Why Bach Matters

Why Johann Sebastian Bach Would Be Living on Food Stamps Today

The piece below - one educated man's point of view on why Bach remains an important composer today, and why modern pop music hardly lasts more than a few weeks - won't satisfy any academic's standards in explaining what is so classical about classical musical. It does, however, put into context something about what is wrong with music today; that is if there is anything wrong with music today. Not to give away the ending, but the fellow in the video below is going to say that pop music is of low value because it is one dimensional, a riff on a single emotion (for instance), as opposed to the work of Bach, who toured listeners through a range of exquisite emotion that taken altogether added up to a thematic statement. Correct he is, in this viewer's opinion, but thanks be to Bach's lucky stars to have worked in the early 18th Century, before the advent of radio and the information chunking age. We don't really do big themes, anymore, not only because we don't do long form music, as they did in Bach's time, but because we modern listeners just aren't that smart. We need little bits of information at a time, because there is this attention span deficit that vexes. And besides, knuckleheads like Bach and his "songs" that go on forever are just too much to remember. Today, A&R people would suggest that Bach read some books on music marketing and focus his melodies more; stop the rambling about, establish a hook, and build to a big chorus. Just judging by his looks , I suspect that Bach may have replied with something like "Fuck yourself, you idiot moron", because his were less politically correct times, though I would hope instead that he might have gotten ironic with it and said something like, "So you want me to be more like Bruno Mars? Or Jason Mraz?" Or perhaps simply become curious as to direction and asked today's music directors - "Where, exactly, are we going with this?"

Chris Ethridge (1946-2012)

Flying Burrito Brothers at Altamont

Musician Chris Ethridge passed away recently, an event that brought renewed focus on his career and attention to a bunch of videos of Ethridge in his performing days. The one below is from the ill-fated Altamont concert in 1969, which became notorious for its shoddy execution, including the use of the Hells Angels motorcycle club for security. Mayhem ensued, including a murder just in front of the stage. The video below captures part of the event, with Ethridge on stage with seminal Country-Rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers. You don't get much of a look at the Burrito Brothers (which included Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow, though there is a nice few seconds showing drummer Michael Clarke, an old friend of this site, who came to fame in the precursor band to the Burrito Brothers, The Byrds.

For musicians in my age group, the Baby Boom generation, North Carolina-native Doc Watson, who passed away recently at age 89, was the guy who built the artistic bridge that connected "traditional-plus" folk music to the space age. That he did it as a blind person seemed to focus his hearing and his sense of touch, which seemed super human in many respects. Though he had been an electric guitarist early in the history of electric guitar, and laboring in obscurity, it was his return to his acoustic roots that launched him into a mythical stratosphere, which is the plane on which he spent the last 50-plus years of his life. 

Doc Watson had some specific gifts: extraordinary timing and a seemingly peerless vision regarding his right-hand attack. Watson was remarkably horizontal in his left-hand approach, all double and triple stops and, as you can see from the video here of him playing "Black Mountain Rag", a master at playing across the fret board to find the dynamics that lesser players assume are the province of vertical thinking. There were no pyro-techniques with Doc Watson, no showboating, but rather incidental accents and flavorings that happen with such complete integration into the melody lines he played that one might listen and wonder why no one ever thought of that before! But no one had, and few ever would, because precious few could match the casual virtuosity of his right-hand approach. The casual aspect to Watson's playing was hugely impactful, because while he was playing at what, for most people, would be breakneck speed - emphasis on the picking hand - Watson never seemed about to go off the rails. As it was with the dancing of Fred Astaire, Doc Watson made playing the acoustic guitar - which is not nearly as pliable of an instrument as the electric, the Les Paul he had played when they were first developed in the '50s - seem effortless, like a natural expression. And through videos such as this, Doc Watson will live on to inspire people for generations to come, just as has Estaire with his grace and style. - RAR

Is this Anything?

Rock Hall of Fame Set for New Honorees

I keep trying to remember why we have the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame, and why exactly it is located in Cleveland, Ohio. Even why the building looks like it does, which I have a hard time equating to rock'n roll, if such was the design intent of architect I.M. Pei (“I didn’t know a thing about rock and roll,” he has confessed - see RnR HOF site).

The stated mission of the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame is "to educate visitors, fans and scholars from around the world about the history and continuing significance of rock and roll music".

Ray Charles - among the first class of inductees - could see what a line of cheap chum that all is. Like many of these cultural recognition schemes, the Hall of Fame started as an idea hatched among a bunch of New York music industry people, whose simple notion was to get a brownstone in the city and populate it with rock memorabilia and charge admission for visitors to get in. Then the City of Cleveland, Ohio, which was in the midst of a revitalization program (North Coast Harbor), heard about the organization and made them an offer. "They had these wonderful diagrams for a museum that would be much larger than any town house we had originally thought of,” said HOF spokesperson Susan Evans. This led to a design competition among major cities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, Cincinnati, and Memphis, any of which seemed more culturally suited to such a venue than does Cleveland, but credit to the State of Ohio and the Cleveland delegation that pressed for the museum, which they won 25 years ago. They put up $65 million to build the thing, which is really why the museum is in Cleveland.

