A trip to the pharmacist

Happy 74th, Bobby

This gives me the opportunity to ask myself a question that, quite frankly, I had not lost any sleep over trying to answer and that is "Was the movie Bye Bye Birdie really Bye Bye Bobby?". The reality is Bobby Rydell never had another major hit single after the film came out.

I never really understood why, but for two years, 1959 and 1960, Rydell was really a major star in the rock ‘n’ roll firmament, one of those "safe" vocalists like Frankie Avalon and Fabian that Dick Clark manufactured after Elvis was drafted in Clark’s blatant attempt to kill, or at least emasculate and domesticate, teen music tastes at that time.

He had a handful of hits, with Wild One, the song featured above as the one that ascended the highest on the charts, all the way to No. 2. Film producer Fred Kohlmar was so taken with Rydell and not only signed him to play Hugo, Ann Margret’s boyfriend, in the film musical Bye Bye Birdie but had the part completely rewritten from the stage version just for Rydell (on stage, the character of Hugo is not a speaking part).

So what did happen to Rydell? Like many other faded singers of the ‘50s and ‘60s (although it is worth noting here that the Rydell High School featured in both the stage and filmed versions of Grease is named after Bobby Rydell), he kept his career alive somewhat by performing in supper clubs and nightclubs, particularly in and around Las Vegas. He also maintains a high level of popularity in Australia. Don’t ask me why.

Unfortunately, health has become a problem for Rydell of late. He cancelled a planned Australian tour four years ago and in July 2012 he had double organ transplant surgery, having his liver and kidneys replaced. He did, however, play a three-night sold-out gig in Vegas in January 2013 and made good on his Australian tour in 2014.

Hope everything is well with you on the health front now, Bobby, and happy 74^th birthday.

George Martin's legacy

I'm convinced it's safe to say that, regardless how you feel about the lasting impact of The Beatles or The Beach Boys or  their respective places in the rock 'n' roll pantheon, George Martin and Brian Wilson introduced more avant-garde techniques and sounds into pop music than anyone else, before or since.

Great music to take you into the final four weekend

I'm beginning to feel this way all the time:

Goodnight, Lou

I first came in contact with Lou Reed in 1967 with the release of that great album The Velvet Underground & Nico, which contains the song in the above video. It is my favorite Lou Reed song, although I will admit enjoying walking on the wild side with Lou. I am going to miss him. Lou Reed died today, six months after undergoing a liver transplant.

Boz Scaggs: America's Van Morrison

Thanks to the great Mike Lindley for reminding me about one of the greatest rock 'n' roll albums of all times -- Boz Scaggs' self-titled first album he recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio in 1969. He was accompanied by those incredible studio musicians -- Barry Beckett on keyboards, Roger Hawkins on drums, guitarists Jimmy Johnson and Peter Carr and, of course, Spooner Oldham on organ. To that lineup, Scaggs added the legendary Duane Allman on slide guitar.

When friends used to gather at my place in the late '60s and early '70s, I would put this album on the turntable, unannounced. I would just let it play. Every single person who heard it came to me to ask me about it and every single one of them purchased it the next day.

The cut featured here is the last song on the album, a powerful way to bring to a close one helluva great LP. Check it out:

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse …

I recently paid tribute to Levon Helm, the drummer/vocalist of The Band, which, along with the E-Street Band, is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll group this country ever produced.

Now it turns out that that some kind of movie (don’t know whether it’s theatrical or made-for-TV) is being made about The Band. That’s OK. What’s not OK — what’s definitely not OK — is that the first person attached to this project is the multi-untalented Robbert Pattinson. Lord, help us all!

Good Night, Big Man

The single greatest saxophone solo in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. You will be missed, Clarence.

Miss you, Bo

Bo Diddley

Today (OK, technically it was yesterday now) is the third anniversary of the death of the great Bo Diddley. I remember being in high school when I first heard his recording of Say Man which includes one of my favorite insult lines of all time: “You look like you’ve been whupped with an ugly stick.”

My favorite little known fact about Bo Diddley was that he wrote the Mickey & Sylvia hit Love Is Strange.

