CB & AK LAUGHTER, PICKING UP THE DIALOGUE IN > MID-CONVERSATION]
CB: …that’s good, Alanna! Yeah…hippie-crits! Like the politicos…they preach freedom, but then follow a strict > Marxist-Leninist dogma! I’m supposed to…what?…go underground, join The Weathermen and start blowing things > up? I’m trying to stay out of the army, not join another one. God…their politics are so > suffocating…everything I came to Kent to escape…
AK: From where, Chris?
CB: Suburban Cleveland. East Side. White bread. Actually, pretty good bread. We’re Italian & Hungarian…we ate > really well. But my parents are assholes.
AK: Ah, so we’re related! Same gene pool.
CB: Which is…?
AK: The suburban Philadelphia branch of the Asshole family. Strict Irish-Catholic…father was from the > O’Bastard clan.
[AUDIO: SONG STARTS AGAIN]
Christ…again? Annoying song.
CB: [CHUCKLE/GROAN] ugh…yeah…some Eagles B-side. I think it’s called “A Certain Kind of Fool”? And no, it > doesn’t get any better with repetition. So, how did you end up in Kent?
AK: The math department offered me a full scholarship. Bye-bye! No…just one “bye”…left so fast I only had > time to squeeze one “bye” out.
CB: Huh…so that makes you the only math major I know. My friends are artists…musicians…goofballs…
AK: Someone’s gotta learn to count…
CB: [LAUGHS]. Nobody here…this is Walter’s…daytime bum bar, nighttime salon for dreamin’ low-riders, Deeges…
AK: What?
CB: Degenerates-In-Training…college town bohemia. People here don’t want to learn to count…they want to > count. For something…or their paintings or songs or poetry to count for something…
AK: …which is why I come here – I like the energy. And I like that woman with orange hair and leopard skin > pants…
CB: Yeahyeahyeah…that’s Terry Hynde’s…Terry?…from the Numbers Band?…his little sister, Chrissie. She went > to England and came back all glam-y. Cadges rides from Akron and then passes out on Terry’s floor. I was in a > band with her, once – country rock, doing Linda Ronstadt songs.
AK: [SURPRISED]…I never would’ve thought…
CB: I know, I know! Now she’s all Bowie-ed up. In the official watering hole of the longhair-ed and the > flannel-shirted.
AK: and the…
CB: Right…present company excepted. I see you at anti-war rallies, but you dress sorta …straight…like a…
AK: …future accountant?
CB: Or….I was gonna say…Catholic schoolgirl…
AK: I was a Catholic schoolgirl. All 12 years. Our Lady of Crushed Souls, Crushed Hopefulness, Dashed > Expectations…something sarcastic.
CB: Well, you survived.
AK: [BEAT] Sort of. [BEAT] What’s with the obsession with clothing?
CB: S’not just clothing. I’m interested in street culture…this whole Downtown Kent/Water Street scene. It’s > got an interesting dynamic. There are splits along really rigid values…favorite bands…drugs of choice…and > strong signals, like …“what you wear is who you are.”
AK: No. No. I don’t see that. These people, the hippies…I feel accepted here…and on campus. I may look like I > should be hanging out with the jocks at the Rendezvous, but no…there’s no judgment. That’s new for me…and > you’ve no idea how good that feels. So you are…?
Who am I?
CB: [CHUCKLES] At the moment…I’m taking sociology…anthropology…psychology…glassblowing…ology!, and I play > guitar in City Lights…the blues band? So that makes me a…pan-subcultural rumdum with no fixed affiliation or > dress code…other than belonging to The Great Mass of the Un-Ironed. And I know you from Lea Seefert’s Honors > English class, right?
Whoa…did you see that?
AK: [DISTRACTED] No, I…
CB: Terry’s sister just reached up and cold-cocked some guy! I guess he was trying to pick her up and…whap! > She never even looked up from her beer! Man…tough woman.
AK: If that’s what it takes. …
CB: S’never boring in Walter’s. Last week, this guy bet a woman she wouldn’t blow him for a dollar right here > in the bar. He lost…or won, depending on your point of view.
AK: So…you’re not Catholic, are you?
CB: Nooooooo…I’m a lapsed Nothing-ist. I always liked the Catholic rituals and robes and mystery, tho…very > theatrical. I like it that there are strong ideals, that everyone can’t possibly meet…and so you get forgiven > for fucking up. And it’s kind of comforting that thousands of cloistered nuns are praying 24 hours a day for > the earth and all of us heathens. For all I know, they’re all that’s keeping the planet from blowing itself > apart.
AK: Like I said…you’re not Catholic.
CB: No! Their stand on birth control is just stupid. And on abortion?…stupider. C’mon…people fuck!…sometimes > someone gets knocked up. Big deal. It’s a woman’s right to choose, now.
AK: IF she has the chance to choose…
CB: Of course, she has the chance to choose…abortion is legal now. You can go to the Free Clinic on > Depeyster…get The Pill or an IUD or a diaphragm or whatever.
The Supreme Court just ruled on that…Roe versus Wade business…it’s the new law of the land.
AK: Yeah…now it is. [BEAT] For some of us, it’s too…damn…late.
CB: oh c’mon…it’s never to late to have a choice.