On one level, there probably is value in having some repository for high-end memorabilia from an important aspect of American culture, a museum as it were. On the other hand, it's just a roadside attraction; more appealing to multi-generational families than, say, the boyhood home of Dwight Eisenhower or other such museum alternatives, but still just something set up with a ticket window. And it is in Cleveland.

Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed is widely credited with promoting the genre called "rock and roll", and the first Rock'n Roll concert is said to have been staged in Cleveland in 1952. Freed, who hosted a radio show under the moniker "Moondog", hosted an event called "The Moondog Coronation Ball". In a manner that may have pre-saged the payola scandal that brought down his career - Freed died of alcoholism in 1965 at age 43 after struggling with post-scandal employment - show promoters oversold the event. In fact, hustlers flooded the market with counterfeit tickets and 20,000 people showed up for a venue that would hold no more than half that. Riot conditions developed. Opening act Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams performed one song and then the police shut the whole thing down. That, on some level, was the "birth" of the rock'n roll concert experience, though hardly the birth of the genre. And even that concert claim is dubious. There was, after all, the Apollo Theater and other venues that had been presenting the forerunners of rock, in the form of Blues, Jazz and Folk musicians, for years. So really the City of Cleveland has precious little to do with rock'n roll, but Alan Freed - one of the first Hall of Fame inductees - had a tremendous amount of influence on popularizing the genre, not that it wouldn't likely have happened anyway even without him. Who knows the real weight of any individual's contributions? In Freed's case, the world did.

Freed relocated in 1954 to do radio in New York City, and he was featured in a series of movies (Rock Around the Clock, most notably) with rock'n roll themes, which made him a big star. His influence spread to Europe in 1956 when he began doing 30-minute rock'n roll shows for Radio Luxembourg, and in that audience were youngsters from England, including Liverpool. One of them - John Lennon - had a band called Johnny and the Moondogs, which he renamed after learning that Alan Freed already owned the "Moondog" handle. Freed's Radio Luxembourg show is really the linchpin that linked the purely American form of Rock'n Roll to the coming era of British Rock.

On the other hand, in a really conceptual way, I suppose one could imagine a tornado of rock music, with its debris funnel touching down in Cleveland, Ohio. Then the main funnel could be viewed as expanding upward and outward to include all places and events after "The Moondog Coronation Ball" of 1952, connecting all spots on the globe, because that is really where the excellence extolled by the mission statement of the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame resides: in the ether, and in the minds of the beholder (now viewers as much as listeners). Excellence, after all, is at least somewhat subjective. This year's inductees include the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the late singer/songwriter Laura Nyro, Donovan, The Small Faces/The Faces, which included Rod Stewart and Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, and Guns'n Roses (though Axl Rose, now touring that band with a different lineup, is declining to attend).

Of that group of inductees, only Donovan strikes me as truly worthy of the honor. That few can remember exactly why is, perhaps, reason enough to have such commercial reminders as the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame - in Cleveland. - RAR 

(Archived 041012)

Dan Hicks at Davies Hall

Celebrating 70 Big Time

See kids, subversive musical types like Dan Hicks, who will celebrate his 70th birthday April 6 at San Francisco's plush Davies Symphony Hall, have been flipping off photographers forever. This is probably one of the weirdest affectations of all professional poses, but practically part of the standard kit of deliverables for deconstructionist of the popular music vein. This is, after all, street business, and the louts who get knocked around all day for low pay have a kind of "fuck you" attitude and somehow Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks have always captured that in an alternative musical way.

Hicks started his musical life as a boy drummer in a Santa Rosa high school marching band. He was distracted for a time, earning a degree in broadcasting from San Francisco State College, where he also took up the guitar, but after graduating he drifted into loud and loose company, becoming the drummer for the seminal "San Francisco" rock band The Charlatans.

The Charlatans came into full form at a 1965 house band engagement at the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City, Nevada, and there, good readers, began the modern era of music in San Francisco. What happened is that the Red Dog performances became a "be-in" type of event, a psychedelic forerunner that would set the template for what was soon to become the "San Francisco Sound". With a passing reference to the 1967 Summer of Love, the SF sound carried a distinct musical signature that blended folk, rock, blues and jazz, producing strains that were identifiable for their San Francisco DNA even while exhibiting a phenomenal range of musical stylings. Ambitious bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service came out of that pot house. Dan Hicks, though known to only the most hip of musical connoisseurs - that has changed over time, as he stayed around to become a living legend - was a key figure in what seemed and smelled like an organic development.

