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Be sure and check out Mark Leviton’s monthly column and Gene Sculatti’s essay on the Doors at the end!

Another Fein Mess
AF Stone’s Monthly
June 2013

‘This ‘n that”

May 4 Hit the road to San Francisco to deliver the family car, the ‘02 Volvo convertible, to Jessie. When traffic halted less than 5 miles into the trip, I consulted my iPad Mini, saw a long red westbound streak ending at Reseda Blvd, and got off the freeway and enjoyed the relative ease of parallel Ventura Blvd, my very first satellite-guided driving experience 1. I stopped in pretty San Luis Obispo, and also drove through Salinas to see what it looked like since last I stopped there in 1978. The somewhat gentrified downtown was empty but it looks like progress is being made, with that entire area building up. This upcoming attraction at the downtown movie theater looked less than ... progressive.



1 Funny, Route 5, that goes straight up there (360 miles), is the only route, with offshoots, that the iPad Mini will send you on. I know my way along the more-coastal 101 route, but when I asked the damn contraption for More Options it said no. After I drove my chosen trail for an hour with the goal address in place, it synchronized with full details. (Damned San Jose snobs think going slower over 440 miles is uncool.) I had a wonderful drive with stops, the trip made magic by the constant sound of some of the 20,000 songs on my iPod.

May 4 Got to SF at 8 pm and host Joel Selvin took me to the Fillmore to see his daughter playing in a trio in the lounge. The room was lined with posters, and I found the one for the first show I saw there, January 1967, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver. (I preferred the latter, who rocked. The former stopped several times during their set to talk and smoke cigarettes. What jerks.)

A window shrine to Jerry Garcia, at the Fillmore.

May 5 Brought the car to Jessie’s Daly City digs. We - she - drove to the Castro to a Greek restaurant. Afterward she drove me to Joel’s and then took off happily in her first car.

Me and Jess in the Castro.

Jessie and the Old Man (younger than me) of Portrero Hill.

May 6

Got to the Oakland Airport (my secret place 2, midday flights are easier than at SFO) at 12:30 for my 2 pm flight to Burbank. Raced through the near-empty security check and rushed to Gate 32 where the 1 pm Burbank flight waited. “Can I get on this one?” I asked the uniformed lady, aware that my flight was an hour later.

“Let me see” she said, knowing that flight wasn’t full. “No,” she said, returning my ticket with disdain. “Not on the low fare. If you want to pay the $54 difference you can board.” The flight was already $129 one way. No thanks. And no thanks to you, General Snooty.

I sat at Gate 28., tried to manipulate my iPad, found reading Huckleberry Finn on it unsatisfying. Wasn’t clock-watching til 1:30 when I looked at my wrist and - no watch. I sorted through my carryon bag and pockets. Shoot! I asked if the PSA (I always say PSA, it’s Southwest) counter lady if I could leave my carryon suitcase and she said OK, and I half-ran back to the security check area where I found the guy who wanded me: “Did anyone find a watch?” I asked. “A little while ago” he said, directing me to another guy. I asked about my watch. “Can you describe it?” he said. Sure, rectangle, blue background, dots. “But it was left over an hour ago” he said, hoping it would be left and he could take it home. “I arrived early to catch the 1:00 and they wouldn’t let me on.” He had me fill out a form and returned it.

It’s good I didn’t get on the 1:00 flight.



2 Carole King’s title for ‘Up On The Roof’ was “My Secret Place.” It shows up in the Little Eva version.

May 9 Made a little misstep on the stairs at home and braced myself with my right forearm on the handrail. However, the rail is horizontal and flat, like a ruler, and running the arm 45 degrees down pushed the muscle it into a rise like it was made of clay. (Gotta start pumping iron!) Went to the ER but they said no big deal, it would go away and it did.

May 12 Went to “Jews In L.A.,” a temp show, at the Autry Museum.3 It was static. Too many merchant mentions, too many “outings” (him? really?), also movies and music. Nothing about Jewish blue collar workers in aircraft plants who misfit the mold. All in all, dull.

One case featured a printed bag from a record store and displayed a 78 by Mickey Katz. This display inadvertently, highlighted the trouble with young people handling history. The 78 was bannered “Vinyl Record.”