AK [TAKES A BREATH/ANGRY NOW] When I was 15, I got pregnant. My “good Catholic” father was so ashamed of me, > he pulled me out of school, and sent me away to a boarding school for ‘girls in trouble’. I had to have the > child, and all the shame and guilt and dishonor and humiliation that the nuns and the priests …that the > Church could dump on me. And then he made me give the baby up for adoption. Choice??…do these look like I > had a choice?
[AUDIO: SONG ENDS RIGHT HERE]
[AUDIO: BAR AMBIENCE STOPS]
[V.O.] CB: Right than, in that crowded bar, Alanna Kellon lifted up her sweater and blouse. Not the smooth, > tight skin of a woman in her early 20’s…angry scars criss-crossed her belly. Stretch marks.
[AUDIO: RETURN TO BAR AMBIENCE]
[AUDIO: SONG STARTS AGAIN]
AK: Who keeps playing that stupid song? I really hate The Eagles.
CB: [STUNNED/NERVOUS] I…uh…me, too. I think it’s about a guy who buys a gun and becomes an outlaw…or buys a > guitar and becomes a rock ‘n’ roll star…something.
AK: Same difference. [BEAT] Did I scare you?
CB: Oh no no…well…no. [BEAT] I’m feeling really ignorant right now…I really gotta pee. [SIGH] I think you > have…an enormous amount of courage. What do you think about…wait…do you want another beer?
AK: [RELIEVED/PERKY] Sure.
CB: [TO THE BARTENDER] Ruthie?…two more Rolling Rocks, please
AD LIB Bathroom. Stay right here. Tab, Ruthie…ok? Be right back. Just gotta pee. Don’t go anywhere.
AK: [RELIEVED/REASSURING/BUT SMALL] okay!
[AUDIO: FADE AMBIENCE & SONG]
I salvaged this from a stalled CD project of new songs &/or writings about all the women who have influenced me. It’s my first attempt at writing a theatrical scene, and everything in the story really happened, though not on the same evening.
Credits:
Recorded in Hoboken by Tom Beaujour at his Nuthouse Studio on Jan 22nd, 2012,
with Tim assisting, and featuring Tammy Lang as “The Girl”.
Directorial Guru: Shelley Wyant
Photo/Walter’s Café: Dennis Rein
Photo/Water St. panorama: Eric Muehling
Whole Wide World
“ARE WE THERE YET?”
so…is “home” where you finally come to a stop, or is “home” who you stop for?
WHOLE WIDE WORLD
When I was a young boy
My mama said to me
There's only one girl in the world for you
And she probably lives in Tahiti
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I grew up in a mean, toxic family of Hungarian-Italian immigrants – people who by definition leave their homes with only what they can carry…maybe some heirloom linens, a few pictures of the old village…a little racism, a lot of alcoholism, a ton of anxiety - so I define ”home” as a place of security and mental health.
Ya long for what you don’t have, right?
I reject my childhood home, and hit the road to find a better one. Unmoored, yes…rudderless, no…’cause you’re always going in at least one direction…hopefully, towards a home.
I spend decades sick with wunderlust - joining touring rock bands, taking impulsive trips, lame-excuse trips. Nothing-good-on-TV-tonight?…jump on a plane.
Or maybe she's in the Bahamas
Where the Carribean sea is blue
Weeping in a tropical moonlit night
Because nobody's told her 'bout you
I’m a nomad looking for a home that promises stillness and roots, but at the same time can’t commit physically to one place or – and this is key – emotionally to one person.
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Find out where they hide her
My compass always points EAST – even as kid, I feel like a New Yorker who somehow got born in Northeastern Ohio…probably thanks to Mad Magazine, which taught an entire goyisher generation how to kvetch like “red diaper baby” Jew. When when I move to New York City to escape Squaresville USA, I realize - NO! – I’m actually a European that somehow got stranded in New York City.
Cheap transatlantic flights from the East Coast reinforce this, and for a long time the most “at home” I ever feel is when my feet hit the tarmac of a French, Dutch, or Danish airport.
But I never move there permanently, because the truth is…I’m a lousy faux European. I can only sputter away at tourist-level in a few foreign languages. The Europe that I fantasize living in is Zurich in 1916 or Paris in the ‘20’s or Italy in the Fellini’s or France in the Truffauts-Tatis-Mai Soixante Huites. All I have to do is pick up a knife and fork, and I give myself away –
I invariably switch them from hand-to-hand when cutting something, then switch them back to eat… a “tell” that instantly gives me away as a Yank, and a wannabe.
It’s always a goal tho, settling somewhere. Over the years in anticipation of this, I collect mid-century modern home furnishings thinking that one day, all this stuff will go somewhere other than in a storage locker.
Why am I hanging around in the rain out here
Trying to pick up a girl
Why are my eyes filling up with these lonely tears
When there're girls all over the world
In 2005, I’m spending a lot of time back in Ohio again. The Akron band I played with in the ‘70’s, Tin Huey, has reformed and we’re doing shows. I’m going thru a dreadful divorce…and I’m hot for a Manic Pixie Art Gurl from Cleveland. The band needs a place to rehearse, I have Pixie-Lust, New York’s a drag now…so I start looking for a place in Ohio.