San Francisco, prior to The Charlatans, was high-end jazz clubs, the bohemian scene in North Beach, and Carol Doda, a waitress (whose breast measurement had been enlarged to 44") who almost single-handedly created the topless bar and made The Condor Club an historic site. There was a folk scene and within that there was a subversive element, including the members of The Grateful Dead, whose inspiration included jug band music, which even in 1965 seemed about as deconstructionist as one could get. There's that fuck you finger, again, or so subversiveness has always seemed to me. The mere act of choosing alternative instrumentation - and in 1965, that included the instruments of our grandfathers, because the electronics of rock'n roll had obliterated the wood era of modern music - seemed radical, like a statement that said we can control your hearts and feet and minds without banks of Marshall amplifiers to make you feel energized. At the same time, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks - Dan Hicks had moved on from The Charlatans by this time - were that dangerous contrapuntal alternative, cutting through the fog of the psychedelic era with acerbic wit, devilish licks, a fun stage act, and attitude. And it was not necessarily the attitude of gratitude, or any other such Summer of Love bullshit, but more like the attitude of a sly table-side slight-of-hand artist; the kind that picks your pocket while you are watching him mysteriously toss playing cards so they stick to the ceiling above. Just for reference, I always thought of Dan Hicks as Dan Hicks and the Special Niche, because like his friend Ray Benson, with Asleep at the Wheel, Dan Hicks rolls into town with a truck load of musical tradition that onstage translates into gravitas and makes one feel the presence of a dangerous force.

Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, because of authentic talent and all of that history just referenced, means something. Exactly what that something is may be a study still in motion - I sense there are clues in the wonderful artwork that Dan Hicks has created for his album covers over the years - and on April 6 a whole bunch of highly qualified subject matter experts are getting together at Davies Hall to play it out, make tribute to Dan Hicks, and see if it all adds up to a conclusive whole. The performers that night will include the Original Hot Licks plus The New Millenium Hot Licks (Roberta Donnay and Daria), Tuck & Patti, Rickie Lee Jones, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Maria Muldaur, John Hammond, Harry Shearer, Van Dyke Parks, Roy Rogers, Jim Kweskin, Bruce Foreman and Ray Benson. - RAR                                                                       (4-6-12)

_________________

From Another Drumming Planet

Terry Bozzio

Six bass drums, two snares, and 26 melodically tuned toms of various sizes (all DW Vertical Low Timber drums), a Roland Handsonic, glockenspiel, six hi-hats, 30 cymbals, three gongs, and a one-octave tuned set of Wuhan Chinese bossed gongs. Toms are arranged in rows of two and three, many of the cymbals are stacked, and 18 floor pedals are arranged in a semi-circle for operating kicks, hi-hats, toms, and various percussion instruments...
 

There is an old baseball maxim that states that fielders are easy to find, particularly in the Latin leagues: shake a tree and a dozen gloves fall out, but try to find a guy who can hit major league pitching and you are in pursuit of one of the rarest treasures in all of sports. (In what other pursuit can guys who are successful in less than 30 percent of their efforts pull down 7-figure annual salaries?)

Ditto for really good drummers. Drummers are falling out of trees too - what else could explain such personalities - but most land on their heads and then start banging away without having any knowledge of musical composition or even basic notation. They are not musicians, in all too many cases, but more like framing carpenters who lay down a bull work of scaffolding upon which to hang melodies and chord changes and vocal arrangements. This has always been a fairly abysmal process, at least from a songwriter's perspective; rather like trying to wire a house with the assistance of a friend who really only knows how to hammer studs into place. It is frustrating as hell, and I suspect that it has gotten ironically worse over the last couple decades, since the advent of hip-hop has led young dudes to believe that "building beats" is the same as making music. All it really is, of course, is providing a static metronomic groove over which to mouth a bunch of rhyming words, usually unencumbered by the demands of actual melody. This is the thing I hate most about hip-hop: lack of musicality, with melody jettisoned in favor of bleats and exclamations and repeats - which now that I think of it is all the same things that most drummers provide, not melodic enhancements or expressions, but droning click tracks marked by periods and exclamation marks.   

Back in the early 1980s, a drummer friend of mine - I actually do have friends who are drummers, despite my cold reaction to what many of them do - named Gerry Capone introduced me to Terry Bozzio, the former Frank Zappa prodigy who at the time was running his band Missing Persons. Fronted by Dale Bozzio, Terry's wife at the time, and including refugees from Zappa's outfit (Guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and Bassist Patrick O'Hearn), Missing Persons was pretty straight-forward stuff compared to the musical-intellectual boot camp the players had emerged from (i.e., Zappa), but the drumming was anything but "beats", as the kids of today say.

Terry Bozzio was using a big kit even back then, though about half the size it is now, and the thing that really jumped out at you was his polyphonic approach to playing coupled with Olympian physical capacities. He had a string of  tuned hi toms that he could roll through with one hand, and do it seamlessly in such a way that his drums were a part of the musical arrangement, rather than just a set of boxes providing a groove beat. It was awe inspiring, not in that Travis Barker bombast way, but in that way that was really born in the much earlier big band era, when master drummers like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich (among many others) were propelling sophisticated sounds with musical ingenuity and showmanship.

Bozzio recently gave a clinic on drumming, which is what the video above comes from. If you are wondering if that ridiculous drum set he sits in the center of is all bells and whistles, just gimmickry and useless overkill, check out his video for some thoughtful illustrations of percussive musicality. - RAR

OH DAMN...