The show, though, dug deeper than the LATimes’ history of Boyle Heights’ a few years ago which went way back only to the 1960s when it turned Latino, ignoring the previous half-century of Jewish settlement..

3 At the good old buckboard-based Gene Autry Museum gift shop golly gosh, great elaborate Tony Lama belts made in China, cool cowboy shirts made in India

May 15 In 1966 I listened to deejay Bill Gardner on KLZ-FM in Denver. Since FM-rock was nearly unknown I got through easily on their phone lines and developed a friendship with Bill. In 1970 my girlfriend Bonnie and I visited him and his wife in Seattle, where he was then working. (His life of habitation is in no way unlike the Harry Chapin song “WOLD.”) We had our next meeting, 43 years later, at the Burbank Airport where he parked his plane. We had a great time for a day - it seemed like no time had passed since we were last together.

May 16 Met pal Ken Shields for lunch at Canter’s on Fairfax, and who was sitting two booths over but Ruby Friedman and Chris Morris. If only I knew a celebrity-sighting site!

May 18 Went with Diane to Top Tunes, a comedy and music improv run by similarly capital-lettered Tom Tully (coincidence?) at an alley-entrance theater in Mar Vista. Seen onstage are Dan Bern and this night's singing partner with whom he wrote a song in 17 minutes as part of the night's competition.

Looking pensive at the right is George Wendt, one of the night's judges.

May 24 Me and almost-birthday sweetheart Diane went downtown to the Down and Out bar below the Alexandria Hotel see the Detroit Cobras. It was ... different standing around in a bar for two hours (of course, nobody will tell you the actual show time over the phone) holding a good standing spot just like the good old days, which weren’t good at all. The opening band Jail Marriages was entertaining, harking back to dramatic 80’s bands I didn’t like then but cherish now, relative to what’s afoot. But when the much-anticipated Cobras took the stage there was a lot of aggro about sound levels which kinda took the spin off their arrival, and the show, which must go on, went on in a state of semi- disintegration for which the band is not unknown. We left before the finale ...

Jail Marriages

Those Cobra kids!

May 29 Went with next-day-birthdayer Diane to the New Beverly Theater to see “Taking Off.” I had seen it in 1971 and remembered only that it was eye-opening. I’m surprised more is not made of this small, sometimes jarring time capsule. Though I identify with neither the characters or story, the teen girl folksingers peppered unexplainedly throughout the movie really jolted me with nostalgia, though not longing, for the look and feeling of the time. Attendance was sparse, and a long line waited outside for the next film, “Harold and Maude.” Little did they know they were standing literally in the footsteps of their forebears, as that is the film that sparked the Midnight Movie trend of the 70s.

Handsome-Eyed Brown Man

Lyrics don’t matter. Not in rock & roll, anyway.
Take “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” by Chuck Berry,

Arrested on charges of unemployment, he was sitting in the witness stand. He’s such such a roué’ that the judge’s wife called the district attorney and told him “If you want your job you’d better free that brown eyed man.”

Got it. He’s had every woman in the city!

Then, flying over the desert he spotted a woman walking to Bombay. To meet the BEHM. Well, he was special. Then he tells us that throughout history women have shed tears for brown eyed handsome men. A beautiful daughter was deciding whether to marry a doctor or a lawyer but her mother said to hold out for - you guessed it.

(All of this may be a reflection of Chuck’s opinion of his own amorous value. He has brown eyes.)

Next, back to history, where Milo de Venus (!) lost her arms in a wrestling match (!!) over a BEHM. Then the finale, at a baseball game, “Two-three the count” the batter hit it into the stands.

Did “Three-two” not scan, or did he actually not know how baseball is played? It was a hit “that won the game,” a final touch of his greatness.

“Two-three the count.”
Our schools’ failure made Chuck Berry a fortune.

