Podcast appearances and mentions of rock and rollers

Get down with lawyers who rock, and some rock that led to lawsuits. Litigators Andrés Correa and Chris Patton of the Dallas firm Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann LLP are both rock and rollers and accomplished litigators. Hear how they make time for their passion for music, but also how the outlet releases stress and opens paths to creative thinking and strategies they've applied to their legal career and legal cases. Their passion for music inspired them to cowrite the Litigation Journal article “Rock Around the Court: How Copyright Litigation Reflects the Muddy Origins of Rock ‘n' Roll” that explores the legal issues surrounding music and creativity. As those who came before influence styles later on, music copyright claims have led to legal cases that shape the world of music and art. Lawsuits continue to this day. What's “inspiration” and what's copyright infringement? From Elvis to Led Zepplin to today. Now, imagine where the brave new world of AI is going to take us.  Resources: “Rock Around the Court: How Copyright Litigation Reflects the Muddy Origins of Rock ‘n' Roll,” by Chris Patton and Andrés Correa, Litigation Journal “Jimmy Page, Sony Pictures Sued by Songwriter Over Led Zeppelin Song,” Reuters “Led Zeppelin Emerges Victor in 'Stairway to Heaven' Plagiarism Case,” Reuters “George Harrison's “My Sweet Lord” Copyright Case,” Performing Songwriter “Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams to Pay $5 Million to Marvin Gaye Estate for 'Blurred Lines'” NBC News “Reggaeton Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Targeting Over 100 of the Genre's Biggest Acts to Move Forward,” Variety American Bar Association American Bar Association Litigation Section Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dave barely holds it together while he tells you how these rock and rollers saved the plight of the Native Americans.

This is an Encore Presentation of my January 2023 interview with iconic rocker Suzi Quatro. She blazed a path as one of the first and one of the best female rock and rollers. She's a singer, songwriter and bassist. She's sold over 50 million records. And she's equally famous for portraying the part of Leather Tuscadero in the hit sitcom “Happy Days”. Plus she's an author and has an honorary doctorate in music. My featured song is “Get Out!”. Spotify link here.---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.—----------------------------------------Connect with Suziwww.suziquatro.com—----------------------------------------ROBERT'S RECENT SINGLES:“ROUGH RIDER” is Robert's latest single. It's got a Cool, ‘60s, “Spaghetti Western”, Guitar-driven, Tremolo sounding, Ventures/Link Wray kind of vibe!CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS—--------------------------------“LOVELY GIRLIE” is a fun, Old School, rock/pop tune with 3-part harmony. It's been called “Supremely excellent!”, “Another Homerun for Robert!”, and “Love that Lovely Girlie!”Click HERE for All Links—----------------------------------“THE RICH ONES ALL STARS” is Robert's single featuring the following 8 World Class musicians: Billy Cobham (Drums), Randy Brecker (Flugelhorn), John Helliwell (Sax), Pat Coil (Piano), Peter Tiehuis (Guitar), Antonio Farao (Keys), Elliott Randall (Guitar) and David Amram (Pennywhistle).Click HERE for the Official VideoClick HERE for All Links—----------------------------------------“SOSTICE” is Robert's single with a rockin' Old School vibe. Called “Stunning!”, “A Gem!”, “Magnificent!” and “5 Stars!”.Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------“THE GIFT” is Robert's ballad arranged by Grammy winning arranger Michael Abene and turned into a horn-driven Samba. Praised by David Amram, John Helliwell, Joe La Barbera, Tony Carey, Fay Claassen, Antonio Farao, Danny Gottlieb and Leslie Mandoki.Click HERE for all links.—-------------------------------------“LOU'S BLUES”. Robert's Jazz Fusion “Tone Poem”. Called “Fantastic! Great playing and production!” (Mark Egan - Pat Metheny Group/Elements) and “Digging it!” (Peter Erskine - Weather Report)!Click HERE for all links.—----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com

In this episode, Danny is joined by Chris Spedding, one of the most versatile and well-respected guitarists in the world. As a singer, he had a hit in 1975 with Motorbikin´, produced the Sex Pistols" first recordings and opened for the Rolling Stones in the 1969 Hyde Park concert. Chris has worked with pretty much everyone in music. And most impressively of all, was the Womble with the Flying V. He and Danny discuss his remarkable musical journey from violinist to guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer. Chris´ career has spanned many genres of music including Skiffle, Country & Western, Jazz, punk, rock & roll and the CBGB scene; a career that included headlining the 100 Club Punk Festival and playing with Joan Armatrading, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, Katie Melua and many more. If you can´t get enough of these podcasts, head to https://www.patreon.com/DannyHurst to access my exclusive, member-only, fun-filled and fact-packed history-related videos. KEY TAKEAWAYS Chris grew up in Sheffield and arrived in London in 1961, living in Pimlico, Islington, Canonbury, Baker Street and Wimbledon. He moved to LA in the 70s and New York in the 90s. Chris came back to the UK in part because he was working mainly for Bryan Ferry. From the 1950s Denmark St became home to some of the world´s biggest modern music publishers. In the 70s it was the place to go to buy instruments. The Rolling Stones recorded their first album on Denmark St. Chris started his career playing country music on US Air Force bases, in the UK. BEST MOMENTS “At the time, it was much sexier to have a guitar than a violin .” “Having played with some orchestral members, they're just as bad as the rock and rollers.” “That was quite depressing seeing so many of the old music shops empty.” “I was in New York, interesting times.” “I used to love Amy Winehouse.” EPISODE RESOURCES http://www.chrisspedding.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Spedding Motorbikin´- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Juz4W9yEYA Toc H - https://tochcentenary.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/the-headquarter-buildings-of-toc-h HOST BIO Historian, performer, and mentor Danny Hurst has been engaging audiences for many years, whether as a lecturer, stand-up comic or intervention teacher with young offenders and excluded secondary students. Having worked with some of the most difficult people in the UK, he is a natural storyteller and entertainer, whilst purveying the most fascinating information that you didn't know you didn't know. A writer and host of pub quizzes across London, he has travelled extensively and speaks several languages. He has been a consultant for exhibitions at the Imperial War Museum and Natural History Museum in London as well as presenting accelerated learning seminars across the UK. With a wide range of knowledge ranging from motor mechanics to opera to breeding carnivorous plants, he believes learning is the most effective when it's fun. Uniquely delivered, this is history without the boring bits, told the way only Danny Hurst can. CONTACT AND SOCIALS https://instagram.com/dannyjhurstfacebook.com/danny.hurst.9638 https://twitter.com/dannyhurst https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-hurst-19574720

Episode 250. They said we'd never make it.Our last live show for the year with classic sky grubbery from a few Rock and Rollers.A huge thanks to the Patrons for keeping the lights on at MFBHQ. Merry Kwismas from the MFB crew. Here's to a great 2025 because you know air biffs will keep flying in!-----------------------------------Heggie's 2025 show Yuck now on sale! -----------------------------------Heggie is now a comedian (ding), father (ding), ABC panel show guest (ding), AND NOW AN AUTHOR (MORRREEEEE CHILLI)Get his book, IF YOU MUST KNOW, by clicking here-----------------------------------Heggie dropped a THIRD YouTube special, LOWBREED, but still left the comments closed like a coward. Watch it here.Cody's new stand-up special "LIVE AT THE CORNER HOTEL" is OUT NOW on YouTubeHave a squizz and leave comments before he takes Heggie's cowardly route and turns off the comments.HEGGIE JUST RELEASED ANOTHER STAND-UP SPECIAL "TIPRAT" ON YOUTUBE FOR FREE! WATCH IT HERE.Heggie has a stand-up special out on YouTube "HAVE THAT" and his stand-up special, "LUKE HEGGIE - I ALREADY TOLD YOU" is out now on Paramount+-----------------------------------PATREON.COM/MIDFLIGHTBRAWL to avoid the harsh insults of our lovely Patreon members and to get your own in next time.NEW ONLINE STORE AND NEW MERCH AVAILABLE!LIMITED EDITION 'ST. JAYDEN'S COLLEGE' GREYHOUND POLO'S OUT NOW! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are few rock and rollers in the last 40 years more synonymous with the piano than Elton John and Billy Joel. These iconic singer songwriters have sold over 450 million albums, had 90 top 40 hits between the two of them, and played tons of shows together during their Face to Face tours from 1994 to 2010.  While they are both known for their piano playing, each of them have their own signature styles. Billy Joel is known for writing biographical songs and incorporating pop and doo wop in his music. Elton John is a legendary showman who is just as known for his flashy outfits as his music.  In this episode of Prisoners of Rock and Roll, it's the Piano Man versus the Rocket Man. Let's hit it. Episode Playlists Check out all of the songs we discussed in this week's episode here. Get In Touch Check us out online, on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. or drops us an email at show@prisonersofrockandroll.com. Or if you're in Philadelphia, come visit our home base at McCusker's Tavern. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are few rock and rollers in the last 40 years more synonymous with the piano than Elton John and Billy Joel. These iconic singer songwriters have sold over 450 million albums, had 90 top 40 hits between the two of them, and played tons of shows together during their Face to Face tours from 1994 to 2010.  While they are both known for their piano playing, each of them have their own signature styles. Billy Joel is known for writing biographical songs and incorporating pop and doo wop in his music. Elton John is a legendary showman who is just as known for his flashy outfits as his music.  In this episode of Prisoners of Rock and Roll, it's the Piano Man versus the Rocket Man. Let's hit it. Episode Playlists Check out all of the songs we discussed in this week's episode here. Get In Touch Check us out online, on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. or drops us an email at show@prisonersofrockandroll.com. Or if you're in Philadelphia, come visit our home base at McCusker's Tavern. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is an Encore Presentation of my interview with iconic rocker Suzi Quatro. She blazed a path as one of the first and one of the best female rock and rollers. She's a singer, songwriter and bassist. She's sold over 50 million records. And she's also famous for portraying the part of Leather Tuscadero in the hit sitcom “Happy Days”. Plus she's an author and has an honorary doctorate in music.My featured song is “Get Out!”. Spotify link here.---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------‘THE SINGLES PROJECT” is Robert's new EP, featuring five of his new songs. The songs speak to the ups and downs of life. From the blissful, joyous “Saturday Morning” to the darker commentary of “Like Never Before” and “The Ship”. “This is Robert at his most vulnerable” (Pop Icon Magazine)Reviews: “Amazing!” (Top Buzz Magazine)“Magical…A Sonic Tour De Force!” (IndiePulse Music)“Fabulously Enticing!” (Pop Icon Magazine)“A Home Run!” (Hollywood Digest)Click here for all links. “IT'S ALIVE!” is Robert's latest Project Grand Slam album. Featuring 13 of the band's Greatest Hits performed “live” at festivals in Pennsylvania and Serbia.Reviews:"An instant classic!" (Melody Maker)"Amazing record...Another win for the one and only Robert Miller!" (Hollywood Digest)"Close to perfect!" (Pop Icon)"A Masterpiece!" (Big Celebrity Buzz)"Sterling effort!" (Indie Pulse)"Another fusion wonder for Project Grand Slam!" (MobYorkCity)Click here for all links.Click here for song videos—-----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Connect with Suzi:www.suziquatro.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comPGS Store - www.thePGSstore.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com

If you're one of the thousands of people who listen to Prisoners of Rock and Roll – and shame on you if you aren't – you know we do a segment in every episode called The Electric Chair where we kill a song for being terrible.  Now, there's a lot of awesome music out there. But let's face it: there's a lot of bad music too.  So much bad music that this episode of Prisoners of Rock and Roll is volume 2 of a show totally dedicated to talking about music that sucks. We have spent hours plumbing the depths of music  We also asked our awesome listeners and some of our podcast friends to submit their picks for the most cringe-inducing tracks out there and man, did they deliver. Get ready go groan and say, “oh no, not THAT song” as we plumb the depths of music hell for songs have left scars on our music souls. Yacht rock, southern rap, novelty songs, one hit wonders, dance tracks, and just plan bad music. It's all here.  Parental advisory on this one rock and rollers. Having to listen to some of these songs made us pretty angry. Special shout out to Set Lusting Bruce as well as Rock and Soul Tarot podcasts for contributing to this one! Hear More Check out the episode playlist. Get In Touch Check us out online, on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. or drops us an email at show@prisonersofrockandroll.com. Or if you're in Philadelphia, come visit our home base at McCusker's Tavern. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're one of the thousands of people who listen to Prisoners of Rock and Roll – and shame on you if you aren't – you know we do a segment in every episode called The Electric Chair where we kill a song for being terrible.  Now, there's a lot of awesome music out there. But let's face it: there's a lot of bad music too.  So much bad music that this episode of Prisoners of Rock and Roll is volume 2 of a show totally dedicated to talking about music that sucks. We have spent hours plumbing the depths of music  We also asked our awesome listeners and some of our podcast friends to submit their picks for the most cringe-inducing tracks out there and man, did they deliver. Get ready go groan and say, “oh no, not THAT song” as we plumb the depths of music hell for songs have left scars on our music souls. Yacht rock, southern rap, novelty songs, one hit wonders, dance tracks, and just plan bad music. It's all here.  Parental advisory on this one rock and rollers. Having to listen to some of these songs made us pretty angry. Special shout out to Set Lusting Bruce as well as Rock and Soul Tarot podcasts for contributing to this one! Hear More Check out the episode playlist. Get In Touch Check us out online, on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. or drops us an email at show@prisonersofrockandroll.com. Or if you're in Philadelphia, come visit our home base at McCusker's Tavern. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Compromise is a lost art. 60-40, 70-30 or even the stellar 80-20 rules are out. 95-5 is about as close as it gets to anyone compromising their stance on anything. Business, sports, politics, even rock and rollers take a "my way or the highway" attitude. Todays essay goes into detail on this unproductive phenomenon.

Frizz and Bob revisit last year's sit down with Zach and Tom from the band Howling Giant to talk about life on the road in a big white hearse, maple donuts, the art of a great cover, and building a community within an audience. This playlist has all the Howling Giant tunes, their favorite music, and the Grammy-award winning 1999 hit, "Smooth" By Santana Ft. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty off the multi-platinum album Supernatural. These nice rock and rollers will be joining us again soon to promote their BRAND NEW ALBUM, Glass Future, so stay tuned.

Hello you rock and rollers! This episode is all about how The Smiths maybe, possibly (but I say YES) transformed Glastonbury from the hippie festival it was known as into the juggernaut we know it as today, even talking about the recent appearance at the festival by one Mr. Astley backed by Blossoms. In order to tackle this huge subject, we've invited renowned Rick Astley super-fan and biographer Elise Soutar (@smilesawakeu) onto the show. You may remember her from our episode on The Top of the Pops, so give her a big returning welcome round of applause, just as her hero (Rick Astley) would!Elise's Substack: https://thingsaregettingkindagross.substack.com/Pulp's "Bad Cover Version": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQEmail: smithscyclopedia@gmail.comSocials: @smithscyclopedia Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 1980s, the little Christian comic books known as Chick Tracts were EVERYWHERE. You'd find them in movie theaters and bus station bathrooms, on subways, and all over shopping malls. People would slip them inside VHS rentals or library books. Many Chick Tracts are black and white Christian horror stories that pull from a huge cast of characters: witches, bikers, Hindus, rock and rollers, Catholics, queer people, truckers, Masons and trick-or-treaters. And at some point in the tract, the protagonist often has to make a choice: either accept Jesus as their savior, or get tossed like cordwood into a Lake Of Fire. Chick Tracts have left a really complicated legacy. Collectors are mesmerized by their edginess and kitsch. The Smithsonian regards Chick Tracts as American religious artifacts, and keeps a bunch of them in its vaults.  At the same time, many of these comics are filled with some ugly and dangerous messages, including homophobia and Islamophobia. So the same tracts that have been hoarded and preserved have ALSO been boycotted and banned, and condemned as hate speech.

Welcome back to another unforgettable episode of the Kenny Aronoff Sessions podcast brimming with laughter and awe-inspiring stories, as the one and only Jack Blades joins Kenny for a celebration of the indomitable power of music and the resilience of the human spirit. Together, they delve into the realms of musical collaborations, the power of positive energy, and the democratic spirit that fuels the magic of bands. With heartfelt reflections on his upbringing and the profound influence of his mother's unwavering positivity, Jack unravels the untold tales behind Night Ranger, Damn Yankees, and how his music actually saved the life of one of his fans. He and Kenny also reveal the many aspects of their illustrious music careers, unveil the secrets behind Jack's most iconic songs, the paramount significance of authenticity in their work, and the exhilarating experiences encountered within the recording studio and on epic tours. Both musicians also emphasize the unyielding commitment to delivering electrifying live performances, and the delicate balance they maintain between the hedonistic allure of the rock and roll lifestyle and the relentless demands of life on the road. From Sly Stone to Sammy Hagar to Ringo Starr, Jack has a vast catalog of behind the scenes stories which he shares with listeners here today, and he also goes on to candidly share a recent health scare he experienced and the transformative life changes he has made since. Prepare yourself today to be immersed in an episode where laughter intertwines with wisdom, unforgettable stories intertwine with the celebration of music's unwavering power, and the sheer joy of living finds its ultimate expression in the electrifying world of these two rock and roll giants. Episode Highlights: Jack Blades' studios The origin of Jack's upbeat personality His introduction to Sly Stone and the San Francisco music scene Andy Newmark's introduction to Sly Stone The democratic nature of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees The stories behind “High Enough”, “(You Can Still) Rock in America”, and “Don't Tell Me You Love Me” Kings of Chaos and the importance of authenticity The keys to success for Jack Blades' bands His writing process Jack's early musical influences Jack and Kenny's takes on touring and partying Jack's top career moments Ringo Starr's massive talent and favorite performance  Jack's recent health scare and how it has changed his life His commitment to continue playing music Quotes: "My mom was the most happiest, like, fun-loving, just loved life, loved everything—everything." "We were a bunch of kids in San Francisco, like, wanting to be rock and rollers and play music and just hoping we could do a second album." "It was always like a democracy. We'd all decide what was going on with the songs." "If you're authentic, if you really write down what's in your heart, in your soul...that's probably the closest glimpse into their soul as a person can see, man." "I feel blessed. I wake up every morning and pinch myself and thank God that I'm alive and thank God that everything is great." "I mean, if music stopped tomorrow, I wouldn't stop playing music... That's what I'll do till the day I die." "It's important to listen to your body.” Links: Kenny Aronoff Night Ranger

This week on A Podcast About Catholic Things, Eric (The Ambassador of Common Sense) and Dan (The Ambassador Of Nonsense) discuss the rebellious, anti-establishment attitude that was once granted to the rock-and-rollers, but should, by all that is good, belong to the traditional Catholic. In current events, Trump is indicted and Canada burns. DeSantis says he'll fight the DOJ. Hawaiian volcano erupts again. I95 collapses. Pat Sajak retiring. Planet orbits two suns. Google ordered to not be competitive. Bud Light continues to suffer--along with Nike and Target… they don't care. Archdiocese of LA and Anthony Bass waffle. Biden to attend 'pride Mass.' Elon Musk and Matt Walsh still in business. California and Illinois protect pornographic kids books. Canada and Massachusetts teens reject gays. Carlson on alien rant. NY AG moves against pro-lifers. Ireland planning to cull herd. COD streamer is banned. In the land of nonsense, bus 666 retires. 26 year old in high school. Woman wakes from dead. SHOW NOTES: Bud Light in freefall as Memorial Day weekend sales plunge nearly 60 percent https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/bud-light-in-freefall-as-memorial-day-weekend-sales-plunge-nearly-60-percent/ Bud Light sponsors ‘all ages' LGBT ‘pride' event in Arizona despite ongoing boycott https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bud-light-sponsors-all-ages-lgbt-pride-event-in-arizona-despite-ongoing-boycott/ Bud Light overtaken by Modelo Especial as best-selling beer in the US as boycott continues https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bud-light-no-longer-best-selling-beer-in-the-us-overtaken-by-modelo-especial/ Pro-LGBT Toronto Blue Jays cut pitcher who endorsed boycott of Target, Bud Light https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pro-lgbt-toronto-blue-jays-cut-pitcher-who-endorsed-boycott-of-target-bud-light/ Anthony Bass, a 12-year veteran of Major League Baseball, had apologized to the 'pride community,' but it wasn't enough to save his job Nike hosting ‘Pride Month' event with surgeon who subjects kids to transgender mastectomies https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/nike-hosting-pride-month-panel-with-surgeon-who-subjects-minors-to-transgender-mastectomies/ Archdiocese of LA urges Catholics to pray to Sacred Heart in response to Dodgers honoring drag ‘nuns' https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archdiocese-of-la-urges-catholics-to-pray-to-sacred-heart-in-response-to-dodgers-honoring-drag-nuns/ Cardinal Dolan condemns Dodgers honoring ‘drag' nuns: ‘This isn't some benevolent, humorous group' https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-dolan-condemns-dodgers-honoring-drag-nuns-this-isnt-some-benevolent-humorous-group/ Bp. Strickland will carry first class relic of St. John Paul II at Dodger Stadium protest https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bp-strickland-will-carry-first-class-relic-of-st-john-paul-ii-at-dodger-stadium-protest/ Archdiocese of LA: Protests against anti-Catholic drag ‘nuns' don't have our ‘backing or approval' https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archdiocese-of-la-protests-against-anti-catholic-drag-nuns-dont-have-our-backing-or-approval/ 'We have decided to take a step back and hope for a dialogue with all relevant parties,' Bishop Gerald Wilkerson wrote to priests and deacons in a private memo. Pittsburgh LGBT ‘Pride Mass' canceled after backlash from local faithful, bishop https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pittsburgh-lgbt-pride-mass-canceled-after-backlash-from-local-faithful-bishop/ Joe Biden's Jesuit-run church to celebrate LGBT ‘Pride Mass' on Wednesday https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/joe-bidens-jesuit-run-church-to-celebrate-lgbt-pride-mass-on-wednesday/ Elon Musk admits Twitter's troubling finances. Are they influencing platform decisions? https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/elon-musk-admits-twitters-troubling-finances-are-they-influencing-platform-decisions/ If the value of Twitter has dropped to the $15 billion level, that means almost all of the $30 billion in personal equity Elon Musk put into the company has been lost. Media blames ‘climate change' for Canadian wildfires despite arrest of multiple arsonists https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/media-blames-climate-change-for-canadian-wildfires-despite-arrest-of-multiple-arsonists/ While the mainstream media continues to point to 'climate change' as the source of the wildfires, reports show that multiple people have been arrested in connection with dozens of intentionally set fires in the country. Gavin Newsom threatens California schools with investigations if they remove woke books https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/gavin-newsom-threatens-california-schools-with-investigations-if-they-remove-woke-books/ Illinois gov. signs law to defund libraries that remove sexually explicit, LGBT books for children https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/illinois-gov-signs-law-to-defund-libraries-that-remove-sexually-explicit-lgbt-books-for-children/ Indiana abortion facility shuts down, abandons legal challenge to state's pro-life law https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/indiana-abortion-facility-shuts-down-abandons-legal-challenge-to-states-pro-life-law/ Matt Walsh relates stunning rollercoaster battle with Twitter that ended with giant success https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/matt-walsh-celebrates-success-of-what-is-a-woman-after-twitters-initial-attempt-at-censorship/ Walsh said 'It was a wild ride for 24-hours' and also stated if 'open conversation' on gender ideology was freely allowed, 'trans ideology would disappear overnight.'' “Given how everything worked out it seems clear that Elon intended for the film to be distributed uncensored on the platform but the woke elements inside the company stepped in to sabotage it,” the Daily Wire host said. Matt Walsh's producer uncovers mutilating ‘trans' surgery being fraudulently approved https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/matt-walshs-producer-goes-undercover-has-mutilating-trans-surgery-fraudulently-approved/ Matt Walsh's producer has gone undercover to show how a “trans healthcare” provider fraudulently approved a mutilating “transgender” surgery in what Walsh has shown is a larger pattern among such providers. The success of Canada's first ever LGBT ‘pride' school walkout signals hope for the future https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-success-of-canadas-first-ever-lgbt-pride-school-walkout-signals-hope-for-the-future/ We would have been happy if schools had a 10% absence rate, but when the numbers started coming in, we were blown away because the participation rate far surpassed anything we could have dreamed of. Ontario high school student tears down LGBT ‘pride' flag: ‘Put it in the garbage!' https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ontario-students-tear-down-lgbt-pride-flag-put-it-in-the-garbage/ Judge halts Florida ban on underage ‘sex changes' for 3 children to take transgender drugs https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/judge-halts-florida-ban-on-puberty-blockers-for-kids-says-supporters-should-put-up-or-shut-up/ Largest Catholic health network in the US performs ‘sex change' surgeries, bombshell report reveals https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/largest-catholic-health-network-performs-sex-change-operations-bombshell-expose-reveals/ UPDATED: Charges dropped after police arrest Christian man who quoted Bible across from LGBT ‘Pride March' https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/police-arrest-christian-who-quoted-scripture-across-the-street-from-lgbt-pride-march/ Armenians, Hispanics push back against radical LGBT ideology, clash with far-left Antifa group https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/armenians-hispanics-push-back-against-radical-lgbt-ideology-clash-with-far-left-antifa-group/ Massachusetts middle school students tear down ‘pride' banners, chant ‘USA are my pronouns' https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/massachusetts-middle-school-students-tear-down-pride-banners-chant-usa-are-my-pronouns/ ‘The Chosen' faces calls for boycott after director, actors defend LGBT ‘pride' flags on set https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-chosen-faces-growing-boycott-calls-after-director-actors-defend-lgbt-pride-flags-on-set/ Tucker Carlson launches Twitter show with insightful Ukraine analysis and bizarre UFO assertions https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/tucker-carlson-launches-twitter-show-with-insightful-ukraine-analysis-and-bizarre-ufo-assertions/ New York AG files injunction against pro-life Red Rose Rescuers https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-new-york-ag-files-injunction-against-pro-life-red-rose-rescuers/ The injunction seeks to make it so that Red Rose Rescue and those 'acting in concert' with the pro-life group are legally barred from getting within 30 feet of any abortion-providing establishment in the state. WHO's deadly ventilation protocols were never designed to save COVID patients https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/whos-deadly-ventilation-protocols-were-never-designed-to-save-covid-patients/ The WHO must be held accountable for its unethical recommendation to sacrifice suspected COVID patients by using ventilation as an infection mitigation strategy. Irish farmers protest plans to cull livestock to meet climate targets https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/irish-farmers-protest-plans-to-cull-livestock-to-meet-climate-targets/ Call of Duty streamer sees surge in Twitter followers after criticizing LGBT indoctrination of kids https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/call-of-duty-streamer-sees-surge-in-twitter-followers-after-criticizing-lgbt-indoctrination-of-kids/ VIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS VIEW ON GOOGLE PODCASTS VIEW ON AMAZON VIEW ON AUDIBLE VIEW ON CASTBOX VIEW ON PODCASTADDICT VIEW ON STITCHER VIEW ON BITCHUTE VIEW ON RUMBLE VIEW ON TUNE-IN VISIT US ON FACEBOOK

Vineeta breaks down the new class of rock and rollers heading to Cleveland for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

Vineeta breaks down the new class of rock and rollers heading to Cleveland for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

Georgie Fame, born Clive Powell in Leigh, Lancashire, June 1943 is one of British R&B music's founding fathers. Fame is the only British star to have scored three number one hits with his only Top 10 chart entries – ‘Yeh Yeh' in 1964, ‘Get Away' in 1966 and ‘Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde' in 1967. But it's more important to acknowledge his cultural influence. Fame popularized and educated in equal measure. The black music he championed with his band The Blue Flames brought new sounds to Swinging London and bossed venues like the Flamingo Club and the Marquee where he turned the English mod movement on to a whole bag of soul and authentic US urban and country sounds and also the ska and early reggae he heard in the Jamaican cafes and clubs in the Ladbroke Grove area of London. Like his great friend and collaborator Van Morrison, Georgie Fame found himself raised on jazz and blues with a penchant for Mose Allison and Willie Mabon and of course Ray Charles, not to overlook a grounding in the sophisticated rock and rollers like Chuck Berry who defied categorization.With Latin pop also part of his skill set, Fame can turn his hand to just about anything and since his piano and Hammond organ keyboard brilliance – he is also a fine guitarist – is matched to a gorgeously relaxed vocal style he takes audiences on a melodic journey that combines the sweetest nostalgia with the most up to date interpretations of great songs and songbooks. As a sideman, he has recorded with many artists, including Gene Vincent, Prince Buster, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Joan Armatrading, Andy Fairweather-Low, Bill Wyman and Van Morrison. Ever on the road, Georgie Fame continues to perform his unique blend of jazz/rhythm and blues for live audiences at clubs and music festivals throughout Europe. He is revered in Scandinavia and Germany and even took a local version of the Blue Flames to Australia where he escaped the English winter and built a rapport with fellow players from another hemisphere.Having taken piano lessons at an early age the man born Clive Powell in the cotton weaving area of Leigh, Lancashire became a professional musician in the 1950s playing at holiday camps before departing to London aged 16 to seek his fortune. He touted his talents up and down the legendary Tin Pan Alley area of Denmark Street just off Soho where he was spotted by impresarios Lionel Bart and Larry Parnes who christened him Georgie Fame – somewhat against his will. Working with touring rock and rollers like Joe Brown, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran young Fame became battle-hardened and was snapped up by Billy Fury in 1961 to lead his backing band The Blue Flames for whom he arranged and sang. The Blue Flames and Fury parted company and so Georgie took over and secured a three-year residency at the Flamingo Club. The debut Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo came out in 1963 and was engineered by Glyn Johns and produced by Cliff Richard's console maestro Ian Samwell. After promoting himself via the offshore pirate radio stations Fame struck gold with his version of “Yeh, Yeh”, a tune first recorded by Mongo Santamaria in the Cuban style. The next significant hit, “Get Away”: was another #1 in 1966 with production from Denny Cordell and a Clive Powell writing credit. The perfect sound for the emerging summer of love

Suzi Quatro is a force of nature! She blazed a path as one of the first and one of the best female rock and rollers. She's a singer, songwriter and bassist. She's sold over 50 million records. And she's equally famous for portraying the part of Leather Tuscadero in the hit sitcom “Happy Days”. Plus she's an author and has an honorary doctorate in music. Suzi comes from a musical family and started off playing the bongos. We do a fun segment featuring some of the best rock bongo songs. And of course we discuss her illustrious career and do a Songfest.My featured song is “Get Out!”. Spotify link here.Robert's new album, "Bobby M and the Paisley Parade", is out now. Click here.“Dream With Robert Miller”. Click here.---------------------------------------------If you enjoyed the show, please Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Just Click Here.Suzi and I discuss the following:Bongos:“Day O” (Sidney Poitier)“For Your Love” (Yardbirds)“It Was I” (Skip and Flip)“Sympathy For The Devil” (Stones)“Inner City Blues” (Marvin Gaye)Getting into the music businessGiving 110% at gigsHer dad's adviceTrudie HellerThe bass - Dad gave her a ‘57 Fender Precision BassMotown/James Jamerson/Motown Sound“Can The Can” with Mickie Most, Producer; 2.5mm salesSigning with Mickie Most vs Electra Records“Glad All Over” and the Dave Clark FiveFavorite Rock moviesLittle Richard - “The Girl Can't Help It”Elvis - “Jailhouse Rock”“No Soul/No Control”Her toughness and motivation“My Heart And Soul”“Do Ya Dance”Leather Tuscadero on “Happy Days”BOBBY M AND THE PAISLEY PARADE is Robert's new album. Featuring 10 new songs and guest appearances by John Helliwell (Supertramp), Tony Carey (Rainbow) and international sitar sensation Deobrat Mishra. Called "ALBUM OF THE YEAR!" by Indie Shark. Praised by Steve Hackett (Genesis), John Helliwell (Supertramp), Gary Puckett (Union Gap), Jim McCarty (The Yardbirds), Peter Yarrow (Peter Paul and Mary), and David Libert (The Happenings). Click here for all links.LIVE AT STEELSTACKS is the 5-song EP by Robert and his band, Project Grand Slam. The release captures the band at the top of their game and shows off the breadth, scope and sound of the band. The EP has been highly praised by musicians and reviewers alike. “Captivating!” Elliott Randall (Steely Dan) “PGS burns down the house!” Tony Carey (Rainbow)“Full of life!” Alan Hewitt (The Moody Blues) “Virtuoso musicians!” (Melody Maker) “Such a great band!” (Hollywood Digest) The album can be streamed on Spotify, Amazon, Apple and all the other streaming platforms, and can be downloaded at The PGS Store.ALL OF THE TIME is Robert's recent single by his band Project Grand Slam. It's a playful, whimsical love song that's light and airy and exudes the happiness and joy of being in love. “Pure bliss…An intimate sound with abundant melodic riches!” Melody Maker/5 Stars) “Ecstasy…One of the best all-around bands working today!” (Pop Icon/5 Stars) “Excellence…A band in full command of their powers!” (Mob York City)Watch the video here. You can stream “All Of The Time” on Spotify, Apple or any of the other streaming platforms. And you can download it here.THE SHAKESPEARE CONCERT is the album by Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, recorded "live" in the studio. It's been praised by Mark Farner (Grand Funk Railroad), Jim Peterik (Ides Of March), Joey Dee (Peppermint Twist), Elliott Randall (Steely Dan) and Sarah Class (British composer). Reviews: “Perfection!”, “5 Stars!”, “Thrilling!”, and “A Masterpiece!”. The album can be streamed on Spotify, Apple and all the other streaming services. You can watch the Highlight Reel HERE. And you can purchase a digital download or autographed CD of the album HERE. THE FALL OF WINTER is Robert's single in collaboration with legendary rocker Jim Peterik of the Ides Of March and formerly with Survivor. Also featuring renowned guitarist Elliott Randall (Steely Dan/Doobie Brothers) and keyboard ace Tony Carey (Joe Cocker/Eric Burden). “A triumph!” (The Indie Source). “Flexes Real Rock Muscle!” (Celebrity Zone). Stream it on Spotify or Apple. Watch the lyric video here. Download it here.FOLLOW YOUR DREAM HANDBOOK is Robert's Amazon #1 Bestseller. It's a combination memoir of his unique musical journey and a step by step how-to follow and succeed at your dream. Available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.  Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with Suzi at:www.suziquatro.com Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comFacebook - www.facebook.com/followyourdreampodcastEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.comYouTubeLinkedIn Listen to the Follow Your Dream Podcast on these podcast platforms:CastBoxSpotifyApple Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comInstagramPGS Store - www.thePGSstore.comYouTubeFacebook - www.facebook.com/projectgrandslamSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com

The week leading up to Thanksgiving includes performances by traveling singer-songwriters, rock and rollers from here and elsewhere, and the return of a beloved holiday tribute show.