Amy Winehouse (1984-2011)

Damned few authentic talents have emerged in music, not just in the past however many years, but ever. They come along only once in a great while and for some reason many of them last only a brief time. So it was with Amy Winehouse, found dead yesterday in her North London home. Her "Back to Black" video is a pretty good summation of her world view, which was unremittingly inspired but bleak. She wanted to be an artist and she achieved that. She also disastrously became a substance abuser and manic depressive with the associated self-esteem issues, and through all that an icon to less-than-fabulous disaster. And yet to her fans, there were only the classic melody lines, the smirk, the pooled eyes, and the deep, round-tone voice, un-diluted by any inclination to be any other than itself. Her toothy smile bespoke a vulnerable soul, which was the final link in the connection she made with fans around the world. We rooted for her to survive, to get well. I have no idea if she now is, only that we all have lost a channel to something real in human feeling and expression, and with her passing a bit of our own opportunity to know the sublime is lost. - RAR

Born in 1928 in N Carolina, nephew of blues giant Sonny Terry, JC moved to San Francisco in 1961 & played in Barbara Dane’s Sugar Hill club and on the streets.  

______________________

In the ongoing battle of good vs. evil...

Loving Katy Perry

The hot weather brings the summer tours and for the past three years that has pitted two of the only colossally large pop acts left standing: Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. RARWRITER.com respects both, but it is Katy we really love. The video below of her extremely compressed preparation time before launching the first big show of her tour tells why. Katy has an amazing perspective at 26 years of age, which compares rather favorably against the monstrous machinations of Lady Gaga.

From October 2009

_____________

Trauma, Unrest and Need

Something Big Is Coming

by RAR

If social history means anything at all - and it does, usually more than we can comprehend as it is happening - we are about to experience something fresh, new and revitalizing; something through which the human spirit will be reborn, at some level, and aspects of living will be reinvented for a new age.

What we may go through to get to this new place may not be pleasant. In fact, it will likely be awful.

What will transpire, however, will inspire generations to come while antiquating the thinking of generations that have gone before. Mankind will not be transformed but as a global community we may feel that we have been.

We will fall under the spell of a new avatar, who will tap into that channel of communications that exists incomprethin our human beings and vibrates at the core of our response to the world we experience.

It happened in the 1930s, during the ironically dubbed "Great Depression", the first world-wide socio-economic phenomena in human history, which ushered in a new age of planetary engagement and awareness. In that "event" we had the key ingredients of change: traumatic disruption to the status quo, social unrest including broad public disillusionment with ideas previously considered "sacred", and open expressions of need.

We turned on the radio, tuned into film, and opened our hearts in hopes that our voids would be filled with something hopeful, imbued with salvation. And while we met on the battlefields of Europe, Africa, the Pacific Isles, and Asia, we slaughtered to the sound of an odd entreatment, of big bands crashing wildly on brass and skins and melodic metals, Sinatra stepping forth from Tommy Dorsey's army of sound to rev up the romance, and build the launch pad of the next generation, which was pop culture.

It wasn't all for the good, of course. In electrifying the young people of "the Greatest Generation", Sinatra and his counterparts paved the way for a transition to youth culture that had the unfortunate effect of bidding adieu to some of the greatest contributors of the first half of the 20th century: George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington... Sinatra, to his everlasting credit, always made it a point to introduce his songs with references to their composers, their arrangers, and to his supporting musicians.

The establishment of pop culture, with its emphasis on youthful themes, became a catalyst itself in the 1950s, in which trauma took the form of the "Korean Conflict", there was growing civil unrest in the south, and the needs of the nation included growing economic disparities featuring pockets of devastating poverty, and this in a nation that now stood astride the globe and claimed the 20th as the "American Century".

This combination of societal pressures coupled with technological change ushered in "the age of Elvis", who married visuals with music in a way that changed the way people expressed themselves thereafter, and in turn opened the door for "race music" to enter into the panoply of the new pop culture. Big wheels turning indeed.

Trauma to the new pop culture world, which by then had become a televised event, came in the form of a rapid-fire series of bullets discharged in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. It was a crack in the newly formed cosmic egg, to borrow a title of the times. Trauma, Unrest and Need, the holy triumvirate of change, unsettled horsemen on the road to apocalypse, rode us into the next age, the "Age of Aquarius" whose avatars were The Beatles, whose spell we have remained under these many years.

Who will it be now, that the cycle of trauma, unrest and need is upon us anew; possibly not fully vested yet? The shock may be soon to come, and it feels unsettling. The trials of life, gnashing of teeth, rending of hair...it is precursor to what will eventually be, which will likely be profoundly positive, for hard times tend to strip humanity to its core, and while this often reveals the worst in us, the thing that always prevails in the end is love, the best in us. However dysfunctional we become as groups and individuals, the one shared aspiration we have without question is the need to love and be loved. The Beatles got it right and they produced a brilliant tribute of sound in celebration of the insight.

Now it is someone else's turn, someone who is somehow gifted with light the way the previous avatar's of change were. They will always be artists, rather than politicians, business people or religious leaders, because art, and particularly music, transcends all human experience, speaking uniquely to each and every one of us even as the entire world hears and shares its sound.

