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1st Record/1st Concert

The first Rock'n'Roll record I ever bought with my own money was "Little Willy" by The Sweet. I was hooked on that thing, it had the Kasenetz - Katz feel of some of the first non - Beatle R'n'R stuff I remember clearly plus it had a bad ass guitar sound, the intro soundin' like a HOWLIN' wolf. Hearing it every 10 minutes on the radio wasn’t gonna cut it. I think it took three weeks allowance. That's a lot of comic books and Wacky Packages.

I entrusted my older brother to go to the record store after school for me and pick it up, which he did. Then shortly thereafter he comes home with a K-Tel collection which included ....You guessed it. The flipside, "Man From Mecca," warrants a lot of attention too for its Eastern / Psych influenced Hard Rock sound (in 1973 !) and backward guitar parts (again , in '73 !!). When I DJ on "Glam Night" in Chicago, I usually play it back to back with the similarly - minded "Long Way To Go" by The Alice Cooper Group.  
 
The first Rock'n'Roll concert I ever attended was Kiss with Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band and Artful Dodger at The Tarrant County Convention Center in Ft. Worth, Texas , in June or very early July, 1976. The Bicentennial was just days away. I was 11 years old so it was the perfect time for me to see Kiss. All that stuff appealed to me at the time, plus it appealed to my three older brothers, and if I wanted to keep up with them I had to get on the Kiss bandwagon.

Of course later we all realized we'd been duped. If you still think The New York Dolls failed because they weren’t "musically proficient" you need to make it through "Kiss Alive II" or browse the top - selling LPs released before their first severe decline (1979 - 1984). My Dad actually took my brothers, several of  their friends , and I to the show and even popped for the tickets. As I recall , he got a good deal from someone on about 15 seats in the 8th and 9th rows , plus he had never been to a Rock'n'Roll show before and wanted to see for himself what it was like.

My Mom and  Dad were already in their early 20's when Rock'n'Roll took over and at that time R'n'R was considered a teen and preteen thing , unlike today. I don't remember very much about the opener, Power Pop cult faves Artful Dodger , and I wish I could because now I actually like them. I just remember they had a skinny Jagger/Steven Tyler type singer who sang with his back to the audience a lot. They did a pretty credible "Keep A'Knockin'" and basically did what they were supposed to do, hold down the fort until reinforcements came. 

Some of you may be saying , "Bob Seger opened for Kiss?!". Yes. Seger had yet to break big with "Night Moves" , which had just recently come out . He'd already been kicked off a tour with Blue Oyster Cult for blowing them off the stage too many times (He was  still doing  foot - in - ass rockers like "Heavy Music" , "Katmandu" , "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" and "Get out of Denver") and he was about to be kicked off this tour for doing the same. I do remember him alternating between straight-ahead Rockers and schmaltz like "Turn The Page", though Bob Seger was VERY new to me at the time. I'd heard "Night Moves " on the radio once or twice. I could tell he was aiming for a more " Adult" crowd , but I  dug his set . OKAY , so now it's STARTIME. Kiss did what you would have expected them to do, came out in all their post - Glam Rock Marvel Comics finery. Firebreathing, blood spewing, guitar smoking , drum riser rising , explosions , a modified disco ball that looked like the thing in "Phantasm" , shooting lightning bolts and  dropping confetti all over the audience. Yeah , but was the music any good? Well I WAS eleven , I thought it was great. They sounded as good as their records , for what that's worth. They did work their balls off, I'll give 'em that. When Paul Stanley assured us that we were going to have a Rock and Roll PAWTY tonight , he wasn’t kidding.

Meanwhile,  another Nooyawk band (also, as it happens, composed of two Jews and two Goys) was showing an emerging English underground youth movement that pyrotechnics and music classes and top notch gear was not necessary to play Rock 'n'Roll.They would soon take the message home with their newly - released first LP , for those who would listen. They wanted to Rock un Roll aw ni - i - ight, un pawty evuh -ree day too, but on their own terms.
 
Ironically , Kiss would go on to go on to record the best track and about the only decent track on the Johnny Ramone - curated Ramones tribute album.