The Beast of Bodmin Moor- Something's been killing livestock in Cornwall and residents think its a panther, but one local went a little too far to instigate an investigation The Russian Fishing Expedition- Two buds purchase a new truck to take their fishing trip at a remote Siberian lake to the next level but it really wasn't their best day.... The 27 Club- It seems that more than the usual number of rock and rollers have died at age 27- and when Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse died that started people looking.... The Deadly Ghost of Lake Ronkonkoma- They say she's an Indian princess who fell in love with a white man who died in the lake-and ever since then she's been claiming male swimmers to avenge her loss...and some people say there's something to it.... The Bell Witch- This wise-cracking witch really gave the Bell family a serious haunting, or so they say..... The Legendary Cowboy Doan- He was a Vietnamese pilot who flew support for a covert Special Ops Group "over the fence" in Laos during the Vietnam War- and his courage became the stuff of legend... ANDROID USERS- 1001 Stories From The Old West at Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0c2fc0cGwJBcPfyC8NWNTw 1001 Radio Days right here at Google Podcasts FREE: https://podcasts.google.com/search/1001%20radio%20days 1001 Classic Short Stories & Tales at Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vQURMNzU3MzM0Mjg0NQ== 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories & Mysteries at Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/search/1001%20heroes 1001 Sherlock Holmes Stories (& Tales from Arthur Conan Doyle) https://podcasts.google.com/search/1001%20sherlock%20holmes 1001 Ghost Stories & Tales of the Macabre on Spotify: https://podcasts.google.com/search/1001%20ghost%20stories 1001 Stories for the Road on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/search/1001%20stories%20for%20the%20road Enjoy 1001 Greatest Love Stories on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/search/1001%20greatest%20love%20stories 1001 History's Best Storytellers: (author interviews) on Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/1001-historys-best-storytellers APPLE USERS 1001 Stories from The Old West at Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-stories-from-the-old-west/id1613213865 Catch 1001 Heroes on any Apple Device here (Free): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-heroes-legends-histories-mysteries-podcast/id956154836?mt=2  Catch 1001 CLASSIC SHORT STORIES at Apple Podcast App Now: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-classic-short-stories-tales/id1078098622 Catch 1001 Stories for the Road at Apple Podcast now:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-stories-for-the-road/id1227478901 NEW Enjoy 1001 Greatest Love Stories on Apple Devices here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-greatest-love-stories/id1485751552 Catch 1001 RADIO DAYS now at Apple iTunes!  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-radio-days/id1405045413?mt=2 NEW 1001 Ghost Stories & Tales of the Macabre is now playing at Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-ghost-stories-tales-of-the-macabre/id1516332327 NEW Enjoy 1001 History's Best Storytellers (Interviews) on Apple Devices here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-historys-best-storytellers/id1483649026 NEW Enjoy 1001 Sherlock Holmes Stories and The Best of Arthur Conan Doyle https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-sherlock-holmes-stories-best-sir-arthur-conan/id1534427618 Get all of our shows at one website: https://.1001storiespodcast.com REVIEWS NEEDED . My email works as well for comments: 1001storiespodcast@gmail.com SUPPORT OUR SHOW BY BECOMING A PATRON! https://.patreon.com/1001storiesnetwork. Its time I started asking for support! Thank you. Its a few dollars a month OR a one time. (Any amount is appreciated). YOUR REVIEWS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS AT APPLE/ITUNES AND ALL ANDROID HOSTS ARE NEEDED AND APPRECIATED! LINKS BELOW.. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you'll learn in this episode: Why being a jewelry artist is like being an engineer How Barbara got her jewelry in the hands of famous rock-and-rollers like David Bowie and the Rolling Stones  Why Barbara doesn't separate her jewelry into women's and men's lines Why talent is only a small part of what it takes to become a successful jeweler About Barbara Klar Barbara Klar was born in Akron, OH, with an almost obsessive attention for details. The clasps on her mother's watch, the nuts, bolts and hinges found on her father's workbench, the chrome on her brother's '54 Harley Hog...Barbara's love of hardware and metal and "how things worked" was ignited and continues to burn bright. Coming of age in the Midwest, Barbara was part of the burgeoning glam rock explosion making the scene, discovering Pere Ubu, DEVO, The Runaways, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in out-of-the-way Cleveland nightclubs. Cue Barbara's love of music and pop culture that carries on to this day. New York...late 1970's, early 80's. Barbara began making "stage wear" for friends in seminal punk rock bands including Lydia Lunch, The Voidoids and The Bush Tetras, cementing Barbara's place in alt. rock history as the go-to dresser for those seeking the most stylish, the most cutting edge accessories. She certainly caught the attention of infamous retailer Barneys New York, who purchased Barbara's buffalo skin pouch belts, complete with "bullet loops" for lipstick compartments. Pretty prestigious for a first-time designer! Famed jeweler Robert Lee Morris invited Barbara into a group show at Art Wear and Barbara joyfully began to sell her jewelry for the first time. Barbara opened her first standalone store, Clear Metals, in NYC's East Village during the mid - 80's. In 1991 she moved that store into the fashion and shopping Mecca that is SoHo, where it was located for ten years until Barbara has moved her life and studio upstate to the Hudson Valley. She continues to grow her business, her wholesale line and her special commission work while still focusing on those gorgeous clouds in the country sky. Barbara's work has been recognized on the editorial pages of Vogue, WWD, The New York Times and In-Style Magazine as well as featured on television shows including "Friends," "Veronica's Closet" and "Judging Amy." Film credits have included "Meet The Parents," Wall Street," "High Art" and The Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" video. Barbara has been hailed in New York Magazine as being one of the few jewelry designers who "will lend her eclectic touch to create just about anything her clients request, from unique wedding bands and pearl-drop earrings to chunky ID bracelets and mediaeval-style chains." Additional Resources: Website Instagram Facebook Twitter Blog Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Barbara Klar's jewelry has been worn by the like of David Bowie, Steve Jordan and Joan Jett, but Barbara's celebrity fans are just the icing on the cake of her long career. What really inspires her is connecting with clients and finding ways to make their ideas come to fruition. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the crash course in business she got when she opened her store in 1984 in New York City; why making jewelry is often an engineering challenge; and why she considers talent the least important factor in her success. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Barbara Klar, founder and owner of Clear Metals. Welcome back.    So, is your studio inside your home now?   Barbara: Yes, it is. It always has been. One time, I tried to have my studio in the back room of my store in SoHo. That just didn't work at all. If they know I'm there, everybody is like, “Is Barbara here?” I could never get any work done. Eventually, I was able to get a building in Williamsburg and have my studios there. It was a great building because it had been a doctor's office in the 50s, so there was a little living space in the back and the front had been all the examination rooms. That worked out perfectly for my studio at the time.   Sharon: And you're in Woodstock, New York now?   Barbara: Yes, I am. I love it here.   Sharon: Had you moved there before Covid, or is that just an area you like?   Barbara: I've been here about six years now. I've been all over the Hudson Valley. I think I moved here prior to Covid. It's a very arty town and full of weirdos and like-minded people. It's a cool place. It has the history of Bird-On-A-Cliff, which was where all the Hudson Valley artists started. It started as an arts colony. So, it's got that history, and it's nice to be part of a history.    When I had my store—and I loved my store on 7th Steet in the East Village—I was so akin and felt such a vibe from the previous generations of jewelers that had stores on 8th Street in the West Village. It was a complete circle to me, and I feel that way now as well.   Sharon: So, you targeted Woodstock or this area to live in?   Barbara: No, I was going through a breakup. It was very painful. I found a place here. I knew it would be my home and my love. I was lucky. It's one of those guided journeys.   Sharon: Looking behind you, I can see you have quite a well-developed studio. You have all your tools. It doesn't seem like you'd be missing anything there.    Barbara: Definitely not. It's great.   Sharon: Did you start out that way? Did you collect the tools throughout the years?   Barbara: Since 1979, I've been collecting tools. There's always something else you need as a jeweler and a metalsmith. About 10 years ago I sold my house, which was a little bit south of Woodstock, and got rid of everything except my studio and my clothes. That's where I'm at now, and it feels so good to not be buried with stuff. I just have my workshop, and that's basically it.   Sharon: That's the important thing, having your workshop. I don't know if you still do, but you had a very successful line of men's jewelry.   Barbara: Yeah, I was one of the first to do men's jewelry. That was probably in the late 80s, early 90s. I've done a lot of men's. I had a lot of gay male clientele. They were always coming in, and they had a large disposable income. It worked out great. I love to see a man in jewelry. I love what's happened with the metrosexuals in the last eight or nine years. Even the nonbinary and straight males are feeling more comfortable with jewelry, and I think it's really great. Coming from a rock background, you see a lot of flamboyancy on stage, and you see a lot of guys flashing metal. I think it looks great.   Sharon: It that what prompted you to develop this line? Did you ever sell it? Was it a production line or was it one-off? How was it?   Barbara: It's limited production always. I had a friend ask me recently, “Barbara, on your website, why don't you have a category that's specifically men's jewelry?” I said, “I'll never do that because I can never tell what a man's going to like.” With all of this large spectrum of gender identity, I can't tell what somebody's going to like. That's not up to me, to decide what men's jewelry is. So, I never really bought into that, but I know men and kids seem to like my work.   Sharon: They look in your window and come in and say, “I'd like to try that on”?   Barbara: Yeah, especially some of the bigger rings. I was always surprised what was attractive to them. Also, there's a lot of word of mouth. I never relied on advertising. I got a lot of press, which didn't seem to do much, but mostly it's because of word of mouth that people come to me.   Sharon: Is the press how you developed your celebrity clientele? You were mentioning that you have quite a roster or that you've done a lot for celebrities.   Barbara: Yeah, that just kind of happened. In my store in SoHo, I used to have what I would call my “deli wall.” You know how you go into a deli in New York and you see all of the celebrities saying, “Oh, thanks for that corned beef sandwich. It was the best I had”? I had that in the background. Over time, celebrities would come in. A lot of stylists would bring celebrities. I developed the deli wall, and it was word of mouth again.   Sharon: I always wonder when I look at a deli wall if they ask people for their signatures, if they have a stack of photos in the back and say, “Would you sign this?” How did that work for you?   Barbara: I'd always ask them. It's hard to do sometimes. I don't want to overstep because every celebrity reacts differently to being recognized and interacting, but you've just got to do it. It's funny; I'm impressed, but I know they're human just like me. On my website, I sometimes look at the marketing stats, and that page is the most visited page. Here in America, we love our celebrities.    I know a lot of them had a big impact on me, so I get it. Once I waited in line for half a day because I made this belt for Tina Turner. She was signing records at Tower Records in New York City. I went up to her and showed her the belt, and I was so excited because she meant a lot me. She got me through a couple of breakups that were pretty devastating. So, I get it. I'm a fan. Definitely, I'm a fan.   Sharon: What did she say when she saw the belt?   Barbara: She was like, “Oh, I love it. I just love it.” She said, “I'm going to wear it.” I never saw her wearing it, but she was very kind and wonderful and gracious.   Sharon: That takes guts on your part, just to show a belt to a celebrity like that.    Barbara: It's not comfortable for me because I'm very shy. I'm really a shy person. I even tried being in bands. My friends were in bands. I work better behind the scenes, but sometimes you have to jump off that cliff. I'm one of these people that I might be shy, but I'm also brave. I'll take a risk. I think in these times, with the all the competition out there, especially for jewelry designers, you have to take a risk and you have to be brave.   Sharon: Yes, absolutely. It's amazing to me; so many people I talk to who make jewelry, they say they're shy, but you have to put yourself out there. You have to put your product out there. You can't just sit in your studio.   Barbara: You can't, and you also have to be able to talk about your work. There was a relationship I had at one time, and we had these arguments because he would make this incredible work. I would say, “What does it mean? How would you explain it? How would you define it?” and he would say, “Well, I'm not going to do that. If I have to do that, it negates everything. People should be able to draw their own opinions about what I'm saying.” I was like, “No, I don't agree. I think you should be able to say what your intention was, how you see it. If it's interpreted differently, that's an extra plus in my mind.” I think everybody should be able to talk about their work.   Sharon: Especially if you are doing what I'll call art jewelry. You're not walking into a place like Tiffany, let say. That's the only one of its kind.    Barbara: Exactly. The one-of-a-kinds are like that. When I had my store in SoHo, the greatest thing that was the most fun for me was making an inspirational thing that I thought nobody would ever wear or buy and putting it in the window, because that would get people to come in. They were outrageous; they were huge, and often I would sell those pieces. It was a shock to me.   Sharon: How did it feel to see celebrities, such as Steve Jordan, wearing what you made?   Barbara: It's pretty incredible. Once it leaves my hands, it takes on its own journey. It's an ego boost for a minute, but then you've got to make a living the rest of the time. I've been in this business so long, and you think, “Oh my God, I got my stuff on the Rolling Stones tour. It's so great.” It's impressive to people when you're at a party and you can say that. Ultimately, it means nothing. Has he mentioned my name or anything on the Rolling Stones tour? No. That may never happen, and that's fine. I don't care. It's fun.    Sharon: Is it validation to other people if you're showing your work or talking about it, and you say a certain celebrity wore it? Isn't that validation in a sense?   Barbara: It is. I try not to buy into that too much. The validation really comes from myself. I know what I'm doing. It's fine. I don't really need that, but that's an extra special perk, I must say.   Sharon: A validation for you, but also—I'm not sure it would sway me, but for a lot of people—it depends on who the celebrity is, but it could sway somebody. They might say, “If ABC person wore it, then I want one like it.”   Barbara: Oh yeah, definitely. It works that way. To a lot of my rock-and-roll friends, the fact that I've sold a lot of work to Steven Tyler or Steve Jordan means something. Sometimes they'll come to me with special commissions. One of my first commissions when I had my store in SoHo was for a client who had been to London, and he was obsessed with Keith Richards and the bracelet he always wears. He wears this incredible bracelet made by Crazy Pig Studios in London. He came to me and said he wanted me to make a bracelet like the one Keith Richards wears. I said, “Why would you have me do it? Why don't you dial Crazy Pig in London and get the same bracelet?” He said, “Oh, I was in there. They were mean. They were really intimidating. I don't want to give them my money.” So, I said, “All right. It's going to be a little different, but I'll make one for you,” and I made this incredible bracelet. I still sell it today. It's the Keith Richards bracelet. It's a fun story.   Sharon: Wow! Yeah, that is a fun story. You're also writing a book now. Tell us a little about the title.   Barbara: Titles are interchangeable, but this has been the title for a while. It's called “You're So Talented.” I'm not sure what the subtitle is going to be exactly, but it could be “It Takes More Than Talent” or “Confessions of a Worker Bee.” It's basically about my stories, my experiences not being a businessperson and being more of an artist, surviving New York. A lot of stories. It's geared towards kids who have a lot of talent, but that's not all it takes. Talent is like two percent of what it takes to be successful and to be creative and to be a survivor.    Surviving in New York City was such an incredible challenge, especially when you're living and working on the street level. You can't control what comes into your space. You don't know how business is done. I had just opened my store in the East Village. I was 24 or something, and this big bruiser guy comes into my store and is like, “You gotta pay me for sanitation pickup.” I said, “What? I have to pay for sanitation? I thought the landlord took care of that.” He said, “No, we pick it up.” I'm like, “Well, how much do you want?” He said, “We want $75 a month.” I said, “What? I can't pay that. I can barely pay my rent.” He said, “Well, how much can you pay?” and I said, “Well, I can pay like $15.” He said, “O.K.” and he walked out. Wouldn't you know, every month he was there for his $15. It was crazy.   Sharon: You were honest, but you had to become a businessperson over the years.   Barbara: It was such a challenge. I have to tell you, another successful designer once said to me, “Nothing teaches you about money like not having any.” I think that was one of the wisest words, because I learned how to become my own bookkeeper, my own press person, my own rep. I also had to pay all the employee taxes, navigate the business end of it, try to get business loans. That was such an experience. I heard 2Roses talking about this on your podcast, too, about how business should be included in art school training. I was totally thrown out there and totally naïve.   Sharon: It sounds like the school of hard knocks.   Barbara: Definitely.   Sharon: And that's what the book is about?   Barbara: Yes. People say, “You're so talented.” If I had a quarter for every time somebody said that to me, I'd be rich. No, it's not about that. It's about perseverance, and it's about hearing a lot of “no's.” It's about coming through the back door instead of the front door. The book is about things that were on my journey that were important and meaningful to me, and that I think young people could learn something from about moving to New York as an artist. It's very different now. I don't claim to know the ins and outs of New York City at this point in life, but I think my journey is still relevant.   Sharon: Definitely. I'm curious how you took the “no's,” because you must have heard a lot of “no's.”   Barbara: So many. It gets you to that next point. A no is actually good, because you're forced to meet up with another solution or another path. I'll never forget; I wanted to be like Robert Lee Morris, who had his work everywhere and bought a ranch in New Mexico and everything. I remember being tested for QVC in the 80s. They were having young designers on QVC. I did the test, and I heard them in the background saying, “I don't know if she works well on camera. She might be a little too quirky. Her work is a little too eclectic.” I was like, “Oh God, really?” So, I was like, “You know what? I don't care. That's my thing. Maybe I don't want to be a production person.”    I looked into having my work made overseas and all of that, and I realized, in the end, I would just be a manufacturer. For me, the art was more important. The hands-on making was more important. The person-to-person contact, communication with my clients and my employees was really important to me. I enjoy that way more than if I had been basically a business owner.    Sharon: It's having the mark of the hand on it. If I know that you crafted it or somebody crafted it, it has much more meaning, I think.   Barbara: Absolutely. It means a lot to me. Recently I had a client whose mother was a big jewelry collector and had a couple of Art Smith rings. The client had lost one of the rings in the pair in Provincetown. It went into the ocean, gone. I was able to hold the matching ring in my hand and look at it and see a signature, because the client wanted me to recreate this ring, which I did do. But the whole time I was making this ring, I kept imaging Art. The ring was covered in dots of silver and pink gold and yellow gold. It's a beautiful ring, very asymmetrical. The dots were raised like a half a millimeter off the band, and there were like 50 dots on this ring. So, I'm thinking of him making this ring in his studio. Every dot had to have a peg soldered onto the back before it was soldered onto the band. I did that 50 times, and I'm thinking, “My God, this guy was tenacious.” I had a lot of respect.   Sharon: How did you decide to start writing a blog?  You write a blog. How did that come about?   Barbara: I really enjoy writing, and there are things I wanted to say that the work couldn't say by itself. One of the things I've always been obsessed with since I was a child are charms. When I was five, Sherry Carr across the street from me had a shoebox full of charms, like the bubblegum charms, and I coveted that box. I was obsessed with that box. Every time I would see it, I would be like, “Show me the charms.” I wanted to knock Sherry out so I could get that charm. I started collecting charms at a very young age. They mean a lot to me, and they mean a lot to my clients. I talked about that in one of my blog posts. I think that was one of my first blogs, talking about charms and the meaning they hold for us. I think the spiritual side is important to me, the emotion you put to it and how it goes on the body. It's for the body.   Sharon: Well, you have very eclectic jewelry, very unique jewelry. Barbara, thank you so much for being here today.   Barbara: I loved it. Thanks so much.   Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.  

What you'll learn in this episode: Why being a jewelry artist is like being an engineer How Barbara got her jewelry in the hands of famous rock-and-rollers like David Bowie and the Rolling Stones  Why Barbara doesn't separate her jewelry into women's and men's lines Why talent is only a small part of what it takes to become a successful jeweler About Barbara Klar Barbara Klar was born in Akron, OH, with an almost obsessive attention for details. The clasps on her mother's watch, the nuts, bolts and hinges found on her father's workbench, the chrome on her brother's '54 Harley Hog...Barbara's love of hardware and metal and "how things worked" was ignited and continues to burn bright. Coming of age in the Midwest, Barbara was part of the burgeoning glam rock explosion making the scene, discovering Pere Ubu, DEVO, The Runaways, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in out-of-the-way Cleveland nightclubs. Cue Barbara's love of music and pop culture that carries on to this day. New York...late 1970's, early 80's. Barbara began making "stage wear" for friends in seminal punk rock bands including Lydia Lunch, The Voidoids and The Bush Tetras, cementing Barbara's place in alt. rock history as the go-to dresser for those seeking the most stylish, the most cutting edge accessories. She certainly caught the attention of infamous retailer Barneys New York, who purchased Barbara's buffalo skin pouch belts, complete with "bullet loops" for lipstick compartments. Pretty prestigious for a first-time designer! Famed jeweler Robert Lee Morris invited Barbara into a group show at Art Wear and Barbara joyfully began to sell her jewelry for the first time. Barbara opened her first standalone store, Clear Metals, in NYC's East Village during the mid - 80's. In 1991 she moved that store into the fashion and shopping Mecca that is SoHo, where it was located for ten years until Barbara has moved her life and studio upstate to the Hudson Valley. She continues to grow her business, her wholesale line and her special commission work while still focusing on those gorgeous clouds in the country sky. Barbara's work has been recognized on the editorial pages of Vogue, WWD, The New York Times and In-Style Magazine as well as featured on television shows including "Friends," "Veronica's Closet" and "Judging Amy." Film credits have included "Meet The Parents," Wall Street," "High Art" and The Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" video. Barbara has been hailed in New York Magazine as being one of the few jewelry designers who "will lend her eclectic touch to create just about anything her clients request, from unique wedding bands and pearl-drop earrings to chunky ID bracelets and mediaeval-style chains." Additional Resources: Website Instagram Facebook Twitter Blog Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Barbara Klar's jewelry has been worn by the like of David Bowie, Steve Jordan and Joan Jett, but Barbara's celebrity fans are just the icing on the cake of her long career. What really inspires her is connecting with clients and finding ways to make their ideas come to fruition. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the crash course in business she got when she opened her store in 1984 in New York City; why making jewelry is often an engineering challenge; and why she considers talent the least important factor in her success. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.    Today, my guest is Barbara Klar, founder and owner of Clear Metals. Barbara began her work as a jeweler in 1980 in New York and has grown her business from there. She has a roster of celebrity clients. She has also developed a successful line of men's jewelry. Steve Jordan, who replaced Charlie Watts throughout a recent Rolling Stones tour, sported her jewelry throughout. Most recently, Barbara has become interested in reliquaries. She is also writing a book. We'll hear more about her jewelry journey today. Barbara, welcome to the program.   Barbara: Thank you, Sharon. I'm so happy to be here talking about my favorite subject, jewelry.   Sharon: So glad to have you. I want to hear about everything going on. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Did you always like it?   Barbara: I was obsessed with my mother's jewelry box. She wasn't a huge jewelry collector, but she had some gemstone rings from the time my father and her spent in Brazil in the semiprecious capital, Rio. I just loved her selection and got obsessed.    Sharon: Did you decide you wanted to study jewelry then?   Barbara: No, I really didn't. My sister was the artist in the family, and I was always trying to play catch-up with her. Eventually I took a class at Akron University in Akron. Well, I made some jewelry in high school out of ceramics. I loved to adorn myself. I loved fashion. I loved pop culture. I was always looking at what people were wearing, and jewelry was so interesting to me because it was so intimate. It was something you could put on you body, like a ring. You could look at it all the time, and it became part of your persona, part of your identity. Sometimes it represented the birth of a child.    I used to go to the museum in Cleveland a lot, and I started seeing these top knuckle rings on women in the Medieval and Renaissance paintings. I ran home and went to my mother's jewelry box because I remembered she had my sister's baby ring in there. I put it on my little pinkie finger. She saw me wearing it and she got very upset, but I started scouting flea markets until I could find my own top knuckle ring. I wear a lot of them at this point in life.   Sharon: Wow! We'll have to have a picture of that. I can see your fingers. You have a ring on every finger, it looks like.   Barbara: Practically.   Sharon: So, you went to the Cleveland Institute of Art. Did you think you'd be an artist or a graphic designer? What did you think you'd do?   Barbara: Like I said, when I went to Akron University, I studied beginning jewelry. My teacher at the time noticed I had an aptitude, and he said, “If you really want to study jewelry making, you should go to the Cleveland Institute of Art.” At that point, I made an application and I got in.   Sharon: Did you study metalsmithing there? When you say jewelry making, what did you study?   Barbara: It was called metalsmithing. It was a metalsmithing program, and at that point in time, Cleveland had a five-year program. You didn't really hit your major until your third year, so you had a basic foundation of art history and drawing and painting. It was really a great education. I feel like I got a master's of fine arts rather than a bachelor of fine arts. When we studied, our thesis was to do a holloware project. A lot of people did tea sets. I did a fondue set and it took me two years to complete. It was a great training, but it was also very, very frustrating because it was a very male-dominated profession.   Sharon: Do you still have the fondue set?   Barbara: I do. I entered it into a show, and they dropped it and it got dented. I have yet to repair that. Over the years, the forks have gone missing, but I have incredible photographs of it, thank God.   Sharon: Wow! So, you were the only fondue set among all the tea sets.   Barbara: Yeah, I was. I had to be different.   Sharon: You opened your own place right after you graduated. Is that correct?   Barbara: Pretty much. All my friends were moving to New York City, so I said, “Hey, I'll go.” I'd been commuting there because my boyfriend at the time was Jim Jarmusch, and he had moved to Columbia to study. I had been going there off and on for a couple of years and when everybody moved to New York City. I was like, “Why not?” So, I went.   Sharon: How far is it from Cleveland or where you were going to school?    Barbara: It's about 500 miles.   Sharon: So, you would fly?   Barbara: No, I would drive. Those were the days you could find parking in the city.   Sharon: That was a long time ago. I'm impressed that you would open your own place right after you graduated. Some people tell me they knew they could never work for anybody else. Did you have that feeling, or did you just know you wanted your own place?   Barbara: No, I didn't. It took me a couple of years. I was in New York a couple of years. I moved in '79 and I opened my store in '84. One thing I did discover in those five years is that the jobs I did have—thank God my mother insisted that I should have secretarial skills to fall back on in high school. She said, “You're not going to depend on any man.” So, she got me those skills, and I became a very fast typist. I realized eventually that to save my creativity, I needed to have a job that was completely unrelated to jewelry work. I would work during the day, and I found a jewelry store where I could clean the studio in exchange for bench time. I started doing that. A lot of my friends were in rock-and-roll bands, and I started making them stage ware when I could work in the studio for free. It just evolved into that before I opened my store.   Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry business today. Do you still make it?   Barbara: Oh yes, I still make everything. I have one part-time assistant. I no longer wholesale. I do a little bit of gallery work. I wish there was more, but I consider myself semi-retired. I'm trying to work on my book. Mostly I do commission work, and I do maybe one or two shows a year. I like to say I have a cult following that keep me in business.   Sharon: When you say you have a cult following, do rock-and-rollers call you and say, “I need something for a show”? How does that work?   Barbara: Pretty much. I'm lucky enough to have been in this business since 1984, so a lot of my private clients, now their children are shopping with me and they're getting married. It's really nice. I feel very blessed to have that.   Sharon: Yeah, especially if it's a second generation.    Barbara: That means something to me because they have a different sense of style. The fact that they would find my work appealing moves me, makes my heart sing.   Sharon: Do you find that you go along with their sense of style? If you have one style you were doing for their parents, let's say, do you find it easy to adapt? Do you understand what they're saying?   Barbara: I do. I try to understand. First of all, I listen. I'm a good listener, but I'm still old-fashioned. I still like streetwear. I still love pop culture. A lot of times I'll ask them what they're looking for, and I can always tell. Even when I had my store, when somebody would walk into the store, I can get a sense of their style. I'm one of these designers who can design very different, very eclectic work, from simple and modern to intricate and whimsical. That used to be a problem for me in my early days because the powers that be—I had a rep. They were like, “Barbara, your work is so different. Why don't you try to make it coherent?” I couldn't. I tried to and I came up with beautiful lines, but for me, the joy is the variation and never knowing what I'm going to come up with.   Sharon: Is that what's kept your attention about jewelry?   Barbara: I think so. And being challenged by commission work and by getting an idea and trying to make it come to fruition. I actually think jewelry designers are as much architects and engineers as anything else, because you get an idea and you're like, “How am I going to make that happen?” That keeps me inspired and challenged.   Sharon: I remember watching a jeweler making a ring. This was several years ago, but they were talking about how jewelry is engineering because of the balance and all of that.    Barbara: Oh yes, totally. There was time when I really wanted to study CAD. I looked into it a bit, and I realized you also have to be able to draw in order to do CAD. It really helps if you have some knowledge of metalsmithing or jewelry making before you enter into a program like that, because you have to be able to visualize it and see how it's going to come together, how it's technically going to work. That interests me a lot.   Sharon: So, that's not a problem for you. You can do that in terms of visualizing or seeing how it would come together.   Barbara: It's a challenge. I'll find myself getting inspired by an idea and spending a couple of days or even a week thinking about how it's going to be engineered, how it's going to fit together. I made a tiara for the leader of a local performance group. He's very flamboyant, and he sings and has a beautiful band. I made him a crown out of a crystal chandelier that I got at a flea market. It was an engineering challenge. It was really fun.   Sharon: It sounds like it. I don't know if I could even imagine something like that. I wanted to ask you about something you said a little while ago, that you wished there were more galleries who wanted your work. What was it you said?   Barbara: I've been making my living doing limited-production items that sell very well. I have a classic piece—I call it the pirate, which is a lockdown mechanism earring that is kind of my bread and butter. But what I've been doing in my off time is making, like you mentioned in your opening, reliquaries or pieces that are more art than jewelry specifically. That's what I've been doing during Covid and everything. It's like a secret group of pieces I've been working on. It would be nice to have a gallery to show them in, but they're very unique and different, so I haven't found that yet.   Sharon: Tell us a little bit about the reliquaries. Tell us what they look like and what they're supposed to represent.   Barbara: I got obsessed with reliquaries when I was going to the Cleveland Institute of Art because right across the street was the Cleveland Museum of Art. I spent a lot of time there, and they have a fabulous armor hall for armor and a 17th century room that's filled with religious reliquaries. I was fascinated by how these fragments of bone or hair were incorporated into jewelry and what they represented as objects, how people would pray to these things or display these items with great meaning. It really moved me, and I started making them in college covertly. I continued that living through the AIDS crisis and now Covid.    I did some pieces recently for people who had lost their loved ones, incorporating pieces of hair or fragments of letters from their loved ones. I find that so meaningful because you have something to hold in your hands that gives you a link to this person whom you've lost. I made a beautiful reliquary for an ex of mine which was based on the dog they lost. Buddy was its name. I got a piece of the dog's tail when he died and made a little charm out of it. It was under a little window. Then I had another artist make this beautiful portrait of the dog when it was a baby. I made a little locket-type thing that could be put on your desk, or it could be hung on the wall or you could wear it. That's what I describe as tabletop jewelry.    Sharon: That's interesting. When I think of a reliquary, I think of exactly what you're saying, but without the jewelry—a piece of bone, hair, whatever, that people venerate.    Barbara: Yeah, absolutely.   Sharon: How do you incorporate it? You're saying for this piece you put it in a locket, but how else have you incorporated it?    Barbara: Pretty much lockets, things that open. I have another piece I made that was based on a monk. I found a little porcelain painter's image—it was about three inches tall—at a flea market years ago. I could hardly afford it. It was hand-painted porcelain. I kept it in my bench drawer for years, 20 years probably, and one day I pulled it out and thought, “You know, this monk needs to be seen.” So, I made a beautiful locket. It's probably about four inches long that you too can display it on your desk. It has little doors that open, and you can hang it on your wall or you can wear it. It's a very large piece, obviously, if you're going to wear it, but it's a statement piece and it's very precious.   I did this piece actually about 10 years ago after living through the AIDS crisis. My friend, one of my clients, looked at this monk and said, “I know who that is.” I did the research. It's on my blog. It is this monk who was from a very wealthy family that gave his life to treat lepers in Spain. He was the patron saint of healers. It touched me so deeply that I was creating this piece after everything I'd watched and lived through with Covid, with the AIDS crisis.   Sharon: Wow! Do pieces hit you as you're going through a flea market? Do they hit you and you say, “That would be perfect”? How is that?   Barbara: I'm a collector. I collect things. I'm fascinated. I love to look at things. One time at a flea market when I had my store in Soho, I found this—I didn't know what it was. It was like a little skeleton paw. It had no fur on it. It was a little skeleton about two inches long, probably a racoon's hands. I used to make incredible windows to get people to come into the store. It was Halloween. At the same flea market, I had gotten some of the old-fashioned glass milk containers that used to have the paper caps on top. So, I had gotten those, and I thought, “I'm going to do a Lizzie Borden window.” I made Lizzie this incredible watch fob, and hanging from that was this little skeleton paw inside the milk container. It was great. You never know. I sometimes hold onto things until it's like, “Whoa, O.K. Now's the time.”   Sharon: I'm imaging it. It's a drawerful of things, a shoebox full of things that you paw through and say, “Oh, this would be perfect.”   Barbara: Absolutely. That's the great thing about being an artist. You never know when it's going to hit. Like I tell people, I would never not have my studio inside my home, because you never know when you're going to be inspired and have to make something.