It is magic, and the next Cosmic Magician is out there somewhere. Maybe this time this person will be a Black or an Asian. We haven't seen a female avatar as yet, but it could be part of what will change. Whatever color, and whether boy or girl, the person will be as a Shaman, confident and wise in his or her ways, though likely without pretension. He or she will be young and it is almost a certainty that "we" do not know at this time whom he or she is.

Someone does though. Maybe there are friends who notice a certain flash in someone in their company that seems other than that coming from anyone else. There will be charisma and nascent creativity that will start to grow by staggering bounds. There will be fun and energy. There will be organic phenomena, like people skipping work to go hear this agent of change sing and play, drawn to the flame like a moth to a light, and lines will grow around the block where this "change artist" sets up to play. And word will get out through the Internet and social networks, and the message will somehow obliterate the competing, numbing buzz of those who don't yet know that they are of a time already past.

They won't have seen or heard anything like this.

And the spirits and the minds of people worldwide will be changed through some future event, some Ed Sullivan moment when some cosmic MC will step before the cameras to say "Now yesterday and today our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that the city never has seen the excitement stirred by these youngsters from..."

And the camera's will pan to the new light, and the world will be born anew.

___________________________________

The Beatles, 1964, rehearsing back stage for the "Ed Sullivan Show". There is a nice account of the story behind the booking of The Beatles for the series of Ed Sullivan shows they did in early 1964, which introduced them to American audience, thus bringing "Beatlemania" across the pond from Britain to the U.S. Click here to read the back story.

LEVI DEXTER

www.levidexter.com
LEVI DEXTER made a strong showing in the 2006 Rock City News Awards in the Outstanding Psychobilly and Outstanding Roots Americana categories, if you can call polling 24 or 25 votes strong. It was enough to finish at the top in both categories, which probably says something about the turf Levi trods. Rockabilly just isn’t the rage it once was, but how about Levi Dexter being around doing it after all these years? Rock on Levi!

Levi, you might recall, first appeared on the scene in the late-‘70s, a little ahead of the Stray Cats and the mini-rockabilly craze that flashed briefly at the dawn of MTV. Rockabilly got another round of life several years later when the swing dance craze hit, but not so much for Levi. He was long ago consigned to a ghetto of kitsch and nostalgia, a perception he attempted to blunt by booking himself among acts associated with less-retro genres, punk for awhile, then modern rock. He has traveled under various names, including Levi & the Rockats, Levi Dexter & the Ripchords, and Levi Dexter & Magic. Moving in on 50 years of age now, but preternaturally youthful looking and sounding, the London-born Levi feels more at home on a bill with rockabilly performers now than he used to, and he counts Rip Carson, Ray Condo, the Hyperions and Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys as rockabilly bretheren.

This Paul Bakan photograph on Levi's website is titled "LongGoneLeviDexter. " The notion of being "long gone," as the term was used in the '50s, seems quaint now. But that is how it looks when you get there. Cool, eh? Iconic. Levi has contributed.

It looks like Roy and wife Ganell are headed for the hills - or mountains, actually. They have their Novato, California home on the market and they are moving to the Lake Tahoe area.

I am taken by this story in that for a lot of people who grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area, as Roy did, Tahoe is that place they all went on family vacations when they were kids. And when they got out of college, many of them went and got jobs in Tahoe while they figured out what they were going to do with themselves as adults. And then they moved away and got real jobs but still return to Tahoe regularly, and they conceive children there - it's like a spawning ground. My wife was conceived there, as was one of my kids. Tahoe is the Rivendale of Northern California, and apparently Roy is going native.

I also like this story because I think people outside of California will find it interesting to see what you can buy in this state for this price. It is a topic that never ceases to inspire wonder - as in, I wonder why anyone would live there (in California)? 

Californians can give you one million three-hundred-ninety-five thousand reasons - or whatever amount they are trying to qualify for a mortgage.

Features:

• 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths

• 1.488 acres of private, prime real estate....Close to the Best of Novato and Award-winning Schools

• Custom one-level ranch home with valley views, gardens and nature..plus 2 offices and a 2-car garage

• Living room made for entertaining; 

• Italian country-style dining room; 2 fireplaces; Hardwood floors
• Family room with French doors opens onto the pool; Robert Tenaka designed large deck
• Rare opportunity: Create a vineyard, compound, new residence..or keep your horse on the property
• MLS# 20633812
• View Listing Details

http://profile.myspace.com/barbeekilledkenn1

Between 1999 and 2002, BARBEE KILLED KENN was a lot of people's favorite San Francisco punk-rock band. Fronted by Miss Dian, a former Vegas flamenco dancer and beauty pageant contestant, BKK was a high-energy, up tempo and largely upbeat "mostly all-girl" group. Together, Dian and bassist Athena are some of the best songwriters I have encountered in my 20-plus years in the Bay Area. Seem implausible? Listen to the MP3s below, which I love for their energy, intelligence, sense of humor, surprising melodic changes, and because they are just plain fetching. (Okay, so I'm weak for girl groups.) Barbee Killed Kenn isn't really a group anymore, at least not in any steady way. Athena has moved to Southern California and previous to that they lost guitarist Ruba F. Tuesday (see profile below), whom they tried unsuccessfully to replace, and her departure seemed to dissolve the band. (I met them through a classified listing as they advertised for someone to fill their Ruba-vacated guitar slot, unlikely as that is to imagine. Note to SFMusician ad posters - a little more detail, please.) I hadn't heard of them in a couple years, then heard that they had recently played a reunion gig in San Francisco and found them - where else? - on myspace. I listened to their songs and am blown away all over again. Their time as a prominent act in San Francisco was just after the millennium, and even then their sound seemed unstuck in time. They really belong musically to the new wave of the early '80s. They put me to mind of a louder Josie Cotton or The Waitresses, with a kind of a camp punk musical edge. In a kitschy way, though, the songs work.

