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Fein Mess Jan 2000
Rock & Roll Hall of WHAT?
I like James Taylor. The first couple of albums, anyways. But that he is in the R&R Hall of Fame while Ritchie Valens is NOT is an outrage, an absurdity, a crime against REASON.
And they just this year got around to honoring backup musicians. The year 2000 and the Great Hall DEIGNS to salute them? WHAT THE HELL HAVE THEY BEEN DOING FOR FOURTEEN YEARS THAT THEY JUST GOT AROUND TO THIS? Players such as "Teenage" Steve Douglas, Lee Allen, Ray Pohlman, (insert the name of your favorite dead sideman here) have shuffled off this mortal coil while waiting for the slight honorarium that these pinheads have SO BELATEDLY bestowed.
It's enough to make you sick. Rock & roll is fun and loose and easy to understand. The Great Hall is just another corporation like General Mills.
NEW YEARS EVE NIGHT, 1985
What was the greatest rock & roll show you ever saw?*
It'd be hard for me to pin down one, as several come to mind:
- Jerry Lee Lewis, Chicago Opera House, December, 1957. The Killer ripped off one purple satin shirt to reveal a white one beneath. What was the point of this? I didn't know, still don't, but he was the Pied Piper, and we kids were listenin'. We flocked to the front to get closer to him, and Thanked God for delivering him.
- Bobby Blue Bland, anytime.
- Clifton Chenier and His Red Hot Louisiana Band, at Verbum Dei High School in Inglewood, California, 1977. This was the smokingest ROCK & ROLL BAND ever. The joy, the jubilation this guy released was without equal. It was like being transported to heaven.
- Bruce Springsteen at the Troubadour, 2 a.m. in 1973. It was something new, rock & roll mixed with theater. Clarence Clemons in the yellow suit representing the ghost of rock & roll's past, the skinny white kid running around the stage trying to catch some of that star dust. A two hours, mind-boggling, eye-opening performance.
But the capper would have to be Darlene Love singing at a New Years party my friends and I held to ring in 1985. It was our fourth party, dedicated to presenting music by great people who weren't recognized enough. Over the six shows we hired, often at great expense, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Roy Brown, Bull Moose Jackson, Joe King Carrasco, Jo-El Sonnier, the Blasters, the Beat Farmers, Swamp Dogg, and many others. We charged our friends $15 a head (it was a private party) and by the end we were luring 500 select people to this one-of-a-kind event.
That year, we rented the entire Starwood, the old PJ's (as in "Trini Lopez Live At...."), where the Bobby Fuller Four was once the house band, which was in the process of being closed. We got hold of Darlene Love, who was singing backgrounds for touring acts, and was also singing over her records in gay baths. All us guys -- Bob Merlis, Gene Sculatti, Bill Liebowitz, Dick Blackburn, and Swamp Dogg and me -- were of course in awe of Darlene, and thrilled out of our minds to 'get' her. Todd Everett, with the help of veteran musician Billy Cioffi, assembled a Wall of Sound band for the evening who worked for free just for the thrill of backing her. What they created was the first, and probably only-ever, approximation of the Spector sound onstage. It wasn't the same, but it was bone-chillingly magnificent. Three girl backup singers, the regular bass, drum, sax, guitar, a brilliant rolling piano, and someone's master stroke, two full drum sets.
When she walked out to the thunderous drums of Da Doo Ron Ron, the place stopped dead. Nobody had ever heard such an avalanche of sound. It was just a prelude. When she opened her mouth, her voice provided the last brick in the Wall of Sound.
It was an earthquake of joy. From that moment, for a half hour, 400 people were locked in rapture. As song after song poured out of her, hidden, unknown feelings were bared.
It wasn't a concert, it was a visitation.
For the climax, and I do mean climax, she announced that she would do a song she hadn't sung for more than twenty years, and we all braced for what we had dreamed of hearing it seemed all our lives. The piano and bass and chime opening came, the girl chorus kicked in with "Christ MAS", and then she launched into it, "Christmas, Baby Please Come Home," the masterpiece from the greatest album ever made, A Christmas Gift To You From Phil Spector.
My god, it was like the room had been levitated. There was nothing to do but cry as the flood of feeling washed over us. Perfectly arranged, perfectly sung (I can say for certain she's never equalled it), it led to the most perfect record-simulation and, dare I say, enhancement, ever heard.
I only wish the whole world could have been there (I have it on tape). Afterwards we were drained of all sensation. Paul Body came up to me and said "What are you gonna do next year -- dig up Elvis? How are you gonna top THIS."