Music

Guitars are commonly accepted as the backbone of rock & roll. Recently I looked at my personal Mt Rushmore - Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Richard, and Fats - and realized that one plays lead guitar and three play piano ... Carlene Carter’s albums on Reprise were great, only I missed them. In the 80s I was engulfed in free albums and overlooked hers. My loss ... Prominently shot in the audience at the recent R&R Hall of Fame spectacle was Meryl Streep. I hope musicians get equal camera time at the Oscars ... Dylan at Newport, 1963 (vid) makes a crack about Fabian. Must’ve been around the same time he mocked rock & roll on an album citing “Rockaday Johnny singing ‘Someday our love will grow, ooh wah ooh wah’” ... I’m way late on this bandwagon, but the Subdudes are great. I find them in Amoeba in the New Orleans section, which is wrong; they may be from there, but there’s little N.O. about them. Their sound reminds me of the Amazing Rhythm Aces and The Band ... Possum Jones was a heck of a singer. But when someone cites the stunning “He Stopped Loving Her Today” as a reason for his greatness, they’re leaving something out. That record’s brilliance is first the work of Billy Sherrill, the genius record producer and songwriter.

Think out of the box

An update to the LATimes article about the long line, long wait, and ultimate disappointment, for many fans whose voucher number did not grant them the chance to buy tickets for the Rolling Stones small-club concert here in April told us that the reporter went back to the distribution venue later in the day and found that several that were on hold had not been picked up and he bought two.



The Capitol Records mural which went up 22 years ago was fading badly til a team of restorers got to it this year.



The details are darned weird, look like the old paint-by-numbers kit, though few were sold at this scale.

Me mi mi me

When May 19, NYT, Elisabeth Rosenthal’s News Analysis about banning plastic bags started out “In my New York City apartment,” I was unhooked. We learned that she has saved them, went to Chicago and encountered them, confesses she sometimes forgets to bring a reusable bag, and discusses businesses in her neighborhood. It purports incredibly that you, me, and most of the world don’t know these things ... Randall Roberts, in the 11-21-12 LATimes, discussed the crit-hated band Rush on his terms too. A glut of expected slams - “unique doesn’t mean brilliant” was followed with more about Roberts -- “a few months ago I voted against their induction” in the R&R HoF -- then gifts us with more about himself: It’s surprising, he said, “that a critic with an already revealed bias against an act would volunteer to review one of its concerts, 4” that the paper got mail “after I declared (!!!) in print their unworthiness”; cited, not unproudly “posts tearing me down”’ 5, says “I hadn’t seen the band live. Now that I have I am impressed. But I am not persuaded”; continues that “I didn’t like the band’s structural impatience” (say WHAT?) adding “but I’m more of a groove man”; then “Lee’s voice has always grated on me.” 6 So the question isn’t whether anyone forced him to review the band he hates, but who permitted it!?

4 SURPRISING!?!?! Critics love to slam a show they prejudge. They can open their big guns of disapproval, their reason for living.

5 I can hear the buttons popping on his vest!

6 Who does this dope think he is? His self-importance dwarfs Cassius Clay’s.

Words

I’m way too literal, and when someone on FB asks “Does anyone have” something I write “Certainly someone does” ... the announcer at the music contest said the finalists would reprise their songs, pronounced re-prize. It’s repreeze. Hard i comes only in one form, reprisal, which is completely unconnected to reprise ... Again and again. On HST -- “J.P. Morgan died less than a month from his 76th birthday.” What the hell is important about the 76th? It goes up and down the birthday scale in contemporary blather - “the boy died just two weeks before his sixth birthday.” Oh, and what a time the sixth would have been! ... When you’re uncertain how to pronounce ‘harass,’ just remember someone named Harris ( I’ll take Wynonie) and the phonetical phrase “harass is bothersome but her ass is dirty” ... FLIX description of a movie “from the best selling novel exposing corruption, as encountered by a British diplomat and his murdered wife.” Must have been tough dragging her around ... “Limelight” was what illuminated movie projectors in the first half of the last century. Nobody today would want power from that hot inefficient source, but it remains our lexiconic standard ... The solon who said his father used to hire plenty of ‘wetbacks’ knew he was saying something out of date, using it for effect, shaking his head. So the press goes nuts ... On a tv newscast the polite ‘caster referred to “the prophet Muhammad.” Isn’t that a grand supposition?