My favorite story about Bo Diddley — although I’ve never confirmed its veracity — involved his Nov. 20, 1955, appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Now Sullivan was a pretty conservative guy and was worried about what this colored rock ‘n’ roll singer might do on his show. As he strolled past Diddley’s dressing room, he heard him strumming Tennessee Ernie Ford’s big hit. Sixteen Tons. “That’s it,” Sullivan allegedly told Diddley. “Sing that one.”

Here is the video of Diddley’s appearance on the Sullivan show. Sullivan barred him from ever appearing again.

Beck and Stewart reuniting?

The original Jeff Beck Group.
 (Left-to right) Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Mickey Waller, Ron Wood

Had not heard about this before and if it wasn't for the great Mike Lindley I might not know about it now, but, according to this, Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart, the core of the original Jeff Beck Group, may be reuniting in a London recording studio.

This could be a great shot in the arm for Stewart who went over to the Dark Side recently with his recordings of standards. Beck, meanwhile, completely and positively re-invented himself with his recent Les Paul tribute CD and tour.

I remember loving the Beck-Ola and Truth albums when they were released. Truth, released in August 1968, was, looking back on it now, the very first heavy metal album and it obviously influenced the work of Led Zeppelin and all the other metal bands that followed. Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience were working in the same areas as the Beck group, but Beck put it all together with his blistering lead quitar, Stewart's dramatic vocals and the thundering rhythm section of Ron Wood on bass and Mickey Waller on drums.

Beck-Ola, which followed in June 1969, was not nearly as strong (second albums rarely are). The sound was still the same but the material was incredibly weaker. Also, by this time, Led Zeppelin had released its first album. The album could have been, however, the one that marked the Jeff Beck Group as an equal to Zeppelin, but Beck was sidelined for a year, the result of an automobile accident. This caused the band to cancel its scheduled appearance at Woodstock and impatient Stewart and Wood bolted to form Faces.

I'm not going to expect anything to rival Truth or even Beck-Ola from this reunion, but I am expecting something positive.

Good Night to The Muse

These days I understand Ernie Gammage is a Very Important Person with the Parks and Wildlife Commission, but I will always remember him fondly as the bass player and a vocalist for the Austin-based Mother of Pearl back in the 1970s. At one point, just about half his bandmates were getting married around the same time and I asked him if this fact concerned him at all. He said "No. I'm looking forward to all the great songs they will write when their marriages break up."

I thought of what Ernie told me when I learned today that Suzan "Suze" Rotolo died at the age of 69 following a long illness. If you are not familiar with the name you might be familiar with the songs she inspired, songs like Boots of Spanish Leather, Tomorrow Is a Long Time and Don't Think Twice. Yes, for a short time in the early 1960s, she was Bob Dylan's lover and muse. She was also a class act, never once capitalizing on her association with Dylan. In fact, in his book Chronicles, Dylan talked more about Rotolo than she ever did about him.

She is probably best known as the answer to the question "Who's that girl with Bob Dylan on the cover of the Freewheelin' album?". She and Dylan met backstage after one of his concerts. The moved into an apartment together on Fourth Street (the Freewheelin' picture was taken on Jones Street in February 1962.) Just a few months later, she broke with Dylan to spend the summer with her parents in Italy. She returned to him however, but the romance ended when he began seeing fellow folksinger Joan Baez.

Rotolo led her own life after her brief but passionate affair with Dylan as a teacher, painter and illustrator. In 1970 she married Italian filmmaker Enzo Bartoccioli and they had one son Luca. She lived in Greenwich Village her entire life.

She was the child of extremely left-wing parents and she herself engaged in many civil rights activities in the early 1960s. She is credited with introducing Dylan to those causes which led to the writing of some of his most inspired early folk songs.

Robert Plant and Patty Griffin rock in a Band of Joy ("Been a long time")

The worst of the Beatles

To commemorate the fact that the entire Beatles catalog has finally been digitized and is not available on iTunes (I figured most everyone just uploaded them from their CDs like I did) British rock critic Neil McCormick has compiled his list of the worst Beatles songs ever (a possible eye-opener for those who thought the Beatles could never do anything bad).

Since I enthusiastically agree with his choice for the worst song (in fact, I would say it was one of the worst contributions by anyone claiming to be a recording musician), I am reprinting his entire list here. I must also admit that I wholeheartedly agree that the so-called White Album should have been a one-disc effort with all the crap removed.