When I first see the house, I’m knocked out. It’s a beautiful, 1950’s hillside structure in a ritzy-horse-y suburb of Akron, with two acres of woodlands and paths (no lawn to mow!) and isolated enough to make a musical racket without pissing off any neighbors.
The real estate agent is shrewd – he lets me fall in love with the place before…”The Phone Call”: “Um…in the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Butler, the house has a bit of a history…”
Eh…I need a place to live. I want a home. So – of course - I fall in love with the house where one of America’s most notorious serial killers got his start: the house is Jeffery Dahmer’s childhood home.
If your first reaction is “Eeeewww…”…that’s understandable.
You remember Jeffery Dahmer…? Confessed to killing at least 17 young men? Tortured them first? Ate some of their body parts? A real prince…
But c’mon!…he only killed his first victim at this house! Well…and had sex with the corpse, chopped the body up in the crawlspace under the house, triple-bagged the parts and drove the bags around in the trunk of his car for a couple of weeks, then scattered the bones around the backyard.
Standing in the empty house a few days later, trying to decide what to do…in or out?…I see something curious. The ‘50’s dining room table I’d bought years ago will fit perfectly …right …over…there.
And the couch?…the one with Atomic Ranch print?…damn! It’s the right color for the walls. In fact, everything I have collected in a random fashion, miraculously fits together harmoniously within the house.
I’m a semi-semi-famous songwriter, and I think about other rock ‘n’ rollers who’ve had eerie abodes:
Jimmy Page: Led Zeppelin = lived in Boleskine House, Alstair Crowley’s retreat in Scotland.
Trent Reznor: Nine Inch Nails: he lived in The Tate-La Bianca/Charlie Manson murder house in Los Angeles.
Chris Butler: The Waitresses…?????…Jeffery Dahmer’s house…..???
Not a perfect analogy but…kind of creepycool!
The house didn’t kill anybody.
I have to have it.
I’m in!
I move in fast, and soon every room, every square inch is stuffed with my self-reinforcing object de funk. I set up my collection of ‘60’s British Invasion musical gear and analog recording equipment, and am so inspired by my cool new pad that I do some of the best work I’ve done in years.
And the slower lifestyle tempo of Ohio lets me catch-up on all the new & old music I’ve had no time to listen to. One of the songs. One of the songs I rediscover is Wreckless Erics “Whole Wide World” – a two-chord wonder that’s as much about finding a home as it is getting a girl.
I love it here. I mean…what’s not to like? It’s perfect.
And when I cook another fabulous dinner, and sit at that ‘50’s dining room table, I am grounded. Rooted, better still. I’ve arrived! I’m home! Peace! Stillness! Quiet…so quiet, I can hear the blood rushing in my head – louder than doubt! or want! or where?…or RUN!
I’ve created the perfect suburban CHILDHOOD home that I should have had, that my parents with all their faults, could never, ever have provided.
And I am going to have a new love in my life – I am sure of it – because as a friend had once said, “If you want to catch a bird, build a nest”.
What a nest!
This is the best I can do.
I am never moving again.
I mean it.
Except that…there is no room for anyone else in here…no room for that new love.
Every square inch is 1000% me.
So…is home where you finally come to a stop?…or is home who you stop for?
Is she lying on a tropical beach somewhere
Underneath the tropical sun
Pining away in a heatwave there
Hoping that I won't be long
I have a son in the New York area, so I keep going back there regularly, and on one of these return trips, I meet this magnificent woman – Wunder Girl. Or actually re-meet her, since she’d gone to college in Akron and had been a fan of Tin Huey.
We click – she even wrote a best-selling book on the history of Mad Magazine! We both love good food, good sex, bad movies…and even share being in the Guinness Book of World Records…her for building the world’s largest garden gnome, and me for writing and recording the world’s longest pop song.
And, she passes the Bob Denver, Right Age Group, Obscure Pop Cultural Reference, Compatibility Test with flying colors - question: to you, is the actor Bob Denver “Gilligan”? from Gilligan’s Island…or is he “Maynard G. Krebs” from the earlier Dobie Gillis show?
In no time, we find a great place upstate in Accord, NY: a 1930’s Arts & Crafts-style house with a huge garage for our art, music, projects and parties.
I love it here. I mean…what’s not to like? It’s perfect.
Except…there’s a catch…Wunder Gurl has a major condition – Ohio is out. She wants and deserves a fulltime boyfriend – not an intra-continental part-timer with the wind in his shoes.
Ok, I rationalize…the Tin Huey revival has run its course, Manic Pixie Art Gurl has started stalking another musician named Chris…it’s pretty clear what my choice should be.
In or out?
I’m in, I say, and I mean it…finally, here is a companion I can make a home with…and I resolve to give my all to the relationship.
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
But the pull of my Akron “home” is also strong…so I try to have it both ways. I continue going back and forth between AC-cord and AK-ron.
I HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THE HOUSE, I TELL HER. My Mom is conveniently dying, which justifies MOST of the trips. I’m offered gigs in Cleveland…more reasons to go back.
In or out?
I’m in, I say, and I mean it.