John Battles currently writes and illustrates for Roctober magazine , and has appeared in three books. He performs , DJs , and sometimes promotes shows , in Chicago.

Another Fein Mess
AF Stone’s Monthly
January 2011
 
Elvisly Yours

To those who don’t “Do the Net” (where is Chubby Checker when we need him?), I stress that the Elvis Birthday Bash this year is January 9 (I am fascinated by people, British mostly, who say jan-yery) instead of the true bday, Jan 8.

This is the second date-dislocated Elvis show. The first one was a disaster. The House Of Blues was newly-opened when we ran our first one there in 1995, and they loved us because the show drew a thousand people on a Sunday night. Five or six years passed and the date fell on a Saturday. “You take January 10th, We can fill the place on Saturdays.” This forced dislocation halved our attendance because while people in our “crowd” knew the haps, regular people who simply liked Elvis or our show didn’t get the message because there was no widespread communications medium to reach them.

Today with the introduction of the Interweb on which typewriters send messages through the air, the information gets to people who don’t live in the area between downtown and Sunset Strip. So thanks to Al Gore and the Grateful Dead for this new channel of communication,

This year’s bash bulges with great music, and big fun is guaranteed. Elvis associate Kathy Westmoreland has said she’ll be there, and other Elvis figures have been invited.

See you January 9th, a day late and the same dollars as last year.

Time Box

Recently I took out an old suitcase (I bought it old) that was not in the suitcase closet and checked to see if anything was in it. There was the large-circular-head toothbrush I bought en route to Cub Koda’s house in July, 1999. I haven’t wondered much, but have wondered, what happened to that odd utensil. (My dentist said a large full toothbrush is stupid, but good for buffing doll shoes.) And there was other stuff. Some books I bought to bring home (mission accomplished!), a couple of CDs, a receipt for something.

Cub Koda was the Dave Edmunds of America. His fundamental joyful rock & roll (and funny projects like King Uszniewicz & the Uszniewicztones, the Michigan bowling alley band from 1962 he created) and his clever, delightful, informative writing in magazines and album notes has, for the most part, gone unheralded. He’s one person who deserves inclusion in the screwy R&R Hall of Fame.

I recall pulling into the driveway of the Koda compound in the woods 60 miles west of Detroit. and him coming out to greet me. We were not close friends but recent ones, and the intimacy of visiting him, I later learned, was a rare privilege. (“You went to his HOUSE?” said the editor of Goldmine.) We hit a couple of thrift and antique stores and talked about old records. After an off-site conversation where Lady J was assured I was OK we had dinner and at some point I went to sleep on the couch. Art Fein, perpetual college student. The following summer when I got a call saying Cub had died, I was despondent that I hadn’t meet him earlier. He was 51.

In retrospect a question dogs me. Cub had 30 pill bottles on the kitchen window sill. He had a bad heart and underwent a couple of surgeries. When I asked about the pill regimen, he said that Andrew Loog Oldham had been advising him on homeopathic (my word) remedies. He said he traveled to Buffalo (memory hazy here) to see him occasionally. Was this parallel to P.F. Sloan’s oft-told story that Elvis came into his room when he was 11 and taught him how to play guitar?

When I asked Andrew about Cub he said “Cub was really ill.” Or maybe something else, my memory can’t be trusted.

The West is Gaining

One of the arty hippie cable tv stations - Sundance? IFC? 1 - is premiering a series about just such people called Portlandia.

What strikes me is the assumption that the city-reference indicates Portland, Oregon. (OR-uh-gun.) A dozen years ago I picked up an issue of American Heritage magazine and noted its cover story: “Portland - It’s on the water, it’s got piers and stuff.” (My recollections - as I said - are not razor-sharp.) When I found the story, it was about Portland, Maine.

Well of course. That mag is published in Washington, DC. Those people know nothing about the West - and I mean west of Pennsylvania. So the coastal tide has turned, a little.

(Full disclosure: Portland, Oregon was named after Portland, Maine. But that was a long time ago.)