Here's McCormick's list:

1. Revolution 9 (The Beatles aka The White Album)
Start with John and Yoko’s nearly nine minute avant-garde sound collage, once pored over by hippies for hidden meanings. What it really means is that you shouldn’t try to make music when you’re stoned out of your brain.

2. Only A Northern Song (Yellow Submarine soundtrack)
“If you’re listening to this song / You may think the chords are going wrong” admits George, on a dreary, tuneless, quasi-psychedelic paean to The Beatles publishing company that proclaims its own laziness: “It doesn’t really matter what chords I play, what words I say”. But it bloody well does.

3. Your Mother Should Know (Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack)
Soft-shoe music hall whimsy from Macca. One of his child friendly numbers that John always hated (others include "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" and "Maxwell’s Silver Hammer"), this has the added disadvantage of starting with a simple idea and not taking it anywhere.

4. Mr Moonlight (Beatles For Sale)
Here’s one your mother might know, and wish she didn’t. A waste of Lennon’s roaring vocal opening, this is an extraordinarily silly cocktail lounge style cover with cheesy harmonies and a hammy organ solo.

5. The Inner Light (B-side, available on Past Masters)
Droning Indian mysticism from George. “Without going out of my door / I can know all things on Earth”. Yeah, right.

6. I’ll Get You (B-side, available on Past Masters)
Uninspiring Lennon-McCartney Merseybeat workout that seems like an exercise in getting to the chorus. Unusual for an early Beatles b-side, nobody else even bothered covering it.

7. Honey Don’t (Beatles For Sale)
Rockabilly classic that they allowed Ringo to sing with more enthusiasm than skill from an album on which you can almost hear the band’s exhaustion at the madness of Beatlemania.

8. Long, Long, Long (The Beatles aka The White Album)
George created some beautiful songs, but he could really get on a minor chord downer sometimes. A boring song about ennui. Which, you could argue, is conceptual perfection.

9. Blue Jay Way (Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack)
George barely stirs himself from marijuana torpor to provide a tuneless account of a dinner party in his house in L.A.

10. Don’t Pass Me By (The Beatles aka The White Album)
Ringo’s first attempt at solo songwriting, it should have been his last. Country chaos, that includes the immortal couplet: “”I’m sorry that I doubted you, I was so unfair / You were in a car crash and you lost your hair."

11. Savoy Truffle (The Beatles aka The White Album)
As glorious as The White Album is, it's questionable whether they had enough really great songs to make it a double. Here George fills the gaps with a little ditty about the contents of a box of chocolates. It’s basically a song about the munchies from the marijuana mystic.

12. Octopus’s Garden (Abbey Road)
Ringo trying to replicate the childish underwater joys of Yellow Submarine, but only succeeding in ruining the otherwise perfect Abbey Road album.

13. Maggie Mae (Let It Be)
During increasingly acrimonious recording sessions, The Feuding Four release tensions with a sudden burst of a dirty scouse folk song. Not their finest moment.

14. You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) (B side, available on Past Masters)
We can play out with another stoned farrago of a comedy song. You should only be grateful that I didn’t include "What’s The New Mary Jane" from Anthology.

Frontier Ruckus is neither

Truth in advertising: I am really not that familiar with the band Frontier Ruckus -- I've heard snippets from their 2008 CD The Orion Songbook (I really liked the haunting instrumentation on the song Dark Autumn Hour as well as Matthew Milia's lead vocals which sound like a cross between Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and a young Woody Guthrie). However, associates who's tastes I respect, are big fans of this group.

The band is neither from the frontier - their home is Detroit, of all places - nor do they sound like they are causing much of a ruckus. But they do have a sound that's pure Americana, almost like a soundtrack for the quieter moments of No Country for Old Men.

The band, which consists of Milia and his college friends David Winston Jones, Zachary Nichols, and Ryan Etzcorn, is about to release a new album July 20 called Deadmalls and Nightfalls on a North Carolina-based indie label, and three days later, on Friday, July 23, they will be headlining a concert at the Granada. (The night before the band will be at the Boiler Room in Denton.)

Milia and banjo player Jones came together first while they were in high school in Detroit. Milia then went off to Michigan State University and Jones to the University of Michigan. They continued to play together, mostly Milia's compositions combined with a few oif his favorite bluegrass tunes. Soon it became a six-piece band with the addition of Eli Eisman on bass; Nichols on trumpet, musical saw (shades of the original Flatlanders) and melodia; Etzcorn on drums; and Anna Burch on harmony vocals. At that point one magazine called Frontier Ruckus "one of the very best sounds to come out of Michigan this entire decade."