I get a caretaker for my house, and cut back on my trips – trying appeasement. But it’s more and more frosty each time I leave now, and when I come back, Wunder Gurl is less and less glad to see me.
Then the real estate bubble bursts. No chance of selling “the Dahmer house” now…I’ve waited too long to deal with it. It’s now a liability…and more and more, I start looking forward to seeing it…in the rearview mirror.
Wunder Gurl digs deeper into the upstate community, and it’s inspiring to watch her flourish. I do meet some great musicians here, but nothing really gells into an ongoing project for me.
In or out?
I’m in, I say, and I mean it. We start going to couples therapy.
Wunder Gurl is creating her perfect childhood home now, her ideal life…the one that her parents with all their faults could never, ever have provided her…but I feel more and more conflicted…because the house in Accord – as great as it is – is just not my home.
I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her
Caressing her warm brown skin
And then in a year or maybe not quite
We'll be sharing the same next of kin
We don’t make it.
I move my stuff to a factory in Hoboken to be nearer my son…the stuff I swore I’d never move again…again. Temporarily, I tell myself. I find a room in Jersey City. Temporarily.
But I’m a nomad again.
My driver’s license says I live in New Jersey.
Chase sends my bank statements to an address in New York.
I pay a mortgage on a house in Ohio.
I’m not sure where I should have my mail forwarded…
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy goes click-click-click…”there’s no place like HOME”.
I go click-click-click…”there’s NO PLACE like home”.
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Find out where they hide her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Find out where they hide her
Fever
An audio portrait of my amazing, legendary friend Fran Blanche.
She really is all these things…and more!
FEVER
I met Fran thru Dave Amels – an extra-terrestrial passing as an electronic engineer, and as the amasser of Earth’s definitive collection of pointy Beatle boots. The mysteries of the electron bonded them…as if you needed any excuse to bond with a 6 foot Valkerie with a knucklehead Harley-Davidson and a bucketful of dark, dangerous cool.
We are all having lunch in Brooklyn after a guitar show, and somehow we get on a jag about NASA, which begets a discussion of our adventures with model rocketry, which begets how Brooklyn needed it’s own space program (BASA!), and then Fran riffs that their slogan should be “one of these days, bang-zoom straight to the Moon”.
Instant big like, but no surprise there - I’ve always been a sucker for smart, attractive, outsider women. When she finds out I play drums in a surf band, she immediately sends me youtube clips of her playing guitar in her instrumental band. She’s a damn good player, too…add that to the list of her accomplishments that I am mentally beginning to tally.
She starts coming to our gigs – usually with her lover Amy – and hits the New York night suited up as a heavy metal matadora with Betty Page notes and a dominatrix finish. A powerful, room-filling presence. On one of those nights, it gets out that I play guitar, too, so she tells me about her business – building boutique guitar effects pedals, and that I should try them. Oh…and come see her collection of all the analog equipment she’d grabbed when Columbia’s Department of Experimental Music had closed. I’m an antique recording technology geek, so this is irresistible – I drop in within a week, drool all over the Columbia stuff (this equipment had been used to invent modern computer music) and apologize by buying one of her distortion pedals, which sounds fantastic. She give me a lift back to the subway in her ’72 hemi-loaded Dodge Charger (Candy Apple Purple, of course) and ok, you can probably tell by now that I’ve concluded that she is one hell of an interesting person.
I am in a café in Quebec City, bright sunshine bouncing off the two knock-out blonds sitting next to me, and thinking how my friend Liam had once said that the reason guys like us don’t wind up with women like them is that we can’t talk to them…it’s too intimidating. They chatter away in that French-Canadian dialect that sounds like ducks quacking (whank-whank-whank-whank) and my schoolboy French decodes that they’re sisters (je pense) celebrating a special day (je pense encore) and were getting along just fine without the distraction of an intruding conversation with a geezer Yank tourist.
Fran moves to King-of-Prussia, PA, and I lose track of her for a while. Then my kid gets interested in aviation, and I find a flight camp for him in her corner of the state. “Flying’s fantastic”, she tells me. Her pilot’s license rates her for soloing, but she doesn’t fly anymore because it’s too expensive. Yet another item for the list. She asks me over, and I see that she’s closed her guitar effects business and is now flourishing as a corset maker for women into tight-waisting: the strange practice where women reduce their waist sizes to Victorian dimensions. Fran has a 19-inch waist – that’s nothing, she sez - the smallest is 14…but I’m tall.
The blonds are intimidating – their beauty is of that Aryan, honey-glow Northern European variety, and in sharp contrast to the squat, gnarled, brunette archetype so dominant in the New France gene pool. They are perfection – top of the Normal set of esthetics. And please…bend down one more time to look for something in your pocketbook? Make a stranger feel welcome.
Fran shows me her collection of handguns. A modern Glock, and modern Colt, an older Army 45, some antique pieces, too. She’s an experienced instructor, and puts me thru the drill of how to handle them safely.
Thank you, I whisper sotto voce to the blond on the left that I’m most attracted to. That was much appreciated. She has a great laugh and a disarming naturalness. But she has no mystery – her 10-ness is there for all to see. And I think – Golden Girl, maybe you shoplifted once or twice…
Fran starts posting her own music program on Facebook – she’s a fan of WFMU = the most freeform, experimental radio station in the USA, (where she was also their tech engineer and gear fixer), but they won’t give her a show ‘cause she’s too far out even for them…so she makes one anyway.