1 Is there any better soporific than a panel of young filmmakers discussing filmmaking? It could put the pharmaceutical industry out of business.

Music

On my show in 1995, I asked P.F. Sloan how he happened to play the intro to “California Dreamin’ “ by the Mamas & Papas. “I didn’t” he said. He played the intro for Barry McGuire’s recording of the song, and then the backing track was used for the Mamas & Papas version ... “Bobby Darin Sings Ray Charles” is a pretty great album. Darlene Love, who was among the backup singers on it, seconds that notion, or I suppose firsts it ... QUIZ QUESTION: What do the Platters and the Miracles have in common?... R&R H of Fame voters should be working musicians. People who only write about it are freighted with prejudice handed down by elders Marsh, etc. Squabbles about who is “right” are embarrassing and expose the chasm between doers and doodlers. Ask Robert Plant whether Freddy Cannon deserves to be in it, not a rock crit. Ask a plucker not a pecker (of typewriter keys) ... I said to Dave Gold of Gold Star that there was no proof that Phil Spector ever fired a gun at all, except for a report that he shot one in the air at a Lennon session and another time at a Ramones session. “He never fired a gun at Gold Star” Dave said. “That’s ridiculous.” Dave would not have tolerated any gun shots in the studio he built. Phil knew this. So why did so many historians take the word of Dee Dee Ramone? ... I often give visitors a tour of my immediate Hollywood area, and that includes Hollywood Forever (I’ll say!), the longtime cemetery on Santa Monica Blvd. But I don’t know as much as I should. After pointing out (it’s hard to miss) the Johnny Ramone statue near the mausoleum (on whose walls movies are projected on Saturday nights in the summer) for the tenth time, I decided to look up whether he is in fact buried there. Nope, the statue is a monument, his ashes are with his widow. But Dee Dee is buried there, in another section of the cemetery ... I look at rock & roll photo books to see the predictability. All photographers with a telephoto lens took the same pictures of snarling rockers or posing rock idols. It’s not like those people were hiding, and concert-lighting made it easy to shoot. A pic of Johnny Rotten calmly puffing a Kaywoodie would be remarkable, not one of him scowling ... QUIZ ANSWER: Both had vocally invisible female members, though the Platters’ Zola Taylor took the lead on some flipsides and album cuts. (Her - their - version of ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ is the definitive one for me.)

The Gateway Drug

I didn’t buy a record til “The Ballad Of Davy Crockett” by Bill Hayes. I wore out that 78. I was terrifically moved by the inspiring lyrics and music.

In this century I loaded it from The Best Of Cadence Records, but didn’t listen to it, knowing someday it would surface on the Magic 8-Ball I call my iPod.

When it played recently I reared back. It was at a quicker pace than I recalled. And Bill Hayes didn’t have that great a voice. But the sentimental tone and especially the slowdowns for dramatic emphasis struck me as manipulative and jingoistic, even if it was about our gallant and justified seizure of the southwest . (It is still plagued by foreign invaders! Davy, where ye be?)

But most jarring was the line “When he lost his love, his grief was gall.” Unlike then, I looked up gall. I’ve been told I have a lot of it many times - was it something really terrible? My Webster’s Dictionary published five years after the song said gall was “very bitter or severe.” But it’s a noun! The verb is to rub, irritate or chafe. I think that’s what people were saying about me, but what was Bill talking about? I looked up Gaul, but that just said Frenchman.

I could check the original sheet music. I bought it for a buck 10 years ago. It’s around here somewhere.

Lyrics I recently learned

Summer In the City - He DOES say “Wheezing like a bus stop.” Sounded as crazy then as now. I thought he said “thin town,” but it’s “been down.” Also, “DEE-spite the heat it’ll be alright” was a blur to me - “bee bop da bee.’

Your Song - I’m not one of those who gets easily high’ is what I believed for nearly 40 years. It’s “who can easily hide.”

Linda Ronstadt’s 1995 version of Neil Young’s “After The Gold Rush” changes “the 1970’s” to “the 20th century,” clumsy but understandable, but “felt like getting high” changed to “felt like I would cry”? Phooey.