As good as the songs are, they wouldn't work as well as they do if it wasn't for front person Dian, who has a really appealing pop voice and likeable stage presence. She is self-possessed and projects fun and star quality. Dian and Athena have recently "resurfaced" with a new unit - The Unprofessionals. The songwriting duo is providing the material for the new band, but it sounds to me like their pop-punk days may be behind them. The new sound is more acoustic and thoughtful, more aged in some ways, but still good. Ruba has gone off in different directions, finding modest success with some good groups - The Zodiac Killers, Dead Vanity and Subimage.

Dian - Athena - Ruba

On stage at the Paradise Lounge, San Francisco

BARBEE KILLED KENN MP3s:

Staring Problem

Head Over Heels

Something Better

Unglued 

Copyright © 2006-2007 Barbee Killed Kenn, all rights reserved 

"I'm a friend of Dian's (from Barbee Killed Kenn).
I've known her for years and she used to sing back up
in my old band, The Servants.  I totally agree with
everything you said about her.  She's got that star
quality and presence that you can't buy." - Dave Rude

www.rubatuesday.com

You see this girl RUBA F. TUESDAY... As a punk-metal guitarist, she was the music engine of Barbee Killed Ken. That's her revving up the BKK MP3s above. 

As I recall, she left that band to concentrate on school, an effort that apparently paid off handsomely. She earned a degree in molecular biology and is now a manager in an engineer recruitment firm. But that hasn't diminished her focus on thrashing guitar. She has gone right into three excellent follow-up bands to her BKK experience: Zodiac Killers, with whom she released three LPs and toured Europe; Dead Vanity, which had a great sound and was really her band - hear the MP3s offered here; and now Subimage, in which Ruba resumes a supporting role, backing songwriter Chris. (Apparently surnames weren't being issued to people born during a certain period or after a certain date. The brainy Ruba apparently thought to make one up.) They are all great bands that carry a certain Ruba stamp. (As she says on her myspace site - "More than hard core - it's Ruba core.") This is one to keep an eye on. Mad skills.

Dead Vanity

Dead Vanity MP3s:

Character

Before I Fall

4 a.m. Love Song

Wantoned

Copyright © Dead Vanity, all rights reserved

Dead Vanity was Ruba's "baby" - the band in which she surfaced as a primary songwriter.

Subimage

Zodiac Killers

The charming Ms. Tuesday wrote an email message to me the other day describing her music career to date.

"BKK was my first band - when I first started I had only previously played in my bedroom and could barely even play guitar standing up. Songwriting - I couldn't even fathom it. Eventually, after playing 173598716716 gigs and working with Athena and Dian who are very talented songwriters, I started to pick up on it. I made a significant contribution to several (BKK) songs including "Head Over Heels", "U-Turn", and "Rockstar Boy" with some other contribution on the other songs.

"After BKK, I got a 4-track, a drum machine, a microphone, and a bass and I started working on my songwriting skills. Eventually, I wanted to do something with my creations so I formed Dead Vanity through networking, word-of-mouth and the help of the internet. A year into it, our singer, Daija, was going through a transitional period in life when she decided she wasn't in a spot where she could give the band her all so we split for a while. When things settled down in her life, we tried to get the band back together but by then, our bass player had committed to another band and could not accommodate the dual band schedules.

"As far as how I see myself, I really like the description 'Super side-person' - it fits nicely. I like to work with really charismatic frontpersons and play off their personalities. Dian from BKK, Greg from Zodiac Killers, Daija from Dead Vanity, and Chris from Subimage are all very special and have great styles and ways about them. I can't be in a band with a bland front person because I feel like I have to hold back. I tried to be a front person for a while but I'm more comfortable in a supporting role...and plus I can't really sing that well unless I'm harmonizing with someone. :)

"With Subimage, it's definitely a 'fun-thing.' I'm committed to my career as a professional sales representative which keeps me busy 50-60 hours a week. I don't have much time to song-write these days so I've hooked up with someone who does and who's style I really like and who is open to my contributions. It works out nicely. I'm having fun exploring the more 'stylish' side of my musical tastes and less of the 'aggressive stuff,' but part of me misses jumping off drum risers and participating in relentless headbanging....I may go back to that someday...:)"

This is Gary Swan's autographed Tommy Chong photo. Gary has been Tommy's music director for many years. He says Tommy has only tried weed twice...but did not inhale.

www.myspace.com/coldbloodmusic 

Some time earlier this year my wife came home from a weekend in the Sierras where, as she reported with great excitement - "I ran into Lydia Pense!" I immediately thought that she meant that literally, because we had occasionally suffered vehicle damage with the wife behind the wheel. I mean, she doesn't actually know Lydia Pense. Except that, everyone who was in the San Francisco/Oakland area between 1967 and 1977 feels that they do, because musically speaking they all grew up with Lydia Pense. She, to this day, is the female voice of San Francisco, even more so than Joplin ever was because Janice left, and then she left forever, and Lydia remains.