Golden Girl - maybe you take a few hits off of a joint now and then…
Fran posts a series of videos on Facebook, revealing that she’s an autistic transsexual. It took a lot of courage to do that, I tell her via email, and she starts getting flirty, having found an understanding, non-judgmental male ear.
Or maybe once you even went down on your boyfriend while he was driving, Golden Girl…but that’s about as deviant as you’re ever going to get.
More Facebook postings and emails to me, and Fran starts hinting that she liked it when I’m stern with her one time over some petty issue. I reply that I can’t imagine anyone bossing her around, to which she replies that she’s heavily into the BDSM scene, and is what’s known as a ‘heavy switch’ – someone who likes taking both the top and bottom roles in BDSM play. She posts a private video for me of her singing “Fever” acapella…it’s smoky, seductive.
I break up with my girlfriend of 4+ years. And start thinking that I wish I could assemble the perfect woman out of all the accomplished, interesting, sexy parts from all the women I’ve known and liked. Then I’m shocked when I realize that I’ve just described Fran.
Fran-ken-stein.
Fran tells me that she has bad arthritis brought on by years of estrogen treatments, and can’t take the cold Pennsylvania winters anymore. She’s considering moving to Los Angeles.
And I really don’t know how I feel about that…
Barbara Ann
“BARBARA-ANN” – THE REGENTS
This, ladies and gentlemen…
…is pure Greaser rock ‘n’ roll.
… a 24-karat golden oldie example of the Mid-20th-Century vocal group style known as Doo-Wop. Doo-wop blended rhythm and blues, gospel, and popular black vocal music of the post-World War II era. It was the Sound of the City, with black and white male teenagers practicing their vocal harmonies in school gyms, on street corners, and in subway entrances…any place that had a good echo. These are nice Italian boys from the Bronx harmonizing …and singing in a Doo-Wop group was the apex of Eisenhower-thru-Kennedy era cool.
So yeah…Greasers!
[“RUMBLE” – LINK WRAY]
Italian-Americans with combed back hair thick with pomade, loud families, spaghetti at every meal and a cousin or two in the Mafia. That was the stereotype, anyway – THO ANY NATIONALITY WILL DO. Greasers were a pre-British invasion, largely lower class, urban subculture, a regional phenomenon at first that went national, thanks to Elvis Presley’s hair, James Dean’s surly attitude and public Congressional hearings on the rising tide of juvenile delinquency (as if Square America didn’t have a enough to worry about with the goddam Russians having The Bomb).
Whatever you called them – greasers, hoods, racks, they were media-typed as lost kids in violent street gangs, with switchblades at the ready, and an all-consuming interest in loud sharp clothes, louder rock ‘n’ roll, horror comic books, fast cars and faster chicks.
Swap “country boy” for the urban Italians…
[RACE WITH THE DEVIL” – GENE VINCENT]
…amp up the Elvis and – like here – with Gene Vincent, you had rock-a-billy, roaring out of the South and around the world.
[BED - “CRY FOR A SHADOW”]
Even The Beatles, before they became the loveable moptop-ed “The Beatles”, affected a Greaser/street thug/rock-a-billy image.
Check out pictures of them in black leather, cowboy boots and well-oiled pompadours when they were nobodies playing in Hamburg, Germany.
The Greaser aesthetic was very masculine and tough-edged, which contrasted sharply with the sweet, HIGH TENOR AND/OR falsetto-voiced Doo-Wop lead singers who sounded…girlie.
[FRANKIE VALLI/FOUR SEASONS “CHERIE”]
If you were a Greaser, as I was, it was commonly assumed that you were either headed for Dropoutsville, the army, auto-mechanic school, jail, a rock ‘n’ roll band…or for some enterprise somehow tied in with The Mob.
And at least with The Regents, who first recorded “Barbara-Ann”, some of this stereotype was true.
The roots of “Barbara-Ann” go back to 1958, when The Desires, a struggling Doo-Wop group from the Bronx, recorded a string of unsuccessful demos at New York’s Regent Sound Studios.
Hoping their luck would change, the group switched their name to The Regents – using the studio’s name, and lead singer Guy Villari’s fondness for smoking Regents cigarettes. To this day, Villari claims to have the empty pack that was in his pocket when the name was chosen.
Later in ‘58, the group decided to do a song Villari had written called “A Teenagers Love” at a small, $15 an hour studio in Manhattan called Associated. [they couldn’t call themselves The Associateds…that would’ve been dumb.]
[“A TEENAGER’S LOVER”]
The group took 50 minutes to do that song, and as they were leaving, one of the members noticed - hey - they still had 10 minutes of recording time left, so Villari suggested the group record a little ditty in the key of F they frequently used as a warm-up number. Written by tenor Chuck Fassert’s brother Fred, the song was named after their little sister, Barbara-Ann Fassert, hyphenated in the original spelling.
[DEMO]
Recorded in three takes, with tagalong friend and future group member Tony Gravagna on sax, the group decided that of all their songs, “Barbara-Ann” had the best chance to become a hit, so they brought the song to more than 50 record labels with no success. Discouraged, The Regents broke up at the end of 1958.