I go to the store

I bought a Genie garage-door opener at a garage sale. The installers charge $40, this one cost $3. I found instructions online and all I did was press a button on the garage door light fixture, watched it flash then pressed the beeper three times and I was in business ... Now I need a car to go with the beeper. I learned that I am not alone, and 1986 though 1994 SAAB convertibles are much desired and sell for $5000, no matter what Kelley and his blue book says. But the insurance company gave me $2300 for my wrecked one. Replacement value, Ha! It was the only car I ever had that I liked ... I have a windup clock from the 1920s that displays the senseless word “Radio” with rays emanating from it. Radio was new, so the manufacturer was drafting on its panache. In the 90s I saw a tripod at Target that said “Digital,” same logic. Now I saw a clip-on phone holder in a package bannered “Wi-FI” ... When Alice Cooper first emerged, a Chicago newspaper columnist offered “There have always been men in dresses with black smudged eye makeup swinging chickens, but there was never a big audience for them til now.” I thought about that a few years ago when I took my daughter repeatedly to Hot Topic, the Goth chain store. Years earlier being elaborately tattooed and having lip rings and whacked-off hair was a hindrance to employment, but it was just a look waiting to be commodified ... On a 1992 Seinfeld, Postum is mentioned and the comment is made that it is a severely underappreciated beverage. I’ll say. Since its demise in December, 2007 I have been nursing the two jars we bought in December 2008 for $40 each, and now they’re nearly gone. So if you go to an estate sale ask if you can look in the kitchen cabinet. It was primarily consumed by old people. Grab me some, will ya?

Things I’m Seeing On My Old Shows

Early digital watches came with ‘alert’ beeps that sounded, not in synch (time wasn’t set by satellite, but by hand), on the hour. They were a menace that made moviegoing an anxious and angry experience. They somehow subsided, unlike the car alarms that still plague us. I “gave” a person of the year award to an actress in North Hollywood who blasted a car with a shotgun after too many nights of its alarm blaring. She went a little too far when she shot into the neighbor’s house, but only a little.

Tigress Beat

Musician Liz Phair, not known for her journalism, was offered the job of reviewing the Keith Richards bio for the NY Times. She wanted it in the worst way. Her 11-14 Book Review piece was so toadying, so worshipful, so giddy I checked back numerous times to see if it was a parody - teenage fan magazine ideology in Rolling Stone (magazine) clothing.

Was Keith Richards a mortal man? You’d never know it from Liz’s rhapsodizing. Her ongoing theme is that he lived a life that we proles will never approach. Early in a graph she notes his devotion to the plight of the underdog, then recounts in full fealty that when a man took a scallion from Keith’s plate he chased him with a saber. Because he’s Keith, “a global avatar of wish fulfillment.” If “This cat put the joie in joie de vivre” it’s because he’s “done more, been more and seen more than you or I will ever dream of.” This sort of thing goes for two full (tab-size) pages.

She uses “bad boy” only twice. As I pore over it again, I still wonder if it is a parody of hero-worship.

“The archetype of the rock & roll antihero is, by now, a familiar image. What is shocking is to remember that Keith himself invented it.”

Link Wray, you never existed.

Movies

In While The City Sleeps (1956), Ida Lupino tells George Sanders that a man in the office might know a secret and Sanders replies “What should I do? Sleep with him?” Words change. Also, Dana Andrews in a hotel room with his bride-to-be pulls out a nightie and says “Alright! You can see right through it.” Must have been one of them communist writers... Watching that film on TCM was like watching a movie while someone punches the “Next” button on a dvd player, or a Videodisc player with a bad needle. Breaks in satellite transmission mean you miss big chunks of dialogue, but as long as it doesn’t disturb big chunks of income the cable company doesn’t care ... Mel Gibson said bad things about Jews and yelled at his girlfriend. “Is his career over?” writes a newspaper columnist. He isn’t Fatty Arbuckle, we aren’t living in that era ... In the Albert Brooks mock-documentary “Real Life,” he says the futuristic video helmet equipment “has no film. All picture and sound information is recorded digitally on these integrated circuit chips, some no larger than a child’s fingernail.” In 1977 ... In “His Kind Of Woman” a man names glamorous sites - “Europe, Rome, San Moritz, Paris” and Robt Mitchum 2 shoots back “Los Angeles - Pomona, LA, Glendale, Van Nuys” 3...