Lydia disappeared for awhile in the '80s and early '90s, taking time out to raise a daughter, but she came back with the same energy and voice to resurrect Cold Blood, which she built anew around a stellar cast of local Bay Area players.

ABOVE: Lydia with Cold Blood (clockwise from far left) - Rob Zuckerman (sax), Steve Dunne (guitar), Donnie Baldwin (drums), Steve Stalinas (keys), Rich Armstrong (trumpet) and Evan Palmerston (bass). LEFT: Playing a sold out show at the Fillmore.

There is a review of Transfusion at http://www.jazzreview.com/cd/review-17215.html. 

LYDIA PENSE AND COLD BLOOD MP3:

Face the Music - From Transfusion - Lydia Pense (vocals), Steve Salinas (keyboards), Mike Morgan (percussion), Steve Dunne (guitar), Rich Armstrong (trumpet, percussion), Evan Palmerston (bass), Rob Zuckerman (alto, tenor, baritone saxes), Donny Baldwin (drums). Plus 14 guest artists including Skip Mesquite, Lenny Williams, Michelle Shocked, David Garibaldi, Bobby Vega, Mic Gillette, Dennis Cruzan, Roger Smith, Raul Matute, David Kessner, Mike Rose, Michael Carrabello, Jeff Tamelier and Joel Behrman.

Copyright © 2006 Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, all rights reserved 

THE WORLD'S GREATEST DEEJAY  

- BIG RICK STUART

The Oakland Tribune recently did a feature on Big Rick, which he seems to be happy with - it is posted on his blog (see below) - but to me it almost completely missed the point. The focus of the article was on how much Big Rick loves music and radio. Big Woop. I would imagine every deejay on every station more or less loves music and radio, maybe some more than others. The thing that makes Rick Stuart special - and he is special, easily the greatest disc jockey I have ever heard, bar none - is that he is Big Rick, the finest tongue-in-cheek monologist I have ever heard anywhere. He practices his endearing silliness between songs, and even through commercial spots, virtually non-stop during each of his six-hour air stints. He does it with such humorous aplomb, matching nuance and subtlety with occasional bursts of obvious buffoonery, that I listen wondering how many radio listeners are really getting how great he is. Big Rick, flat out, is a master.

I think of Big Rick Stuart as the anti-deejay, the one who is so distinctly different, so flaunting of commercial radio's ridiculous conventions that he stands apart from it like a touchstone to intelligence and perspective.
I first heard Big Rick 20 years ago when he was with The Quake, which was San Francisco's short-lived modern rock station. That station was just great, about the closest thing to commercial radio playing college radio play lists that I had ever heard, but it didn't last long before the station went belly up. For awhile all we had in San Francisco was San Francisco State's KUSF college station, which coincidentally gave Big Rick his start. It's play list was spotty, its deejays amateurs, and the signal was weak, so we yearned for a commercial alternative.

While The Quake became a footnote in San Francisco radio history, Big Rick moved on to the then-new SF radio station KITS, otherwise known as "Live 105," which filled the modern rock void left by The Quake. Though it was and is part of a Philadelphia-based syndicate of stations that has since gone into the pooper, it was great in its early years in the mid-80s. It was the place where you could hear Nina Haagen and Guadacanal Diary, acts that existed almost exclusively on college radio and in the clubs of Europe. Big Rick had the great good fortune to be surrounded with an on-air staff - like Roland West the reggae aficionado, and super mix master and music director Steve Masters - that made Live 105 a cutting edge place. Steve Masters was bringing back music from Europe, which gave the station an eclectic and wild play list, particularly for the evening shifts (Big Rick's drive-time and later), and Big Rick was just smoking with hilarious banter.

Big Rick seems totally unscripted - he just starts talking and keeps it up until his spot is over, and listening to him is akin to watching a high wire act. Sometimes he slips, starts to fall, but catches himself. He's a little like Johnny Carson use to be - at his funniest when he is struggling. Other times he is flat-out brilliant, weaving his stories and insights through intricate turnbacks and asides, and somehow wrapping them up in neat bundles just in time for the next segment. And none of it is serious, it's all for laughs. Big Rick is endearingly self-effacing, the target of much of his own humor. He'll get on kicks that he will revisit - he used to go on forever about his "pea-sized brain" - but there is nothing pea-sized about this guy. Remember that Ellen Barkin line in Buckaroo Bonzai - "You're like Jerry Lewis - you give me hope to carry on." That's Big Rick Stuart to me, a sign of intelligent life in the universe. Sure, he loves radio and music, but he also sees right through it, or sees it for what it is, and he is forever puncturing pomposity and self-importance, not with snotty attitude and cheap insight, but with an "everyman's" humor that is so sharp that I'm not sure "everyman" gets it.