Fast forward to 1961. Eddie Jacobucci, younger brother of Regents’ bass man Don Jacobucci, was in a spot. Eddie’s group, The Darts, was short of original songs. Eddie remembered his brother’s demo of “Barbara-Ann,” and played it for them. They liked it and cut their own demo of the tune…with a session drummer changing the beat to an inappropriate shuffle rhythm, and sounding lost most of the time.
[DARTS DEMO VERSION]
Group member Sal Donnarumma took their version to Lou Cicchetti’s locally well-known Cousins Records on Fordham Road in the Bronx. Lou liked the song so much he decided to release it as a single, however Fred Fassert heard about this and went to Cicchetti with the original Regents demo, and convinced him that this was the version which should be pressed. Lou agreed. Fassert quickly found the original members of the Regents, and once re-formed, they recorded “I’m So Lonely” as the B-side to “Barbara-Ann”, now with an over-dubbed bass line.
Released in March 1961, “Barbara-Ann” became a No. 1 record in New York. When it started to breakout nationally, Cousins then leased it to Morris Levy’s Gee Records, a subsidiary of his Roulette label, for worldwide distribution, and it reached #13 in the Billboard Hot 100, and #7 on Billboard’s R & B chart. The Regents released three more records for Gee with mixed success, but after a royalties dispute with the label, the group broke up.
Did you catch that phrase “royalty dispute”? Morris Levy was one of the music business characters that would publically be called “colorful” in the music press, but privately had a reputation as a notorious scumball. He was heavily connected with New York’s Genovese crime family, so none of Roulette’s artists got paid, or rather dared to ask where their checks were. The Genoveses were deep into every aspect of New York nightlife, especially night clubs like the famous Peppermint Lounge, home of the then-current dance craze called The Twist.
[“Peppermint Twist”]
This is Joey Dee and The Starlighters’ “Peppermint Twist”. On Roulette Records. Get the connection?
[FADE]
Barbara Ann Maniglia was a VERY good Twister. Barbara Ann Maniglia also smelled bad. No nice way to say it. She moved in a caustic cloud of “beauty secrets” laminated over QUESTIONABLE hygiene - a mandatory can of Aquanette hairspray to hold her sculpted Ronnette pile in place, two-and-a-half Protestant normal white girl’s worth of over-scented make-up, the best perfume Uncle Bill’s Discount Store had to offer, with the anti-acne astringent Bonne Bell “Ten-O-Six” adding a final chemical plant finish. One big olfactory train wreck.
But I knew to tolerate her when she was around. She always had a pink rattail comb (the greaser girl’s weapon of choice) in the back pocket of her tight black slacks, and she’d already sent one boy to the hospital for wrinkling his nose, and asking “who cut one?” when she’d walked into homeroom one day.
Add a white blouse, a black vest dusted with dandruff, pointy leather boots and here we have the complete Italian “bad girl” look (and aroma) of the early ‘60’s.
[“RUMBLE”]
I liked her. She was danger. She’d done forbidden things. Or had forbidden things done to her. Not like the putty-soft preppy girls with their “Don’t touch me, I’m Savin’ It” circle pins. The preppy boys had unofficially voted Barbara “The Girl Most Likely To Get Knocked Up”, tho she wouldn’t have let any of them get to even first base with her, ‘cause none of them knew how to work on cars.
I didn’t know that much about cars, either, but she liked me a little anyway. She must have, because one day in the Orange Middle School multi-purpose room, where we kids could play records and Twist the lunch hour away, she gave me her precious 45 rpm record of “Barbara-Ann” by The Regents – my favorite song at the time.
[“CLAIR DE LUNE”]
Barbara Maniglia’s family, like my family, was in “construction” - an occupation that always came with air quotes if you were Italian-American and from Northeastern Ohio, because the building trades were heavily tied in with the Cleveland mafia thru Local 507 of the Teamsters Union.
I had a relative in the Union, too. My Uncle Frank Graceffo was the biggest man I have ever seen – 6 foot 4 and 350 lbs. of Sicilian Greaser menace. He was technically a plasterer and a hod carrier – a hod being a metal, open triangle attached to a pole, which was used to carry bricks up to masons working at above ground level. Carrying 30 or so bricks at a time up ladders all day was quite a workout, and gave him the muscle he needed for his real job – leg breaker for Jackie Presser, a Cleveland area Teamster Union official. At Thanksgiving dinners at Uncle Frank and Aunt Ann Marie’s house – if I was a good boy – I got to shoot the Thompson machine gun in his basement firing range.
When my band The Waitresses began to catch on, selling out shows at – of all places - The Peppermint Lounge, my Uncle Frank took me aside and told me that since I was family, if there was anything he could do for us, that I should just ask. “Thank you, but no,” I politely told him, “I think I can do this on my own.” “Good for you”, he said, “but just know that we’re here for you”. Uncle Frank died in the late Eighties of a heroin overdose, a drug he was self-prescribing for back pain, and to dull the finding out that his two children were actually fathered by my Aunt Ann Marie’s employer…not by him.