2 I know it’s incredible, but in the shot where Mitchum and Vincent Price are head to head behind a rock looking for the bad guys, Price looks positively gay!

3 They may have known LA, but not Chicago. One character says someone was found in Cicero - good local reference - but another on “the east eide.” There is no east side; only in Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died.” Then again, they were talking about a corpse, so maybe it was a morbid joke, the east side being Lake Michigan.

Movie News News

* Patty Goldstein opened his LATimes12-15 column assailing the Golden Globe nominations with this cryptic putdown: “Let me just say two words: Pia Zadora.”

Overlooking as you must the misplaced modifier (as written it means either he could also have sung it or sky-written it or these were his last words), I divine in the ancient name-drop that Pia Zadora, the muscular-voiced 70’s singing semi-sensation whose career was floated by her millionaire husband, was a favorite of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

In la dia Pia I knew people who scoffed at the HFPA as a claque of ... foreigners. (They couldn’t read the foreign journalists’ writings, but being scoffers, they scoffed.) Today thanks to a need for a televised award shows every 3 months the Golden Globes are on par with the rest.

Patgo wrote that two of the GoGlo choices “were movies that critics everywhere have mocked for (how shall we say it?) 4 their singular lack of filmmaking artistry.” Well, if everyone else says it ... it must be true!

In that day’s cloying, even horrifying headline, “Ronni Chasen Is Present,”5 the Times staff genuflected to the memory of someone who plied them with gifts, gossip, favors and flattery to print her press releases. On 12-14, Patgo did a think-piece on the investigation citing another publicist 6 , “showbiz insiders,” “people” and that pesky authority who seems to be everywhere, “one blogger.”

4 Why all the asides? Does another person live in his head?

5 In the 12-9 NYTimes, slimwit Jennifer Medina wrote “For weeks now, Ms. Chasen’s murder has captivated this celebrity-obsessed city.” Only if you read the LA Times, Jenn.

6 Shouldn’t he do a “full disclosure” about how paid pipers influence writers?

Words

I like hyphens and may use them wrongly. And I compound words that may need hyphens. So many times I’m wrong-as-rain ... The crusade to make all nouns verbs has taken a funny turn. On one hand people are efforting and referencing and accomplishmenting (made that one up) and on another people are using hyphens to make verbs nouns - “Drop-off” or “Trade-in.” Yet when your drycleaner sign says “Drop-off your clothes here” they are violating two rules or maybe none - it could be an inadvertent (they inadvertented a) double negative. This tireds me ... Watching a 1918 short with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (not a team), some lines stood out. The butler is swatting a flying insect, and the dialogue card says he’s “having a fly time.” Fly as cool, way back then. When Hardy shows a stick of dynamite it’s called a “little Bolsheviki.” And something is called “as bad as the phone service” ... In the surge to add syllables to sound smarter people sign on and off things. “The president signed off on the bill.” Two extra words = more important. If a ball player signs ON with a team, it’s more important than if he simply signs with them. And why does anyone ‘weigh in’ on anything? It sounds like everyone is fat, voting with bulk ... I recently said there was a sharp increase in something, and it struck me that a modern copy editor would change it to “spike” or “uptick” to make it groovy and sheeplike ...

These Are the Times Of L.A.