Filmmaker Peter Jackson was 3 years old when The Beatles first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on February 9,1964. His family didn't own a television and he didn't see the original airing because he believes New Zealand didn't broadcast the TV show. “Even though I was born in 1961, I kind of don't really have a story or any memory of The Beatles in the ‘60s, which is crazy because I lived all the way through that period,” Jackson remarks. His parents were not “rock and rollers,” he says, but he recalls hearing the band “endlessly through ‘65, ‘66, ‘67 because the radio was playing nothing else.” Sixty years later, he produced and directed the Disney+ docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back,” about the making of the 1970 documentary “Let It Be.” Jackson's series has been nominated for several Emmys, and the award-winning director discusses what led him to tackle this documentary project, and how his labor of love morphed from being a feature film to a series. But first, Kim Masters and Matt Belloni, founding partner of Puck News, discuss the Disney+ positive quarterly results, and what the decision to raise subscription prices mean for consumers, and the future of its streaming services. 

On this episode Brian is joined by Joe Mansman from Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band. Tune in to hear all about their latest release 'Take It Easy', the history of the band and much more.Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band are a blistering display of dangerously skilled rock and rollers. Their spirited stompers offer an essence of familiarity to listeners while rarely veering off the road less traveled, and having enough hooks to draw you in like air to the lungs. The group never fails to maintain that haughty and boisterous swagger they've become so well known for since forming in 2014 in Upstate NY. Check out the band's new song "Take It Easy," written by Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band. It was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Brandon Kapoor at Skyfall Recording Studio,Greenwich, NY.Follow Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band here:https://www.facebook.com/themidnightrevivalbandhttps://www.instagram.com/themidnightrevivalband/https://twitter.com/revivalmidnighthttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQhwVvL8wLIeQ2jeJ2yL4gwFind CTMU here: https://linktr.ee/Concertsthatmadeus  Newsletter: https://concertsthatmadeus.aweb.page/p/f065707b-2e34-4268-8e73-94f12bd2e938  If you would like to support the show you can do so by rating/reviewing us on Itunes and Spotify or by signing up at https://www.patreon.com/Concertsthatmadeus and you will gain access to a range of benefits including video versions of the episodes.--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ctmu/message Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/concerts-that-made-us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's no telling where this week's show could lead because we've got the musical evangelists, pentacostals, and Baptists right alongside those charming bluesmen and rock and rollers to turn up the heat. We've got a burning revival of rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and God-fearing country and hillbilly sounds to take us into the weekend. Hooligans and bible-thumping holy rollers are pushing their way through the doors today and we're here to tell you that we're not gonna take anyone telling he or she what they can do with their bodies. Today's performers will feature Sister Rosetta, Brother Claude, The Louvins, Hank Jr., Moon Mullican, and Jerry Lee Lewis…and that's just a taste. Join us on Sonoma County Community Radio.

This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward Episode 460 With Joe Mansman From The Midnight Revival Band. A blistering display of dangerously skilled rock and rollers. Their spirited stompers offer an essence of familiarity to listeners while rarely veering off the road less traveled, and having enough hooks to draw you in like air to the lungs. The group never fails to maintain that haughty and boisterous swagger they've become so well known for since forming in 2014 in Upstate NY. Check out the band's new song "Take It Easy," written by Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band. It was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Brandon Kapoor at Skyfall Recording Studio, Greenwich, NY.

This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward Episode 460 With Joe Mansman From The Midnight Revival Band.A blistering display of dangerously skilled rock and rollers. Their spirited stompers offer an essence of familiarity to listeners while rarely veering off the road less traveled, and having enough hooks to draw you in like air to the lungs. The group never fails to maintain that haughty and boisterous swagger they've become so well known for since forming in 2014 in Upstate NY. Check out the band's new song "Take It Easy," written by Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band. It was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Brandon Kapoor at Skyfall Recording Studio, Greenwich, NY.

This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward Episode 460 With Joe Mansman From The Midnight Revival Band. A blistering display of dangerously skilled rock and rollers. Their spirited stompers offer an essence of familiarity to listeners while rarely veering off the road less traveled, and having enough hooks to draw you in like air to the lungs. The group never fails to maintain that haughty and boisterous swagger they've become so well known for since forming in 2014 in Upstate NY. Check out the band's new song "Take It Easy," written by Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band. It was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Brandon Kapoor at Skyfall Recording Studio, Greenwich, NY.

This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward Episode 460 With Joe Mansman From The Midnight Revival Band. A blistering display of dangerously skilled rock and rollers. Their spirited stompers offer an essence of familiarity to listeners while rarely veering off the road less traveled, and having enough hooks to draw you in like air to the lungs. The group never fails to maintain that haughty and boisterous swagger they've become so well known for since forming in 2014 in Upstate NY. Check out the band's new song "Take It Easy," written by Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band. It was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Brandon Kapoor at Skyfall Recording Studio, Greenwich, NY.

This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward Episode 460 With Joe Mansman From The Midnight Revival Band. A blistering display of dangerously skilled rock and rollers. Their spirited stompers offer an essence of familiarity to listeners while rarely veering off the road less traveled, and having enough hooks to draw you in like air to the lungs. The group never fails to maintain that haughty and boisterous swagger they've become so well known for since forming in 2014 in Upstate NY. Check out the band's new song "Take It Easy," written by Joe Mansman and The Midnight Revival Band. It was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Brandon Kapoor at Skyfall Recording Studio, Greenwich, NY.

The original Woodstock Festival happened once. The Cornerstone Festival, however, gathered an unlikely and diverse group of rock and rollers from around the world to two different pieces of land 29 years in a row. Even as the so-called “Jesus Movement,” of the late 60s, and its' fascinating musical soundtrack, transformed throughout the 80s into more of a subculture than a counterculture, and "Contemporary Christian Music" became more mainstream, Cornerstone kept the fire of revolution burning. With a radical lineup – both musically and educationally – this event was unique in the world. It was responsible for launching several artists not only into the thriving underground, but to mainstream rock, alternative, and metal success as well.   The final Cornerstone Festival happened in July of 2012 and on this special edition of the True Tunes Podcast we revisit the event both through archival interviews and performance audio, and newly recorded interviews with some of the festival's founders. We hear from some of our listeners about the ways Cornerstone impacted them, and co-producer Bruce A. Brown even interviews our host, John J. Thompson, for his perspective. True Tunes traces its roots directly to this incendiary event – when John was just a 13-year-old kid watching The 77s, Rez Band, and others in a field outside of Chicago. We'll hear that story and a lot more.   If you were ever at Cornerstone, you know. If not – take a listen and hear about one of the most unlikely, insane, wonderful, and influential events few people have ever heard of. We'll also ponder what we miss most about it ten years later – and what, if anything, we might do about that.   Music list and more are available on the Show Notes Page for this episode at TrueTunes.com/CstoneRemembered   The True Tunes Podcast is sponsored by VisionTrust.org. Help us change the world for one child at a time by sponsoring a child today. Visit VisionTrust.org/TrueTunes for more information. If you would like to support the show, please consider joining our Patreon community or dropping us a one-time tip and check out our SWAG STORE.  

Hello to all my emos and real rock and rollers alike!!! Thanks for dropping by for the show. We got a real good one for ya this week. You know we had to talk to Pictoria MF Vark about their debut album, The Parts I Dread, out right this very second. We basically pitch the next big coming of age film, which I legally do have to mention here was our idea alone and note that we do retain sole ownership of the intellectual property.  With apologies to Kristen Stewart. A24 get at us tho!!!FOLLOW PICTORIA VARK:Twitter: https://twitter.com/pictoriavark Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pictoriavark  Bandcamp: https://pictoriavark.bandcamp.com/ The Parts I Dread is out now! Go buy a vinyl!!Write in to the show at ybigpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on twitter @ybigpodcastThe YBIG theme song is courtesy of hey, ily! Additional music courtesy of Barely March and Jake Boutwell.

Quizmasters Lee and Marc meet with Seth and Joe for a trivia quiz on topics including Fashion, Movies, Food, Cryptids, Geography, Sports, History and more! Round One FASHION - What fashion retailer founded in 1984 puts John 3:16 on the outside of the bottom of their bags? MOVIES - What 1985 film directed by Joel Schumacher features more members of Hollywood's Brat Pack than any other, with only Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald missing from the cast? FRUIT - Black Manuka, Reliance and Venus are all different types of what fruit? AWARDS - Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win what award? SNACK FOODS - What brand of frozen snack product was first introduced at baseball stadiums and is named for an iconic superhero owned by DC? CRYPTIDS - The Loveland Frog is a humanoid cryptid from what U.S. state? Round Two ITALIAN FOOD - In Italian cuisine, what word is used to identify any meat stew that is typically served as a sauce over pasta? OBSCURE WORDS - What does a spermologer collect? GAME OF THRONES - What castle was Edmund Frey and his wife Jana Lannister granted after their role in the Red Wedding? GEOGRAPHY - Chisinau is the capital of what Eastern European country? NBA - What 8x NBA All-Star was first pick in the 2004 NBA draft and has had three separate stints with the Los Angeles Lakers? Rate My Question U.S. PRESIDENTS - This 29th U.S. President was the first to put the U.S. Constitution into a protective glass case. Name this president. Final Questions 90's NICKELODEON - The child actor Danny Cooksey, who played Bobby Budnick on the Nickelodeon show Salute Your Shorts, was the vocalist of what early 90's Hard Rock band? ROCK STAR DEATHS - Rosehill Cemetery in Bibb County, GA is the sight of internment of what rock and rollers? OLYMPICS - Previously deemed too dangerous, what Winter Olympics event was open to women for the first time at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi? FUNGI - When Cremini mushrooms fully mature, they are then commonly referred to by what name? Upcoming LIVE Know Nonsense Trivia Challenges March 29th, 2022 - Know Nonsense Challenge - Point Ybel Brewing Co. - 7:30 pm EDT March 30th, 2022 - Know Nonsense Trivia Challenge - OOPS! All Podcast Questions - Ollies Pub Records and Beer - 7:30 pm EDT You can find out more information about that and all of our live events online at KnowNonsenseTrivia.com All of the Know Nonsense events are free to play and you can win prizes after every round. Thank you Thanks to our supporters on Patreon. Thank you, Quizdaddies – Gil, Brandon, Adam V., Tommy (The Electric Mud) and Tim (Pat's Garden Service) Thank you, Team Captains – Matthew, Captain Nick, Grant, Mo, Jenny, Rick G., Skyler, Dylan, Lydia, Gil, David, Aaron, Kristen & Fletcher Thank you, Proverbial Lightkeepers – Trent, Justin M., Robb, Rikki, Jon Lewis, Moo, Tim, Nabeel, Patrick, Jon, Adam B., Ryan, Mollie, Lisa, Alex, Spencer, Kaitlynn, Manu, Luc, Hank, Justin P., Cooper, Elyse, Sarah, Karly, Kristopher, Josh, Lucas Thank you, Rumplesnailtskins – Issa, Nathan, Sai, Cara, Megan, Christopher, Brandon, Sarah, FoxenV, Laurel, A-A-Ron, Loren, Hbomb, Alex, Doug, Kevin and Sara, Tiffany, Allison, Paige, We Do Stuff, Kenya, Jeff, Eric, Steven, Efren, Mike J., Mike C., Mike. K If you'd like to support the podcast and gain access to bonus content, please visit http://theknowno.com and click "Support." Special Guests: Joe Lachut and Seth.

Episode 143 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Summer in the City'”, and at the short but productive career of the Lovin' Spoonful.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More" by the Walker Brothers and the strange career of Scott Walker. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. This box set contains all four studio albums by the Lovin' Spoonful, plus the one album by "The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler", while this CD contains their two film soundtracks (mostly inessential instrumental filler, apart from "Darling Be Home Soon") Information about harmonicas and harmonicists comes from Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers by Kim Field. There are only three books about the Lovin' Spoonful, but all are worth reading. Do You Believe in Magic? by Simon Wordsworth is a good biography of the band, while his The Magic's in the Music is a scrapbook of press cuttings and reminiscences. Meanwhile Steve Boone's Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with the Lovin' Spoonful has rather more discussion of the actual music than is normal in a musician's autobiography. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk about the harmonica for a while. The harmonica is an instrument that has not shown up a huge amount in the podcast, but which was used in a fair bit of the music we've covered. We've heard it for example on records by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "I'm a Man"] and by Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] and the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Little Red Rooster"] In most folk and blues contexts, the harmonicas used are what is known as a diatonic harmonica, and these are what most people think of when they think of harmonicas at all. Diatonic harmonicas have the notes of a single key in them, and if you want to play a note in another key, you have to do interesting tricks with the shape of your mouth to bend the note. There's another type of harmonica, though, the chromatic harmonica. We've heard that a time or two as well, like on "Love Me Do" by the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love Me Do"] Chromatic harmonicas have sixteen holes, rather than the diatonic harmonica's ten, and they also have a slide which you can press to raise the note by a semitone, meaning you can play far more notes than on a diatonic harmonica -- but they're also physically harder to play, requiring a different kind of breathing to pull off playing one successfully. They're so different that John Lennon would distinguish between the two instruments -- he'd describe a chromatic harmonica as a harmonica, but a diatonic harmonica he would call a harp, like blues musicians often did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love These Goon Shows"] While the chromatic harmonica isn't a particularly popular instrument in rock music, it is one that has had some success in other fields. There have been some jazz and light-orchestral musicians who have become famous playing the instrument, like the jazz musician Max Geldray, who played in those Goon Shows the Beatles loved so much: [Excerpt: Max Geldray, "C-Jam Blues"] And in the middle of the twentieth century there were a few musicians who succeeded in making the harmonica into an instrument that was actually respected in serious classical music. By far the most famous of these was Larry Adler, who became almost synonymous with the instrument in the popular consciousness, and who reworked many famous pieces of music for the instrument: [Excerpt: Larry Adler, "Rhapsody in Blue"] But while Adler was the most famous classical harmonicist of his generation, he was not generally considered the best by other musicians. That was, rather, a man named John Sebastian. Sebastian, who chose to take his middle name as a surname partly to Anglicise his name but also, it seems, at least in part as tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach (which incidentally now makes it really, really difficult to search for copies of his masterwork "John Sebastian Plays Bach", as Internet searches uniformly think you're searching just for the composer...) started out like almost all harmonica players as an amateur playing popular music. But he quickly got very, very, good, and by his teens he was already teaching other children, including at a summer camp run by Albert Hoxie, a musician and entrepreneur who was basically single-handedly responsible for the boom in harmonica sales in the 1920s and 1930s, by starting up youth harmonica orchestras -- dozens or even hundreds of kids, all playing harmonica together, in a semi-militaristic youth organisation something like the scouts, but with harmonicas instead of woggles and knots. Hoxie's group and the various organisations copying it led to there being over a hundred and fifty harmonica orchestras in Chicago alone, and in LA in the twenties and thirties a total of more than a hundred thousand children passed through harmonica orchestras inspired by Hoxie. Hoxie's youth orchestras were largely responsible for the popularity of the harmonica as a cheap instrument for young people, and thus for its later popularity in the folk and blues worlds. That was only boosted in the Second World War by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, which we talked about in the early episodes of the podcast -- harmonicas had never been thought of as a serious instrument, and so most professional harmonica players were not members of the AFM, but were considered variety performers and were part of the American Guild of Variety Artists, along with singers, ukulele players, and musical saw players. Of course, the war did also create a problem, because the best harmonicas were made in Germany by the Hohner company, but soon a lot of American companies started making cheap harmonicas to fill the gap in the market. There's a reason the cliche of the GI in a war film playing a harmonica in the trenches exists, and it's largely because of Hoxie. And Hoxie was based in Philadelphia, where John Sebastian lived as a kid, and he mentored the young player, who soon became a semi-professional performer. Sebastian's father was a rich banker, and discouraged him from becoming a full-time musician -- the plan was that after university, Sebastian would become a diplomat. But as part of his preparation for that role, he was sent to spend a couple of years studying at the universities of Rome and Florence, learning about Italian culture. On the boat back, though, he started talking to two other passengers, who turned out to be the legendary Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart, the writers of such classic songs as "Blue Moon" and "My Funny Valentine": [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "My Funny Valentine"] Sebastian talked to his new friends, and told them that he was feeling torn between being a musician and being in the foreign service like his father wanted. They both told him that in their experience some people were just born to be artists, and that those people would never actually find happiness doing anything else. He took their advice, and decided he was going to become a full-time harmonica player. He started out playing in nightclubs, initially playing jazz and swing, but only while he built up a repertoire of classical music. He would rehearse with a pianist for three hours every day, and would spend the rest of his time finding classical works, especially baroque ones, and adapting them for the harmonica. As he later said “I discovered sonatas by Telemann, Veracini, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Marcello, Purcell, and many others, which were written to be played on violin, flute, oboe, musette, even bagpipes... The composer seemed to be challenging each instrument to create the embellishments and ornaments to suit its particular voice. . . . I set about choosing works from this treasure trove that would best speak through my instrument.” Soon his nightclub repertoire was made up entirely of these classical pieces, and he was making records like John Sebastian Plays Bach: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Flute Sonata in B Minor BWV1030 (J.S. Bach)"] And while Sebastian was largely a lover of baroque music above all other forms, he realised that he would have to persuade new composers to write new pieces for the instrument should he ever hope for it to have any kind of reputation as a concert instrument, so he persuaded contemporary composers to write pieces like George Kleinsinger's "Street Corner Concerto", which Sebastian premiered with the New York Philharmonic: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Street Corner Concerto"] He became the first harmonica player to play an entirely classical repertoire, and regarded as the greatest player of his instrument in the world. The oboe player Jay S Harrison once wrote of seeing him perform "to accomplish with success a program of Mr. Sebastian's scope is nothing short of wizardry. . . . He has vast technical facility, a bulging range of colors, and his intentions are ever musical and sophisticated. In his hands the harmonica is no toy, no simple gadget for the dispensing of homespun tunes. Each single number of the evening was whittled, rounded, polished, and poised. . . . Mr. Sebastian's playing is uncanny." Sebastian came from a rich background, and he managed to earn enough as a classical musician to live the lifestyle of a rich artistic Bohemian. During the forties and fifties he lived in Greenwich Village with his family -- apart from a four-year period living in Rome from 1951 to 55 -- and Eleanor Roosevelt was a neighbour, while Vivian Vance, who played Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy, was the godmother of his eldest son. But while Sebastian's playing was entirely classical, he was interested in a wider variety of music. When he would tour Europe, he would often return having learned European folk songs, and while he was living in Greenwich Village he would often be visited by people like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers living in the area. And that early influence rubbed off on Sebastian's son, John Benson Sebastian, although young John gave up trying to learn the harmonica the first time he tried, because he didn't want to be following too closely in his father's footsteps. Sebastian junior did, though, take up the guitar, inspired by the first wave rock and rollers he was listening to on Alan Freed's show, and he would later play the harmonica, though the diatonic harmonica rather than the chromatic. In case you haven't already figured it out, John Benson Sebastian, rather than his father, is a principal focus of this episode, and so to avoid confusion, from this point on, when I refer to "John Sebastian" or "Sebastian" without any qualifiers, I'm referring to the younger man. When I refer to "John Sebastian Sr" I'm talking about the father. But it was John Sebastian Sr's connections, in particular to the Bohemian folk and blues scenes, which gave his more famous son his first connection to that world of his own, when Sebastian Sr appeared in a TV show, in November 1960, put together by Robert Herridge, a TV writer and producer who was most famous for his drama series but who had also put together documentaries on both classical music and jazz, including the classic performance documentary The Sound of Jazz. Herridge's show featured both Sebastian Sr and the country-blues player Lightnin' Hopkins: [Excerpt: Lightnin' Hopkins, "Blues in the Bottle"] Hopkins was one of many country-blues players whose career was having a second wind after his discovery by the folk music scene. He'd been recording for fourteen years, putting out hundreds of records, but had barely performed outside Houston until 1959, when the folkies had picked up on his work, and in October 1960 he had been invited to play Carnegie Hall, performing with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Young John Sebastian had come along with his dad to see the TV show be recorded, and had an almost Damascene conversion -- he'd already heard Hopkins' recordings, but had never seen anything like his live performances. He was at that time attending a private boarding school, Blair Academy, and his roommate at the school also had his own apartment, where Sebastian would sometimes stay. Soon Lightnin' Hopkins was staying there as well, as somewhere he could live rent-free while he was in New York. Sebastian started following Hopkins around and learning everything he could, being allowed by the older man to carry his guitar and buy him gin, though the two never became close. But eventually, Hopkins would occasionally allow Sebastian to play with him when he played at people's houses, which he did on occasion. Sebastian became someone that Hopkins trusted enough that when he was performing on a bill with someone else whose accompanist wasn't able to make the gig and Sebastian put himself forward, Hopkins agreed that Sebastian would be a suitable accompanist for the evening. The singer he accompanied that evening was a performer named Valentine Pringle, who was a protege of Harry Belafonte, and who had a similar kind of sound to Paul Robeson. Sebastian soon became Pringle's regular accompanist, and played on his first album, I Hear America Singing, which was also the first record on which the great trumpet player Hugh Masakela played. Sadly, Paul Robeson style vocals were so out of fashion by that point that that album has never, as far as I can tell, been issued in a digital format, and hasn't even been uploaded to YouTube.  