TV

I was surprised to hear LA arrogance on an early 60s Jack Benny Show. He described a route that started on Wilshire & Doheny and went to Beverly and Canon and ended in Oxnard. Who outside of LA knows these streets and places? It’s the same rude way that New York street names and places are mentioned matter-of-factly like we all know them. Strange ... Some tv history idiot effused over Carlos the Jackal, the South American drug jerk, with exciting details like how he tore out his plane’s seats to store more cocaine, “legend” says he burned $2 million to keep warm, that he was loved as well as hated. I’m sure if the grinning idiot narrator had met him she’d be the same as today, giddy from the air whistling through her head ... Credits after a Burns & Allen show included “Perfume by Arpege.” Dammit, I told my parents to buy a smell-a-vision tv !!!! ... The opening of the ‘Vicious Circle’ episode of the Alfred Hitchcock show has Dick York, a killer, shot from below, swaggering mercilessly. I jumped: he looked exactly, in the shadowy scene, like Jim Carrey ... The finale of an Andy Griffith episode has a bratty kid and Opie in the sheriff’s office. The bad kid’s father realizes his son is a creep, and Andy, in a preternatural turnaround not unlike the characters in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, tells the father “I know of a good woodshed right near here.” The father’s face slowly illuminates like Sweeney Todd’s and he does a partial grin through unseen gritted teeth and says “A real old-fashioned woodshed?” I don’t think that kid’s character was ever seen again, nor an investigation launched into his disappearance.

Driving

Explained to 30-year-olds that there was a song “I Can’t Drive 55.” They looked blank. Told them there was a national speed limit to increase gas mileage. That gas crisis was real -a real opportunity for gas companies to reconfigure their pumps to allow for dollars ... The day my daughter, 18, got her license she said she was going to drive up a mountain to see a meteor shower. I shuddered thinking of her going up a black cliffside road her first night out. She reconsidered. I still shake about it now ... One person’s impression of “Sunset Boulevard” is one thing, mine was seeing 1949 Sunset Blvd as a two-laner... I thought having a remote control for a car radio was stupid, but when listening to a baseball game it’s darned handy for shutting out commercials ... A Peter Paul & Mary song came up and one guy was on the left, another on the right and Mary in the middle. Ridiculous ... “Columbo” ended in the early 80s, Falk had other things to do. When the character returned in the late 80s they had to search all over America for a Peugeot convertible like the one he had, which the studio had junked.

Commerce

Orville Redenbacher’s 30 oz popcorn jar goes for 6 or 7 bucks. My popcorn world, electric hot-air popper style, was rocked when Costco, for a second, carried the 8-pound jar for $8. Turned my world upside down but didn’t earn a place of permanence. People just don’t think ahead, popcornwise ... Canter’s Deli kept a 1955 menu, on a plaque, by their front entrance, but now it’s hidden in a back hall. Too many people, I’d wager, demanded the 55 cent corned beef sandwich when the menu was posted up front. Or demanded a refund after they’d paid for lunch ... The 16 oz. bottle of awesome Awesome spray cleaner has been sold at the 99 Cent Store since the chain opened. So it is a shock to encounter the 32 oz. bottle in little bodegas selling for the same price. Ya think they get a better price than the 300-store chain?

Say what?

* The ads against Wendy Gruehl for mayor of L.A. said this: She found no errors in the DWP’s 7 $7 billion budget - and the DWP’s president says “We’re expecting raises.”

This could mean that for three years she’s run a tight rein on the DWP and now its books are in order. And they haven’t gotten raises in 4 years, so they’re due.

* Wal-Mart employees, to the tune of 80%, collect welfare and food stamps because their paychecks for part-time work keep them below poverty level.

An argument could be made that their employment at Wal-Mart keeps them off the full dole. Helps government.

* I finally saw the clip of the mayor who said, regarding what he did for Hispanics today, “I might have a taco when I get home.” I might have said the same thing. Have you ever seen a tv news reporter? Someone who says something then shoves a mic in your mouth and says “Your thoughts”? TV news people are often stupid and always arrogant. The reporter demanding the mayor say what he did today for Latinos was a demanding boor. Instead of saying “I passed a bill that insures all citizens can drive safely” or “I serve everyone in the city,” he said, in essence, Go fuck yourself.

* We had a 75 degree day: the record was 100 in 1944. The next day’s weather was bannered as “record breaking.” Turns out that the 1944 day was followed by a normal 70 degree day, and for 69 years that date never got hot - so tomorrow’s 78 degrees exceeded the previous record of 77. Some record.