Dec 18, Kim Willisher “Reporting from Paris,” reports (from reading Paris newspapers) that a billionaire is hosting an expensive party. Willisher dug deep to get a person afraid to give their name to say “Six million dollars for a party ... it’s obscene.” A friendly LATimes editor must want to help Kim pay for her vacation ... Ashley Powers AND Rich Rojas, embedded Las Vegas reporters (just two?), wrote 12-16 of a robbery at the Bellagio “The heist was as brief as the spin of a roulette wheel, as dramatic as a Hollywood caper.” Oh, golly. “Opulent,” “luminous,” “hype,” “dazzle,” “ Sin City,” “Tinseltown” and “spin” spilled forth like coins from a misfiring slot machine ... Dawn Chmielewski and Steven Zeitchik 12-7-10: “The release of new Christmas movies has long been as much of a tradition as the annual late night showing of “It’s A Wonderful Life” and shoppers stampeding stores on Black Friday.” That would be about 30 years for the former, less than five for the latter ... Give up! Nicole Santa Cruz 12-9 carries on the embarrassing Times tradition of mentioning car brands that titillate. That a Porsche hit a Ferrari is not exactly surprising in Newport Beach ... Hed on pic of guy convicted of murder in 1996: “Infamous Incident.” No, sordid. Infamous is earth-changing, history-making .... Dec 10 Matt Donnelly writes a large piece on “Power Tables,” where important people eat. Save it for Michael Musto ...

New York, New YAWK - Here!

Jonathan Gold leads off a restaurant story in the 11-25 LAWeekly reassuring us he’s qualified (“When I was New York restaurant critic for Gourmet”) and then names eateries there with geographic keys - the Flatiron District, “uptown,” Sheridan Square. Must we go to Google Maps to read the L.A. Weekly? ... Dec 4, the death of Elaine Kaufman, “beloved by N.Y. elites,” got a half page. Have you wondered who she was and why her boite got all the coverage? The LATimes will tell ya. “Our” Geraldine Baum earns her salary detailing Kaufman’s accent, history, friends ad nauseum. No one in L.A. compares with Elaine, that we’re told... Dec 8, a FULL PAGE WITH PIC of NY’s mayor who, it says, was booed for his choice of chancellor for the NY city school system. THIS IS AN OUTRAGEOUS WASTE OF PRECIOUS NEWS SPACE .... Rock This Town: A12-13 blind item bannered “Bloomberg denies bid for president” caught the eye of entrenched L.A. Times Manhattan reporter Geraldine “Da” Baum who jumped on this important-to-L.A. news with a half-page followup on 12-18. The LATimes tells us not only what goes on in NY, but also what doesn’t ... A thing about Jackson Pollack said “his career didn’t take off until he knew how to work the NY art scene.” News? That’s how its done ... Christmas Day they squeezed in breaking news that “this year - like every year - The Encyclopedia of New York City” has been updated. In the entertainment section because many days there is no entertainment news in L.A. ...12-27, a quick note of importance to us, that NY’s governor was fined for - oh, who the hell cares? Same day, an article about post-Xmas sales in LA is illustrated with a picture of shoppers in Times Square. In case you thought this was an L.A. paper ... hed on Dec 30 AP story: “A political storm for Christie, Bloomberg.” I thought, “Christie Bloomberg? His wife?” Then I noticed the comma - oh, the governor of New Jersey. You know, Christie. It says that New Yorkers are griping about snow removal there. NYers griping? Hold the front page! And doesn’t the snow fall on the whole east coast, not just NYC? ... Same day, the business section announced, big hed, front page, that NY is “hip” again for internet companies. We missed the news that NY was, til now, a backward unhip place. We probably need more reporters there.

Maybe It Was A Documentary

In Family Jools, a star-studded Hollywood short from the early 30s, police captain Wallace Beery takes calls. “Jewels stolen? Forget it. Los Angeles is on fire? Alright, I’ll send a man out. SOMEONE PARKED ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STREET? I’ll send a dozen men!”

How the Creep Didn’t Steal Christmas

The pkg lot of the post office on Vermont Street here is not a maze but maze like. To enter from the north you turn right down a slim channel that would be a tunnel if it had a top. Then go left and left again and enter the parking lot from the rear. Cars all face east, on a slant.

A gal friend went there at the height of the Xmas season and drove through the lot til she stopped just behind the last space, closest to the main door, where a car was backing out. She waited, and when the space was clear a car entered wrong-way from the street and did a 60 degree turn into the space. She cried out and honked her car’s horn. The guy waved her off like brushing off a fly.