As "Live 105" went into decline I became bored with the station and stopped listening, then after a time learned that Big Rick had moved on himself, landing at the venerable San Francisco adult-rock station KFOG. The first time I heard his familiar voice on KFOG I could hardly believe it, because KFOG for years was a really musty old dinosaur (though it premiered in the '80s around the same time as "Live 105) that played a lot of classic rock, including the Grateful Dead and other bands closely associated with '60s San Francisco. My first thought was that Big Rick didn't sound very happy at the sleepy station, which played music that he had poked fun at for years. But it wasn't long before he became himself again, and now he is pretty much the same guy he always was - older but as funny and loveable as ever. He seems to find things to like about the KFOG play list, though I sense he recognizes that he is no longer associated with cutting edge radio. Still, the radio personality Big Rick Stuart is always worth the listen.

Big Rick has a blog at http://www.bigrick.fm/blog/blog1.html that you may find entertaining, particularly if you are familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area.

www.jillcarole.com

JILL CAROLE has been on the edge of stardom since her 1998 signing with England's Mystic Records and subsequent tours of the U.K. She toured with Al Stewart, the "Year of the Cat" guy who has developed quite a connection to Bay Area artists (see Paul Robinson's profile below), and Colin Blunstone, who was once lead singer for the '60s band the Zombies, as well as Byrds founder Roger McGuinn. Jill has also toured with Suzzy Roche of the Roches (now there's your Boulder, Colorado link, the Roches being long-time residents). She had a minor hit, in the fall of 1999, with her single "Every Now and Then," which did well on adult contemporary charts. From her website - "She also received airplay for her witty and topical tune, 'I Slept With Kenneth Starr' on San Francisco radio stations KGO-AM and KPFA-FM. Larry Kelp, music critic for the Oakland Tribune and host of 'Sing Out' on KPFA in Berkeley, called the unreleased political thriller 'one of my favorite songs of 1999.'" (And in a political sense, there's your Bay Area link.)

The Alabama native, but long-time Bay Area resident, grew up in rarified air similar to Deborah Winters, profiled above. Jill's mother was an opera singer and Jill apparently inherited her three-octave range. From her website - "(Jill) left the South to study at Amherst College and then at The Berklee College of Music, where she twice received the top singer-songwriter award. She migrated to California, trading her acoustic guitar for an electric, and rekindling her affair with the piano."

Jill's music is hard to classify, but it is certainly wild and sex charged, a sort of adult pop-punk. The themes are adult (marriage, infidelity, cultural iconography) and manipulative but tasteful and certainly smart. They are produced for a modern audience, maybe even a modern rock audience with their emphasis on techno effects and club-inspired spatial choreography. (Scot Mathews produced her Trophy Wife LP.)

RAR Note - I am really not sure how active Jill is these days. At one time she was playing SF clubs with her rock band The Contrarians, but I haven't heard of them being around for awhile. I hope to find out more about this talented singer/songwriter and update this profile in the future.

BELOW: Jill Carole's Trophy Wife was released in 2002. The Easter Bunny, Sex and Santa Claus was released in 1998.

Jill Carole MP3s can be heard from the CDs page of her site.

BOB LOGAN 

BOB LOGAN is a talented Bay Area guitarist whose stock and trade over the years has been playing in show bands and supplying soundtracks to Electronic Arts video games. He is a smoking jazz fusion/jazz funk player who also has a deft touch on acoustic guitar, all of which is demonstrated on his CD release titled Faster Than The Speed Of Wood? 

Bob is Lee Ritenour-like in a lot of ways, but he's got some Barney Kessel in him, too. He tends to favor double harmonized leads and, like a lot of jazz guys his playing is a smorgasboard of techniques and approaches, as much a part of the movement of each piece as is the infrastructure of chorus, verse and bridge.

BOB LOGAN MP3s:  

2nd Ray - Barney Kessel type jazz instrumental

Acoustic #1-acoustic instrumental

Pedal Over the Bridge-acoustic instrumental

C.F.T.-Lee Ritenour type jazz-funk instrumental

Copyright © Bob Logan, All Rights Reserved 

Here is a story I never thought I'd live to tell - either a good news or a bad news item depending upon whether or not you are a songwriter. Bay Area cover bands have fallen on hard times. Rich Flynn, featured above, who has played around the Bay Area for years in both cover and original music units, reports that "bar bands" have fallen out of favor with a younger generation that would prefer a DJ and current sounds. "These days if people walk into a place and see a stage set up with musical instruments, they turn and walk back out the door." The exception seems to be those venues that are known for featuring original acts. In San Francisco that would include places like Hotel Utah, The Paradise Lounge, and Cafe Du Nord, among many other throughout the Bay Area. It is ridiculously expensive for Bohemian songwriters to try to survive here - hell, it's ridiculously expensive for corporate cheese eaters to survive here! - but hard core Bay Area music fans have always supported the fresh idea, and still do. The cover bands, however, not so much.

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