But this excerpt from a later recording by Pringle should give you some idea of the kind of thing he was doing: [Excerpt: Valentine Pringle, "Go 'Way From My Window"] After these experiences, Sebastian started regularly going to shows at Greenwich Village folk clubs, encouraged by his parents -- he had an advantage over his peers because he'd grown up in the area and had artistic parents, and so he was able to have a great deal of freedom that other people in their teens weren't. In particular, he would always look out for any performances by the great country blues performer Mississippi John Hurt. Hurt had made a few recordings for Okeh records in 1928, including an early version of "Stagger Lee", titled "Stack O'Lee": [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Stack O'Lee Blues"] But those records had been unsuccessful, and he'd carried on working on a farm. and not performed other than in his tiny home town of Avalon, Mississippi, for decades. But then in 1952, a couple of his tracks had been included on the Harry Smith Anthology, and as a result he'd come to the attention of the folk and blues scholar community. They'd tried tracking him down, but been unable to until in the early sixties one of them had discovered a track on one of Hurt's records, "Avalon Blues", and in 1963, thirty-five years after he'd recorded six flop singles, Mississippi John Hurt became a minor star, playing the Newport Folk Festival and appearing on the Tonight Show. By this time, Sebastian was a fairly well-known figure in Greenwich Village, and he had become quite a virtuoso on the harmonica himself, and would walk around the city wearing a holster-belt containing harmonicas in a variety of different keys. Sebastian became a huge fan of Hurt, and would go and see him perform whenever Hurt was in New York. He soon found himself first jamming backstage with Hurt, and then performing with him on stage for the last two weeks of a residency. He was particularly impressed with what he called Hurt's positive attitude in his music -- something that Sebastian would emulate in his own songwriting. Sebastian was soon invited to join a jug band, called the Even Dozen Jug Band. Jug band music was a style of music that first became popular in the 1920s, and had many of the same musical elements as the music later known as skiffle. It was played on a mixture of standard musical instruments -- usually portable, "folky" ones like guitar and harmonica -- and improvised homemade instruments, like the spoons, the washboard, and comb and paper. The reason they're called jug bands is because they would involve someone blowing into a jug to make a noise that sounded a bit like a horn -- much like the coffee pot groups we talked about way back in episode six. The music was often hokum music, and incorporated elements of what we'd now call blues, vaudeville, and country music, though at the time those genres were nothing like as distinct as they're considered today: [Excerpt: Cincinnati Jug Band, "Newport Blues"] The Even Dozen Jug Band actually ended up having thirteen members, and it had a rather remarkable lineup. The leader was Stefan Grossman, later regarded as one of the greatest fingerpicking guitarists in America, and someone who will be coming up in other contexts in future episodes I'm sure, and they also featured David Grisman, a mandolin player who would later play with the Grateful Dead among many others;  Steve Katz, who would go on to be a founder member of Blood, Sweat and Tears and produce records for Lou Reed; Maria D'Amato, who under her married name Maria Muldaur would go on to have a huge hit with "Midnight at the Oasis"; and Joshua Rifkin, who would later go on to become one of the most important scholars of Bach's music of the latter half of the twentieth century, but who is best known for his recordings of Scott Joplin's piano rags, which more or less single-handedly revived Joplin's music from obscurity and created the ragtime revival of the 1970s: [Excerpt: Joshua Rifkin, "Maple Leaf Rag"] Unfortunately, despite the many talents involved, a band as big as that was uneconomical to keep together, and the Even Dozen Jug Band only played four shows together -- though those four shows were, as Muldaur later remembered, "Carnegie Hall twice, the Hootenanny television show and some church". The group did, though, make an album for Elektra records, produced by Paul Rothchild. Indeed, it was Rothchild who was the impetus for the group forming -- he wanted to produce a record of a jug band, and had told Grossman that if he got one together, he'd record it: [Excerpt: The Even Dozen Jug Band, "On the Road Again"] On that album, Sebastian wasn't actually credited as John Sebastian -- because he was playing harmonica on the album, and his father was such a famous harmonica player, he thought it better if he was credited by his middle name, so he was John Benson for this one album. The Even Dozen Jug Band split up after only a few months, with most of the band more interested in returning to university than becoming professional musicians, but Sebastian remained in touch with Rothchild, as they both shared an interest in the drug culture, and Rothchild started using him on sessions for other artists on Elektra, which was rapidly becoming one of the biggest labels for the nascent counterculture. The first record the two worked together on after the Even Dozen Jug Band was sparked by a casual conversation. Vince Martin and Fred Neil saw Sebastian walking down the street wearing his harmonica holster, and were intrigued and asked him if he played. Soon he and his friend Felix Pappalardi were accompanying Martin and Neil on stage, and the two of them were recording as the duo's accompanists: [Excerpt: Vince Martin and Fred Neil, "Tear Down the Walls"] We've mentioned Neil before, but if you don't remember him, he was one of the people around whom the whole Greenwich Village scene formed -- he was the MC and organiser of bills for many of the folk shows of the time, but he's now best known for writing the songs "Everybody's Talkin'", recorded famously by Harry Nilsson, and "The Dolphins", recorded by Tim Buckley. On the Martin and Neil album, Tear Down The Walls, as well as playing harmonica, Sebastian acted essentially as uncredited co-producer with Rothchild, but Martin and Neil soon stopped recording for Elektra. But in the meantime, Sebastian had met the most important musical collaborator he would ever have, and this is the start of something that will become a minor trend in the next few years, of important musical collaborations happening because of people being introduced by Cass Elliot. Cass Elliot had been a singer in a folk group called the Big 3 -- not the same group as the Merseybeat group -- with Tim Rose, and the man who would be her first husband, Jim Hendricks (not the more famous guitarist of a similar name): [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] The Big 3 had split up when Elliot and Hendricks had got married, and the two married members had been looking around for other musicians to perform with, when coincidentally another group they knew also split up. The Halifax Three were a Canadian group who had originally started out as The Colonials, with a lineup of Denny Doherty, Pat LaCroix and Richard Byrne. Byrne didn't turn up for a gig, and a homeless guitar player, Zal Yanovsky, who would hang around the club the group were playing at, stepped in. Doherty and LaCroix, much to Yanovsky's objections, insisted he bathe and have a haircut, but soon the newly-renamed Halifax Three were playing Carnegie Hall and recording for Epic Records: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Island"] But then a plane they were in crash-landed, and the group took that as a sign that they should split up. So they did, and Doherty and Yanovsky continued as a duo, until they hooked up with Hendricks and Elliot and formed a new group, the Mugwumps. A name which may be familiar if you recognise one of the hits of a group that Doherty and Elliot were in later: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Creeque Alley"] But we're skipping ahead a bit there. Cass Elliot was one of those few people in the music industry about whom it is impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say, and she was friendly with basically everyone, and particularly good at matching people up with each other. And on February the 7th 1964, she invited John Sebastian over to watch the Beatles' first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Like everyone in America, he was captivated by the performance: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on the Ed Sullivan Show)"] But Yanovsky was also there, and the two played guitar together for a bit, before retreating to opposite sides of the room. And then Elliot spent several hours as a go-between, going to each man and telling him how much the other loved and admired his playing and wanted to play more with him. Sebastian joined the Mugwumps for a while, becoming one of the two main instrumentalists with Yanovsky, as the group pivoted from performing folk music to performing Beatles-inspired rock. But the group's management team, Bob Cavallo and Roy Silver, who weren't particularly musical people, and whose main client was the comedian Bill Cosby, got annoyed at Sebastian, because he and Yanovsky were getting on *too* well musically -- they were trading blues licks on stage, rather than sticking to the rather pedestrian arrangements that the group was meant to be performing -- and so Silver fired Sebastian fired from the group. When the Mugwumps recorded their one album, Sebastian had to sit in the control room while his former bandmates recorded with session musicians, who he thought were nowhere near up to his standard: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] By the time that album was released, the Mugwumps had already split up. Sebastian had continued working as a session musician for Elektra, including playing on the album The Blues Project, which featured white Greenwich Village folk musicians like Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Spider John Koerner playing their versions of old blues records, including this track by Geoff Muldaur, which features Sebastian on harmonica and "Bob Landy" on piano -- a fairly blatant pseudonym: [Excerpt: Geoff Muldaur, "Downtown Blues"] Sebastian also played rhythm guitar and harmonica on the demos that became a big part of Tim Hardin's first album -- and his fourth, when the record company released the remaining demos. Sebastian doesn't appear to be on the orchestrated ballads that made Hardin's name -- songs like "Reason to Believe" and "Misty Roses" -- but he is on much of the more blues-oriented material, which while it's not anything like as powerful as Hardin's greatest songs, made up a large part of his repertoire: [Excerpt: Tim Hardin, "Ain't Gonna Do Without"] Erik Jacobsen, the producer of Hardin's records, was impressed enough by Sebastian that he got Sebastian to record lead vocals, for a studio group consisting of Sebastian, Felix Pappalardi, Jerry Yester and Henry Diltz of the Modern Folk Quartet, and a bass singer whose name nobody could later remember. The group, under the name "Pooh and the Heffalumps", recorded two Beach Boys knockoffs, "Lady Godiva" and "Rooty Toot", the latter written by Sebastian, though he would later be embarrassed by it and claim it was by his cousin: [Excerpt: Pooh and the Heffalumps, "Rooty Toot"] After that, Jacobsen became convinced that Sebastian should form a group to exploit his potential as a lead singer and songwriter. By this point, the Mugwumps had split up, and their management team had also split, with Silver taking Bill Cosby and Cavallo taking the Mugwumps, and so Sebastian was able to work with Yanovsky, and the putative group could be managed by Cavallo. But Sebastian and Yanovsky needed a rhythm section. And Erik Jacobsen knew a band that might know some people. Jacobsen was a fan of a Beatles soundalike group called the Sellouts, who were playing Greenwich Village and who were co-managed by Herb Cohen, the manager of the Modern Folk Quartet (who, as we heard a couple of episodes ago, would soon go on to be the manager of the Mothers of Invention). The Sellouts were ultra-professional by the standards  of rock groups of the time -- they even had a tape echo machine that they used on stage to give them a unique sound -- and they had cut a couple of tracks with Jacobsen producing, though I've not been able to track down copies of them. Their leader Skip Boone, had started out playing guitar in a band called the Blue Suedes, and had played in 1958 on a record by their lead singer Arthur Osborne: [Excerpt: Arthur Osborne, "Hey Ruby"] Skip Boone's brother Steve in his autobiography says that that was produced by Chet Atkins for RCA, but it was actually released on Brunswick records. In the early sixties, Skip Boone joined a band called the Kingsmen -- not the same one as the band that recorded "Louie Louie" -- playing lead guitar with his brother Steve on rhythm, a singer called Sonny Bottari, a saxophone player named King Charles, bass player Clay Sonier, and drummer Joe Butler. Sometimes Butler would get up front and sing, and then another drummer, Jan Buchner, would sit in in his place. Soon Steve Boone would replace Bonier as the bass player, but the Kingsmen had no success, and split up. From the ashes of the Kingsmen had formed the Sellouts, Skip Boone, Jerry Angus, Marshall O'Connell, and Joe Butler, who had switched from playing "Peppermint Twist" to playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in February 1964. Meanwhile Steve Boone went on a trip to Europe before starting at university in New York, where he hooked up again with Butler, and it was Butler who introduced him to Sebastian and Yanovsky. Sebastian and Yanovsky had been going to see the Sellouts at the behest of Jacobsen, and they'd been asking if they knew anyone else who could play that kind of material. Skip Boone had mentioned his little brother, and as soon as they met him, even before they first played together, they knew from his appearance that he would be the right bass player for them. So now they had at least the basis for a band. They hadn't played together, but Erik Jacobsen was an experienced record producer and Cavallo an experienced manager. They just needed to do some rehearsals and get a drummer, and a record contract was more or less guaranteed. Boone suggested Jan Buchner, the backup drummer from the Kingsmen, and he joined them for rehearsals. It was during these early rehearsals that Boone got to play on his first real record, other than some unreleased demos the Kingsmen had made. John Sebastian got a call from that "Bob Landy" we mentioned earlier, asking if he'd play bass on a session. Boone tagged along, because he was a fan, and when Sebastian couldn't get the parts down for some songs, he suggested that Boone, as an actual bass player, take over: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm"] But the new group needed a name, of course. It was John Sebastian who came up with the name they eventually chose, The Lovin' Spoonful, though Boone was a bit hesitant about it at first, worrying that it might be a reference to heroin -- Boone was from a very conservative, military, background, and knew little of drug culture and didn't at that time make much of a distinction between cannabis and heroin, though he'd started using the former -- but Sebastian was insistent. The phrase actually referred to coffee -- the name came from "Coffee Blues" by Sebastian's old idol Mississippi John Hurt – or at least Hurt always *said* it was about coffee, though in live performance he apparently made it clear that it was about cunnilingus: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Coffee Blues"] Their first show, at the Night Owl Club, was recorded, and there was even an attempt to release it as a CD in the 1990s, but it was left unreleased and as far as I can tell wasn't even leaked. There have been several explanations for this, but perhaps the most accurate one is just the comment from the manager of the club, who came up to the group after their two sets and told them “Hey, I don't know how to break this to you, but you guys suck.” There were apparently three different problems. They were underrehearsed -- which could be fixed with rehearsal -- they were playing too loud and hurting the patrons' ears -- which could be fixed by turning down the amps -- and their drummer didn't look right, was six years older than the rest of the group, and was playing in an out-of-date fifties style that wasn't suitable for the music they were playing. That was solved by sacking Buchner. By this point Joe Butler had left the Sellouts, and while Herb Cohen was interested in managing him as a singer, he was willing to join this new group at least for the moment. By now the group were all more-or-less permanent residents at the Albert Hotel, which was more or less a doss-house where underemployed musicians would stay, and which had its own rehearsal rooms. As well as the Spoonful, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty lived there, as did the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Joe Butler quickly fit into the group, and soon they were recording what became their first single, produced by Jacobsen, an original of Sebastian's called "Do You Believe in Magic?", with Sebastian on autoharp and vocals, Yanovsky on lead guitar and backing vocals, Boone on bass, Butler on drums, and Jerry Yester adding piano and backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] For a long time, the group couldn't get a deal -- the record companies all liked the song, but said that unless the group were English they couldn't sell them at the moment. Then Phil Spector walked into the Night Owl Cafe, where the new lineup of the group had become popular, and tried to sign them up. But they turned him down -- they wanted Erik Jacobsen to produce them; they were a team. Spector's interest caused other labels to be interested, and the group very nearly signed to Elektra. But again, signing to Elektra would have meant being produced by Rothchild, and also Elektra were an album label who didn't at that time have any hit single acts, and the group knew they had hit single potential. They did record a few tracks for Elektra to stick on a blues compilation, but they knew that Elektra wouldn't be their real home. Eventually the group signed with Charley Koppelman and Don Rubin, who had started out as songwriters themselves, working for Don Kirshner. When Kirshner's organisation had been sold to Columbia, Koppelman and Rubin had gone along and ended up working for Columbia as executives. They'd then worked for Morris Levy at Roulette Records, before forming their own publishing and record company. Rather than put out records themselves, they had a deal to license records to Kama Sutra Records, who in turn had a distribution deal with MGM Records. Koppelman and Rubin were willing to take the group and their manager and producer as a package deal, and they released the group's demo of "Do You Believe In Magic?" unchanged as their first single: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] The single reached the top ten, and the group were soon in the studio cutting their first album, also titled Do You Believe In Magic? The album was a mix of songs that were part of the standard Greenwich Village folkie repertoire -- songs like Mississippi John Hurt's "Blues in the Bottle" and Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" -- and a couple more originals. The group's second single was the first song that Steve Boone had co-written. It was inspired by a date he'd gone on with the photographer Nurit Wilde, who sadly for him didn't go on a second date, and who would later be the mother of Mike Nesmith's son Jason, but who he was very impressed by. He thought of her when he came up with the line "you didn't have to be so nice, I would have liked you anyway", and he and Sebastian finished up a song that became another top ten hit for the group: [Excerpt: (The Good Time Music of) The Lovin' Spoonful, "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice"] Shortly after that song was recorded, but before it was released, the group were called into Columbia TV with an intriguing proposition. Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, two young TV producers, were looking at producing a TV show inspired by A Hard Day's Night, and were looking for a band to perform in it. Would the Lovin' Spoonful be up for it? They were interested at first, but Boone and Sebastian weren't sure they wanted to be actors, and also it would involve the group changing its name. They'd already made a name for themselves as the Lovin' Spoonful, did they really want to be the Monkees instead? They passed on the idea. Instead, they went on a tour of the deep South as the support act to the Supremes, a pairing that they didn't feel made much sense, but which did at least allow them to watch the Supremes and the Funk Brothers every night. Sebastian was inspired by the straight four-on-the-floor beat of the Holland-Dozier-Holland repertoire, and came up with his own variation on it, though as this was the Lovin' Spoonful the end result didn't sound very Motown at all: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Daydream"] It was only after the track was recorded that Yanovsky pointed out to Sebastian that he'd unconsciously copied part of the melody of the old standard "Got a Date With an Angel": [Excerpt: Al Bowlly, "Got a Date With an Angel"] "Daydream" became the group's third top ten hit in a row, but it caused some problems for the group. The first was Kama Sutra's advertising campaign for the record, which had the words "Lovin' Spoonful Daydream", with the initials emphasised. While the group were drug users, they weren't particularly interested in being promoted for that rather than their music, and had strong words with the label. The other problem came with the Beach Boys. The group were supporting the Beach Boys on a tour in spring of 1966, when "Daydream" came out and became a hit, and they got on with all the band members except Mike Love, who they definitely did not get on with. Almost fifty years later, in his autobiography, Steve Boone would have nothing bad to say about the Wilson brothers, but calls Love "an obnoxious, boorish braggart", a "marginally talented hack" and worse, so it's safe to say that Love wasn't his favourite person in the world. Unfortunately, when "Daydream" hit the top ten, one of the promoters of the tour decided to bill the Lovin' Spoonful above the Beach Boys, and this upset Love, who understandably thought that his group, who were much better known and had much more hits, should be the headliners. If this had been any of the other Beach Boys, there would have been no problem, but because it was Love, who the Lovin' Spoonful despised, they decided that they were going to fight for top billing, and the managers had to get involved. Eventually it was agreed that the two groups would alternate the top spot on the bill for the rest of the tour. "Daydream" eventually reached number two on the charts (and number one on Cashbox) and also became the group's first hit in the UK, reaching number two here as well, and leading to the group playing a short UK tour. During that tour, they had a similar argument over billing with Mick Jagger as they'd had with Mike Love, this time over who was headlining on an appearance on Top of the Pops, and the group came to the same assessment of Jagger as they had of Love. The performance went OK, though, despite them being so stoned on hash given them by the wealthy socialite Tara Browne that Sebastian had to be woken up seconds before he started playing. They also played the Marquee Club -- Boone notes in his autobiography that he wasn't impressed by the club when he went to see it the day before their date there, because some nobody named David Bowie was playing there. But in the audience that day were George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis, and Brian Jones, most of whom partied with the group afterwards. The Lovin' Spoonful made a big impression on Lennon in particular, who put "Daydream" and "Do You Believe in Magic" in his jukebox at home, and who soon took to wearing glasses in the same round, wiry, style as the ones that Sebastian wore. They also influenced Paul McCartney, who wasn't at that gig, but who soon wrote this, inspired by "Daydream": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Good Day Sunshine"] Unfortunately, this was more or less the high point of the group's career. Shortly after that brief UK tour, Zal Yanovsky and Steve Boone went to a party where they were given some cannabis -- and they were almost immediately stopped by the police, subjected to an illegal search of their vehicle, and arrested. They would probably have been able to get away with this -- after all, it was an illegal search, even though of course the police didn't admit to that -- were it not for the fact that Yanovsky was a Canadian citizen, and he could be deported and barred from ever re-entering the US just for being arrested. This was the first major drug bust of a rock and roll group, and there was no precedent for the group, their managers, their label or their lawyers to deal with this. And so they agreed to something they would regret for the rest of their lives. In return for being let off, Boone and Yanovsky agreed to take an undercover police officer to a party and introduce him to some of their friends as someone they knew in the record business, so he would be able to arrest one of the bigger dealers. This was, of course, something they knew was a despicable thing to do, throwing friends under the bus to save themselves, but they were young men and under a lot of pressure, and they hoped that it wouldn't actually lead to any arrests. And for almost a year, there were no serious consequences, although both Boone and Yanovsky were shaken up by the event, and Yanovsky's behaviour, which had always been erratic, became much, much worse. But for the moment, the group remained very successful. After "Daydream", an album track from their first album, "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" had been released as a stopgap single, and that went to number two as well. And right before the arrest, the group had been working on what would be an even bigger hit. The initial idea for "Summer in the City" actually came from John Sebastian's fourteen-year-old brother Mark, who'd written a bossa nova song called "It's a Different World". The song was, by all accounts, the kind of thing that a fourteen-year-old boy writes, but part of it had potential, and John Sebastian took that part -- giving his brother full credit -- and turned it into the chorus of a new song: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] To this, Sebastian added a new verse, inspired by a riff the session player Artie Schroeck had been playing while the group recorded their songs for the Woody Allen film What's Up Tiger Lily, creating a tenser, darker, verse to go with his younger brother's chorus: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] In the studio, Steve Boone came up with the instrumental arrangement, which started with drums, organ, electric piano, and guitar, and then proceeded to bass, autoharp, guitar, and percussion overdubs. The drum sound on the record was particularly powerful thanks to the engineer Roy Halee, who worked on most of Simon & Garfunkel's records. Halee put a mic at the top of a stairwell, a giant loudspeaker at the bottom, and used the stairwell as an echo chamber for the drum part. He would later use a similar technique on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer". The track still needed another section though, and Boone suggested an instrumental part, which led to him getting an equal songwriting credit with the Sebastian brothers. His instrumental piano break was inspired by Gershwin, and the group topped it off with overdubbed city noises: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's only number one record, and it was the last track on what is by far their best album, Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful. That album produced two more top ten hits for the group, "Nashville Cats", a tribute to Nashville session players (though John Sebastian seems to have thought that Sun Records was a Nashville, rather than a Memphis, label), and the rather lovely "Rain on the Roof": [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Rain on the Roof"] But that song caused friction with the group, because it was written about Sebastian's relationship with his wife who the other members of the band despised. They also felt that the songs he was writing about their relationship were giving the group a wimpy image, and wanted to make more rockers like "Summer in the City" -- some of them had been receiving homophobic abuse for making such soft-sounding music. The group were also starting to resent Sebastian for other reasons. In a recent contract renegotiation, a "key member" clause had been put into the group's record contract, which stated that Sebastian, as far as the label was concerned, was the only important member of the group. While that didn't affect decision-making in the group, it did let the group know that if the other members did anything to upset Sebastian, he was able to take his ball away with him, and even just that potential affected the way the group thought about each other. All these factors came into play with a song called "Darling Be Home Soon", which was a soft ballad that Sebastian had written about his wife, and which was written for another film soundtrack -- this time for a film by a new director named Francis Ford Coppola. When the other band members came in to play on the soundtrack, including that track, they found that rather than being allowed to improvise and come up with their own parts as they had previously, they had to play pre-written parts to fit with the orchestration. Yanovsky in particular was annoyed by the simple part he had to play, and when the group appeared on the Ed Sullivan show to promote the record, he mugged, danced erratically, and mimed along mocking the lyrics as Sebastian sang. The song -- one of Sebastian's very best -- made a perfectly respectable number fifteen, but it was the group's first record not to make the top ten: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Darling Be Home Soon"] And then to make matters worse, the news got out that someone had been arrested as a result of Boone and Yanovsky's efforts to get themselves out of trouble the year before. This was greeted with horror by the counterculture, and soon mimeographed newsletters and articles in the underground papers were calling the group part of the establishment, and calling for a general boycott of the group -- if you bought their records, attended their concerts, or had sex with any of the band members, you were a traitor. Yanovsky and Boone had both been in a bad way mentally since the bust, but Yanovsky was far worse, and was making trouble for the other members in all sorts of ways. The group decided to fire Yanovsky, and brought in Jerry Yester to replace him, giving him a severance package that ironically meant that he ended up seeing more money from the group's records than the rest of them, as their records were later bought up by a variety of shell companies that passed through the hands of Morris Levy among others, and so from the late sixties through the early nineties the group never got any royalties. For a while, this seemed to benefit everyone. Yanovsky had money, and his friendship with the group members was repaired. He released a solo single, arranged by Jack Nitzsche, which just missed the top one hundred: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "Just as Long as You're Here"] That song was written by the Bonner and Gordon songwriting team who were also writing hits for the Turtles at this time, and who were signed to Koppelman and Rubin's company. The extent to which Yanovsky's friendship with his ex-bandmates was repaired by his firing was shown by the fact that Jerry Yester, his replacement in the group, co-produced his one solo album, Alive and Well in Argentina, an odd mixture of comedy tracks, psychedelia, and tributes to the country music he loved. His instrumental version of Floyd Cramer's "Last Date" is fairly listenable -- Cramer's piano playing was a big influence on Yanovsky's guitar -- but his version of George Jones' "From Brown to Blue" makes it very clear that Zal Yanovsky was no George Jones: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "From Brown to Blue"] Yanovsky then quit music, and went into the restaurant business. The Lovin' Spoonful, meanwhile, made one further album, but the damage had been done. Everything Playing is actually a solid album, though not as good as the album before, and it produced three top forty hits, but the highest-charting was "Six O'Clock", which only made number eighteen, and the album itself made a pitiful one hundred and eighteen on the charts. The song on the album that in retrospect has had the most impact was the rather lovely "Younger Generation", which Sebastian later sang at Woodstock: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Younger Generation (Live at Woodstock)"] But at Woodstock he performed that alone, because by then he'd quit the group. Boone, Butler, and Yester decided to continue, with Butler singing lead, and recorded a single, "Never Going Back", produced by Yester's old bandmate from the Modern Folk Quartet Chip Douglas, who had since become a successful producer for the Monkees and the Turtles, and written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who had written "Daydream Believer" for the Monkees, but the record only made number seventy-eight on the charts: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler, "Never Going Back"] That was followed by an album by "The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler", Revelation: Revolution 69, a solo album by Butler in all but name -- Boone claims not to have played on it, and Butler is the only one featured on the cover, which shows a naked Butler being chased by a naked woman with a lion in front of them covering the naughty bits. The biggest hit other than "Never Going Back" from the album was "Me About You", a Bonner and Gordon song which only made number ninety-one: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler, "Me About You"] John Sebastian went on to have a moderately successful solo career -- as well as his appearance at Woodstock, he released several solo albums, guested on harmonica on records by the Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young and others, and had a solo number one hit in 1976 with "Welcome Back", the theme song from the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Welcome Back"] Sebastian continues to perform, though he's had throat problems for several decades that mean he can't sing many of the songs he's best known for. The original members of the Lovin' Spoonful reunited for two performances -- an appearance in Paul Simon's film One Trick Pony in 1980, and a rather disastrous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Zal Yanovsky died of a heart attack in 2002. The remaining band members remained friendly, and Boone, Butler, and Yester reunited as the Lovin' Spoonful in 1991, initially with Yester's brother Jim, who had played in The Association, latterly with other members. One of those other members in the 1990s was Yester's daughter Lena, who became Boone's fourth wife (and is as far as I can discover still married to him). Yester, Boone, and Butler continued touring together as the Lovin' Spoonful until 2017, when Jerry Yester was arrested on thirty counts of child pornography possession, and was immediately sacked from the group. The other two carried on, and the three surviving original members reunited on stage for a performance at one of the Wild Honey Orchestra's benefit concerts in LA in 2020, though that was just a one-off performance, not a full-blown reunion. It was also the last Lovin' Spoonful performance to date, as that was in February 2020, but Steve Boone has performed with John Sebastian's most recent project, John Sebastian's Jug Band Village, a tribute to the Greenwich Village folk scene the group originally formed in, and the two played together most recently in December 2021. The three surviving original members of the group all seem to be content with their legacy, doing work they enjoy, and basically friendly, which is more than can be said for most of their contemporaries, and which is perhaps appropriate for a band whose main songwriter had been inspired, more than anything else, to make music with a positive attitude.