The band was named Detroit's Best Folk Group by Real Detroit Weekly. Last year they not only toured the United States extensively, but also played the Slottsfjell Festival in Norway, as well as in the United Kingdrom, Holland and Germany. This year they were part of the Bonnaroo Music Festival. The Granada show could be one of those opportunities from which you can say, years later, "I saw them when ..."

Something for all former mop tops to ponder

Ringo Starr turns 70 today.

Joni Mitchell calls Dylan a fake

Ya think she may be upset because her music has been largely ignored this century?

Patty Griffin's coming to town ... finally

The first time I heard Patty Griffin sing When It Don't Come Easy I stopped dead in my tracks. It takes one memorable song these days to get me to stop what I am doing and devote 100 percent of my attention to the singer and the song. But Patty Griffin did that.

It was not my introduction to Patty Griffin.. That came in 1998 with the album Flaming Red and then in 2002 she recorded what many consider her masterpiece, 1000 Kisses. But it was the song When It Don't Come Easy off the album Impossible Dream that made me come to the conclusion that Patty Griffin was that finest female singer/songwriter to come along since ... well ... Sheryl Crow immediately comes to mind.

Griffin's appearance at the very first Austin City Limits Festival was the main reason I purchased tickets to that event even though I had sworn I would never ever again attend an outdoor pop music festival. I figured she would sing When It Don't Come Easy. I just hoped she could do it justice live. The moment she did sing it will live with me forever. It was transcendent, one of those rare times where a singer and a song transported me to a special place that is not of this earth.

I sincerely hope she sings that song again Friday night when she plays the House of Blues and I hope I'm there to hear it. (I haven't bought tickets yet -- mainly because I didn't get to mention the event to My Hero until tonight -- and I'm hoping there will be some available when I go to purchase them tomorrow.)

Patty Griffin should be more famous and more popular than she is, but there has never been real justice in the pop music world. Many people know of her because others, namely the Dixie Chicks (they recorded Truth #2 and Top of the World on their album Home and Let Him Fly on their album Fly.), Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Bette Midler have recorded her songs.

She was born March 16, 1964 in Old Town, Maine. She began writing songs at the age of 16 on a used Honer guitar she bought for $55. She formed her first band, Patty and the Executives, while still in high school. In 1985, after living briefly in Florida, she moved to Boston where she took guitar lessons from John Curtis of the Pousette-Dart Band. Curtis began booking her in small clubs in the Boston area in 1991.

She recorded a set of demos that attracted the attention of A&M records for which she made her first album, Living With Ghosts. She joined the Lilith Tour. moved to Nashville and began work on a second record, 1998's Flaming Red and the song One Big Love, which was my introduction to Griffin.

In 2000 she moved to Austin and two years later she released 1000 Kisses, her best collection of songs (Rain, Chief, Making Pies, Long Ride Home and others), which was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category.

"I suspect Patty Griffin's songs make most people a little uncomfortable -- like they've just walked in on a private moment in someone else's life and they know they should turn around and tiptoe away, but they can't," singer/songwriter Steve Earle says. "They make me jealous."

Her most recent album, Downtown Church, so named because it was recorded at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tenn., is a collection of gospel songs that was produced by Buddy Miller, who will be opening for Griffin Friday at the House of Blues.

In July, Griffin and Miller will become members of Robert Plant's Band of Joy, which will tour the United States much the same way Plant did with Alison Krauss a few years ago.

Underrated singers of a bygone era and a bygone joint

My iPod, forever in random play, is playing while I write and up popped the Amazing Rhythm Aces' version of Dancing the Night Away. Now that is such a magnificent song, even I can't ruin it by singing it. If you want proof of this, seek out, of all people, Crystal Gayle's version of the song.

Still, it reminded me that Russell Smith, the lead singer of the Aces, was among the most under- appreciated and underrated lead singers of his era along with Peter Cetera of Chicago (I remember touring with Chicago and the Beach Boys and just marveling whenever Cetera was at the mike) as well as the great George Jones and the incomparable Al Green. From where I sit, it doesn't get much better than those four.