Too bad….’cause as my life has progressed, there have been times when I wish I could’ve called up my Uncle Frank and have some didmewrongers taken care of.
“He was such a complex man,” my piano-playing Mother once said of him. “He loved to hear me play Clair de Lune over and over. He was really sensitive…for a murderer.”
I just played all the “Barbara-Ann” teaser bits on iTunes researching this story, and it makes me deliriously happy for the songwriter, Fred Fassert, to have written a song like this – that’s so fun, long-lasting and so of an era. When I hear that opening seven-note phrase from whomever…
…whether it’s The Who
…an accapella group
…or two
…a swingin’ jazz-lite version
…a country fiddle version
…an “I just got a cheapo Casio keyboard with a built-in sequencer” version
…or an “I just got an expensive Digital Audio Workstation with a rave preset” version
…a choral version
…punk versions
…a “whatever language this is” version
…moronic jingoistic parodies
…or even a version by the Despicable Me minions
…and I’m back twistin’ with Barbara Maniglia.
Or, if I must…there’s the Beach Boy’s hit version…
[CLIP]
…and I’m back at their fake party-on-a-platter. There is no denying that these guys can sing, but their version is suburban Hawthorne, California meets studio sound effects and faux false starts.
[CLIP]
The Regents’ version has “real” mistakes, like when the lead singer comes in a little pitch-wobbly at the start of the second chorus.
[CLIP]
I’ll take The Regents over the Beach Boys any day.
It’s the real thing…the Greaser real thing. You can almost smell the Brylcream on the group’s hair.
That’s the intro to “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses - the band I was in BACK in the early ‘80’s. And that’s me - playing that guitar line. This holiday season, it’ll be 34 years since the song was first recorded and released.
The guitar I’m playing on this song is a 1960’s era, Robin’s Egg Blue, teardrop-shaped, Vox Mark VI electric guitar, and that’s the only time I ever recorded anything with it. I sold the guitar back in 1987. This is the story of how I got it back …or how I think I got my guitar back.
There is an unwritten rule among musicians that you don’t sell your gear. If a guitar, an amp, a snare drum, a sax, a keyboard has found it’s way to you, if you’ve had some kind of joy with it and its become part of your very being …well, that’s cosmic.
It’s as if the instrument had picked YOU ..and in an enterprise as brutal, luck-dependent and demoralizing as trying to play music for a living…you don’t mess with cosmic.
Of course, that rule bumps up against the reality of needing money. Money for a down-payment on a house, or for grad school tuition. Money just for living.
Or maybe the issue isn’t money at all, but instead you’ve hit that frustration point where the dream is over and you just …want…out. And the thousands of dollars worth of equipment you’ve got lying around idle just reminds you at best of how complex and adult your life is becoming, or at worst…how miserably you’ve failed.
Well… I’d hit that frustration point in ‘87 - and against the unwritten rule - I loaded all my guitars and amps into my Low-Self-Esteem-Mobile, drove to a used instrument shop in Manhattan run by my friends Peter Kohman and Chris Cush…and asked them that horrible question: “What can you give me for all this stuff?”
Almost immediately - seller’s regret … especially for that Vox guitar – the one Patty Donahue nick-named Baby Blue. You might remember seeing the name Vox - V-O-X - on the amplifiers used by The Beatles, and lining the back of the stage of almost every other British Invasion band of the ‘60’s.
Vox also made guitars, and the most famous use of a Vox teardrop guitar – in fact the original prototype of this model - is by Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, playing the signature riff on their song “The Last Time”. Jones had also asked Vox to build him a bass guitar out of cast-iron, so the rot was already beginning to set in. But the image of Jones with that teardrop guitar was so visually striking that Vox put the guitar into production.
The first batch of 10 or so were handmade in England, were all painted white, and are rare collector’s items, but the mass-produced versions were built by a company called EKO in Recanati, Italy.
My guitar was one of the Italian ones - I think I paid my pal Randy Hudson $75 in 1980 for it - which was fair ‘cause it was not the world’s greatest instrument.
The pickups were weak and tinny which means they sounded like cheap, toy microphones And the neck was like a baseball bat. But it was something I could use to give myself a little stage presence. Lord knows I needed all the help I could get in that area.
…until The Waitresses fell apart and I didn’t need stage presence. I didn’t need the guitar…in fact I didn’t need or want anything to do with the music business. Period.
So in ‘87, I sold the guitar. But I stayed friends with Chris and Peter from the instrument shop, and so I was able to keep track of Baby Blue’s whereabouts. The guitar ended up in Brussels, Belgium, now owned by a woman named Christine Maas.
And the years passed, as they always do…in stories like this.
My life settled into the thin gruel of a normal non-musical existence.
In my worst moments of regret, I imagined Baby Blue out there – somewhere – being strummed, plucked and fingered by this…stranger.
Then in the spring of 2006 – great news! Christine had contacted Peter and told him that she was thinking of selling it.
But not to just anyone … only to someone who would appreciate the guitar’s specialness. Peter calls me and asks do I want it back? I want it back. A few days after I buy my airplane ticket to Belgium, and just before my flight, tho, Peter calls again and drops a caveat emptor bomb: it seems there had been TWO Robin’s Egg Blue Vox teardrop guitars at the shop the day Christine had bought hers.