7 L.A.’s Dept of Water & Power pays the best salaries with the best benefits around. It’s unionized.

Parting shots

FB note posted the day before the Rolling Stones first LA show. “Me, at the Mint, serving drinks. Mick Jagger, at the bar for an hour, NO TIP” ... There exists no sympathy for the Boston bastards, but I get chills thinking of the tidal wave, the avalanche, the earthquake of emotion felt by the mother in Whateverland watching tv and suddenly seeing her two sons named as the suspects. She shook the tv and screamed.

Ghouls

* In a followup to the Boston massacre, NYTimes writer Tim Rohan assayed the anguish of the father of Jeff Bauman, a young man who lost both his legs. At the article’s close Rohan, in putrid tv journalism style, asks the the father what will say to his son once they speak. The father said he didn’t know, Rohan writes, “and he started to cry.” I never wanted more to slap a journalist.

* LAT, 6-3-13 “Three storm chasers killed by a tornado near Oklahoma City last week were not risk-takers or thrill-seekers but experienced researchers dedicated to advancing the field of meteorology, family and colleagues said Sunday.”
That sentence is front-loaded with presumption and a quick near-dismissal at the end. It’s journalism today. “Jones is a robber, rapist, murderer and liar, according to people who don’t like him” is the way too many stories read. As for the storm chasers not being thrill-seekers, what is the right reaction to the sight of destruction and near certain death of people? Theirs was “Wow! Look at that one!” They were on wheels and could, but never did, race to lend aid.

Whose history?

A tv docu about the 1980s ran in April. The parts I saw included the Rubix cube, the onset of home computers, fashion fads, skateboarding, sport events, political moments and music. In other words, everything the media reported.

Not bad enough, LATimes gal Mary McNamara wrote HER impression of this list of trifles and promised a REAL assay of that time from someone “who came of age in the 80s.” What did THAT promise beyond a lack of perspective that someone older had? She listed other goofy things the tv missed. Trifles, piffles.

The media’s reconstruction of a calendar period pertains to the few who were engaged in or led by the media. Actual people lived their lives individualistically.

Misc

Why don’t Italian-American societies embrace Roy Campanella? Italian dad, black mom ... Porn filming has fled LA because voters voted to require rubbers for actors (LAT, 4-18). Why did I get to vote on what other people do? Shouldn’t race car drivers slow down? Helicopters not fly over the city? The idea that citizens outside that field set standards is ludicrous - esp when a portion of those voters dislike porn and wish to limit it. Personally, I’d like to vote to ban the word “iconic” ... In a 4-5 LATimes piece, five were killed and two injured in a car in which “all but two of the occupants were wearing seat belts.” Why is this buried! “Seat belts useless in preventing crash deaths” is a fact here, but it’s not PC to say it .

New Yawk, New Yawk Times

May 17, Carol Vogel salivates after a $95 million art auction, that “there was considerable curiosity” about the next one. These art pieces are bonds, paper, junk that accrues value. They are not art by merit. The sickening quotes from “the dealer” so and so and “Miami art collector” who-the-fuck are base, craven. Art and its price ... The March 3 Sunday Styles cover story trumpeted the ‘progress’ of some dope who at first took pictures at “one of Manhattan’s most decadent gathering places.” (He got in once “dressed as a zebra.”) I know some people actually take that shit seriously there, but the NYTimes? ... Ha! May 30. Alex Williams effuses over “real estate mogul” and “world-class art collector” Aby Rosen who “commanded attention” at some fool disco “gyrating on the dance floor to Kool & The Gang, silver hair flowing, fist in the air.” Couldn’t be stupider if I’d made it up ... Perusing the NYTimes magazine’s year-end dead-people ish I learned something. Don Cornelius, whose Soul Train tv show was a tremendous uplift for young black people and our culture, left but one towering legacy: the show’s impact on writer Jonathan Van Meter. Van wrote lengthily, and solely, about the show’s effect on him in high school in southern New Jersey in 1978. It would be hard to imagine a more trivial sendoff for Cornelius, but in the end it’s Van Meter that the NYT mag editor finds most important ...

Lyrical notes

* In Frankie Laine’s autobiography, he tells about an Ed Sullivan Show appearance where he sang “I Believe” in a western setting. Laine mused that since a horse ‘unloaded’ throughout his song, it must have misunderstood the title to be “I Relieve.”

* I heard Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” when it was current, but paid no attention to the words. Now, 2013, driving up the 101, that song came up on the iPod and I heard for the first time this verse:

Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can’t even think of a word that rhymes

Til now I was dazzled only with principles/principals.