Yes, you've heard plenty of concept albums from rock and rollers, but what about country? In 1975, Willie Nelson took it upon himself to respond to rock music's "Sergeant Pepper"s and "Tommy"s with his own protagonist on a journey. However, with Willie's "Red Headed Stranger", we got a much less fantastical, and much more harrowing western tale, rife with betrayal, murder, and eventually redemption. There's a very clear character arc and the story is pretty easy to follow, but there's something different about this concept album. It's almost entirely covers. Somehow, Willie was able to take pre-existing and historically significant songs and form them into a coherent story that sounds entirely his own. It's truly one of the most impressive concept albums we've tackled. This episode has Brad, Jon, and Jake! Links: OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/2stA2P7pTC Flyover State Hotline - 1 608 HIT-NERD FLYOVER STATE TV YOUTUBE live every other Tues. at 730pm CST: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClxl2ivi_eO93zL49QZDuqA (for local listeners) Under the Covers is Wednesday mornings from 6 to 8am on 91.7 WSUM FM, 92.5 WISY FM Sunday afternoons 1-3pm EVERYTHING ELSE: https://linktr.ee/FlyoverStatePark --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/albumconcepthour/support

From the photographer of the critically acclaimed 108 Rock Star Guitars comes a new collection of beautifully shot guitar photos, documenting the legendary instruments of B.B. King, Kurt Cobain, St. Vincent, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and more than one hundred and fifty legendary rock icons. Armed with a macro lens, an incredible eye for detail, and a truly inspiring vision, Johnson and her guitar art are taking the world of fine art photography on a rock and roll ride. Far from still life, Johnson's work conjures the abstract yet also possesses a very sensual and ethereal aura, illustrating the intimate wear and details of each instrument featured.Johnson's debut book, 108 Rock Star Guitars, received rave reviews and in Immortal Axes, she raises the bar even further, capturing the imagination of music fans everywhere. Each intimate photograph is accompanied by a touch of musical history, an anecdote or great personal storytelling moments, making this stunning book a must-have not only for guitar lovers but for every reader who wants to know more about their favorite guitarists and the instruments they cherish. Additional artists and bands include: Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Peter Frampton, Steve Hackett, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Jimmy Page, Albert Lee, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Lita Ford, Susanna Hoffs, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Malcolm Young, Dave Grohl, Nancy Wilson, Michael Anthony and Suzi Quatro to name a few.  Lisa S. Johnson's stunning photos and her body of work have led to collaborations with the Malibu Guitar Festival, Museum of Making Music, and Museum of Design Atlanta. She collaborated with former Editor-in-Chief of Guitar World magazine and author Brad Tolinski for Immortal Axes. Johnson lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her partner and two boxer dogs. She is also an avid Kundalini yoga teacher on her instagram platform @Cosmic_108. Connect with Lisa at www.108RockStarGuitars.com and on insta @cosmic_108 Brandon Handley 0:40 It is crucial dope. I'm on here today with Lisa s. Johnson. She is coming here to us by way of a guest you may or may not recall from the game here. with fresh Shaw, that's how you and I connected Lisa and Lisa. She's got a couple of really awesome books, guitar and books that she's put on the winners on all about those two here in a second. And she also does a weekly Kundalini course on Instagram under cosmic 108. But this one should tell us a little bit about who you are. What made you feel a spiritual dove was is a place for you to be right now. Lisa S Johnson 1:15 Well, hey, Brandon, thank you so much for having me on as a guest today. I really appreciate it. And it was really cool that we did meet through Paresh who I know through Kundalini Yoga, we went through Kundalini Yoga training together. And he's also rock and rollers. So it was interesting that he and I really connected in class before we even know, we were both into rock and roll. So. So that's how things weave together. And that brought me to you spiritual dope, which I love that name. Because it's kind of telling of the times and connecting to the youth generation really, because to say spiritual dope, kind of, you know, get the younger person interested. And we can talk about things spirituality, and things that are going on in the world in more of a hipper way. So it's really fun to take part in that. My background is that I come from a musical family in northern Canada, where I grew up until I was 23. And I was born in California, though, so I have my California roots until age seven, and then lived in Canada, then moved to Florida. And I ended up going to college for photography, which led me to a job for 10 years with the Eastman Kodak company. And I ended up living in Memphis, Tennessee, and going to the Unity Church. And my father growing up told me I was not allowed to date musicians. And so I he was a musician, so and still is. And so I was at the Unity Church picnic, and the guitar player from church asked me out on a date, and I accepted and we started dating. So I called my dad and said, Hey, Dad, I'm, I'm dating a musician. However, he is the guitar player at church, and he owns a vintage guitar store. And my dad being a guitar player said, Hey, if he ever gets in and gets a mandolin, I've always wanted one. And you know, he's not a touring musician. So that doesn't matter. You can you can date him. So that was the beginning of my photographing guitars, because my boyfriend then Hank said, I told him about this request of a vintage mandolin. And he got one in two weeks later, and I said, how much I want to buy that from my dad. And he said, You can't afford it. But if you photograph some guitars, for me, I have to sell that I don't want to sell, I'll trade you for the mandolin. So that was it. And I photographed these amazing vintage guitars for him and I fell in love with my photography for the first time. So I really was drawn into photographing guitars in a spiritual way, because I was going to the Unity Church, which is a non denominational church and what attracted me too, it was that they would always read a passage out of Chicken Soup for the Soul, you know, Joseph Campbell, and, and, and they would relate it to a passage in the Bible. So it wasn't you know, like this indoctrinated you know, where I grew up in the Catholic Church, you know, it was fun, at the end would always sing a song holding hands, the whole congregation, let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. And so that was the beginning of my spiritual journey. And at that point, I was probably 2425 Ah, you know, and of course, my spiritual journey did begin when I grew up, I started in the Catholic Church. By the age of 14, I already realized that God was within me, that I didn't need to go to church to be with God. And that gave me a lot of peace. And I always felt God with me and I've always prayed. But then when I found the Unity Church, I actually because it was more of a spiritual feeling. And I they had a bookstore there and I my first spiritual books that I bought was Wayne Dyer, and Louise Hay and Shaco Wayne. And these books really and you know, the first really spiritual book that I read before that even at 18 was thinking go Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. And if you read Shakti, Wayne's creative visualizations, basically, it's the same concept. You know, you, you are what you think, you know, what you speak manifests into reality. And that was Napoleon Hill's whole premise. You know, if you think you're going to be negative and talk negative all the time, that's what you're going to attract. And if you talk positive, and think positive and and visualize your goal, then that's what's going to manifest. And so this is how I've lived my life and manifest in my life since I was 18 years old. So just to conclude, I, I went to college for photography, and I ended up moving to New York City. And I got this job with Kodak. So I was in New York, and then Memphis. And I ended up shooting those guitars in Memphis. And then I got sent back to New York. And I thought, if I'm going to shoot guitars, I may as well shoot famous ones. So Les Paul played every Monday night at the Iridium room in Manhattan, and I started going down there, and I eventually met him and he let me photograph his guitar. So that was the first famous guitar I photographed. And then 12 years later, he ended up writing the foreword for my first book, 108 rock star guitars. And then I ended up in a car crash in between all this and my neck got jacked. After, after I moved to Las Vegas from New York City. And that led me to a chiropractor who told me that Vikram yoga would be really good for me. And so I started taking their chrome yoga classes became a victim yoga teacher, studied yoga philosophy, read Autobiography of a Yogi, and it totally changed my life. And then, almost 20 years later, I was introduced to Kundalini Yoga. Through the modern day priestess training that I started that I, I took, I'm a modern day priestess as well. And we did Kundalini Yoga every day. So that's how I ended up in the Kundalini, cosmic 108 Saturday morning classes to share the yoga technology and the tools of yoga to help us previously, just in regular times, but now especially even more in these really trying times on the planet. Brandon Handley 7:25 of the story, I love the journey that you know, I mean, first time, Ed, a musician, of course, is when the dad says no. Right? And that's the that's right. There's your proven out of principle, right out of thinking Grow Rich, like whatever you focus on what manifests sure very. So you know, he's focused on for you was what manifested for you. So he played a part in that. And that, you know, the journey towards photography and photographing these these guitars, right, and cars is going for it. Just saying this is this is what kind of sets my soul on fire, and looking for ways to make that happen. Exact so cool. Yeah. So thanks. Thanks for the background. Right. So what I like to start this off with is the idea that, hey, we're all spiritual beings. Right? And that source speaks through us right now I sources speaking through you, to me, to somebody on the other end, that is listening to this podcast today. What is something what's a message that can only be delivered through you to that person today? Lisa S Johnson 8:38 Okay, well, I'm just going to go with what channels right through instantly, that's where you got to go. And so mine is via channel, B channel. So ask your higher guides, or whatever God is for you, make me a channel of a higher will. This is how we received the messages from the universe and from our guides and angels, through our, our cosmic antenna, our auric field, which the ark line is a part of our bigger auric field. And so the ark line is the seventh body of consciousness that we have out of 10 light bodies of consciousness, the 3d body, the gross body, that's only one body, we have seven additional. So the Arc Line is, is the seventh body. And it's the way that we send and receive signals to each other, that can be sent even over vast spaces of time, you know, for one country or area or planet to another. And it's important to keep your antenna clean and clear. If it's dirty, it's got a lot of static in there. You can't send your signal and you can't receive signals. So that means I'm not communicating effectively or I can't receive others communications effectively. So this is one of the reasons why we do spiritual work meditation and movements. So that we can clean and clear all of our bodies, including that that radar antenna, the Arc Line. So that is how I would channel something that no one else could receive from any other place other than through me, because I'm sending it through my Arc Line through my channel to your listeners right now. And I have often asked my guys make me a channel of a higher will, so that I can hear and see the unseen. Brandon Handley 10:32 What is Oh, I think that's fantastic. open yourself up to be a channel to begin with, say, Make me your channel, allow me to be a channel. I've been trying to do this whole thing myself this entire time. What else kind of let it flow through me? What's a way that we can clear tailor my sales of this? Boy, how do I clean my sale? Lisa S Johnson 11:00 It's easier than you think. I mean, people say I can't meditate. Oh, I can never meditate. Okay, so yes, everyone can meditate. And everyone can clear their channel. And here's how. First of all, you can sit and you have to make meditation, super simple and easy, especially in the beginning. And while you're meditating, you're cleaning your arclight. Okay, so this is the same answer for both things. So first of all, you sit and we you invoke you do an invocation to clear the space, stage yourself, you know, stage the room with Palo Santo or stage what happens. Then you do an invocation, bringing in your guides and teachers, and then you do movements. So for example, one way to clear your Arc Line, your antenna is inhaling and turning your head to the left, and exhale and turning your head to the right, because that's cleaning and clearing the space right in front of your face and to the left into the right. And then if you tuck your chin into your chest, you rotate your head around a big neck circles. This is cleaning the Arc Line, you're going in a circle and it's clean exactly that area in your in your Arc Line in your auric fields. Then we use breathwork inclusively, you know a lot of deep inhaling, exhaling or rectifier pumping the belly and equal pumps. And this is distributing energy in the body and sending your Kundalini energy from the base of your spine, all the way up to the top of your crown chakra. So all of your chakras are getting a burst of energy as you're pumping the belly in. So and then you quiet the mind you do the work, the movement opens the body and allows you to sit in meditation and be more calm. And still, even when you're super calm. You can close your eyes, look into your third eye center, your sixth chakra, and that that stimulates activates your pineal gland, which is your your tool your gland for extrasensory perceptions, and how we can learn to connect and with our subtle body with using extrasensory perception so we can feel energy around us more we can hear what someone is saying without them actually saying it. And all of this clears your archive and your intent just to very quickly, you know, give you a summary of how you how you clear it. So it's through breath movement, meditation. Brandon Handley 13:29 That's great. So you got a twofer there. Alright, you can do a little bit a little bit of both at the same time. One thing that definitely has been hugely impactful for me this past year has definitely been the breathwork. And it sounds like that's a big part of Kundalini Yoga. We're a couple that with Autobiography of a Yogi, right, is this Kundalini Yoga? associated? Specifically with like I was at the Southeast Asia foundation. Yeah. Through. You went through the priestess Lisa S Johnson 14:05 training? I did. Yes. So, Yogi, paramahansa Yogananda. He was a Kriya. Yogi. So that's what we do include aleni we do Kriya Yoga. And that means that we do yoga postures from the 84 Classic asanas that Austin as is of your means yoga posture, we do we pull from there. And on top of that, we also always use mantra, meditation mudras. We use our our throat or our throat. To every class, we incorporate these aspects. And this is called Kriya Yoga. So guys like guru Singh, who's been a longtime kodaline Teacher, he also come through lineage of Yogananda, and so to why so I really kind of relate to him in that way. So we're doing Kriya Yoga. But the thing about Kundalini that makes it more advanced is that it's really teaching the science of yoga, and yoga as a technology as tools that we use for self healing. First, we heal the self, then we can heal others, and we heal others through our energetic field. So as we amplify and expand our electromagnetic frequency, through the movement, and the meditation and the breathwork, and all that, we're expanding our electromagnetic field and our auric field gets bigger and brighter and stronger, and more radiant, and more attractive to other people. And it then it starts to just attract all the right people to and it spells all the negative stuff out. And then there's no room for any negative anymore. So even when the worst shit is flying around this planet, right now, you can learn and use these tools to be able to stay calm, in the midst of this chaos that we're in and send your light out in every direction. super big and super powerful. And when we sit and meditate, especially on full moons, and new moons, because these are the the doors of the portals of the planets when the planets line up when the Moon and the Sun and Earth are lining up. And they're lining up with other stars that happen throughout the year. These create portals, we just had the big Lionsgate portal on August 8. And this is a time when energy frequency and vibration funnels into the planet and upward levels, our DNA and our our electromagnetic frequency and our ESP and our overall consciousness on the planet. So right now, we're going through hell. But we're going through hell to get to heaven. Because heavens on the way. And it's on the way, and I know it is because I study the yugas. And that's what Yogananda used to teach the yugas and his his teacher Shri you test guar. He's the one who wrote the book, the science of yoga, and he speaks all about the yoga so we can get into that if you'd like it's just one of my favorite topics. Brandon Handley 17:18 Well, yeah, I mean, we absolutely get into that we have a lot. I love the concept. And I think I remember like, first of all, you know, Autobiography of a Yogi, what a great book write a really, really great book, fun to read. And so it was like being on that adventure with them as as he kind of goes through his life. And then I think he did talk about it. Did he talk about yoga technology, and there are not likely to finish it up with that. Lisa S Johnson 17:47 Remember, you remember him specifically saying yoga as a technology? But I bet he did. Because you shriek test suar he saw I'm sure the technology because of these. The the chart of the yoga is that he created and I mean, they they knew the science of yoga. So Brandon Handley 18:07 Oh, yeah, that's, that's not new to that. No, it's not it's not new to them. And by that, I mean, like, the whole Indian Lisa S Johnson 18:16 culture, and just like how people are way more advanced than us. 100% Brandon Handley 18:20 I mean, look, I mean, we're, I mean, we're like crawling, right? And in terms of like, our just general conscious capabilities. That's my thing. Right? I just kind of where we are in terms of, of civilization like that. It's really learn how to as you I think you talked a little bit about harnessing your mind right, and just really getting in there. So you also need to talk about these portals. I want to just hit on. I love Lionsgate, right. Just just I love Lionsgate portal, mostly because of the memes and the social media that come along with it because it's very entertaining. But I think it also offers like, you know, through through the entertainment edutainment, right like it's so opens that up to somebody even if they laugh at it or joka. Like it becomes a seed somewhere. Right. So, what tell us a little bit about more, right if I was about Lionsgate Okay, we'll talk about that. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Lisa S Johnson 19:24 Well, there is a star named Sirius. I'm sure you're aware of it most. Everybody knows about the star Sirius. It's also called the dog star. And it is the brightest star in the sky. It's the North Star. So the Sirius star in August from July 26 to August 12. The dog star begins to rise in the morning with our son. So there's two suns in the sky. So you may have seen recently a lot of photos with two suns in the sky and people are going What's up, there's two sons. Well, this happens every year because the Sirius star is rising with the sun. So that is in alignment of Sirius that is supposedly a planet where the Syrians come from. And they that planet Sirius is aligned now with our sun, which is aligned with our Earth. So that is creating a shaft, a portal, it's going straight through to planet earth, showering the planet earth with that energy frequency and vibration. What was really extra special this year was that we have the new moon exactly in the path. So with serious sun, moon, earth, so this was especially powerful. Just like on the new moon and the full moon, those are especially powerful times and for us to set intentions. So that's why we do new moon and full moon intention setting and clearings. So, in on top of this, the Sirius star is in alignment with Orion's belt that has three stars. And those three stars were aligned with the tip the points of the three pyramids in Giza. So, I mean, why were the pyramids built? Who built the pyramids? You know, did they build them exactly to line up with, you know, Stargate Ryan, you know, was that how serious came in and maybe maybe people for, you know, whatever you want to call them, aliens. Other other types of beings came down, and were able to access Planet Earth, and maybe they that's how, you know, when we when we send the shuttle off, for spaceships off, it has to coincide in line with, you know, the planets and things moving around in the sky. So it's the same thing, if another entity wants to come on a spaceship to Earth, maybe there has to be certain portals that takes for them to come down. And maybe that's why the pyramids are pointing up to those three stars. So that's what happened on August 8, so July 26, to August 12. That is the portal opening and closing. So begins just like you see, you know, the moon, the moon slowly going from full moon to you know, New Moon, we have that energy shift as well, during that date, but August 8 is the apex of that alignment and the most powerful day. So that's where everyone does a ceremony on August 8, but we really do the work from July 26, all the way through to August 12. To get that full, you know, you can utilize the energy, this is what we have to use to upgrade our consciousness, we need to utilize these tools that are given given to us by God really through the makeup of our cosma cosmos, we're really need to utilize the tools which we've forgotten to use because they've dumped us down with freaking TV with even Disneyland. I mean, it's the dumbing down of our society. I mean, they just finished some state just passed the law that you don't have to be able to know math or read to pass your high school examination. Really. And there's there's no lot of modesty anymore. Every album cover every every video, you see, it's just people wearing hardly anything. It looks super hot and sexy. Hey, yeah, I get it. I see it. But it's not. It's not serving our youth culture. They're growing up thinking what do you want to be when you grow up? Oh, I want to be a rock star. Brandon Handley 23:40 Well, I always I always make that joke. My own joke anyways about like tipper gore and our board back in the day, right? When they were trying to you know, kind of pull back some like to live crew and and all those other albums. But this isn't really this isn't benefiting anybody. And then it was a freedom of expression man and you know, but really, it's a you know, there's this interjection right injection of just kind of like this, this continues to type and this this. Why would we encourage Lisa S Johnson 24:20 that? Well, it starts to encourage disrespect or kind of a lack of respect. I think it's Brandon Handley 24:29 respect even. Yeah, Lisa S Johnson 24:31 I mean, talk to any kids today about dating, and how to date I mean, it's dating online, they meet online or, and what do they do? They share pictures back and forth. And you know, how many pictures and how kinds what kind of pictures you know, and languaging that goes on online and just the music I mean, last year, the Best Song of the Year, was, like the most vocal vulgar title ever like I can't even I can't even think of what it is right now. But it's like really bad. Brandon Handley 25:07 Is it that cardi B song? Like fat or something like that? Alright. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting where that's, that's, I agree, right? It's kinda like was, was that gonna be enough? But anyways? Look, it is what it is, in that regard. Lisa S Johnson 25:29 I'm gonna have to change, things are gonna have to change because I believe you're right, you're breaking down the morality of our whole society. And, hey, pick up my boxers. You can see one of them there. Yep. Brandon Handley 25:45 But I'm just like you were saying earlier? Do you see like kind of having on the horizon? Right? Are you seeing a change and a shift in consciousness yourself? Lisa S Johnson 25:55 I am. And I'm hopeful. Because even though things don't seem like they're elevating, I see a lot of things changing. I haven't see a lot of people doing yoga. I mean, of course, I've been in I've been doing yoga and teaching yoga for 20 years now. And the yoga community is a billion dollars, something like a $70 billion business. So there's a lot of people doing yoga, and even if they're not doing meditation, it's the precursor to meditation. Because doing the movement of yoga, if you're going to Chaga class or, you know, Bikram yoga class or vinyasa of some kind, what have you, you're going through the motions, you're doing the physical aspect, just know that that's only one aspect of doing your. So But yeah, I think a lot of people are doing yoga, and that is helping them to find some sense of their body, feeling their body and feeling their extrasensory perceptions. And that over in time is going to lead people to self inquiry. And if that self inquiry expands your consciousness, and we learn how to deal with ourselves and calm ourselves, and then we can learn to deal with the next person in our family, or brother or sister or spouse, whatever, we get to practice every day, the tools of yoga, being patient and compassionate and just with not only with other people, but with yourself. And that transcends to when you go to the grocery store and working with that person at the slow with the tail, and you're in a hurry. And, you know, trying to deal with that emotions, the emotions and the irritation that you have, and, or, you know, watching the news, and you know, seeing the world being Polaroid rise right now. And just learning how to look at it on a macro level. So you don't get all caught up in the details in the micro level in your world and allow it to upset your world and upset your body and upset your body to a point of this discomfort and disease and disease. And, and, you know, I think that's been happening on our planet for a long time. And we're we've got a disease on this planet right now. We're really diseased in more ways than one being personified by a disease COVID right now. And we're polarized on that subject, too. So it could help. We're going to help us through all of that and get to the other side. Brandon Handley 28:30 That's the cleaner. Yeah. The antenna cleaner. Yeah, that's it right. And get it all get it all situated. I mean, you got to start somewhere. And I think that it's impressive to see just how fast Yoga has taken into the US. Right. And it's been growing, I think at a fairly rapid clip. Understanding is my real low level understanding since I've been in the States, you know, since around 1900, or when whenever Yogananda came over, give or take, yeah, correct. Yeah. Now, I want to use HostIn while you were talking about the serious story, he talks about the Syrians. Was that like, you know, what he's saying there? Lisa S Johnson 29:15 Well, there's no way that we are the only intelligent and living life in the entire cosmos in the entire Milky Way. Galaxy number one, and then there's something like 100 million, probably infinite number of galaxies, and then every galaxy has like 500 billion stars. I mean, there's just no way we're the only living I mean, at one point dinosaurs rule for planet Earth. Reptiles that didn't speak English that look pretty freakin scary. So there could be, you know, the Draco's, they say is if species. They look like lizards or what have you, and they might just come down on the earth. That would be kind of scary. They might eat people we don't really know. Do I believe they're Pleiadians? Yeah, I do. I think that's a star. And I do think that there are living entities there and why maybe they're the ones coming down here and doing this crop circles, because the crop circles are a, I believe a phenomenon of UFO within me difficult. You've seen recordings of the little white balls that fly around and suddenly and, you know, very quick speed of lightning time, there's this amazing geometrical, perfectly mathematical structure that humans can do. They tried in the middle of the night to do it in the middle. And you know, there's no way I mean, it doesn't it's not a sophisticated and they can tell the difference of the grass. So why they haven't been able to help us out a little bit more? I think because we have to help ourselves out of it. Because otherwise, how is our consciousness going to change, like, what we're trying to get off this planet, so we can just develop another planet and kill the all life on that planet to? Like, you know, I think that we're, we've shot down spacecraft, they need to be careful about how they make any approach into they have to get us to where we're more friendly, and willing to accept them. I understand as well, that there are our races that are already living on the planet Earth, and they've been living in the middle of the earth. And you know, the earth could be hollow. You know, if you look at, if you look at the toric field, a Taurus, it's a circular motion, and it's hollow in the middle, isn't it? So the energy can go around what's what isn't there a hole at the top of Antarctica and the bottom of the Northwest Territories, you know, the top and the bottom of the earth? The note? Brandon Handley 31:52 No, I feel like that's a Google that. So that leads us Lisa S Johnson 31:56 to Google Google, Richard bird. Richard bird was a captain and he was up in Antarctica time. And he went on a plane ride. And he got diverted, and he ended up somewhere in Shangri La. And he wrote about it, and he was forbidden to talk about it while he was still in the army. And when he died, his journal revealed it. So there could be something in the center of the earth. And there certainly are other intelligent beings in our soul, our solar in our, in our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, and in other galaxies beyond probably the infinite number of planets with living beings. Brandon Handley 32:36 For sure, I agree. I just want to make sure I caught that, you know. And then last thing he talks about was outside of our gross body, right? Key share a little bit more about that. Lisa S Johnson 32:51 Sure. Okay, so the gross body, that's the three dimensional body in which we live, it's our vessel is what we came into we birthed into through the top of our head, they say we have the soft spot in your head, that's where your soul enters. That's called the Vindu the sarga. And when we meditate, we can connect with that and actually drip the nectar into the brain and through the body. And one of the things that the breathwork does is helps to hold that nectar in the throat chakra by pumping the the energy up to the top of the crown and keeps that energy here and that helps you to heighten your awareness and your cosmic consciousness. We are we also have, we have 10 bodies of like consciousness. So the first body is your soul. That's the soul body that that comes in through you. It's the heart, it's what speaks to you, it's your inner voice, your soul body, then you have three minds, there's the positive mind that weighs the positive things that are around you in a situation so you have to weigh out is this a good thing? Or is it a bad thing? So that so it tells you that it's a bad thing is the negative mind see the positive mind telling you good things, the negative mind telling you Beware, beware danger danger. And then the fourth body is your neutral mind which is your third eye where it takes the positive and the negative aspects of any situation and weighs them within nine seconds, your your third eye, your fourth body, your neutral mind makes a decision and it will make it if you are clean and clear in your neutral mind through meditation. That's how you clean and clear it. You got to meditate. You can make an accurate decision within nine seconds. Then the fifth body that's that's your physical body. That's your 3d. Then you've got your your sixth body, which this is going to be your your breath because you got to breathe, you got your product body, your lifeforce, then your your seventh body, we have the our climb your auric field. Then you have your rain. To hit body, that's the 10th body. And you have the nice body is the subtle body. And this is the one that helps you to give and receive with the subtle mind and the subtle, subtle body without thinking or saying, without saying anything out loud, you can utilize your subtle energy, you can will your will to, for that person to move a little to the left, so that I can see the guitar player on the stage better, right? You just like you're driving down the road, and somebody's going way too freakin slow. And you're just like Dude, to the right. And then they go through flicker goes on and they move into the right hand lane. This is willing your will through your cell body and speaking your language with your attendants all in unison. So when all of those 10 bodies are balanced, that means your shoppers are going to be balanced too. And then there's an 11th body and it's called parallel use in this and that's what all 10 bodies are aligned. And so my my my neutral mind, where I've made that decision that I want that guy to move to the right works with my subtle body, willing my will and energetically telling him to move and my Arc Line going VPP radar reader reader out you go Whoo, bro. xover. Or I go, you know, I need to call Nancy, I just keep forgetting to call her that I looked down on my phone A minute later, there's Nancy calling. Like, this is how it works. When you're in the nod which crash always is talking about, you know, I'm in the NA, you'll call me up with these stories, you know how something happened. And that's what that is being in the flow. As you said earlier, Brandon Handley 36:35 your flow state, I think there's an ease with with all that can happen if you allow for it. To write sounds like to me, once you've got these things in alignment, and you allow for it to happen, it happens with ease, actually, these things only happen. Well, they don't only happen when you're in an ease state, but they're less likely to happen when you're deceased. Right. And so there's like this forest, and there's a out of balance of, I guess all of these bodies, I've never heard them all. So it's visually great to hear that and thanks for sharing that. But uh, you know, once you have these in alignment, things you begin to live in a state of ease would be my guess Lisa S Johnson 37:23 you don't have to do anything anymore. You don't have to do, you just set your intention, and the portals are open, and it flows in. So you don't have to struggle, I got to get this new job, or I have to, you know, I need more of this or that or the next thing. It's just all comes flowing in, in divine timing, one of my favorite Montt affirmations that I've been working with for the last couple of years, and it's so powerful, kind of like preamps, anything else, it's, I am aligned with the highest expression of my future now. So the now is bringing it into the now into the present moment right now, not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow, it's like right now. And I'm aligned with the highest expression of my future, in all ways. So in my relationships, and my health and my finances, in my career, I'm aligned with the highest expression for my future now. So what's best for my future is what I'm what I need to align with. And I'm aligned, I'm telling myself, I'm aligned with the highest expression. So I don't have to say, other mantras and other affirmations that say, I now have the right amount of finances in my bank, I now have the perfect publisher, I now have like, that's a good way for moon ceremonies and something to write it like that. And I've just eliminated the need to have to do that on a daily basis. Because I used to say in the mirror doing near meditations, I used to say in the mirror, my mom long list of, of affirmations, and now I just say I'm aligned with the highest expression of my future now. It's all done. Brandon Handley 39:07 So right, this is kind of the end in mind, right now. And if you've got that end in mind, right now, then all those other sub things take care of themselves. Right? You don't need that long list, because like, you wouldn't have this one statement. If the rest of these underneath of it. Were kind of already done and Lisa S Johnson 39:30 working. Yeah. And you know, I do that with the planet Earth too. I do say that our planet Earth is aligned with the highest expression of its future now. So that's my greatest prayer for the planet. And when you say that things in the energetic field start to align. And that's what I love about sacred geometry. I actually brought a couple pieces. This is the this is the flower of life. Most people know the flower of life and this is the blueprint of creation. And within it are all the platonic solids. And like the 64 tetrahedron, you can't really tell. But this actually, when they when you invert the flower of life into a three dimensional, it's, it looks like this, it's there 64 triangles, which there are here in here. And then, you know, Megatron fits into the flower of life as well, which is all different. You can't really see the triangles, but they're in there, the tetrahedrons made up of 13 Circle points. And so if you meditate on these, this is metal strong, the triangle pointing up and down. And then there's one that's pointing back or forward, depending if you're male or female. And this is your your meta Tron or your merkabah, the light spirit vehicle. So you asked about the 3d body, or 3d bodies, our vehicle, it's how we move from A to B and move around the planet. But we can also move it when we're meditating and spiritually and go into the cosmos. And this is actually three dimensional and it spins. So this is only a one dimensional, but it actually is a three dimensional and it spends. So if we look at these sacred geometries, which can also be referred to as a Yantra, with a geometrical line shape, and if I meditate on if I look at it straight ahead, and then I close my eyes, I'm going to see the imprint of this flower of life in my mind's eye. And then that imprints it on to me on a cellular level, it all goes in that implantation goes into me on a cellular level, all my cell cells get a burst of that. That light of the of the sacred geometry, whether it's the Firefly for the Sri entre is my favorite one is the entre for manifestation. And so this is how we get it into us on a cellular level. And this is what they've been doing with TV manipulating us forever, you know, with symbols and signs, and you see that and it goes into our consciousness. And then we get, you Brandon Handley 42:05 know, what's in there? Yeah, yeah, but we Lisa S Johnson 42:09 can change it, we can restructure the geometry, and launch Brandon Handley 42:13 sacred geometry monitors, meditation, taking your attention off of those things, right, that you allow them for so long, and realizing that they're already there. And it's like a garden or some weeding today, right? Yeah. That one's that one's there. We got it. And it's still you know, sometimes like, just like in a garden, you feel like you got all the all the weeds out. But like, you know, you come back with the next day, like, I swear to God, I pulled that thing. Right, it's still there. Lisa S Johnson 42:43 analogy I know, and then you get to practice. Oh, you know, let me fix that. You know, but that's the start of being aware and consciousness because you've become aware and conscious of it, and then you change it the next time, just like, you don't beat yourself up. If you get into an argument with your partner, you know, or yell at somebody, then you gotta hurry up, I really was kind of out of line there. Now, I'll get another opportunity to practice that in the next time, I'll do better. So you don't beat yourself up. Brandon Handley 43:09 That's in alignment with the two arrows and Buddhism, right? We talked about the first arrows, that's already there. The second arrow is the one that you deliver yourself. Right? Like, kind of jerk was if you can eliminate it just by the example you just gave. So I think that's a great example. I wanted to go real quick back to two pieces here. First of all, you know, I love your, your, your mantra, slash affirmation, slash prayer, because you pronounce it more like a command, then I'll request is that intentional? Or is that just how you are with it? Lisa S Johnson 43:51 I guess that's just how I am with it. I didn't notice that. I said, it's more as a command. Well, the affirmation I definitely say as a command. Is that what you mean? I'm aligned with the highest expression of my future now? Yeah. Brandon Handley 44:05 Absolutely. If I don't get I feel like if I'm not getting in line with that, I might actually get in trouble. Lisa S Johnson 44:10 Yeah, so I'm telling the universe. Hey, all right. Right. Up here. Brandon Handley 44:16 So that's also alignment with Um, I don't know if you ever listened to or read Blaine hills? devil Book Three. Oh, no. So he's got one that like was released, like post mortem and even to release it was kind of like, don't do that. And basically, it's talking to the devil, whatever. But and that was talking to him, like how do you talk to what's in versus like, don't ask for it, you command it, you demand it right? Like that's yours by like, you know, the vine right and also other stuff. So as I was just curious, kind of where the command part was coming from. Definitely. Lisa S Johnson 44:55 Also comes from my teaching with the chrome choudry because I studied For many years, he was my first yoga teacher. And he Bikram yoga class is very commanding. So you've got to get bodies to move in unison. You want everyone moving together and flowing together in a in a Bikram yoga class. And then it's really a moving meditation. Everyone's flowing together. And it's beautiful breathing together. And to get people to move together, you have to be really commanding arms over your head, interlock your fingers, release your index finger stumps cross, no weight in your heels, hips forward, upper body back, no gap between biceps, arms and ears inhales. So long stretch up hold. And then do your right hand side. Like you have to talk like that, to get them to freakin do it on time with you. Then when it comes to Kundalini, we do mantra, and it's different. It's not commanding, it's it's very calming. And like, for example, like I just wanted, I loved your analogy about you know, planting the seeds and growing because there's a meditation that I'm actually doing right now we practice. I'm in my fourth level two training out of five modules. So I'll be a level two Kundalini trading teacher soon. And would they require us to do a 90 day meditation. So you know, it's a challenge, every day you have to meditate is a 30 minute meditation, it's not three minutes, five minutes, 11 minutes, you know, it's 30 minutes that you have to sit and take out if your day doesn't seem like very long, but sometimes it it seems like a long time in the day taking that 30 minutes out anyway, you. It's a commitment, and it gets you to, you get to where you would miss doing a meditation if you didn't do it. So that's good, because you really want to meditate every day in twice a day, if possible. But then you just get to where you're meditating all the time you're driving, you're meditating, we can always be meditating in the background, because we do the mantra, and the mantra becomes like that, you know, you get that song song stuck in your head. That's what happens when you're doing a mantra every single day. And the one that I'm doing right now is a three part. Meditation for 90 minutes. There's a mudra involved where you interlock your to you put your both hands and Gyan Mudra, which is the thumb and index finger touching, which is the seal of knowledge, the Seal of consciousness, and you interlock them, which now makes sacred geometry the vesica Pisces. So I really love this part of having this as a sacred geometry mudra then there's three mantras. The first one is bond bond, and this one is invoking the Divine Mother, this the spiritual mother, the Adi Shakti, the creator. And then we move into the second mantra, which is don don ROM das guru. And this one is all about making the impossible possible. It's called crossing the crisis. So the world's in crisis right now. So that's why I'm doing this meditation. So we're recreating with the vesica Pisces, this is the symbol of creation, the vesica Pisces so we're creating a new world. So the second mantra is all about making the impossible become possible through miracles and believing in miracles. We see miracles every day. And the more I do this mantra, I'm seeing miracles happen right before my very eyes all the time. It's amazing. Okay, and then the third mantra is heart Hooray, howdy. Which means planting the seed, watching the flow of planting the seed of infinite creativity. Hari Hari Hari Hari is watching the flow of creativity. parkeri hari is manifesting that creativity. And how can a Petit WaheGuru WaheGuru is wow, and being taken from the darkness into the night that light that's what a guru is goo is the dark room with the light. So why he is wow, I'm being taken from the dark into the light Waheguru and I'm watching the beautiful process of how everything is unfolding from the seeding of planting to the flow of the growing of the creation to the manifestation and to the final harvest. So that's where we're at right now on the planet and and everybody that's meditating everybody who's doing yoga, they're planting these the seeds of a new world. Not a new world order, bro, a new world Love and Light and peace and truth and higher consciousness and compassion for each other without any kind of division, you know, just acceptance of each other, knowing the truth of what is right what is wrong so that we are in right relationship and doing right action for ourselves and for our planet and animal kingdom. And when we can find that balance, which I believe that we will because I was talking earlier a little bit about shriek Heswall, he wrote the cycles of consciousness, we have what's called the yugas. And it takes the 26,000 year cycle for a for a full Yuga that goes from the Iron Age, Silver Age, the Bronze Age and the Golden Age. And that's the Age of Enlightenment. And so we have come out of the Kali age and have entered into the the Bronze Age, which is the dwapara Yuga. And that's where we are right now. And we are on the A sending part of that. So the you guys have a 13,000 year, a sending cycle and a 13,000 year descending cycle. So it takes 26,000 years. So we're on a sending we've come out of the dark ages, we've come out of a really dense low level consciousness area. And now there's we're only going to go up now, but like a friend of mine says, gorgeous Sufi he's he's someone you might want to interview some time gone just Sufi, he's cool. He's a recording artists you can check out I'll send you a link to some of yours. He says you could go through hell to get to have so for sure are in hell right now, but on our way to happen. Brandon Handley 51:12 For sure, for sure. And I think that I think that we're in an accelerated accelerated pace. So we're gonna plug in real quick here, you know, cosmic wantaway on Instagram. Sounds like she might know her stuff a little bit on some yoga and and some of the background and sacred geometry. So I know that that's something I wanted to get more into with you. And I don't think we're gonna have time for that. But I do want to call out the fact that I believe you got some sacred geometry intertwined on some of your book covers, if I'm not mistaken, and you want to toss out, you know, what about what is it about cosmic one away and let's share a little bit about the book so that we can Lisa S Johnson 51:52 have, okay, so I have two books, the first one came out called 108, rock star guitars. And when you when you first look at the cover, it's, it's it doesn't have a guitar on the cover, it has motifs of guitars on it, and like a guitar headstocks and guitar bodies and but it looks it's all formed in the shape of a lotus flower. And it's all intertwined with the number 108, which totals nine in numerology, one plus zero plus eight. So there are nine, guitar headstocks to go around the flower petals, and around the circumference of the book. And when you first open up the book, the Sri Yantra sacred geometry artwork is inside of it. And it asks the question, why 108 and then I get to infuse the spiritual cosmic message of the number 108 and yoga philosophy. because music is spiritual, you know, music can take you to Nirvana. So I wanted to invoke that cosmic philosophy of 108 into the book. So that's 108 rock star guitars. And now on September 28th, this year, my new book called immortal axes will be coming out. And the cover is similar. It's no guitar on the cover, but there's a skull that has the vesica Pisces sacred geometry in his forehead in the third eye. And his eyes are made up of the diamond inlay headstock on a Gibson Guitar. And that's going around in his eyes and his nose is an upside down Flying V. And then he's surrounded by little guitar bodies with gold. They're all laid and gold sparkles. You know, it's very sparkly, and it's called immortal axes. Because when a musician makes music, he makes it on that wire and wood and that memory of that work is embedded in that wire and wood. And when the artist passes on, the guitar still is holding the notes and holding that music within it. And so that's immortalizing the song memorializing that artists, just like the song itself when it's recorded immortalizes the artists so there are about 47 artists in this book that have passed away. There's 157 artists featured in this book including David Gilmore's $4 million black strap that just sold and Rory Gallagher's Fender super famous Fender Pete Townsend's number nine Les Paul is in this in this book. Peter Frampton wrote the foreword and Suzi quatro wrote the afterword, some very, very happy to present this book to the world and hope that people enjoy it as much as I can as much as as much fun with as I have photographing it traveling around the world. Brandon Handley 54:46 So one thing you know, for the people that are listening, and don't get the chance to see the pictures and the artwork and the artworks amazing on these these covers, and I love what we were talking I love it for seen pictures but hadn't seen the hadn't seen it in somebody's hands. Book and somebody says the book is large. What's the dimensions on Lisa S Johnson 55:11 108 rocks in our guitars weighs about nine pounds. And it's let's see, 11 inches by 13 is that you know, a and then the second book is a square book it's 11 and a quarter I think by 11 and a quarter plus the the rock star of the cars one is a red leather leather rat, press press leather rat and this immortal axes is a black cover with gold and silver sparkling motifs on it have guitar motifs on it. Brandon Handley 55:51 I think the artwork is so cool. And I think anybody would anybody into guitars Classic Rock, rock and roll this face would be you know, this would be such trying to sell. This would be like such a new gift. Something so cool. I love what you've done with it. Give me like one story of like maybe the most challenging guitar to get to, or like the one that you felt like, was like the pinnacle for you. Lisa S Johnson 56:16 Yeah, well, one of them I have to say is Joan Jett, because you know she's a woman and rock and she rocks really hard and she's paved the way for a lot of women in music. Before even her there was Suzi quatro, Suzi quatro actually paved the way for Joan Jett. And Joan will will say that it was really hard to get to Joan. She's not super happy to have a lot of photographers around. And so I think that was one of the issues that I kept requesting. And they just, they don't really have photographers around, and I usually shoot before after shows. So I finally was getting finished with this book. And I really want to Joan and I've asked several times, because for me, she's the most important woman to have in the book and as a female artist, because she influenced so many. And of course, Suzi quatro, she wrote the the afterword for the book, so I'm just so important to mean, and so amazing that she did that. But finally, I was rounding up, I was just finishing the book, and I really wanted Joan. And I just couldn't not not have Joan. And so I finally realized, you know, I've worked with the heart Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for so many photoshoots and I was there doing a shoot, I think it was it was before the David Gilmore shoot Anyway, it was one of the shoots. And I said, by chance do you guys happen to have a Joan Jett guitar? In the rock hall? And they said, Well, well, yes, we do, actually. And so then I realized, you know, I'm just gonna find out if they'll let me photograph the guitar. They don't have to do B here. It's not before after a show. And so we went back to them and said, Hey, you know, how about just let me photograph the guitar that's at the rock Hall. And she'll do the rest. She'll make all the arrangements. And they said, Yes. So it's Brandon Handley 58:07 very cool. I just want to give the idea to that. This is a kind of like a life that you follow your bliss, kind of thing. Right? You followed your kind of journey followed your heart, and does this production is a display of that. Lisa S Johnson 58:26 Yeah, it wasn't easy. I have insecurities just like anyone else. And you know, when you're putting your neck out there for yourself, like, you know, I'm a photographer, and this is my work. You're putting your soul out on the line, you're showing your photos and it's something that you like, it may not be that somebody else likes, you know, so you you get a lot of nose. I've had to hear no, a lot. And then I've had a lot of yeses, and I've had way more yeses than I've had knows. And it was because of perseverance and just not taking no for an answer. I mean, I asked, had to ask Billy Givens people many, many times until I finally met him under the stage at Rolling Stones concert and said, Hey, Billy ever trying to get through to you, you know, and then the next time I requested I got a yes. So and then just saying, like, I don't have Mark Knopfler yet. And he's one of my all time favorite guitar players in the world ever, ever, ever. And I'm not going to give up on Mark even though they've told me no. They've said no. Many times. Brandon Handley 59:30 Hold now for what's your now for so I think the story is great. I love I love what you've done. I really want to say thanks for stopping Jose. I do have one more question for you today. We'll say a little bit of spiritual speed dating. I figured somebody is on here and they're looking for their next like spiritual date and you could be it. Okay, so that's where we're at number one. What was the specific one? I think it fits what's the relationship between science and Religion. Lisa S Johnson 1:00:01 It's getting closer and closer. I think that CERN has certainly helped to view the science experiments they've been doing at CERN. Trying to find the God Particle. I think that's been important. And I think that science is finally recognizing, they never get to find. Because you can't see that with your eyes. That's something you have to feel. And science is finally starting to understand that. And I know that they are because even quite a few years ago, they put Ken Wilber on the cover of science and spirituality magazine. I think it was. And he was he's ahead, you know, if you haven't studied Ken Wilber, he's someone really interesting. And I learned a lot from him and and now that's correlating with somewhere. So I mean, yeah, Brandon Handley 1:01:00 I know. I know. He's on the list. Okay. He's on my list. Lisa S Johnson 1:01:04 But yes, yeah. Listen to the CD series called cosmic consciousness cosmic with a K. That's all you need to do. Just get that series you can. I think you can download it on iTunes now or cosmic consciousness. Ken Wilber. It's one of the most important things you could listen to. And there you'll see science meatsuit spirits rally and what he talks about. And you can watch shrieve testhorse book, the science of yoga, and that is bringing science and spirituality together, check out what cern is doing. And of course, students at CERN has gotten really weird. So there's some strange stuff going on at CERN, too, but Brandon Handley 1:01:45 black holes, Lisa S Johnson 1:01:47 I suppose. Yeah. A lot of stuff has happened over there. Brandon Handley 1:01:51 Oh, man, that would be cool. That would be cool to know more. Well, he's so much fun. Where should I send everybody to go check out your books. Lisa S Johnson 1:02:01 Okay, so to check out the books, go to my Instagram, at LS j for Lisa s Johnson at lsj rock photos. lsj rock photos is where you'll find me on Instagram. And there's a link there my link tree that allows you to both of my books, and for cosmic wantaway for yoga classes comm and rock your Kundalini with me every Saturday from 10 to 11am PST, that's Los Angeles time. And it's just a one hour long class from 10 to 11. And we get into all the subjects that we've been talking about. And we do a Korea for about 30 minutes, and we do meditation and it opens with some context around what the class is about and what the meditation will be about. And then we go right into it. And we have a gong bath, or a sound bath afterwards, because the gong is very important. It's the most powerful meditation, it clears the subconscious mind. So we do a gong wrap at the end of every class. So come and rock your Kundalini with me at cosmic 108. It's cosmic underscore 108. Brandon Handley 1:03:08 And you have made how many Saturdays in a row Lisa S Johnson 1:03:14 since COVID started so we've gotten a year and a half now, isn't it? You know, started in February or March of last year. So March, April, May, June, July, August. Yeah. So it's a year and five months, every single Saturday, I've only had one class covered for me by one of the teacher and that would be our friend Parrish. He's, he's jumped in when I when I needed him to come and teach a class and he's very fun. Have you taken this class? Brandon Handley 1:03:41 I've taken a couple of his, like zoom classes. Yes. Lisa S Johnson 1:03:45 Yeah. Yeah. He's very funny. He's fun. And he's, he's ahead. You know, he really with that Harvard education, his brain like, Brandon Handley 1:03:54 you know, for sure. For sure. Lisa, this has been so much fun. I'm so glad that we we finally we finally got the chance to put the time and again, I love I think the artworks amazing photography is fantastic. I love the size of them, write your books and just don't Kundalini, I think of bringing that out to the world and letting people do that with you. And that's just on the set. As you said, You're helping so Lisa S Johnson 1:04:24 I'm here to serve. That's what we're here to do on the planet. Follow our be creative. And follow your heart, listen to your heart, and be creative and then everything falls into place. So and being in service with your creativity. So that's what I'm trying to do bringing joy into people's lives just because they get to see their favorite guitar Unknown Speaker 1:04:45 up quarterly. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the spiritual dove podcast. stay connected with us directly through spiritual co You can also join the discussion on Facebook and Instagram and spiritual underscore go if you would like to speak with us. Send us an email to Brandon at spiritual dove calm and as always thank you for cultivating your mindset and creating a better reality. This includes the most thought provoking part of your day. Don't forget to like and subscribe to stay fully up to date until next time me Conyers zone and trust your intuition Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Tony Kurre and Dr. Josh Klapow talk about how some rock and rollers become disillusioned with their lives after being in the game for a while. 