One went to Peter’s partner Chris’s girlfriend, and the other went to Belgium. HE WAS NOT SURE WHICH WAS WHICH. This finish color is stoopid rare, and the two blue guitars had consecutive serial numbers, which means quite possibly they’d even been made and painted on the same day. Peter and Chris were and are heavy-duty vintage guitar dealers and connected with other dealers around the world, but these were the only two Mark VI’s in this color that anyone had ever seen or heard of. Still, actually.
So the guitar that was in Belgium might be mine…or might not be.
Too late. I’d bought my ticket. So on a cold and rainy New York City day a week before Christmas in 2006, I set off to Northern Europe …to reclaim “my” or “a” cool blue guitar.
I’m on the plane. A budget night flight. Which means I’ll be fried/jetlagged/fuzzy for days after arriving. My mind is racing. This is ridiculous. There is only a 50-50 chance that it actually is MY guitar. I’m not wealthy enough to blow a fat sum on a whim like this. But here I am, doing it anyway. It may not even be my guitar. Do I remember anything at all about it? I secretly mark all my musical gear now, but didn’t back then. How the fuck will I know if it’s my guitar or not? When I had it, the tremolo arm was busted, but in the picture Christine sent me, she’d replaced it with a vintage spare. This is stoopid. It’s not my guitar. Fortuitous things like that don’t happen to me. It’s not like I’m looking for my lost youth…trying to recapture some shining moment in my past. FYI: the whole Waitresses experience was actually pretty miserable, truth be told. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this????
“I’M DOING THIS BECAUSE THERE’S A 50-50 CHANCE THAT IT IS MY GODDAM GUITAR!”
Six hours later I’m sitting in a Belgian bistro, face-to-face with Baby Blue’s adoptive mother.
Christine tells me she had always been shy, and thought that playing guitar in a band would allow her to overcome her social insecurities. When she and her band had played in New York, she’d shared the bill with Peter and Chris’s band, The Headless Horsemen, and that her crappy knock-off Stratocaster had had major tuning problems. “Come ‘round the shop” they’d said. She did…and as soon as she saw Baby Blue, it had been love at first sight. She’d recorded many songs with the guitar, her garage band had a respectable following on the European pub and festival circuit. I’d heard her records – she was pretty good. But her circumstances had changed, and the guitar was a symbol of a past life.
We walk through the streets of Old Europe, to Christine’s apartment. A cup of tea I agree to stalls the moment of truth for a bit – I admit I’m nervous. Finally she pulls out the case and lays it in my lap.
Snap. Snap. Latch.
No celestial choir. No “A Ha!” moment. No bolt of lightning flash of recognition. It is wicked cool, but I still don’t know if it’s really my guitar.
On the flight back…seven hours of even more churning ruminations. We land at JFK. I try to be invisible as I walk down that narrow corridor towards the final exit, but a US Customs guy sees the guitar case and pulls me over.
Now – keep in mind this is the Christmas season. And also keep in mind the movie “Miracle on 34th St”, particularly the final courtroom scene when and how the lawyer for the defense proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the Kris Kringle character on trial is in fact, the real Santa Claus.
“What’s that?”
An electric guitar.
“Is it yours?”
Well sir…that’s sort of a complicated question…
“Don’t be a smart ass,” he grumps, “…is this your guitar?”
I show him the receipt Christine had written in her neat, precise, European-educated cursive.
That’ll be $43.67 import duty, son.
After all my doubts…that settles the question of ownership. By paying that duty…The United States Custom Service…an agency of the Federal Government…has determined Baby Blue to be MY guitar.
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Album Intro
Please find herein, hopefully for your pleasure and enjoyment, an audio memoir-in-progress called “Album”.
The structure of this project is to take the mostimportantdeeplysignificantsupermeaningful songs to me, split them open, and pour in my own history…to assemble an “album” of my life.
Now, one might assume this would be fodder for a book, but I’m old, you see…old enough to have had my key musical milestones come from an AM radio station, or delivered in the form of a 45 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) vinyl single (purchased at an establishment called a ‘record store’), or - if your allowance was big enough - packaged with a bunch of other tunes of questionable merit in an audio entertainment product called an “album”.
An “album” was originally a bunch of 78 RPM disks in a fold-open, accordion-ish cardboard book-thing. The name carried over when the technology improved to where all this data could fit onto one 33 1/3 RPM vinyl record. The songs were usually dictated to the singer by mohair-sweatered Artist & Repetoire record executives in order to cash in on a hit single. Then, the folksingerpoets and the hippies and The Beatles took over, and they turned an album into a complete artistic statement - often with a single, unifying concept presented as a suite of related songs. Sometimes these albums were extraordinary, and became the definitive art objects of their day. Sometimes they sucked…but at least it got the creation of popular music out of the clutches of the guys in the mohair sweaters.
It’s also my hope that the songs I pick for my album will have meaning for you…be part of your “album”.
If you like what you hear here, please share this site with others. Oh…and check in again soon – more songs on the way!
And the years passed, as they always do…in stories like this.
Please find herein, hopefully for your pleasure and enjoyment, an audio memoir-in-progress called “Album”.