Watch what you say

On a science tv show, the man who said “We do that, in a word, to measure the changes in the temperatures and intensity in order to develop ways to deal with difficulties that will arise” may understand science, but not the meaning of “in a word.”

Ch-ch-ch-changes

When I was growing up it was a good thing to pass, you know, from one grade to the next. Now in today’s culture of euphemism, people who pass DIE.

Local cruelty

Years ago when the Soviet bloc disintegrated, billboards sprouted up around L.A. proclaiming that the newly freed nations were bent on making movies. Signs read “Bulgaria (Bosnia, Herzegovina, etc.) needs your unsold scripts.”

It was an art project.

Excitable Boy

Can’t drink coffee, it makes me run at 120%. I take tea immoderately but unlike coffee it never gets the propellor in my head spinning like Little South Indian Sambo’s tigers.

What about Cokes, then. There’s caffeine there. But though I sometimes would like a Coke lift, I won’t crack a bottle, it’s just too much. I’d like to buy it in shots.

Heavy hiways

Though most avenues and byways in America are named for domestic solons, ours in California are named for foreigners.

- While the 101 and other major routes are numbered not named, the little entryways are dedicated to a former Israeli premiere. They’re called “Begin Freeway.”

- Spelling of foreign names has never been our long suit, so some signals at freeway entries, though misspelled, are dedicated to former french president “Meter On.”

I’ve got a lot of friends

When I first took Diane to see Carlos perform at Senor Fish downtown, she was not accustomed to the way he kids.
He said, “Are you with HIM?”
Yes, she said.
“Well you must be blind and have no sense of smell.”
Drum hit. She blushed.
“How does the band sound so far?” he continued.
It’s fine, she said.
The other band members chimed, “She’s deaf too!”



Birthday girl Diane out for a walk with Phoebe.

- 57 -

Afterburn

1. Mark On The Move - by Mark Leviton

2. The Perception of Doors - by Gene Sculatti

Mark On The Move
          
Before the lights dimmed at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on 46th Street in Manhattan to signal the start of The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream, the voice of Steven Van Zandt boomed out at the SRO crowd.  This would be the customary time to ask patrons to silence their cellphones and unwrap their candy, but Van Zandt instead told us we didn’t have to put away anything.  “Take as many pictures as you want, we don’t care.  Put ‘em up on youtube, facebook, anywhere.  In fact, tonight, do whatever the fuck you wanna do!”
 
Only then could the curtain rise on The Rascals – Dino Danelli, Eddie Brigati, Gene Cornish and Felix Cavaliere – playing a lively “It’s Wonderful” while psychedelic images blasted the screen behind them and the audience could roar their greeting for one of the most remarkable, improbable reunions in rock ‘n’ roll history.  Group members had been squabbling and suing each other periodically since Eddie Brigati bailed out in 1970 after the expiration of their Atlantic Records contract (the group recorded two albums for Columbia without him before giving up altogether in 1972). 
 
Despite growing up on the West Coast, I always loved The Rascals’ New Jersey-New York-infused style, all the way back to their first hit “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore,” when they were billed as The Young Rascals and wore rather unbecoming Little Lord Fauntleroy suits. 
 
In the nineties Cornish, Danelli and Cavaliere did one post-breakup reunion tour without Brigati, opening for Tommy James and The Shondells, and they were pretty damn good at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles (I never saw the band in their sixties heyday).  Despite their recordings getting considerable airplay for 40 years, the band never performed in the same room until Van Zandt managed to get the four original members together for an April 24, 2010 benefit for the Kristin Ann Carr Fund. 

In 1997 it was “Little Steven” who had given the speech inducting the band into the Roll and Roll Hall of Fame, giving great play to their Italian names (and tweaking Cornish for not  having one), and praising their music to the sky.  (When I had dinner with Felix after the show he told me this “performance” was caught by David Chase, who cast Van Zandt in The Sopranos as a result.) 