Of course, we never did.
A-ha!
There'll be no rock-crit dishing in this ish, but some soul-wrangling over the oh-so-important matter of writing.
I am heartsick/saddened/hardened about the way rock-writing has turned out. Mean-spirited little shits and shitesses pound away at agreed-upon bad musicians (Hootie & the Blowfish, Dave Matthews, whoever) and it's so damnably unkind and pissy that -- well, you really do hope they rot in hell. But I said I wasn't going to talk about them.
Recently I read, and hated, a book about one of my favorite subjects, Elvis Presley. (I won't name it, and since a book on Elvis comes out every week nobody'll know.) In this one, the author or authors claim to document "all" the major events of Elvis's life, with the blessing of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
It contains many, many previously-unseen photos, and that's nothing to complain about.** But it is loaded with half-facts, and random "illuminations" about things the authors happen to know. When facts are missing, they claim not their own failings: instead of " We could not find out whether he actually played this date," they say, "IT IS NOT KNOWN whether he played this date." The nerve. Big words are inserted gratuitously, and misused. Throughout this casually-edited book, among the facts and true illuminations, junk facts and inconsistencies shout out from nearly every page.
What's my philosophical quandary? From my previously-stated point of view, the book should be 'reviewed' positively, with its good points - there are many - stressed. Certainly those are the type of reviews it's been getting. I think I still believe that. The book's got a lot of info, and it will satisfy the casual reader and many fans.
The only place for someone like me to rage about its frail framework is in a specialists journal, like this one.
The Spirit Of Rock & Roll
Rock & roll's death has been reported many times: 1959, 1967, and 1981 (the debut year of MTV) are a few common dates.
I agree with them all.
But it don't matter when, it just matters that it's dead. The verve, the spontanaiety, the joy of it has been missing for a heck of a long time. What we're left with is -- well, whatever you call it, and it has its moments. It just ain't rock & roll.
Only one man has it. Like Ishi, the California Indian who kept his tribal ways while living alone in the hills outside Sacramento California in the early 1900s, Hasil Adkins -- "The Haze" (though I'm told the right pronunciation is has-il) -- is a West Virginia rock & roll pioneer rounding the age of 60 who has kept the unchecked first-blush fever of rock & roll alive in a seeming bubble since his first shack-made recordings in the late 50s.
He in fact, is something of a loon, which helps him stay pure. His foot-stomping one-man-band show is a display of energy and virtuosity unlike anything in this world. In a voice reminiscent of Jerry Lee Lewis, he stomps through a set of mostly originals that send shivers up your spine.
HASIL ADKINS IS THE ONLY TRUE ROCK & ROLLER ON THE PLANET.
You're not likely to see him, though he tours now and then. In 1998 I saw him at Rhino Records store in Santa Monica, his first L.A. appearance . His song, "She Said," was covered by the Cramps on an early album. Other songs like the one about nailing someone's head to the wall have kept him from getting a lot of airplay.
I'm not telling this to torture you: his records are available from Norton Records in New York. (Brooklyn.) Unlike, say, 100%*** of 50s rockers who still make records, Adkins' current output is as excellent and audacious as his 50s stuff. Time means nothing to Hasil.
And a half-hour movie about him, The Wild World Of Hasil Adkins, is available from Norton Records. (And I don't recommend it solely because I'm in it for 30 seconds.)
He shouldn't be IN the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame --
The place should be named after him.
(*) This brings to mind a book that came out 25 years ago from the geniuses at Rolling Stone, "The Greatest Rock & Roll Shows." A bunch of writers got together and wrote about the best shows they'd seen, and named "The best rock & roll show of all time." This figures: the magazine started in San Francisco. People in San Francisco think the world revolves around them. An ice cream brand from there claims it is "Voted the World's Best Ice Cream" because a poll was taken of Friscans. On that same note, guided by Frisco thinking, the assembled writers figured, "We are the greatest rock-reviewers in the world, so the best show WE saw is the best show ANYONE saw." Stunning.
(**) But here's something that is. It shares a mindlessness with other books, the caption-that-describes-the-photo. What on earth is the slug "Elvis with cigar" for? I know there are people who cannot read but can see pictures, but are there people who can read but can't see photos! Also the seeming-information slug. The person shown is in his 20s. The slug reads, "A very young XXXX." Did we think the person was in his 80s? Happens everywhere, not just here....
(***) One exception is the new Dale Hawkins album, Wildcat Tamer. It is as good as anything he's ever done.
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