Ted Dobson is one of the East Coast's most legendary old-school, outdoor marijuana farmers. More than 30 years ago, he was selling pot on the underground market to major league baseball players, rock and rollers, and upscale NYC chefs. Today, he's the farmer-in-chief and public face of Equinox Farm in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Brit chats with Ted about organic, sun-grown bud and what the future might look like for outdoor growing as our climate continues to change. Learn more about Ted Dobson in the Fall 2019 issue of Different Leaf Magazine, or at equinoxfarmberkshires.com.Check out DifferentLeaf.com for all the issues of our cannabis magazine, and follow us on social media @DifferentLeaf @Different_Leaf, and find host Brit Smith @BritTheBritish.Produced by Andrea Muraskin and Brit Smith, music by Homebody.

Six String Samurai, a movie about samurai sword wielding rock-and-rollers fighting over who will be the new king of Lost Vegas, is discussed in this week's episode! Sounds awesome, right? Don't get too excited! Matt and Brian learn that not all camp is good and what it truly means for a movie to have a cult following, and apologies are given. They also talk about the weirdness of a post apocalyptic wasteland, the non stop rockabilly music, the repetitive story elements, and for some reason they talk about all The Crow iterations.

Check Playlist This edition of The Five Count featured two exclusive interviews with rock and rollers! First we were joined by singer Terry LeRoi. Terry is best known as the frontman for the band Granny 4 Barrel. He's also the singer for the band LeRoi XIII. During the show he discussed how the character of “Granny” in Granny 4 Barrel came to be, his new band LeRoi XIII, and the release of LeRoi XIII's new single Stand Up and Shout. All proceeds from the single go to benefit the Ronnie James Dio Cancer Fund! Next we were joined by musician Damon Johnson. Damon is best known as the singer and guitarist for the band Brother Cane. He's also played with the likes of Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy, Sammy Hagar and Faith Hill. During the show he discussed his years in Brother Cane, what he learned touring with Alice Cooper, and his new band Damon Johnson & The Get Ready. Their new album Battle Lessons is out now! During the rest of the show we discussed our favorite “pig out” restaurants, Ton whined about having to do his own laundry, and we complained about how easy it is for kids to get stickers nowadays. Kids today don't know how good they got it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXu5itlhhj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az-UdUgB914

We caught up with Eric Friedl aka Eric Oblivian. The man behind Memphis, TN based record label & record store Goner Records; home of the annual Goner Fest bringing in rock and rollers from all over the globe including us! Eric has also played in Oblivians, New Memphis Legs, and True Sons of Thunder - just to name a few. We discuss his various projects over the years, geek out on Memphis/Goner lore, and how Goner is making it through the pandemic and beyond. Photo used w/ permission, credit: Hugo B. (Time Warp Week Ends)

The Nuge. Uncle Ted. Great Gonzo. The Motor City Madman. Today Dave and Sam are discussing the rock legend, Ted Nugent,  in honor of his upcoming birthday.    The list of conservative rock-and-rollers is pretty short. But even if you were only going to have just one, Ted Nugent would do the trick.   Ted Nugent goes by many names, but he was born with the unassuming moniker Theodore Anthony Nugent in 1948, the third of four kids in Redford, MI. Part of a military family, Nugent's father was a career sergeant in the army. For his part, though, Nugent was of draft age during the Vietnam War, he flunked his physical and was declared unfit for military service. Today, however, he is a member of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Felony Task Force.   Nugent began his rock-and-roll career with the Amboy Dukes, one of the premiere psychedelic rock bands of the era. They replaced the equally legendary Shadows of Knight as the house band at The Cellar, a teen rock club in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, IL. Their breakout hit was “Journey to the Center of the Mind,” a song that is clearly about LSD use – but not to Uncle Ted, who is one of the most notoriously sober rockers in history. In fact, he was cited by Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye, and others of the early hardcore scene, as one of the biggest inspirations for the straight-edge movement.   Indeed, The Nuge claims and proudly owns his role as the inspiration for this movement. In a VICE interview he said that he will work with anyone who is anywhere on the political spectrum (citing Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello as both a friend and a collaborator), but that he's reticent to work with anyone who does drugs of any kind because he believes that it robs them of focus.    You can read the full article “Ted Nugent: The Forgotten History of the Conservative Rock-and-Roller and Gun Advocate” at Ammo.com.     For $20 off your $200 purchase, go to https://ammo.com/podcast (a special deal for our listeners).   Follow Sam Jacobs on Parler: https://parler.com/profile/SamJacobs1776/posts   And check out our sponsor, Libertas Bella, for all of your favorite 2nd Amendment shirts at LibertasBella.com.   Helpful Links:  Ted Nugent: The Forgotten History of the Conservative Rock-and-Roller and Gun Advocate Resistance Library  Sam Jacobs

This week on The Show On The Road, we feature a conversation with Gary Louris, co-founder and leading songwriter of longtime Americana favorites The Jayhawks -- who launched out of Minneapolis in 1985 and celebrated the release of their harmony-rich 11th studio album, XOXO, this July. Any band that has managed to stick together for a generation (their self-titled debut dropped when host Z. Lupetin was in diapers) clearly has kept a fervent fanbase intrigued; their signature shoegaze-y, electric roots has endured through personnel changes, bouts of addiction, and the upheaval of the music industry that often leaves fading rock and rollers behind. While Louris will be first to admit that for many years he didn't think it would be “cool” to keep a rock band together this long, he has grown to appreciate the band's defiant longevity. Indeed, their newest collaboration, XOXO, doesn't show The Jayhawks softening at all, even as they have become respected Americana elder statesmen. Instead it shows off some of their sharpest rock-guitar-inspired records yet -- with tunes like the Uncle Tupelo-, sepia-tinted “This Forgotten Town” staying at the top of Americana single charts for months, getting near-constant radio play nationwide. Seminal Americana records like Smile and Rainy Day Music in the early 2000s finally launched The Jayhawks into international notoriety -- they played late night TV and enjoyed (or endured) packed bus tours across North America and Europe -- but the success was often bittersweet and they never quite tipped the scale like other roots-adjacent groups like Wilco and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. As host Z. Lupetin discovered while remote recording, Louris can now laugh about an infamous New York Times review of their album Smile that, despite being quite positive, lead with an unfortunate headline noting the band's lack of widespread acceptance: "What If You Made a Classic and No One Cared?" Louris is often cited as leading the charge behind the band's shift from jangly alt-country toward a more catchy, rock-pop sound, but there are plenty of roots still showing -- especially Louris' noted love of British Invasion rock energy and 1970s AM radio layered harmony. After some years that took Louris away from the supportive twin city hub for other ventures (he was also in supergroup group Golden Smog) the band's core group of Louris, Marc Perlman, Karen Grotberg, and Tim O'Reagan are now happily back together in their original Minneapolis home-base, grateful to still be creating new rock 'n' roll with a devoted audience that is waiting patiently for touring to open up again. Stick around to the end of episode to hear Louris share an intimate acoustic performance of The Jayhawks' all too fitting new song, “Living A Bubble."

Part 2 - From one of the first rock and rollers on Dick Clark's American Bandstand to iconic jingle writer of such enduring melodies as When you say Bud you've said it all, Nationwide is on your side, and I Love New York.  It's said that Steve Karmen's melodies have been heard more than Elton John's.  His reputation as King of the Jingle is matched only by his wit and soul.  Listen and learn to a man whose journey spans a half-century of popular culture. 

From one of the first rock and rollers on Dick Clark's American Bandstand to iconic jingle writer of such enduring melodies as When you say Bud you've said it all, Nationwide is on your side, and I Love New York.  It's said that Steve Karmen's melodies have been heard more than Elton John's.  His reputation as King of the Jingle is matched only by his wit and soul.  Listen and learn to a man whose journey spans a half-century of popular culture. 

Yungblud is one of the top-rising rock-and-rollers on the scene today!He's 22-years-old and he's full of piss and vinegar, his songwriting kind of reminds us of early punk rock, there's angst and rebellion hence, he's not afraid of calling out greedy corporations, politicians and goes to war for who he feels gets taken advantage of…and that's why he's loved.In just 2 years, he's released 3 EP's one live album and one studio album called "21st Century Liabiality". Songs he's been featured on include "11 Minutes" with Halsey and Travis Barker.He also worked with Travis Barker again on Machine Gun Kelly's hit "I Think I'm Okay”And he also put out a tune with Imagine Dragons singer Dan Reynolds called “Original Me”.Yungblud also had a chance to perform that one with Dan on the "Late Show with Stephen Colbert". On top of already having performed on the "Late Night with Seth Myers". 

For all you rock-and-rollers out there, -I fought the law and the law won-- but with grace, it's amazing how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me---During his February 9th sermon, Dr. Christopher Passalacqua, one of Grace Gospel Fellowship's elders, took a look at the difference between law and grace---Law condemns, grace saves--Law accuses, grace acquits--Law demands justice, grace is unmerited favor--Law can create self-righteousness, grace leaves no room to boast--Law imprisons, grace liberates--Law is rigid and inflexible, God's grace is the surgical scalpel that cuts out the cancerous effects of sin from our soul---There are close to fifteen hundred laws on the books, but only one is needed in grace for the remission of sins-

When it comes to who Mom liked best, which kid got the better stuff, who's older, etc., Rock And Rollers aren't much different than the average family. Since the 1950's there have been many examples of creative siblings fighting their way to the top. Arguably, this quirk began with Don & Phil, The Everly Brothers!This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

When it comes to who Mom liked best, which kid got the better stuff, who's older, etc., Rock And Rollers aren't much different than the average family. Since the 1950's there have been many examples of creative siblings fighting their way to the top. Arguably, this quirk began with Don & Phil, The Everly Brothers!This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Our heroes travel the deserts of Pisan into the Deadlands armed with nothing but their wit and survival skills. How will they fair? Ice Flow by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3898-ice-flow/License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

  Episode seventy of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs looks at “Move It” by Cliff Richard, and the beginning of rock and roll TV in the UK. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Poor Little Fool” by Ricky Nelson, another artist whose career was made by TV, and one who influenced Cliff Richard hugely.   —-more—-  ERRATUM: I say Cliff Richard was sixteen when he first heard “Heartbreak Hotel”. He was fifteen. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   This four-CD set contains all the singles and EPs released by Cliff Richard and the Shadows, together and separately, between 1958 and 1962. This MP3 compilation, meanwhile, contains a huge number of skiffle records and early British attempts at rock and roll. Much of the music is not very good, but I can’t imagine a better way of getting an understanding of the roots of British rock. Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and gives far more detail about the historical background. And Cliff Richard: The Biography by Steve Turner is very positive towards Richard, but not at the expense of honesty.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   We’ve looked a little bit at the start of rock and roll in Britain, which was so different from the American music that it feels absurd to talk of the two in the same breath. But today we’re going to have a look at the first really massive star of British rock and roll — someone who is still going strong today, more than sixty years after he released his first record: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, “Move It”] When we’ve looked at British rock and roll to this point, it’s been rather lifeless, and there’s a reason for that. There were, in the mid-fifties, two different streams of music in Britain that were aiming to appeal to young people. One was skiffle, and that’s the branch of music that eventually led to all British rock and roll from the sixties onwards — we looked at that with Lonnie Donegan, but the skiffle craze was a big, big thing for about two years, and when it finally died down it splintered into three different, overlapping, groups — there were the folk revivalists, who we’ll talk about when we get to Bob Dylan; the British blues people, who we’ll look at when we get to the Rolling Stones; and the rock and rollers. Skiffle had everything that people found exciting and interesting about American rock and roll — at least, it had much of the excitement of the rockabilly music. But it wasn’t marketed as rock and roll, and it tended to aim at a slightly more bohemian audience. Meanwhile, British rock and roll proper — the stuff that was being marketed as rock and roll — was mostly being made by longtime professional musicians who had switched from playing anaemic copies of swing music to anaemic copies of Bill Haley and the Comets. Groups like Tony Crombie and the Rockets were making records like “Let’s You and I Rock”, which copied the formula of Haley’s less good records: [Excerpt: Tony Crombie and the Rockets, “Let’s You and I Rock”] The idea of rock and roll in the British music business in those early years came entirely from the film Rock Around the Clock, which had featured Haley, the Platters, and Freddie Bell and His Bellboys — who were a second-rate clone of Haley’s band. As we discussed in the episodes on Haley, his particular style of music had few imitators in American rock and roll, so while British groups were copying things like Freddie Bell’s one hit, “Giddy-Up A Ding-Dong”, British teenagers were instead listening to American records by Buddy Holly or Little Richard, the Everly Brothers or Elvis, none of whose recordings had anything to do with anything that was being made by the British commercial rock and roll industry. For British rock and roll to matter, it had to at least catch up to what the American records were doing. It needed its own Elvis — and that Elvis would ideally be someone who came from the skiffle scene, but was more oriented towards rock and roll than most of the skifflers, who were very happy playing Lead Belly songs rather than “Blue Suede Shoes”. Tommy Steele had been a good start, but he’d jumped the gun a little bit. He was essentially still a pre-Elvis performer, although he was one who followed the rockabilly pattern of a young man with a guitar. His records were still novelty songs with the word “rock” thrown in, like “Rock With the Caveman”, and when he tried to copy Elvis’ vocal mannerisms, while it brought him a number one hit, it didn’t really sound particularly credible: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Singing the Blues”] In the wake of Steele came a whole host of other teen idols along the same lines, most of them managed by Larry Parnes — Adam Faith, Mary Wilde, Terry Dene, Vince Taylor, Johnny Gentle, Billy Fury, Duffy Power, Dickie Pride, and many more. Some of these went on to have interesting careers, and a few made records that we’ll be looking at in future episodes, but one of them — one of the few not managed by Parnes — managed to have a career that would outlast almost all of his American contemporaries, and outsell many of them. [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, “Move It”] One of the things that will be a recurring theme in this podcast as Britain becomes a bigger part of rock history is the end of the British Empire. It is literally impossible to understand anything about Britain for the last eighty years without understanding that at the start of the 1940s the British Empire was the largest, most powerful empire that had ever been seen in human history, while by the early 1970s Britain was a tiny island that was desperately begging to be allowed into the EEC — the precursor of the EU — because it had no economic or political power at all on its own. The psychic shock this change in status gave to multiple generations of British people cannot be overstated, and almost all British history since at least 1945 can be explained in terms of Britain trying and failing to convince itself and the world that it was still important and still mattered. And one of the people whom that change in status hit most dramatically was a young boy named Harry Webb, who was born in India in 1940, to a family who were of British descent, but who had been in India for a couple of generations. Like most white people in India at the time they benefited hugely from the Empire — although they were only moderately well off by white British standards in India, they lived in what for most people would seem absolute luxury, with servants looking after them, and the people of India being deferential to them. But then, after World War II came Indian independence and partition, and the Webb family found themselves in Britain, a country they’d never lived in, homeless and jobless. Harry, his parents, and his three sisters had to live in one room of a three-bedroom house, with the other rooms of the house occupied by another family of eight. Not only that, but while Harry had been a beneficiary of racism in India, in Britain he was a victim of it — while he was white, he had a dark complexion, an Anglo-Indian accent, and came from India, so everyone assumed he was Indian — except that the only Indians that his schoolmates knew anything about were the ones in cowboy films, so he kept getting asked where his wigwam was. Eventually the Webb family managed to get a house to themselves, and young Harry managed to get rid of his accent, ending up with an accent that reflected neither his Indian origins nor his London upbringing, but rather a generic regionless middle-class accent with a trace of the mid-Atlantic behind it. Webb’s accent would later become almost the default for people in the media, edging out the received pronunciation that had dominated in previous decades, but at the time it gave him a distinct advantage when he finally became a pop star, because he didn’t sound like he was from a particular place. When he was sixteen, he heard the record that would change his life: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Heartbreak Hotel”] Young Harry became obsessed with Elvis Presley, and tried to make himself look as much like Elvis as possible. His first public performance was with a vocal group he formed at school, and he took a solo on “Heartbreak Hotel”. On leaving school, having failed almost all his exams, he decided that he wanted to become a rock and roll star. He had no idea how he was going to go about it until one day his bike broke, and he had to get the bus into work. On the same bus was an old schoolfriend, Terry Smart, who was the drummer in a skiffle group. Their singer had recently been drafted, and they needed a new one. He remembered that Harry could sing, and invited him to join the group. Harry’s musical tastes didn’t really run to skiffle, which by this time had become a very formalised genre, with the instruments almost always consisting of acoustic guitar, teachest bass, and washboard, and a repertoire that was made up primarily of songs by Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Big Bill Broonzy (who was the one blues musician that even the least knowledgable skiffler could name, despite his relative lack of commercial success in the US). There would also be a good chunk of traditional folk and sea shanties thrown in. A typical example of the style would be the Vipers Skiffle Group’s version of “Maggie May”: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Maggie May”] Skiffle was both too rowdy and too intellectual for young Harry Webb, whose main interest other than music was sports rather than digging up old folk songs. Other than Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, his tastes ran to smoother American soft-rockers like Ricky Nelson and the Everly Brothers — he never had much time for the R&B styles of people like Little Richard, let alone for anything as raw as Lead Belly or Big Bill Broonzy. But Harry Webb was an unusual person. On the one hand, he was amazingly old-fashioned and prudish even for the period — he refused to smoke, drink, or blaspheme, he was very softly spoken, and as a teenager when asked if he had a girlfriend he would say “Yes, I’ve got a picture of her in my pocket” and would pull out a photo of his mother. But on the other hand, he was incredibly driven, and was willing to make use of anyone around him for precisely as long as it would take for them to help him achieve his goals. If the musicians around him wanted to play skiffle, he would play skiffle — for the moment. So Harry Webb joined Dick Teague’s Skiffle Group, and became their lead singer. He applied himself diligently to learning the skiffle material — songs like “Rock Island Line”, “This Train”, “This Little Light of Mine”, and “Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O” — and he would rehearse every single night, and got to know the material intimately. But he insisted on singing in an imitation of Elvis’ voice, and thrusting his hips like Elvis did. But an Elvis-style vocal simply didn’t work with songs like this: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O”] After a short period with the group, he started scheming with Terry Smart — they were going to continue with the skiffle group for the moment, but they secretly put together their own rock and roll group. Harry’s friend Norman Mitham started turning up to the group’s rehearsals, and watching the guitarists’ fingers intently — he was learning their material for the new group. Webb and Smart left the Dick Teague Skiffle Group, and with Mitham they formed a new rock and roll group. Inspired by the recent launch of Sputnik, they thought of calling themselves The Planets. But they decided that wasn’t quite right, and looked up the etymology of “planet”, and found it came from the Greek for “wanderer” or “drifter”, and so they became the Drifters, unaware there was an American group of the same name. On one of their very early gigs, a man named John Foster came up and introduced himself to them. Foster had no music business experience — he worked in a sewage farm — but he became the group’s manager based on two important factors. The first was that he had a telephone, which in 1958 meant he was clearly a figure of some importance — *no-one* in Britain had a telephone! And the second was that he was a nodding acquaintance of the managers of the 2is, the famous coffee bar where the Vipers used to play, and where both Tommy Steele and Terry Dene had been discovered, and he was pretty sure he could get them a gig there. He managed to get them a two-week residency at the 2is, and during the first week, a young man named Ian Samwell came up and asked them if they needed a lead guitarist. They said yes, and he was in the group. A booking agent who saw the group in their second week decided he wanted to book them for some shows in the North, but he had two problems. He didn’t want them to be booked as a group, but as a lead singer and his backing group, and he thought Harry Webb wasn’t a good enough name. So the Drifters became Cliff Richard and the Drifters, and Harry Webb soon told everyone in his life that he was only to be addressed as Cliff from now on. Foster and Samwell got the group an agent, and the agent in turn got them an audition with Norrie Paramor at Columbia Records. But there was one more thing to do. By this time Cliff *did* have a girlfriend — while according to those around him he was never that interested in dating or sex, they did go out with each other for a little while and claimed to be in love with each other. But he knew that if he was going to be a rock and roll star, he had to appear available to the teenage girls, so he dumped her. She understood — he’d had to choose between his career and love, and he’d chosen his career. Paramor was interested, and he wanted the group to record a song which had been a hit in the US for Bobby Helms: [Excerpt: Bobby Helms, “Schoolboy Crush”] That song was co-written by Aaron Schroeder, who we’ve seen before as the co-writer of some of Elvis’ tracks for Jailhouse Rock, and of Carl Perkins’ “Glad All Over”. Cliff learned the song straight away, and soon the Drifters were in Abbey Road studios ready to record their first single — but only Cliff Richard’s name was on the recording contract. While the record label would say “Cliff Richard and the Drifters”, the other group members were only going to get a flat session fee for the record, while Cliff was going to get artist royalties. Also, not all of the Drifters were present. Ian Samwell had persuaded Cliff that there was no need to keep Norman Mitham in the band. Mitham was just playing rhythm guitar like Cliff was, and Samwell thought there was no point having three guitarists and splitting the money three ways instead of two. So Mitham, who had been friends with Cliff since they were both nine, was out of the group. Cliff didn’t play guitar especially well, so for the session Samwell switched to rhythm and a session player, Ernie Shear, was brought in to play lead. The group was also augmented in the studio by a double bass player, Frank Clarke, and the Mike Sammes singers on backing vocals. The track they cut that day was not hugely inspiring: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, “Schoolboy Crush”] But the B-side was more interesting. It was the first song that Ian Samwell had ever written — an angry response to an article in the Melody Maker arguing that rock and roll was dead. It was stuck on the B-side of the proposed single mostly for lack of anything better, and it was knocked off quickly. Indeed, the main engineer on the session didn’t stick around for the recording — he wanted to go to the opera, and so it was left to the junior engineer Malcolm Addey to actually record the song. And that made a big difference — Addey was young enough to have some idea himself as to what a rock and roll record should sound like, and he came up with a much louder, more resonant, sound than anything that had been heard in a British recording session — a record that didn’t sound all that dissimilar to the records that Sun was putting out: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, “Move It”] That track was still intended for the B-side, until the point that Jack Good heard it. Jack Good was possibly the most important person ever to be involved in music TV — not just in Britain, but in the world. Good had been an actor, until he saw “Rock Around the Clock” in the cinema, and saw the way that the audiences reacted to the film. He became immediately convinced that the audience response was a crucial part of rock and roll, and that if done properly rock and roll performances could lead to the kind of catharsis that classical Greek drama aimed at. He took this idea to the BBC, who were at the time looking to put on a new teenage show. Up until mid 1956, the practice in British TV had been to stop transmitting for an hour, from six until seven in the evening, in order to let parents put their kids to bed — this was known as the Toddlers’ Truce. But after the commercial network ITV began broadcasting in 1955, the practice became controversial. While the BBC saved money by not putting on any programmes between six and seven — they got the same amount in TV license fees however much they broadcast — an hour without programmes for a commercial channel meant an hour without advertising fees. Eventually, ITV managed to get the rules changed, and the BBC decided that at five past six on a Saturday, they would put out a programme for young people, but young people allowed up that late — and it was to be called Six-Five Special. [Excerpt: The Bob Cort Skiffle Group, “The Six-Five Special”] Six-Five Special embodied many of Good’s ideas about how to broadcast rock and roll music — it had the audience as an integral part of the programme — there was very little distinction between the audience and the performers, who would perform among the crowd rather than separated from them. By all accounts it had some fantastic moments, including an appearance by Big Bill Broonzy, and a live broadcast from the 2Is coffee bar itself. But Good wasn’t the sole producer, and he had to compromise his vision. As well as rock and roll and skiffle, the programme also included light music of a kind parents would approve of, educational items, and bits about sport. Good kept trying to persuade the people at the BBC to let him have the show be just about rock and roll, but his co-producer wanted Hungarian acrobats and features on stamp collecting. So Good moved over to ABC, one of the ITV stations, and started a rival show, “Oh Boy!” On “Oh Boy!” the focus was entirely on the music. Good had very strong ideas on what he wanted from the show, ideas he’d got from sources as varied as a theatrical company who put on performances of Shakespeare with all-black backgrounds and no sets, and a book he’d read on the physiology of brainwashing. He wanted to make something powerful. Unlike on Six-Five Special the audience wouldn’t be mixing with the performers, but this time the performers would be picked out by a white spotlight on a black background. After two pilot episodes in June 1958, the programme started its run in September, with appearances from Marty Wilde, the John Barry Seven and more, and with instrumental backing for the solo performers provided by Lord Rockingham’s Eleven, a studio group who would go on to have a novelty hit with “Hoots Mon!” as a result of their appearances on the show: [Excerpt: Lord Rockingham’s XI, “Hoots Mon!”] And Cliff Richard was to be added to that show. It was Jack Good who, more than anyone else, came up with the image of the rock and roll star, and his influence can be seen in literally every visual depiction of rock and roll music from the early sixties on. And from the evidence of the two surviving episodes of Oh Boy! he, and the director Rita Gillespie, one of the very few female directors working in TV at the time, did a remarkable job of creating something truly exciting — something all the more remarkable when you look at what they had to work with. Most of the British rock and roll acts at the time were small, malnourished, spotty, teenage boys, who were doing a sort of cargo-cult imitation of American rock and rollers without really understanding what they were meant to be doing. But the lighting and the visuals of the show were extraordinary — and in Cliff Richard, Good had found someone who, if he was nowhere near as exciting as his American models, at least could be moulded into something that was the closest thing that could be found to a real British rock and roll star — someone who might one day be almost as good as Gene Vincent. Good insisted that the song Cliff should perform on his show should be “Move It”, and so the record label quickly flipped the single. Good worked with Cliff for a full week on his performance of the song, instructing him in every blink, every time he should clutch his arm as if in pain, the way he should look down , not straight at the audience, everything. Good chose his shocking pink outfit (not visible on black and white TV, but designed to send the girls in the audience into a frenzy) and had him restyle his hair to be less like Elvis’. And so in September 1958, a few weeks before his eighteenth birthday, Cliff Richard made his TV debut: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, “Move It”] “Oh Boy” was the most fast-paced thing on TV — on the evidence of the surviving episodes it was one song after another, non-stop, by different performers — as many as seventeen songs in a twenty-five minute live show, with no artist doing two songs in a row. It was an immediate hit, and so was “Move It”, which went to number two in the charts. There was a media outcry over Cliff’s brazen sexuality, with the NME accusing him of “crude exhibitionism”, while the Daily Sketch would ask “Is this boy TV star too sexy?” Cliff Richard was suddenly the biggest star and sex symbol in the UK, but there were problems with the band. Cliff was no longer playing guitar while he sang, and the group also needed a bass player, so Ian Samwell switched to bass, and they went looking for a new guitarist. The original intention was to audition a young player named Tony Sheridan, but while John Foster was waiting in the 2is to meet him, he started talking with someone who had just left the Vipers, and said that he and his friend would be happy to join the group, and so Cliff’s backing group now consisted of Ian Samwell, Terry Smart, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch. The new group recorded another Ian Samwell song, “High Class Baby”: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, “High Class Baby”] What Samwell didn’t know when they recorded that was that Cliff was already planning to replace him, with Jet Harris, who had played with Marvin in the Vipers. Now he was playing with better musicians, Samwell’s shortcomings were showing up. Cliff didn’t tell Samwell himself — he got John Foster to fire him. Samwell would go on to have some success as a songwriter and record producer, though, most famously producing “Horse With No Name” for America. Shortly after that, Foster was gone as well, first demoted from manager to roadie, then given two weeks’ notice in a letter from Cliff’s dad. And then finally, Cliff replaced Terry Smart, his old school friend, the person who had invited him into his group, with Tony Meehan, another ex-Viper. By Cliff’s nineteenth birthday, the only thing left of the original Drifters was the name. And soon that would change too, as Cliff Richard and the Drifters became Cliff Richard and the Shadows.