It also reminded me of the wonderful evening I spent watching the listening to the Aces at a saloon on Abrams and Skillman right around where that Super Target is located today. Those were some heady days. Does anyone else remember that joint? I also spent a marvelous evening seeing Waylon Jennings there in the early 1970s, but I would still, to this day, be betraying a major confidence if I so much as uttered the name of the person I was with that evening. Oh, but what a night it was.

Making note of the passing of a musician that went largely unnoted

Willy DeVille died Aug. 6 of pancreatic cancer. Not that many people made note of it. I certainly didn't know about it until my South Florida correspondent clued me in.

For those who don't know Willy DeVille or ever heard of his band, Mink DeVille, the house band at the New York club where punk music was born, CBGB, you might remember the theme song to that much-loved movie The Princess Bride called Storybook Love. DeVille wrote it and was nominated in 1987 for an Academy Award for that song. He performed it himself on that year's Oscar telecast. The song came from DeVille's first solo album, Miracle, which was produced by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. At the same time, Knopfler was working with director Rob Reiner on The Princess Bride and realized immediately the subject of Storybook Love was the same as the subject of the movie. Knopfler sent the song to Reiner, who loved it.

A year after Storybook Love, DeVille moved to New Orleans and helped invigorate that city's rhythm and blues revival.

Critic Robert Palmer had this to say about DeVille: "Mr. DeVille is a magnetic performer, but his macho stage presence camouflages an acute musical intelligence; his songs and arrangements are rich in ethnic rhythms and blues echoes, the most disparate stylistic references, yet they flow seamlessly and hang together solidly. He embodies (New York's) tangle of cultural contradictions while making music that's both idiomatic, in the broadest sense, and utterly original."

Doc Pomus, who with one-time collaborator Mort Shuman, wrote such early rock 'n' roll classics as A Teenager in Love, Save the Last Dance for Me, This Magic Moment, and Viva Las Vegas, and later composed with DeVille, said "DeVille knows the truth of a city street and the courage in a ghetto love song. And the harsh reality in his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today, and tomorrow—timeless in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles find each other and never quit for a minute."

DeVille was three weeks shy of 59 years old when he died.

When you absolutely positively got to have it and are willing to pay and arm and a leg to get it

Are you looking for the perfect gift for that Beatles fanatic friend of yours? I thought so, but I'm going to give you some suggestions anyway. How about a handwritten letter from John Lennon to Bhaskar Menon (he was the chairman of Capitol Records back in the early 1970s when Lennon wrote the letter) calling the "rife" speculation that the Beatles would get back together "such an unfounded untrue rumour." The letter can be had for a mere pittance (i.e., between $22,000 and $25,000) through an on-line auction going on for the next 10 days or so. Incidentally, the bidding starts at $20,000.

So that's a little out of your price range, eh? Another item being auctioned off is a National Westminster Bank check made out to John Lennon signed by both Lennon and Paul McCartney in black and blue ink, respectively, dated June 14, 1976. The minimum bid on this one is a mere $9,000 and the item is expected to go for between $11,000 and $13,000.

But there's more than just Beatles items in the auction. You can start the bidding at $15,000 for Bob Dylan's handwritten working lyrics for A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall or $20,000 for a poem handwritten by Jimi Hendrix. Pictured on the right up there is the earliest known contract signed by Jimi Hendrix (the contract calls him "Jimmy" throughout) and the bidding on this one starts at $200,000.

Not everything on this list is as expensive as those mentioned. In fact, the jacket pictured here was custom made for Mick Jagger and the bidding on that item begins at only $800. There's Elvis stuff on here, Keith Moon's drumsticks, a Janis Joplin police mug shot, Grateful Dead concert posters, a sleeveless denim jacket worn by Bruce Springsteen during his Born in the U.S.A. tour, a bustier worn by Madonna during her Like a Virgin tour as well as a pair of micro cassettes containing erotic messages Madonna left on boyfriend Jim Albright's answering machine between 1992-1993 (minimum bid 25-large).

Now for those who don't want to spend this kind of cash, there are deals for you at the auction as well. How about the sheet music to Joy to the World signed by all the guys in Three Dog Night. Someone has already started the bidding on this one at $50, but I'm betting you can steal it for $70. Hurry -- only nine days, six minutes and 21 seconds left to get your bid in.