After the 2010 show, Van Zandt took it upon himself to do the impossible and arrange a full-blown Rascals reunion, which, as he conceived it, would include a live performance, period films, re-creations with actors, and new interviews with the group telling their story.  He raised money on Kickstarter, brought in co-director and co-producer Marc Brickman (who’s worked with Pink Floyd, Cirque du Soleil, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney etc.), his Sopranos buddy Vinny Pastore as narrator, and wrote the script himself.  Dubbed Once Upon a Dream after a mid-period Rascals LP, the show debuted with a short run in December 2012 at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY.  I didn’t see it until it hit Broadway for 15 performances in April-May of this year.  If I had to wait 40 years to see the original Rascals line-up, this was the way to experience it.
 
The group was arranged in a rectangle, Cornish to the left up front, with Cavaliere at keyboards some distance behind him, and Brigati front right with Danelli and drumkit behind him.  A small group of additional musicians and singers occupied the space to the right, under less illumination.  I immediately worried about the level of interaction and eye-contact available to the group members, and whether this would affect their musical interplay, but keeping them somewhat separate didn’t seem to be a problem as the show went on.  

The sound was superb and the performance outstanding.  There was much verbal back-and-forth on the stage-wide film screen behind them, as pre-recorded interviews had them sparring about The Rascals’ history and exactly who-did-what-with-whom in a humorous way.  The fictional recreations of the group in the studio, with actors playing their younger selves, were so-so, but did manage to convey some interesting inside dope. Interspersing live performances with other media worked well, and I never felt the music was being unnecessarily interrupted by talk or gimmicks.  The script makes no secret of their frequent disagreements, but does try to present the current situation as amiable, if not intimate.  Once Upon a Dream is conceived to provide a context for the music, not just a jukebox of hits – although with “Good Lovin’,” “A Girl Like You,” “Groovin’” etc. there were plenty of those.
 
Cornish and Brigati roamed the footlights and involved the audience, and Brigati occasionally went back to urge Danelli on.  Still, Cavaliere and Danelli were immobilized by their instruments.  Good thing they spoke so eloquently with music.  Danelli was a fiery powerhouse on drums (and often a more nuanced player than I’ve noticed from recordings), showing off a technique which during his interview segments he squarely alligned with the likes of Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich.  (At times he seemed not too distant from Keith Moon.)  Felix was excellent on keyboards and vocals, sounding pretty much as he did in the sixties, although he did fudge a few high notes on “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long,” the second number.  Brigati’s voice was a bit rougher, but he still managed to absolutely crush “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore,” and achieved one of the evening’s standing ovations for a rapturous “How Can I Be Sure.” 

When he and Felix sang together, it was magnificent.  I was pleased to hear some of the more obscure Rascals tunes given prominent placement, including “What Is the Reason,” “Baby Let’s Wait,” “If You Knew” and one of my particular favorites, “Find Somebody,” with Cornish nailing the wacky psychedelic guitar part.  It was particularly audacious to chronicle the early days of the band, illustrating how they came together in the New Jersey and Long Island dance-club scenes by including typical bar-band fare like “Mickey’s Monkey,” “Slow Down” and “Too Many Fish In the Sea” (all of which The Young Rascals recorded on early albums).
 
Van Zandt’s design also included the group’s late-sixties psychedelic leanings and spiritual lyrics, and made a good argument that material like “Heaven” and “Ray of Hope” deserve a wider audience.  (This reminded me of the recent Monkees tour, which gave a place of honor to the edgier songs from “Head” that had been left off previous Monkees setlists.  Reunions are a good time to revise audience expectations.)  By the time Felix (on film) introduced “People Got To Be Free” by talking about what it was like to be a rock band during the political, civil rights and liberation movements of the sixties, we were two hours into the show and I figured another of my late-period favorites “See” was going to be the only significant omission.  But no – after a reprise of “People Got to Be Free” with the house lights up, the band taking their bows and the audience singing along, the encore proved to be a fantastic, swirling version of that neglected tune, with some of Felix’s most heartfelt lyrics: “Things ain’t like they used to be/Love’s the only thing I see.” 
 
When released as one of The Rascals’ last singles in 1969, “See” only managed to get to #27 on the Billboard pop chart.  Maybe its time has come at last.  As I wrote this piece, the Rascals announced they’re taking Once Upon a Dream on the road.
 
Fleetwood Mac regularly break up and re-form for tours, and I caught their latest “reunion” in Anaheim.  I still find them a bit hobbled with Christine McVie retired from the band, but on this trek they’ve adjusted by beefing up the sound with two extra instrumentalists and two background singers, and devising a two-and-a-half-hour set that rocks harder than usual, with Mick Fleetwood extremely aggressive on drums and Lindsey Buckingham turning up the guitar volume. 