Episode sixty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Great Balls of Fire” by Jerry Lee Lewis. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. This one comes with a bit of a content warning, as while it has nothing explicit, it deals with his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Rumble” by Link Wray. —-more—-  Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode (with one exception, which I mention in the podcast). The Spark That Survived by Myra Lewis Williams is Myra’s autobiography, and tells her side of the story, which has tended to be ignored in favour of her famous husband’s side. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. Books on Jerry Lee Lewis tend to be very flawed, as the authors all tend to think they’re Faulkner rather than giving the facts. This one by Rick Bragg is better than most. There are many budget CDs containing Lewis’ pre-1962 work. This set seems as good an option as any. And this ten-CD box set contains ninety Sun singles in chronological order, starting with “Whole Lotta Shakin'” and covering the Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins records discussed here. There are few better ways to get an idea of Lewis’ work in context. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum: I say “Glad All Over” was written by Aaron Schroeder. In fact it was co-written by Schroeder, Roy Bennett, and Sid Tepper. Transcript   We’ve looked before at the rise of Jerry Lee Lewis, but in this episode we’re going to talk about his fall. And for that reason I have to put a content warning at the beginning here. While I’m not going to say anything explicit at all, this episode has to deal with events that I, and most of my listeners, would refer to as child sexual abuse, though the child in question still, more than sixty years later, doesn’t see them that way, and I don’t want to say anything that imposes my framing over hers. If you might find this subject distressing, I suggest reading the transcript before listening, or just skipping this episode. It also deals, towards the end, with domestic violence. Indeed, if you’re affected by these issues, I would also suggest skipping the next episode, on “Johnny B. Goode”, and coming back on February the second for “Yakety Yak” by the Coasters. We’re hitting a point in the history of rock and roll where, for the first time, rock and roll begins its decline in popularity. We’ll see from this point on that every few years there’s a change in musical fashions, and a new set of artists take over from the most popular artists of the previous period. And in the case of the first rock and roll era, that takeover was largely traumatic. There were a number of deaths, some prosecutions — and in the case of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, scandals. In general, I try not to make these podcast episodes be about the horrific acts that some of the men involved have committed. This is a podcast about music, not about horrible men doing horrible things. But in the case of Jerry Lee Lewis, he was one of the very small number of men to have actually faced consequences for his actions, and so it has to be discussed. I promise I will try to do so as sensitively as possible. Although sensitivity is not the word that comes to mind when one thinks of Jerry Lee Lewis, generally… [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Great Balls of Fire”] When we left Jerry Lee Lewis, he had just had his first really major success, with “Whole Lotta Shakin'”. He was on top of the world, and the most promising artist in rock and roll music. With Elvis about to be drafted into the army, the role of biggest rock and roll star was wide open, and Lewis intended to take over Elvis’ mantle. There was going to be a new king of rock and roll. It didn’t quite work out that way. “Whole Lotta Shakin'” was such a massive hit that on the basis of that one record, Jerry Lee was invited to perform his next single in a film called Jamboree. This was one of the many exploitation films that were being put out starring popular DJs — this one starred Dick Clark, rather than Alan Freed, who’d appeared in most of them. They were the kind of thing that made Elvis’ films look like masterpieces of the cinema, and tended to involve a bunch of kids who wanted to put a dance on at their local school, or similar interchangeable plots. The reason people went to see them wasn’t the plot, but the performances by rock and roll musicians. Fats Domino was in most of these, and he was in this one, singing his minor single “Wait and See”. There were also a few performances by musicians who weren’t strictly rock and roll, and were from an older generation, but who were close enough that the kids would probably accept them. Slim Whitman appeared, as did Count Basie, with Joe Williams as lead vocalist:… [Excerpt: Joe Williams, “I Don’t Like You No More”] The film also featured the only known footage of Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, who we talked about briefly last week. More pertinently to this story, it featured Carl Perkins: [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Glad All Over”] That song was one of the few that Perkins recorded which wasn’t written by him. Instead, it was written by Aaron Schroeder, who had co-written the non-Leiber-and-Stoller songs for Jailhouse Rock, and who also appeared in this film in a cameo role as himself. The song was provided to Sam Phillips by Hill and Range, who were Phillips’ publishing partners as well as being Elvis’. It was to be Carl Perkins’ last record for Sun — Perkins had finally had enough of Sam Phillips being more interested in Jerry Lee Lewis. Even little things were getting to him — Jerry Lee’s records were credited to “Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano”. Why did Carl’s records never say anything about Carl’s guitar? Sam promised him that the records would start to credit Carl Perkins as “the rocking guitar man”, but it was too late — Perkins and Johnny Cash both made an agreement with Columbia Records on November the first 1957 that when their current contracts with Sun expired, they’d start recording for the new label. Cash was in a similar situation to Perkins — Jack Clement had now taken over production of Cash’s records, and while Cash was writing some of his best material, songs like “Big River” that remain classics, Clement was making him record songs Clement had written himself, like “Ballad of a Teenage Queen”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “Ballad of a Teenage Queen”] It’s quite easy to see from that, which he recorded in mid-November, why Cash left Sun. While Cash would go on to have greater success at Columbia, Perkins wouldn’t. And ironically it was possible that he had had one more opportunity to have a hit follow-up to “Blue Suede Shoes” at Sun, and he’d passed on it. According to Perkins, he was given a choice of two songs to perform in Jamboree, both of them published by Hill and Range, but “I thought both of them was junk!” and he’d chosen the one that was slightly less awful — that’s not how other people involved remember it, but he would always claim that he had been offered the song that Jerry Lee Lewis performed, and turned down “Great Balls of Fire”: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Great Balls of Fire”] That song was one that both Lewis and Phillips were immediately convinced would be a hit as soon as they heard the demo. Sam Phillips’ main worry was how they were going to improve on the demo by the song’s writer, Otis Blackwell, which he thought was pretty much perfect as it was. We’ve met Otis Blackwell briefly before — he was a New York-based songwriter, one of a relatively small number of black people who managed to get work as a professional songwriter for one of the big publishing companies. Blackwell had written “Fever” for Little Willie John, “You’re the Apple of My Eye” for Frankie Valli, and two massive hits for Elvis — “Don’t Be Cruel” and “All Shook Up”. We don’t have access to his demo of “Great Balls of Fire”, but in the seventies he recorded an album called “These are My Songs”, featuring many of the hits he’d written for other people, and it’s possible that the version of “Great Balls of Fire” on that album gives some idea of what the demo that so impressed Phillips sounded like: [Excerpt: Otis Blackwell, “Great Balls of Fire”] “Great Balls of Fire” seems to be the first thing to have been tailored specifically for the persona that Lewis had created with his previous hit. It’s a refinement of the “Whole Lotta Shakin'” formula, but it has a few differences that give the song far more impact. Most notably, where “Whole Lotta Shakin'” starts off with a gently rolling piano intro and only later picks up steam: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Whole Lotta Shakin'”] “Great Balls of Fire” has a much more dynamic opening — one that sets the tone for the whole record with its stop-start exclamations: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Great Balls of Fire”] Although that stop-start intro is one of the few signs in the record that point to the song having been possibly offered to Perkins — it’s very reminiscent of the intro to “Blue Suede Shoes”: [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Blue Suede Shoes”] I could imagine Perkins recording the song in the “Blue Suede Shoes” manner and having a hit with it, though not as big a hit as Lewis eventually had. On the other hand I can’t imagine Lewis turning “Glad All Over”, fun as it is, into anything even remotely worthy of following up “Whole Lotta Shakin'”. Almost straight away they managed to cut a version of “Great Balls of Fire” that was suitable for the film, but it wasn’t right for a hit record. They needed something that was absolutely perfect. After having sent the film version off, they spent several days working on getting the perfect version cut — paying particular attention to that stop-start intro, which the musicians had to time perfectly for it not to come out as a sloppy mess. Oddly, the musicians on the track weren’t the normal Sun session players, and nor were they the musicians who normally played in Lewis’ band. Instead, Lewis was backed by Sidney Stokes on bass and Larry Linn on drums — according to Lewis, he never met those two people again after they finished recording. But as the work proceeded, Jerry Lee became concerned. “Great Balls of Fire”? Didn’t that sound a bit… Satanic? And people did say that rock and roll was the Devil’s music. He ended up getting into an angry, rambling, theological discussion with Sam Phillips, which was recorded and which gives an insight into how difficult Lewis must have been to work with, but also how tortured he was — he truly believed in the existence of a physical Hell, and that he was destined to go there because of his music: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis and Sam Phillips, Bible discussion] Sam Phillips, who appears to have had the patience of a saint, eventually talked Lewis down and persuaded him to get back to making music. When “Great Balls of Fire” came out, with a cover of Hank Williams’ ballad “You Win Again” on the B-side, it was an immediate success. It sold over a million copies in the first ten days it was out, and it became a classic that has been covered by everyone from Dolly Parton to Aerosmith. It’s one of the records that defines 1950s rock and roll music, and it firmly established Jerry Lee Lewis as one of the greatest stars of rock and roll, if not the greatest. Jack and Sam kept recording everything they could from Lewis, getting a backlog of recordings that would be released for decades to come — everything from Hank Williams covers to the old blues number “Big Legged Woman”: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Big Legged Woman”] But they decided that they didn’t want to mess with a winning formula, and so the next record that they put out was another Otis Blackwell song, “Breathless”. This time, the band was the normal Sun studio drummer Jimmy Van Eaton, Billy Lee Riley on guitar — Riley was also furious with Sam Phillips for the way he was concentrating on Lewis’ career at the expense of everyone else’s, but he was still working on sessions for Phillips — and Jerry Lee’s cousin J.W. Brown on bass. J.W. was his full name — it didn’t stand for anything — and he was the regular touring bass player in Lewis’ band. “Breathless” was very much in the same style as “Great Balls of Fire”, if perhaps not *quite* so good: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Breathless”] To promote the record, Jud Phillips, Sam’s brother, came up with a great promotional scheme. Dick Clark, the presenter of American Bandstand, had another show, the Dick Clark Show, which was also called Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beechnut Show because it was sponsored by Beechnut chewing gum. Clark had already had Jerry Lee on his show once, and he’d been a hit — Clark could bring him back on the show, and they could announce that if you sent Sun Records five Beechnut wrappers and fifty cents for postage and packing, you could get a signed copy of the new record. The fifty cents would be more than the postage and packing would cost, of course, and Sun would split the profits with Dick Clark. Sun bought an autograph stamp to stamp copies of the record with, hired a few extra temporary staff members to help them get the records posted, and made the arrangements with Dick Clark and his sponsors. The result was extraordinary — in some parts of the country, stores ran out of Beechnut gum altogether. More than thirty-eight thousand copies of the single were sent out to eager gum-chewers. It was around this time that Jerry Lee went on the Alan Freed tour that we mentioned last week, with Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Larry Williams, the Chantels, and eleven other acts. The tour later became legendary not so much for the music — though that was great — but for the personal disputes between Lewis and Berry. There were two separate issues at stake. The first was Elmo Lewis, Jerry’s father. Elmo had a habit of using racial slurs, and of threatening to fight anyone, especially black people, who he thought was disrespecting him. At one show on the tour, a dispute about parking spaces between Berry and Lewis led to the elder Lewis chasing Berry three blocks, waving a knife, and shouting “You know what we do with cats like you down in Ferriday? We chop the heads off them and throw it in a lake.” Apparently, by the next day, Elmo and Chuck were sat with each other at breakfast, the best of friends. The other issue was Berry’s belief that he, rather than Lewis, should be headlining the shows. He managed to persuade the promoters of this, and this led Lewis to try more and more outrageous stunts on stage to try to upstage Berry. The legend has it that at one show he went so far as to set his piano on fire at the climax of “Great Balls of Fire”, and then walk off stage challenging Berry to follow that. Some versions of the story have him using a racial slur there, too, but the story in whatever form seems to be apocryphal. It does, though, sum up the atmosphere between the two. That said, while Lewis and Berry fought incessantly, Berry was one of the few people to whom Lewis has ever shown any respect at all. Partly that’s because of Lewis’ admiration for Berry’s songwriting — he’s called Berry “the Hank Williams of rock and roll” before now, and for someone who admires Williams as much as Lewis does that’s about the highest imaginable praise. But also, Lewis and his father were both always very careful not to do anything that would lead to word of the feud getting back to his mother, because his mother had repeatedly told him that Chuck Berry was the greatest rock and roller in the world — Elvis was good, she said, and obviously so was her son, but neither of them were a patch on Chuck. She would have been furious with him, and would definitely have taken Chuck’s side. After the tour, Jerry Lee recorded another song for a film he was going to appear in. This time, it was the title song for a terribly shlocky attempt at drama, called High School Confidential — a film that dealt with the very serious and weighty issue of marijuana use among teenagers, and is widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made. The theme music, though, was pretty good: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “High School Confidential”] That came out on the nineteenth of May, 1958, and immediately started rising up the charts. Two days later, Jerry Lee headed out on what was meant to be a triumphal tour of the UK, solidifying him as the biggest, most important, rock and roll star in the world. And that is when everything came crashing down. Because it was when he and his entourage landed in the UK, and the press saw the thirteen-year-old girl with him, and asked who she was, that it became public knowledge he had married his thirteen-year-old cousin Myra. And here we get to something I’ve been dreading talking about since I decided on this project. There is simply no way to talk about Jerry Lee Lewis’ marriage to Myra Gale Brown which doesn’t erase Brown’s experience, doesn’t excuse Lewis’ behaviour, explains the cultural context in which it happened, and doesn’t minimise child abuse — which, and let’s be clear about this right now, this was. If you take from *anything* that I say after this that I think there is any possible excuse, any justification, for a man in his twenties having sex with a thirteen-year-old girl — let alone a thirteen-year-old girl in his own family, to whom he was an authority figure — then I have *badly* failed to get my meaning across. What Lewis did was, simply, wrong. It’s important to say that, because something that applies both to this episode and to the downfall of Chuck Berry, which we’ll be looking at in the next episode, is the way that both have been framed by all the traditional histories of rock and roll. If you read almost anything about rock and roll history, what you see when it gets to 1958 is “and here rock and roll nearly died, because of the prurient attitudes of a few prudes, who were out to destroy the careers of these new exciting rock and rollers because they hated the threat they posed to their traditional way of life”. That is simply not the case. Yes, there was a great deal of establishment opposition to rock and roll music, but what happened to Jerry Lee Lewis wasn’t some conspiracy of blue-nosed prudes. It was people getting angry, for entirely understandable reasons, about a man doing something that was absolutely, unquestionably, just *wrong*. And the fact that this has been minimised by rock and roll histories says a lot about the culture around rock journalism, none of it good. Now, that said, something that needs to be understood here is that Lewis and most of the people round him didn’t see him as doing anything particularly wrong. In the culture of the Southern US at the time, it was normal for very young girls to be married, often to older men. By his own lights, he was doing nothing wrong. His first marriage was when he was sixteen — Myra was his third wife, and he was still legally married to his second when he married her — and his own younger sister had recently got married, aged twelve. Likewise, marrying one’s cousin was the norm within Jerry Lee’s extended family, where pretty much everyone whose surname was Lewis, Swaggart, or Gilley was married to someone else whose surname was Lewis, Swaggart, or Gilley. But I don’t believe we have to judge people by their own standards, or at least not wholly so. There were many other horrific aspects to the culture of the Southern states at the time, and just because, for example, the people who defended segregation believed they were doing nothing wrong and were behaving according to their own culture, doesn’t mean we can’t judge them harshly. And it’s not as if everyone in Jerry Lee’s own culture was completely accepting of this. They’d married in secret, and when Myra’s father — Jerry Lee’s cousin and bass player, J.W. Brown — found out about it, he grabbed his shotgun and went out with every intention of murdering Jerry Lee, and it was only Sam Phillips who persuaded him that maybe that would be a bad idea. The British tour, which was meant to last six weeks, ended up lasting only three days. Jerry Lee and his band and family cancelled the tour and returned home, where they expected everyone to accept them again, and for things to carry on as normal. They didn’t. The record company tried to capitalise on the controversy, and also to defuse the anger towards Lewis. At the time, there was a craze for novelty records which interpolated bits of spoken word dialogue with excerpts of rock and roll hits, sparked off by a record called “The Flying Saucer”: [Excerpt: Buchanan and Goodman, “The Flying Saucer”] Jack Clement put together a similar thing, as a joke for the Sun Records staff, called “The Return of Jerry Lee”, having an interviewer, the DJ George Klein, ask Jerry Lee questions about the recent controversy, and having Jerry Lee “answer” them in clips from his records. Sam Phillips loved it, and insisted on releasing it as a single. [Excerpt: George and Louis, “The Return of Jerry Lee”] Unsurprisingly, that did not have the effect that was hoped, and did not defuse the situation one iota — especially since some of the jokes in the record were leering ones about Myra’s physical attractiveness — the attractiveness, remember, of a child. For that reason, I will *not* be putting the full version of that particular track in the Mixcloud mix of songs I excerpted in this episode. This is where we say goodbye to Sam Phillips. With Jerry Lee Lewis’ career destroyed, and with all his other major acts having left him, Phillips’ brief reign as the most important record producer and company owner in the USA was over. He carried on running Sun records for a few years, and eventually sold it to Shelby Singleton. Singleton is a complicated figure, but one thing he definitely did right was exploiting Sun’s back catalogue — in their four-year rockabilly heyday Sam Phillips and Jack Clement had recorded literally thousands of unreleased songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Conway Twitty, Charlie Rich, Billy Lee Riley, and many more. Those tracks sat in Sun’s vaults for more than a decade, but once Singleton took over the company pretty much every scrap of material from Sun’s vaults saw release, especially once a British reissue label called Charly employed Martin Hawkins and Colin Escott, two young music obsessives, to put out systematic releases of Sun’s rockabilly and blues archives. The more of that material came out, the more obvious it became that Sam Phillips had tapped into something very, very special at Sun Records, and that throughout the fifties one small studio in Memphis had produced staggering recordings on a daily basis. By the time Sam Phillips died, in 2003, aged eighty, he was widely regarded as one of the most important people in the history of music. Jerry Lee Lewis, meanwhile, spent several years trying and failing to have a hit, but slowly rebuilding his live audiences, playing small venues and winning back his audience one crowd at a time. By the late 1960s he was in a position to have a comeback, and “Another Place, Another Time” went to number four on the country charts, and started a run of country hits that lasted for the best part of a decade: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Another Place, Another Time”] Myra divorced Jerry Lee around that time, citing physical and emotional abuse. She is now known as Myra Williams, has been happily married for thirty-six years, and works as a real-estate agent. Jerry Lee has, so far, married four more times. His fourth and fifth wives died in mysterious circumstances — his fourth drowned shortly before the divorce went through, and the fifth died in circumstances that are still unclear, and several have raised suspicions that Jerry Lee killed her. It’s not impossible. The man known as the Killer did once shoot his bass player in the chest in the late seventies — he insists that was an accident — and was arrested outside Graceland, drunk and with a gun, yelling for Elvis Presley to come out and settle who was the real king. Jerry Lee Lewis is still alive, married to his seventh wife, who is Myra’s brother’s ex-wife. Last year, he and his wife sued his daughter, though the lawsuit was thrown out of court. He’s eighty-four years old, still performs, and according to recent interviews, worries if he is going to go to Heaven or to Hell when he dies. I imagine I would worry too, in his place.  

  Episode sixty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Susie Q” by Dale Hawkins, and at the difference between rockabilly and electric blues. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Shake a Hand” by Faye Adams.  —-more—- Errata I pronounce presage incorrectly in the episode, and the song “Do it Again a Little Bit Slower” doesn’t have the word “just” in the title. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This time, for reasons to do with Mixcloud’s terms of service, it’s broken into two parts. Part one, part two. There are no books that I know of on Hawkins, but I relied heavily on three books with chapters on him — Hepcats and Rockabilly Boys by Robert Reynolds, Dig That Beat! Interviews with Musicians at the Root of Rock and Roll by Sheree Homer,  and Shreveport Sounds in Black and White edited by Kip Lornell and Tracy E.W. Laird. This compilation of Hawkins’ early singles is as good a set as any to start with, though the liner notes are perfunctory at best.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We’re pretty much at the end of the true rockabilly era already — all the major figures to come out of Sun studios have done so, and while 1957 saw several country-influenced white rock and rollers show up, like Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers, and those singers will often get referred to as “rockabilly”, they don’t tend to get counted by aficionados of the subgenre, who think they don’t sound enough like the music from Sun to count. But there are still a few exceptions. And one of those is Dale Hawkins, the man whose recordings were to spark a whole new subgenre, the style of music that would later become known as “swamp rock”. [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Susie Q”] Dale Hawkins never liked being called a rockabilly, though that’s the description that most people now use of him. We’ll look later in the episode at how accurate that description actually is, but for the moment the important thing is that he thought of himself as a bluesman. When he was living in Shreveport, Louisiana, he lived in a shack in the black part of town, and inside the shack there was only a folding camp bed, a record player, and thousands of 78RPM blues records. Nothing else at all. It’s not that he didn’t like country music, of course — as a kid, he and his brother hitch-hiked to a nearby town to go to a Flatt and Scruggs gig, and he also loved Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers — but it was the blues that called to him more, and so he never thought of himself as having the country elements that would normally be necessary for someone to call themselves a rockabilly. While he didn’t have much direct country influence, he did come from a country music family. His father, Delmar Hawkins senior, was a country musician who was according to some sources one of the original members of the Sons of the Pioneers, the group that launched the career of Roy Rogers: [Excerpt: Sons of the Pioneers, “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”] While Hawkins Sr.’s name isn’t in any of the official lists of group members, he might well have performed with them at some point in the early years of the group. And whether he did or didn’t, he was definitely a bass player in many other hillbilly bands. However, it’s unlikely that Delmar Hawkins Sr. had much influence on his son, as he left the family when Delmar Jr was three, and didn’t reconnect until after “Susie Q” became a hit. Delmar Sr. wasn’t the only family member to be a musician, either — Dale’s younger brother Jerry was a rockabilly who made a few singles in the fifties: [Excerpt: Jerry Hawkins, “Swing Daddy Swing”] Another family member, Ronnie Hawkins, would later have his own musical career, which would intersect with several of the artists we’re going to be looking at later in this series. Del Hawkins, as he was originally called, did a variety of jobs, including a short stint as a sailor, after dropping out of school, but he soon got the idea of becoming a musician, and started performing with Sonny Jones, a local guitarist whose sister was Hank Williams’ widow. Jones had a lot of contacts in the local music industry, and helped Hawkins pull together the first lineup of his band, when he was nineteen. While Hawkins thought of himself as a blues musician, for a white singer in Shreveport, there was only one option open if you wanted to be a star, and that was performing on the Louisiana Hayride, the country show where Elvis, among many others, had made his name. And Jones had many contacts on the show, and performed on it himself. But Hawkins’ first job at the Louisiana Hayride wasn’t as a performer, but working in the car park. He and his brother would go up to drivers heading into the car park for the show, and charge them fifty cents to park their cars for them — when the car park filled up, they’d just park the cars on the street outside. What they didn’t tell the drivers was that the car park was actually free to the public. At the same time he was starting out as a musician, Del was working in a record shop, Stan’s Record Shop, run by a man named Stan Lewis. Hawkins had been a regular customer for several years before working up the courage to ask for a job there, and by the time he got the job, he was familiar with almost every blues or R&B record that was available at the time. Customers would come into the shop, sing a snatch of a song they’d heard, and young Del would be able to tell them the title and the artist. It was through doing this job that Hawkins became friendly with customers like B.B. King, who would remain a lifelong friend. It was also while working at Stan’s Record Shop that Hawkins became better acquainted with its owner. Stan Lewis was, among other things, both a talent scout for Chess records and one of the biggest customers of the label — if he got behind a record, Chess knew it would sell, at least in Louisiana, and so they would listen to him. Indeed, Lewis was one of the biggest record distributors, as well as a record shop owner, and he distributed records all across the region, to many other stores. Lewis also worked as a record producer — the first record he ever produced was one of the biggest blues hits of all time, Lowell Fulson’s “Reconsider Baby”, which was released on the Chess subsidiary Checker: [Excerpt: Lowell Fulson, “Reconsider Baby”] Lewis took an interest in his young employee’s music career, and introduced Hawkins to his cousin, D.J. Fontana, another musician who played on the Louisiana Hayride. Fontana played with Hawkins for a while before taking on a better-paid job with Elvis Presley. At Lewis’ instigation, Hawkins went into the studio in 1956 with engineer Merle Kilgore (who would later become famous in his own right as a country songwriter, co-writing songs like “Ring of Fire”), his new guitarist James Burton, and several other musicians, to record a demo of what would become Hawkins’ most famous song, “Susie Q”: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Susie Q”, demo version] Listening to that, it’s clear that they already had all the elements of the finished record nearly in place — the main difference between that and the finished version that they cut later is that the demo has a saxophone solo, and that James Burton hasn’t fully worked out his guitar part, although it’s close to the final version. At the time he cut that track, Hawkins intended it as a potential first single, but Stan Lewis had other ideas. While Chess records put out almost solely tracks by black artists, their subsidiary Checker *had* recently released a single by a white artist — a song by Bobby Charles called “Later, Alligator”, which a short while later had become a hit for Bill Haley, under the longer title “See You Later, Alligator”: [Excerpt: Bobby Charles, “Later Alligator”] Lewis thought that given that precedent, Checker might be willing to put out another record by a white act, if that record was an answer record to Bobby Charles’. So he persuaded Hawkins to write a soundalike song, which Hawkins and his band quickly demoed — “See You Soon, Baboon”: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “See You Soon, Baboon”] Lewis sent that off to Checker, who released Hawkins’ demo, although they did make three small changes. The first was to add a Tarzan-style yodelling call at the beginning and end of the record: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “See You Soon, Baboon”] The second, which would have long-lasting consequences, was that they misspelled Hawkins’ first name — Leonard Chess misheard “Del Hawkins” over the phone, and the record came out as by “Dale Hawkins”, which would be his name from that point on. The last change was to remove Hawkins’ songwriting credit, and give it instead to Stan Lewis and Eleanor Broadwater. Broadwater was the wife of Gene Nobles, a DJ to whom the Chess brothers owed money. Nobles is also the one who supplied the Tarzan cry. Both Lewis and Broadwater would also get credited for Hawkins’ follow-up single, a new version of “Susie Q”: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Susie Q”] On that, at least, Hawkins was credited as one of the writers along with Lewis and Broadwater. But according to Hawkins, not only did the credit get split with the wrong people, but he didn’t receive any of the royalties to which he was entitled until as late as 1985. And crucially, the other people who did cowrite the song — notably James Burton — didn’t get any credit at all. In general, there seems to be a great deal of disagreement about who contributed what to the song — I’ve seen various other putative co-authors listed — but everyone seems agreed that Hawkins came up with the lyrics, while Burton came up with the guitar riff. Presumably the song evolved from a jam session by the musicians — it’s the kind of song that musicians come up with when they’re jamming together, and that would explain the discrepancies in the stories as to who wrote it. Well, that and the record company ripping the writers off. The song came from a myriad musical sources. The most obvious influence for its overall sound — both the melody and the way the melody interacts with the guitar riff — is “Baby Please Don’t Go” by Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “Baby Please Don’t Go”] But the principal influence on the melody was, rather than Waters’ song, a record by the Clovers which had a very similar melody — “I’ve Got My Eyes on You”: [Excerpt: The Clovers, “I’ve Got My Eyes On You”] Hawkins and Burton took those melodic and arrangement ideas and coupled them with a riff inspired by Howlin’ Wolf — I’ve seen some people claim that the song was “ripped off” from Wolf. I don’t believe, myself, that that is the case. Wolf certainly had several records with similar riffs, like “Smokestack Lightnin'”: [Excerpt: Howlin’ Wolf, “Smokestack Lightnin'”] And “Spoonful”: [Excerpt: Howlin’ Wolf, “Spoonful”] But nothing with the exact same riff, and certainly nothing with the same melody. Some have also claimed that Wolf provided lyrical inspiration — that Hawkins was inspired by seeing Wolf drop to his knees on stage yelling something about “Suzy”. There are also claims that the song was named after Stan Lewis’ daughter Suzie — and notably Stan Lewis himself bolstered his claim to a co-writing credit for the song by pointing out that not only did he have a daughter named Susan, so did Leonard Chess. He claimed that he had mentioned this to Hawkins and suggested that the two of them write a song together with the name in it, because it would appeal to Chess. Both of those tales of the song’s lyrical inspiration may well be true, but I suspect that a more likely explanation is that the song is named after a dance move. We talked way back in episode four about the Lindy Hop, the popular dance from the late 1930s and forties. That dance was never a formalised dance, and one of its major characteristics was that it would incorporate dance moves from any other dance around. And one of the dances it incorporated into itself was one called the Suzie Q, which at the height of its popularity was promoted by a song performed by the pianist Lilian Hardin, who is now best known for having been the wife of Louis Armstrong, whose career she managed in its early years, but who at the time was a respected jazz musician in her own right: [Excerpt: Lil Hardin Armstrong, “Doin’ the Suzie Q”] The dance that that song was about was a simple dance step, involving crossing one’s feet, swivelling. and stepping to one side. It got incorporated into the more complex Lindy Hop, but was still remembered as a step in itself. So, it’s likely that Hawkins was at least as inspired by that as he was by any of the other alleged inspirations for the song. Certainly at least one other Checker records artist thought so — Jimmy McCracklin, in his song “The Walk”, released the next year, starts his list of dances by singing “I know you’ve heard of the Susie Q”: [Excerpt: Jimmy McCracklin, “The Walk”] According to the engineer on the session, Bob Sullivan, who was more used to recording Jim Reeves and Slim Whitman than raw rock and roll music, “Susie Q” was recorded in four takes, and Hawkins had the final choice of which take to use, but in Sullivan’s opinion he chose the wrong one. The take chosen for release was an early take of the song, when Sullivan was still trying to get a balance, and he didn’t notice at first that Hawkins was starting to sing, and had to quickly raise the volume on Hawkins’ vocal just as he started. You can hear this if you listen to the finished recording: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Susie Q”] This new version of “Susie Q” was stripped right down — it was just guitar, bass, and drums — none of the saxophone that was present on the early version. But it kept the crucial ingredients of the earlier version — that biting guitar riff played by James Burton, and the drum part, with its ear-catching cowbell. That drum part was played by Stan Lewis’ fifteen-year-old brother Ronnie on the new version, but he’s closely copying the part that A.J. Tuminello played on the demo — Tuminello couldn’t make the session, so Lewis just copied the part, which came about when Hawkins had heard Tuminello playing his drum and cowbell simultaneously during a soundcheck. Now that we’ve put the song in context, there’s an interesting point we can make. As we discussed in the beginning, people usually refer to “Susie Q” as a rockabilly song. But there are a few criteria that generally apply to rockabilly but not to “Susie Q”. And one of the most important of these ties back to something we were talking about last week — the electric bass. The demo version of “Susie Q” had, like almost all rock and roll records of the time, featured a double bass, played in the slapback style, and as we talked about back in the episodes on Bill Haley several months back, slapback bass is one of the defining features of the rockabilly genre. For this new recording, though, Sonny Trammell, a country player who played with Jim Reeves, played electric bass, as he was the only person in Shreveport who owned one. This was a deliberate choice by Hawkins, who wanted to imitate the sound of electric blues records, rather than using the double bass, which he associated with country music — though as it turns out, he would probably have been better off using a double bass if he wanted that sound, as Willie Dixon, who played bass on all the Chess blues records, actually didn’t play an electric bass. Rather, he got a sound similar to an electric bass by actually placing the microphone inside the bottom of the bass’ tailpiece. But that points to something that “Susie Q” was doing that we’ve not seen before. One of the things people have asked me a few times is why I’ve not looked very much at the music that we now think of as “the blues”, though at the time it was only a small part of the blues — the guitar playing male solo artists who made up the Chicago sound, and the Delta bluesmen who inspired them. And that’s because the common narrative, that rock and roll came from that kind of blues, is false — as I hope the last year and a bit of podcasts have shown. Rock and roll came from a lot of different musics — primarily Western swing, jump bands, and vocal group R&B — and had relatively little influence in its early years from that branch of blues. But over the next few years we will see a lot of musicians, primarily but not exclusively white British men, inspired by the first wave of rock and rollers to pick up a guitar, but rejecting the country music that inspired those early rock and rollers, and turning instead to Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Howlin’ Wolf. There’s never a first anything, and that’s especially the case here where we’re talking about musical ideas crossing racial lines, but one can make an argument that Dale Hawkins was the first white rock and roller to be inspired by people like Waters and Wolf, and for “Susie Q” as the record, more than any other, that presaged the white rock acts of the sixties, with its electric bass, Chess-style guitar riffs, and country-inflected vocals. Acts like the Rolling Stones or the Animals or Canned Heat were all following in Hawkins’ footsteps, as you can hear in, for example, the Stones’ own version of the song: [Excerpt: the Rolling Stones, “Susie Q”] What’s surprising is how reluctant Chess were to release the single. The master was sent to Chess for release, but they kept hold of it for ten months without getting round to releasing it. Eventually, Hawkins became so frustrated that he sent a copy of the recording to Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records. Wexler got excited, and told Leonard Chess that if Chess weren’t going to put out the single, Atlantic would release it instead. At that point, Chess realised that he might have something commercial on his hands, and decided to put the record out on Checker as it was originally intended. The song went to number seven on the R&B charts, and number twenty-seven on the pop charts. Between the recording and release of the single, James Burton quit the band. He moved on first to work with another Louisiana musician, Bob Luman: [Excerpt: Bob Luman, “All Night Long”] Burton then went on to work first with Ricky Nelson and then as a session player with everyone from the Monkees to Elvis. Hawkins had an ear for good guitarists, and after Burton went on to be one of the most important guitarists in rock music, Hawkins would continue to play with many other superb players, such as Roy Buchanan, who played on Hawkins’ cover version of Little Walter’s “My Babe”: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “My Babe”] And then there was the guitarist on the closest he came to a follow-up hit, “La-Do-Dada”: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Lo-Do-Dada”] That guitarist was another young player, Joe Osborn, who would soon follow James Burton to LA and to the pool of session players that became known as the Wrecking Crew, though Osborn would switch his guitar for bass. However, none of Hawkins’ follow-ups had anything more than very minor commercial success, and he would increasingly find himself chasing trends and trying to catch up with other people’s styles, rather than continuing with the raw rock and roll sound he had found on “Susie Q”. By the early sixties he was recording novelty live albums of twist songs, to try to cash in on the twist fad: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Do the Twist”] After his brief run of hits dried up, he used his connection with Dick Clark, the TV presenter whose American Bandstand had helped to break “Susie Q” on the national market, to get his own TV show, The Dale Hawkins Show, which ran for eighteen months and was a similar format to Bandstand. Once that show was over, he turned to record production. There he once again worked for Stan Lewis, who by that point had started his own record labels. There seems to be some dispute as to which records Hawkins produced in his second career. I’ve seen claims, for example, that he produced “Hey Baby” by Bruce Channel: [Excerpt: Bruce Channel, “Hey Baby”] But Hawkins is not the credited producer on that, or on “Judy In Disguise With Glasses” by John Fred and the Playboy Band, another record he’s often credited with. On the other hand, he *is* the credited producer on the big hit “Do it Again Just a Little Bit Slower” by Jon and Robin: [Excerpt: Jon and Robin, “Do it Again A Little Bit Slower”] Towards the end of the sixties, he had a brief second attempt at a recording career for himself. Creedence Clearwater Revival had a hit in 1968 with their version of “Susie Q”: [Excerpt: Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Susie Q”] And that was enough to draw Hawkins back into the studio, working once again with James Burton on guitar and Joe Osborn on bass, along with a few newer blues musicians like Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder, on an album full of the swamp-rock style he had created in the fifties, “LA, Memphis, and Tyler, Texas”: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins: “LA, Memphis, Tyler, Texas”] When that wasn’t a success, he moved on to RCA Records to become head of A&R for their West Coast rock department — a job he was apparently put forward for by Joe Osborn. But after a successful few years, he spent much of the seventies suffering from an amphetamine addiction, having started taking speed back in the fifties. He finally got clean in the early eighties, and started touring the rockabilly revival circuit — as well as finally getting his master’s degree, which for a high school dropout was a major achievement, and something to be as proud of as any hit. In 1998, he recorded his first album in thirty years, Wildcat Tamer: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Wildcat Tamer”] That got some of the best reviews of his career, but his next album took nearly a decade to come out, and by that time he had been diagnosed with the colon cancer that eventually killed him in 2010. Hawkins is in many ways a paradoxical figure — he was someone who pointed the way to the future of rock and roll, but the future he pointed to was one of white men taking the ideas of black blues musicians and only slightly altering them. He was a byword for untutored, raw, instinctive rock and roll, and yet his biggest hit is carefully constructed out of bits of other people’s records, melded together with a great deal of thought. At the end of it all, what survives is that one glorious hit record — a guitar, a bass, drums, a cowbell, and a teenage boy singing of how he loves Susie Q.