She was furious. She parked across the street in front of an Italian restaurant, and saw two policeman walk in. She went in too. She told them what had happened. They looked at her sympathetically but said ‘What can we do about it?” So she started crying.

They went with her across the street. She pointed to the guy in line. One cop went up to him and pointed to the door. The guy walked out and drove away.

People in line cheered.

- 57 -

Mark On The Move

I didn't know much about Nevada City when I moved there five years ago, but soon discovered that there is a very large community of musicians among the town's 3,000 inhabitants. Most play folk and jazz, but there’s rap, flamenco, avant-garde classical and more. There are showcases at bars, restaurants and nightclubs and music at street fairs and community and church events. Some of the music makers are full-time professionals while many excellent players and singers spend most of their time as graphic artists, or mailmen, or accountants.

On Dec. 18th "A Night Of Giving" was held on two stages in the historic Miners Foundry (built in 1855 as an ironworks and blacksmith shop, and now a cultural center). Proceeds went to the Nevada City/Grass Valley Hospitality House homeless shelter. Music ran from 4pm to midnight, and the suggested donation of $20 was a good deed and a good deal to see 30 local performers I'd enjoyed before or hadn't seen. With 20-minute sets, nobody overstayed their welcome and many left us wanting more. Some highlights:

The Stardust Cowboys* are a solid Western Swing band with mostly original material, fronted by the Rose Maddox-like Vicki Campbell and her smooth-crooning husband Gary, with fiddler Olen Dillingham sitting in. (Bands here draw from a deep pool of musicians.)

Dan Scanlan heads up Cool Hand Uke And the Enablers doing vaudeville numbers, often duetting with a percussionist whose vocal zeal almost overcame her limitations. Scanlan must be sui generis, writing political songs about government corruption, single-payer health care and other current topics, but playing them like it's 1928. Both he & his lady friend were also part of The Strum Bums who played later, a uke-and-banjo gaggle that does most of their gigs in retirement and convalescent homes and may draw members from there, too. The group website says they are comprised of from 10-40 members. They are amateurs who rehearse Thursdays at Mason's Lodge in Grass Valley and you’re welcome to stop by and pick or just grin.

Paul Kamm and Eleanor MacDonald are a much-admired local duo. He sounds not unlike Jackson Browne, she like Bonnie Raitt, and they harmonize wonderfully on mostly original material in the vein of Buddy & Judy Miller or Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Their several albums have made them stars locally, and they deserve wider acclaim. Likewise for Lorraine Gervais, a terrific jazz & blues singer with a crack band who can handle material associated with Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday or Aretha Franklin with equal expertise. She drew from the "tribute to James Taylor and Carole King" she's been performing recently, including "It's Too Late" and "Natural Woman" with Eleanor MacDonald guesting.

I also caught Bodie Wagner, a wry folksinger who sports the local fashion of long pony-tail, cowboy hat and prospector mustache. His lyrics are perfectly sculpted and his catch-in-the-throat voice suits his yearning melodies. Like many Nevada City singers he was a running buddy of the late Utah Phillips, who still exerts a strong influence in town -- many performers sang his songs this night or dedicated theirs to him.

The night’s true capper was composer Terry Riley playing a grand piano in the smaller Stone Hall. I'd first seen Riley at Pasadena's Cal Tech in the early ‘70s when he was already a counterculture star based on compositions like "In C" and "Rainbow in Curved Air." Then, he played the electronic organ for several hours straight to an audience in the throes of stonedom. These days he's widely revered and plays in symphony venues (his recent recital at Disney Concert Hall was received with rapture) and seeing him only a few feet away do twenty minutes for about 40 people was just about as good as it gets. He did three pieces, great rolling almost psychedelic repetitive lines in his left hand and jazz-like punctuation in his right. His playing was part meditation, part improvisational freakout, and when he chanted in an unknown-to-me dialect during one piece, I could hear the snaking vocal traditions of the Middle East and India which he studied in the sixties. He smiled beatifically when it was over, and so did I.

* They bear no resemblance to The Legendary Stardust Cowboy Norm "Paralyzed" Odam.


-- 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 )