They took the opening “Second Hand News” at breakneck speed, and followed it with a blasting version of “The Chain,” with Lindsey’s frantic fingerpicking electric guitar stylings on display.  He was in excellent voice, and was the only band member who participated in every number (Stevie Nicks needs opportunities for wardrobe changes, but the others perhaps just don’t have Lindsey’s stamina).  They did a few brand new songs, but they couldn’t hold up next to the many seventies classics they’ve got available.  The light show and film projections were tip-top.
 
Stevie Nicks’ vocal range has worn down some (she doesn’t even attempt the falsetto effects on “Dreams”) but she was still able to put out the emotional intensity that her fans expect.  “Sisters Of the Moon” made its first appearance in a Fleetwood Mac setlist since 1981, and “Sara,” “Silver Springs” and “Rhiannon” didn’t disappoint.  But it was her performance of “Gold Dust Woman” that really showed what she could do, with a new arrangement that spun out into a quasi-psychedelic coda and mesmerizing slow fade overseen by Fleetwood’s tremendous percussion work.  Lindsey followed it with “I’m So Afraid,” his best performance of the night.  It’s a stupendously dramatic song that just gets better over the years.  And when Lindsey and Stevie duet on “Landslide” Fleetwood Mac fans (like me) still swoon.
         
-- Mark Leviton
 
(Mark’s sixties-themed radio show Pet Sounds can be heard alternate Wednesdays 10pm-Midnight PST on KVMR-FM 89.5 in the Sacramento area and streaming at www.kvmr.org )

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THE PERCEPTION OF DOORS

by Gene Sculatti
 
Why not weigh on in the Doors, since everyone’s doing it after Ray Manzarek’s passing? I have a slightly unorthodox take on them, much like the one I have on the Grateful Dead (earliest, quasi-garage-y stuff is best).
 
First time I saw the Doors (January, ’67, Fillmore Auditorium), I thought they were a joke. I’m a Frisco guy, but I never bought into that town’s notorious provincialism, so that doesn’t explain my perception. Besides, I’d already enjoyed great shows by L.A. acts like Love, Captain Beefheart, Buffalo Springfield, Sons of Adam, etc.
 
No, what soured me on the Doors (and I hadn’t heard their just-released album yet) was that, while the music was spooky good (though not as gothically dark as Quicksilver Messenger Service), their presentation flew starkly in the face of everything that defined the newly emerging ‘rock.’ Which is to say, the anti-pop’ness of it all. What was fresh about all these groups, no matter where they hailed from, was a certain unpretentiousness: go onstage in your street clothes, eschew crowd-pleasing patter, leave the showbiz at the door. Just play.
 
But the Doors…partway into a strong set, the lead singer, already working the mic with crypto-Privilege rock-star technique, fakes a fall, pretends to be hurt. Mister Mojo rises, acts disoriented, belts and croons some tunes. In the audience, I’m thinking, ‘What is this—Euripides? Some choreographed set-piece/stage play?’ Later there’d be the dramatic “The End.” The music was great, the audience seemed to like it (I recall lots of us quizzing each other on our impressions after the show), but what to make of all this artifice?
 
Silly me: I had the same reaction two months later when I heard about the Who and Hendrix performances at Monterey. This seemed like Ed Sullivan Show stuff: flashy theatrics, maybe at the expense of music (though, to be frank, it never prevented either of those two acts from creating some of the best of the era). In time, of course, both the more improvised and studied ‘rock’ approaches came to coexist perfectly, until you get to today’s pop, most of which wears its fakery proudly, seeming to claim rebellious rock-spirit by virtue of its craven unnaturalness.
 
There was plenty to dislike about the Doors (Jimbo’s Lizard King variations and coy, do-you-wanna-see-my-pud? concert teases), but way more to like, even if they did swipe “Touch Me” from the 4 Seasons’ “C’mon Marianne.” Krieger alone was one of the Sixties’ great guitar stylists, and the band (and Jim) at their best cooked, and, owing to Manzarek and Krieger’s gifts and dispositions, always made sure melody had a stage-front spot in their music. Break on through.