Who the heck is Beethoven? In this special episode of A Podcast About Music (it's the 10th episode), Erik and Logan break away from rock and rollers and popular artists to talk about one of the greats. The really greats. Beethoven. Plus, Real or Fake continues with an exciting rhythm that could only be found on A Podcast About Music. Für Elise: https://youtu.be/_mVW8tgGY_w Moonlight Sonata: https://youtu.be/4Tr0otuiQuU

Episode forty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino, and at how the racial tensions of the fifties meant that a smiling, diffident, cheerful man playing happy music ended up starting riots all over the US. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Birmingham Bounce” by Hardrock Gunter. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The best compilation of Fats Domino’s music is a four-CD box set called They Call Me The Fat Man: The Legendary Imperial Recordings. The biographical information here comes from Rick Coleman’s Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll.  The information about the “Yancey Special” bassline and its history comes from “Before Elvis”, by Larry Birnbaum. There have been three previous episodes in which Domino and Bartholomew have featured, including two on Domino songs. See the “Fats Domino” tag for those episodes. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?  Transcript This is the third episode we’re going to do on Fats Domino, and the last one, though he will be turning up in other episodes in various ways. He was the one star from the pre-rock days of R&B to last and thrive, and even become bigger, in the rock and roll era, and he was, other than Elvis Presley, by far the most successful of the first wave of rock and roll stars.   And this points to something interesting — something which we haven’t really pointed out as much as you might expect.   Because of that first wave of rock and rollers, by late 1956 there were only Elvis and the black R&B stars left as rock and roll stars on the US charts. The wave of white rockabilly acts that had hits throughout 1955 and 56 had all fizzled — Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, and Bill Haley would between them never have another major hit in the US, though all of them would have success in other countries, and make important music over the next few years. Johnny Cash would have more hits, but he would increasingly be marketed as a country music star. If we’re talking about actual rock and roll hits rising to decent positions in the charts, by late 1956 you’re looking at acts like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino, with only Elvis left of the rockabillies.   Of course, very shortly afterwards, there would come a second wave of white rock and rollers, who would permanently change the music, and by the time we get to mid-1957 we’ll be in a period where white man with guitar is the default image for rock and roll star, but in late 1956, that default image was a black man with a piano, and the black man with a piano who was selling the most records, by far, was Fats Domino.   [Excerpt: Fats Domino, “Blueberry Hill”]   When we left Domino, he had just had his breakout rock and roll hit, with “Ain’t That A Shame”. He was so successful that Imperial Records actually put out an album by him, rather than just singles, for the first time in the six years he’d been recording for them. This was a bigger deal than it sounds — rhythm and blues artists hardly ever put out albums in the fifties. The sales of their records weren’t even normally directly to their audiences — they were to jukebox manufacturers.   So when Imperial put out an album, that was a sign that something had changed with Domino’s audience — he was selling to white people with money. The black audience, for the most part, were still buying 78s, not even 45s — they were generally relatively poor, and not the type of people to upgrade their record players while the old ones still worked.   (This is obviously a huge generalisation, but it’s true in so far as any generalisations are true.)   Meanwhile, the young white rock and roll audience that had developed all of a sudden between 1954 and 1956 was mostly buying the new 45rpm singles, but at least some of them were also buying LPs — enough of them that artists like Elvis were selling on the format.   Domino’s first album, Rock and Rollin’ With Fats Domino, was made up almost entirely of previously released material — mostly hit singles he’d had in the few years before the rock and roll boom took off, and including the songs we’ve looked at before. It was followed only three months later by a follow-up, imaginatively titled Fats Domino Rock and Rollin’. That one was largely made up of outtakes and unreleased tracks from 1953, but when it came out in April 1956 it sold twenty thousand copies in its first week on release.   That doesn’t sound a lot now, but for an album aimed at a teenage audience, by a black artist, in 1956, and featuring only one hit single, that was quite an extraordinary achievement.   But Domino’s commercial success in 1956 was very much overshadowed by other events, which had everything to do with the racial attitudes of the time. Because believe it or not, Fats Domino’s shows were often disrupted by riots.   We’ve been talking about 1956 for a while, and dealing with black artists, without having really mentioned just what a crucial time this was in the history of the civil rights struggle. The murder of Emmett Till, supposedly for whistling at a white woman, had been in August 1955. Rosa Parks had refused to get to the back of the bus in December 1955, and in early 1956 a campaign of white supremacist terrorism against black people stepped up, with the firebombing of several churches and of the houses of civil rights leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King.   This, as much as anything musical, is the context you need to understand why rock and roll was seen as so revolutionary in 1956 in particular. White teenagers were listening to music by black musicians, and even imitating that music themselves, right at the point where people were having to start taking sides for or against racial justice and human decency. A large chunk of white America was more concerned about the “inappropriate” behaviour of people like Rosa Parks than about the legitimate concerns of the firebombers. And this attitude was also showing up in the reaction to music. In April 1956 Nat King Cole was injured on stage when a mob of white supremacists attacked him. Cole was one of the least politically vocal black entertainers, and he was appearing before an all-white audience, but he was a black man playing with a white backing band, and that was enough for him to be a target for attempted murder.   And this is the background against which you have to look at the reports of violence at Fats Domino shows. The riots which broke out at his shows throughout that year were blamed in contemporary news reports on his “pulsating jungle rhythms” — and there’s not even an attempt made to hide the racism in statements like that — but there was little shocking about Domino’s actual music at the time.   In fact, in 1956, Domino seemed to be trying to cross over to the country and older pop audience, by performing old standards from decades earlier. His first attempt at doing so became a top twenty pop hit. “My Blue Heaven” had originally been a hit in 1927 for the crooner Gene Austin:   [Excerpt: Gene Austin, “My Blue Heaven”]   Domino’s version gave it a mild R&B flavour, and it became a double-sided hit with “I’m In Love Again” on the other side:   [Excerpt: Fats Domino, “My Blue Heaven”]   And for the rest of the year, Domino would repeat this formula — one side of each of his singles would be written by Domino or his producer Dave Bartholomew, while the other side would be a song from twenty to forty years earlier. His single releases for the next eighteen months or so would include on them such standards as “I’m in the Mood for Love”, “As Time Goes By”, and “When My Dreamboat Comes Home”.   And so, this is the music that was supposedly to blame for riots. And riots *did* follow Domino around everywhere he went. In Roanoake, Virginia, for example, in May, Domino was playing to a segregated crowd — whites in the balcony, black people on the floor. The way segregation worked when it came to rock and roll or R&B concerts was simple — whichever race the promoter thought would be more likely to come got the floor, the race which would have fewer audience members got the balcony.   But in this case, the promoters underestimated how many white people were now listening to this new music. The balcony filled up, and a lot of white teenagers went down and joined the black people on the ground floor. Towards the end of the show, someone in the balcony, incensed at the idea of black and white people dancing together, threw a whisky bottle at the crowd below. Soon whisky bottles were flying through the air, and the riot in the audience spread to the streets around.   The New York Times blamed the black audience members, even though it had been a white person who’d thrown the first bottle. The American Legion, which owned the concert venue, decided that the simplest solution was just to ban mixed audiences altogether — they’d either have all-white or all-black audiences.   Another riot broke out in San Jose in July, when someone threw a string of lit firecrackers into the audience. In the ensuing riot, a thousand beer bottles were broken, twelve people were arrested, and another twelve needed medical treatment.   In Houston, Domino played another show where white people were in the balcony and black people were on the dancefloor below. Some of the white people decided to join the black dancers, at which point a black policeman — trying to avoid another riot because of “race mixing” — said that everyone had to sit down and no-one could dance. But then a white cop overruled him and said that only white people could dance. Domino refused to carry on playing if black people weren’t allowed to dance, too, and while that show didn’t turn violent, a dozen people were arrested for threatening the police.   This is the context in which Domino was performing, and this is the context in which he had his biggest hit. The song that was meant to be the hit was “Honey Chile”, a new original which Domino got to feature in an exploitation film called “Shake, Rattle, and Rock”:   [Excerpt: Fats Domino, “Honey Chile”]   At the same session where he recorded that, he tried to record another old standard, with disappointing results. “Blueberry Hill” was originally written in 1940 by Vincent Rose, Larry Stock, and Al Lewis. As with many songs of the time, it was recorded simultaneously by dozens of artists, but it was the Glenn Miller Orchestra who had the biggest hit with it:   [Excerpt: The Glenn Miller Orchestra, “Blueberry Hill”]   After Glenn Miller, Gene Autry had also had a hit with the song. We’ve talked before about Autry, and how he was the biggest Western music star of the late thirties and early forties, and influenced everyone from Les Paul to Bo Diddley. Given Domino’s taste for country and western music, it’s possible that Autry’s version was the first version of the song he came to love:   [Excerpt: Gene Autry, “Blueberry Hill”]   But Domino was inspired to cover the song by Louis Armstrong’s recording. Armstrong was, of course, another legend of New Orleans music, and his version, from 1949, had come out after Domino had already started his own career:   [Excerpt: Louis Armstrong: “Blueberry Hill”]   Domino loved Armstrong’s version, and had wanted to record it for a long time, but when they got into the studio the band couldn’t get through a whole take of the song. Dave Bartholomew, who hadn’t been keen on recording the song anyway, said at the end of the session, “We got nuthin'”.   But Bunny Robyn, the engineer at the session, thought it was salvageable. He edited together a version from bits of half-finished takes, and thanks to the absolutely metronomic time sense of Earl Palmer, he managed to do it so well that after more than thirty years of listening to the record, I’m still not certain exactly where the join is. I *think* it’s just before he starts the second middle eight — there’s a *slight* change of sonic ambience there — but I wouldn’t swear to it. Listen for yourself. The part where I think the join comes is just before he sings “the wind in the willow”:   [Excerpt: Fats Domino, “Blueberry Hill”]   After Robyn edited that version together, Dave Bartholomew tried to stop it from being released, telling Lew Chudd, the owner of the record label, that releasing it would ruin Domino’s career forever.   He couldn’t have been more wrong. The song became Domino’s biggest hit, rising to number two in the pop charts, and Bartholomew later admitted it had been a huge mistake for him to try to block it, saying that his horn arrangement for the song would be the thing he would be remembered for, and telling Domino’s biographer Rick Coleman, “When I’m dead and gone a million times, they’ll still be playing ‘da-da-da-da-dee-dah'”.   Not only was Domino’s version a hit, but it was big enough that Louis Armstrong’s version of the song was reissued and became a hit as well, and Elvis recorded a soundalike cover, including the piano intro that Domino had come up with, for his film “Loving You”:   [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Blueberry Hill”]   The song was so big that it even revived the career of its co-lyricist, Al Lewis, whose career had been in the doldrums since a run of hits for people like Eddie Cantor in the 1930s. Lewis made a comeback as an R&B songwriter, co-writing songs for Domino himself:   [Excerpt: Fats Domino, “I’m Ready”]   And for Little Anthony and the Imperials:   [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, “Tears on My Pillow”]   As always with a Fats Domino record, we’re going to talk about its points of rhythmic interest. The bass-line here is not one that was used on any of the previous versions, but it was common on New Orleans R&B records — indeed it’s very similar to the one Domino used on “Ain’t That a Shame”, which we looked at a few months ago.   This kind of bassline has some of that Jelly Roll Morton Spanish tinge we’ve talked about before, when we talked about the tresilo rhythms that Dave Bartholomew brought to the arrangements. But when it’s used as a piano bassline, as it is here, it comes indirectly from the boogie woogie pianist Jimmy Yancey:   [Excerpt: Jimmy Yancey, “How Long Blues”]   Yancey made a speciality of this kind of bassline, but the man who made every New Orleans piano player start playing like that was the great boogie player Meade “Lux” Lewis, with his song “Yancey Special”:   [Excerpt: Meade “Lux” Lewis, “Yancey Special”]   Lewis named that song after Yancey, which caused a problem for him when Sonny Thompson, an R&B bandleader from Chicago, recorded an instrumental with a similar bassline, “Long Gone”:   [Excerpt: Sonny Thompson, “Long Gone”]   That song went to number one on the R&B charts, and Lewis sued Thompson for copyright infringement, claiming it was too similar to “Yancey Special”, because it shared the same bassline. The defendants brought out Jimmy Yancey, who said that he’d come up with that bassline long before Lewis had. Lewis didn’t help himself in his testimony — he claimed, at first, that he hadn’t named the song after Jimmy Yancey, but later admitted on the stand that the song called “Yancey Special” which featured a bassline in the style of Jimmy Yancey had indeed been named after Jimmy Yancey.   The plagiarism case was thrown out for that reason, but also for two others. One was that the bassline was such a simple idea that it couldn’t by itself be copyrightable — which is something I would question, but I have spoken in great detail about the problems with copyright law as it comes to black American musical creation in the past, and I won’t repeat myself here. The other was that by allowing the record of “Yancey Special” to come out before he’d registered the copyright, Lewis had dedicated the whole composition to the public domain, and so Thompson could do what he liked with the bassline.   That bassline became a staple of R&B music, and particularly of New Orleans R&B music. You can hear it, for example, on “I Hear You Knockin'”, a 1955 hit for Smiley Lewis, arranged by Dave Bartholomew, featuring Huey “Piano” Smith playing a very Fats Domino style piano part:   [Excerpt: Smiley Lewis, “I Hear You Knockin'”]   Domino had used the bassline in “Ain’t That A Shame”, as well, and it seems to have been taken up by Bartholomew as a signature motif — he also used it in “Blue Monday”, another song which he’d written for Smiley Lewis:   [Excerpt: Smiley Lewis, “Blue Monday”]   Domino’s remake of that song would become his next hit after “Blueberry Hill”, and almost as big a success. Worldwide, “Blueberry Hill” was the biggest rock and roll hit of 1956, outdoing even Elvis’ “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel” in worldwide chart positions, though none of those songs could beat “Que Sera Sera” by Doris Day — however much our popular image of the 1950s is based on ponytailed bobbysoxers, the fact remains that a sizeable proportion of the record-buying public were older and less inclined to rock than to gently sway, and for all that Domino’s shows were inspiring riots wherever he went in 1956, his records were still also appealing to that older crowd.   But segregation applied here too. “Blueberry Hill” made Billboard’s top thirty records of the year for country sales in its annual roundup, but it never appeared even on the top one hundred country charts during 1956 itself. We’ve talked before about how the recent “Old Town Road” debacle shows how musical genres are the product of rigid segregation, but nothing shows that more than this. That appearance by Domino in the top thirty sellers for the year was the only appearance by a black artist on any Billboard country charts in the fifties, and it shows that country audiences were buying Domino’s records, just as his *lack* of appearance on all the other country charts that year shows that this wasn’t being recognised by any of the musical gatekeepers, despite the evident country sensibility in his performance:   [Excerpt: Fats Domino, “Blueberry Hill”]   Meanwhile, of course, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins were appearing on the R&B charts as well as the country and pop ones.   1956 was the absolute peak of Domino’s career in chart terms, and “Blueberry Hill” was his biggest hit of that year, but he would carry on having top twenty pop hits until 1962, by which point he had outlasted not only the first wave of rockabilly acts that came up in 1955 and 56, but almost all of the second wave that we’re going to see coming up in 1957 as well. His is an immense body of work, and we’ve barely touched upon it in the three episodes this podcast has devoted to him. His top thirty R&B chart hits span from 1949 through to 1964, a career that covers multiple revolutions in music. When he started having hits, the biggest artists in pop music were Perry Como and the Andrews Sisters, and when he stopped, the Beatles were at the top of the charts. Domino was, other than Elvis, the biggest rock and roll star of the fifties by a massive margin. The whole of New Orleans music owes a debt to him, and “Blueberry Hill” in particular has been cited as an influence by everyone from Mick Jagger to Leonard Cohen.   Yet he is curiously unacknowledged in the popular consciousness, while much lesser stars loom larger. I suspect that part of the reason for that is racism, both in ignoring a black man because he was black, and in ignoring him because he didn’t fit white prejudices about black people and the music they make.   Other than drinking a bit too much, and sleeping around a little in the fifties, Domino led a remarkably non-rock-and-roll life. He was married to the same woman for sixty-one years, he rarely left his home in New Orleans, and other than a little friction between songwriting partners you’ll struggle to find anyone who had a bad word to say about him. You build a legend as a rock star by shooting your bass player on stage or choking to death on your own vomit, not by not liking to travel because you don’t like the food anywhere else, or by being shy but polite, and smiling a lot.   That’s not how you build a reputation for rock and roll excess. But it *is* how you build a body of work that stands up to any artist from the mid-twentieth-century, and how you live a long and happy life. It’s how you get the Medal of Arts awarded to you by two Presidents — George W. Bush awarded Domino with a replacement after he lost his first medal, from Bill Clinton, during Hurricane Katrina. And it’s how you become so universally beloved and admired that when your home is destroyed in a hurricane, everyone from Elton John to Doctor John, from Paul McCartney to Robert Plant, will come together to record a tribute album to help raise funds to rebuild it.   Fats Domino died in 2017, sixty-eight years after the start of his career, at the age of eighty-nine. His collaborator Dave Bartholomew died in June this year, aged one hundred. They both left behind one of the finest legacies in the histories of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and New Orleans music.

Welcome to episode twenty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This is the second of our three-part look at Chess Records, and focuses on “Maybellene” by Chuck Berry. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I reference three previous episodes here — last week’s, the disclaimer episode, and the episode on Ida Red. I used three main books as reference here: Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry by Bruce Pegg is a good narrative biography of Berry, which doesn’t shy away from the less salubrious aspects of his personality, but is clearly written by an admirer. Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry’s Recorded Legacy by Fred Rothwell is an extraordinarily researched look at every single recording session of Berry’s career up to 2001. And for information on Chess, I used The Record Men: Chess Records and the Birth of Rock and Roll by Richard Cohen. I wouldn’t recommend that book, however — while it has some useful interview material and anecdotes from those involved, Cohen gets some basic matters of fact laughably wrong, and generally seems to be more interested in showing off his prose style than fact-checking. There are a myriad Chuck Berry compilations available. The one I’d recommend if you don’t have a spare couple of hundred quid for the complete works box set is the double-CD Gold, which has every major track without any of the filler. And if you want to check out more of Willie Dixon’s material, this four-CD set contains a hundred records he either performed on as an artist, played on as a session player, wrote, or produced. It’s the finest body of work in post-war blues.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   [Intro: Alan Freed introducing Chuck Berry and Maybellene] Welcome to the second part of our trilogy on Chess Records. This week, we’re going to talk about the most important single record Chess ever put out, and arguably the most important artist in the whole history of rock music. But first, we’re going to talk about something a lot more recent. We’re going to talk about “Old Town Road,” by Lil Nas X. For those of you who don’t follow the charts and the music news in general, “Old Town Road” is a song put out late last year by a rapper, but it reached number nineteen in the country charts. Because it’s a country song: [Excerpt: “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X] That’s a song with banjo and mandolin, with someone singing in a low Johnny Cash style voice about riding a horse while wearing a cowboy hat. It’s clearly country music if anything at all is country music. But it was taken off the country music charts the week it would otherwise have made number one, in a decision that Billboard was at pains to say was nothing at all to do with his race. A hint — if you have to go to great lengths to say that the thing you’re doing isn’t racist, it’s probably racist. Because genre labels have always been about race, and about policing racial boundaries in the US, since the very beginning. Remember that when Billboard started the R&B charts they were called the “race music” charts. You had the race music charts for black people, the country charts for lower-class whites, and the pop charts for the respectable white people. That was the demarcation, and that still is the demarcation. But people will always want to push against those constraints. And in the 1950s, just like today, there were black people who wanted to make country music. But in the 1950s, unlike today, there was a term for the music those people were making. It was called rock and roll. For about a decade, from roughly 1955 through 1965, “rock and roll” became a term for the music which disregarded those racial boundaries. And since then there has been a slow but sure historical revisionism. The lines of rock and roll expand to let in any white man, but they constrict to push out the women and black men who were already there. But there’s one they haven’t yet been able to push out, because this particular black man playing country music was more or less the embodiment of rock and roll. Chuck Berry was, in many ways, not at all an admirable man. He was one of all too many rock and roll pioneers to be a sex offender (and again, please see the disclaimer episode I did close to the start of this series, for my thoughts about that — nothing I say about his work should be taken to imply that I think that work mitigates some of the awful things he did) and he was also by all accounts an unpleasant person in a myriad other ways. As I talked about in the disclaimer episode, we will be dealing with many awful people in this series, because that’s the nature of the history of rock and roll, but Chuck Berry was one of the most fundamentally unpleasant, unlikeable, people we’ll be looking at. Nobody has a good word to say about him as a human being, and he hurt a lot of people over his long life. When I talk about his work, or the real injustices that were also done to him, I don’t want to forget that. But when it comes to rock and roll, Chuck Berry may be the single most important figure who ever lived, and a model for everyone who followed. [Excerpt: “Maybellene”, just the intro] To talk about Chuck Berry, we first of all have to talk about Johnnie Johnson. Johnnie Johnson was a blues piano player, who had got a taste of life as a professional musician in the Marines, where he’d played in a military band led by Bobby Troup, the writer of “Route 66” among many other songs. After leaving the Marines, he’d moved around the Midwest, playing blues in various bands, before forming his own trio, the Johnnie Johnson Trio, in St Louis. That trio consisted of piano, saxophone, and drums — until New Year’s Eve 1952, when the saxophone player had a stroke and couldn’t play. Johnson needed another musician to play with the trio, and needed someone quick, but it was New Year’s Eve — every musician he could think of would be booked up. Except for Chuck Berry. Berry was a guitarist he vaguely knew, and was different in every way from Johnson. Where Johnson was an easy-going, fat, jovial, man, who had no ambitions other than to make a living playing boogie-woogie piano, Chuck Berry had already served a term in prison for armed robbery, was massively ambitious, and was skinny as a rake. But he could play the guitar and sing well enough, and the customers had hired a trio, not a duo, and so Chuck Berry joined the Johnnie Johnson Trio. Berry soon took over the band, as Johnson, a relatively easy-going person, saw that Berry was so ambitious that he would be able to bring the band greater success than they would otherwise have had. And also, Berry owned a car, which was useful for transporting the band to gigs. And so the Johnnie Johnson trio became the Chuck Berry Trio. Berry would also play gigs on the side with other musicians, and in 1954 he played guitar on a session for a calypso record on a local independent label: [Excerpt: “Oh Maria”, Joe Alexander and the Cubans] However, when Berry tried to get that label to record the Chuck Berry Trio, they weren’t interested. But then Berry drove to Chicago to see one of his musical heroes, Muddy Waters. We’ve talked about Waters before, but only in passing — but Waters was, by far, the biggest star in the Chicago electric blues style, whose driving, propulsive, records were more accessible than Howlin’ Wolf but still had some of the Delta grit that was missing from the cleaner sounds of people like T-Bone Walker. Berry stayed after the show to talk to his idol, and asked him how he could make records like Waters did. Waters told him to go and see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Berry went to see Chess, who asked if Berry had a demo tape. He didn’t, but he went back to St Louis and came back the next week with a wire recording of four newly-recorded songs. The first thing he played was a blues song he’d written called “The Wee Wee Hours”: [excerpt: Chuck Berry, “The Wee Wee Hours”] That was too generic for Chess — and the blues they put out tended to be more electric Chicago blues, rather than the Nat Cole or Charles Brown style Berry was going for there. But the next song he played had them interested. Berry had always been interested in playing as many different styles of music as he could — he was someone who was trying to incorporate the sounds of Louis Jordan, Muddy Waters, Charlie Christian, and Nat “King” Cole, among others. And so as well as performing blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues music, he’d also incorporated a fair amount of country and western music in his shows. And in particular, he was an admirer of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and he would perform their song “Ida Red” in shows, where it always went down well. We already had an entire episode of the podcast on “Ida Red”, which I’ll link in the liner notes to this, but as a quick reminder, it’s an old folk song, or collection of folk songs, that had become a big hit for Bob Wills, the Western Swing fiddle player: [Excerpt: “Ida Red”, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys] Berry would perform that song live, but messed around and changed the lyrics a lot — he eventually changed the title to “Ida May”, for a start — and when he performed the song for Leonard Chess, Chess thought it sounded great. There was only one problem — he thought the name made it too obvious where Berry had got the idea, and he wanted it to sound more original. They tried several names and eventually hit on “Maybellene”, after the popular cosmetics brand, though they changed the spelling. “Ida Red” wasn’t the only influence on “Maybellene” though, there was another song called “Oh Red”, a hokum song by the Harlem Hamfats: [Excerpt: “Oh Red”, the Harlem Hamfats] Larry Birnbaum, in “Before Elvis”, suggests that this was the *only* influence on “Maybellene”, and that Berry was misremembering the song, as both songs have “Red” in the titles. I disagree — I think it’s fairly clear that “Maybellene” is inspired both by “Ida Red”s structure and patter-lyric verse and by “Oh Red”s chorus melody. And it wasn’t just Bob Wills’ version of “Ida Red” that inspired Berry. There’s a blues version, by Bumble Bee Slim, which has a guitar break that isn’t a million miles away from what Berry was doing: [Excerpt: “Ida Red”, Bumble Bee Slim] And there’s another influence as well. Berry’s lyrics were about a car chase — to try to catch up with a cheating girlfriend — and are the thing that makes the song so unique. They — and the car-horn sound of the guitar — seem to have been inspired by a hillbilly boogie song called “Hot Rod Racer” by Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys: [Excerpt: “Hot Rod Racer”, Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys] That had been a successful enough country song that it spawned at least three hit cover versions, including one by Red Foley. Berry took all these Western Swing, blues, and hillbilly boogie influences and turned them into something new: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, “Maybellene”] Even this early, you can already see the Chuck Berry style fully formed. Clean blues guitar, as clean as someone like T-Bone Walker, but playing almost rockabilly phrases — this is closer to the style of Elvis’ Sun records than it is to anything else that Chess were putting out — and punning, verbose, witty lyrics talking about something that would have a clear appeal to people half his age. All of future rock is right there. The lineup on the record was the Chuck Berry trio — Berry on guitar, Johnson on piano, and Ebby Hardy on drums — augmented by two other musicians. Jerome Green, the maraca player, is someone we’ll be talking about next week, but we should here talk a bit about Willie Dixon, the bass player, because he is probably the single most important figure in the whole Chess Records story. Dixon had started out as a boxer — he’d been Joe Louis’ sparring partner — before starting to play a bass made out of a tin can and a single string for him by the blues pianist Leonard Caston. Dixon and Caston formed an Ink Spots-style group, “The Five Breezes”: [Excerpt: “Sweet Louise”, the Five Breezes] But when America joined in World War II, Dixon’s music career went on hold, as he was a conscientious objector, unwilling to fight in defence of a racist state, and so he spent ten months in prison. He joined Chess in 1951 shortly after Leonard Chess took over full control of the company by buying out its original owner — right after the club Chess had been running had mysteriously burned down, on a day it was closed, giving him enough insurance money to buy the whole record company. And Dixon was necessary because among Leonard Chess’ flaws was one fatal one — he had no idea what real musical talent was or how to find it. But he *did* have the second-order ability to find people who could recognise real musical talent when they heard it, and the willingness to trust those people’s judgment. And Dixon was not only a real talent himself, but he could bring out the best in others, too. Dixon was, effectively, the auteur behind almost everything that Chess Records put out. As well as a session bass player who played on almost every Chess release that wasn’t licensed from someone else, he was also their staff producer, talent scout, and staff songwriter, as well as a solo artist under his own name. He wrote and played on hits for Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Little Walter, Koko Taylor, Bo Diddley, Elmore James… to all intents and purposes, Willie Dixon *was* the Chicago blues, and when the second generation of rock and rollers started up in the 1960s — white boys with guitars from England — it was Willie Dixon’s songs that formed the backbone of their repertoire. Just a few of the songs he wrote that became classics include “Little Red Rooster” for Howlin’ Wolf: [Excerpt: Howlin’ Wolf, “Little Red Rooster”] “Bring it on Home” for Sonny Boy Williamson II [Excerpt: Sonny Boy Williamson II, “Bring it on Home”] “You Need Love” for Muddy Waters [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “You Need Love”] You get the idea. In any other session he played on — in any other room he ever entered — Dixon would be the most important songwriter in the room. But as it turned out, on this occasion, he was only the second-most important and influential songwriter there, as “Maybellene” would be the start of a run of singles that is unparalleled for its influence on rock and roll music. It was the debut of the single most important songwriter in rock and roll history. Of course, Chuck Berry isn’t the only credited songwriter — and, separately, he may not have been the song’s only writer. But these two things aren’t linked. Leonard Chess was someone who had a reputation for not being particularly fair with his artists when it came to contracts. A favourite technique for him was to call an artist and tell him that he had some new papers to sign. He would then leave a bottle of whisky in the office, and not be in when the musician turned up. His secretary would say “Mr. Chess has been delayed. Help yourself to a drink while you wait in the office”. Chess would only return when the musician was totally drunk, and then get him to sign the contract. That wouldn’t work on Berry, who didn’t drink, but Chess did manage to get Berry to sign two thirds of the rights to “Maybellene” over to people who had nothing to do with writing it — Russ Fratto and Alan Freed. Freed had already taken the songwriting credit for several songs by bands that he managed, none of which he wrote, but now he was going to take the credit for a song by someone he had never met — Chess added his name to the credits as a bribe, in order to persuade him to play the song on his radio show. Russ Fratto, meanwhile, was the landlord of Chess Records’ offices and owned the stationery company that printed the labels Chess used on their records. It’s been said in a few places that Fratto was given the credit because the Chess brothers owed him money, so they gave him a cut of Berry’s royalties to pay off their own debt. But while Freed and Fratto took unearned credit for the song, it’s at least arguable that so did Chuck Berry. We’ll be looking at several Chuck Berry songs over the course of this podcast, and the question of authorship comes up for all of them. After they stopped working together, Johnnie Johnson started to claim that he deserved co-writing credit for everything that was credited to Berry on his own. Johnson claimed that while Berry wrote the lyrics by himself, the band as a whole worked out the music, and that Berry’s melody lines would be based on Johnson’s piano parts. To get an idea of what Johnson brought to the mix, here’s a performance from Johnson, without Berry, many years later: [Excerpt: Johnnie Johnson, “Johnny’s Boogie”] It’s impossible to say with certainty who did what — Johnson sued Berry in 2000, but the case was dismissed because of the length of time between the songs being written and the case being brought. And Johnson worked with Berry on almost all his albums before that so we don’t have any clear guides as to what Berry’s music sounded like without Johnson. Given Berry’s money-grubbing, grasping, nature, and his willingness to see every single interaction as about how many dollars and cents were in it for Chuck Berry, I have no trouble believing that Berry would take the credit for other people’s work and not think twice about it, so I can fully believe that Johnson worked with him on the music for the songs. On the other hand, most of the songs in question were based around very basic blues chord changes, and the musical interest in them comes almost solely from Berry’s guitar licks — Johnnie Johnson was a very good blues piano player just like a thousand other very good blues piano players, but Chuck Berry’s guitar style is absolutely distinctive, and unlike anything ever recorded before. But the crucial evidence as to how much input or lack of it Johnson had on the writing process comes with the keys Berry chose. Maybellene is in B-flat. A lot of his other songs are in E-flat. These are *not* keys that any guitarist would normally choose to write in. If you’re a guitarist, writing for the guitar, you’d probably choose to write in E or A if you’re playing the blues, D if you’re doing folkier stuff, maybe G or C if you’re doing something poppier and more melodic. These are easy keys for the guitar, the keys that every guitarist’s fingers will automatically fall into unless they have a good reason not to. E-flat and B-flat, though, are fairly straightforward keys on the piano if you’re playing the blues. And they’re keys that are *absolutely* standard for a saxophone player — alto saxes are tuned to an E-flat, tenor saxes to B-flat, so if you’re a band where the sax player is the most important instrumentalist, those are the keys you’re most likely to choose, all else being equal. Now, remember that Chuck Berry replaced the saxophone player in Johnnie Johnson’s band. Once you know that it seems obvious what’s happened — Berry has fit himself in around arrangements and repertoire that Johnson had originally worked up with a sax player, playing in the keys that Johnson was already used to. When they worked out the music for Berry’s songs, that was the pattern they fell into. So, I tend to believe Johnson that the backings were worked out between them after Berry wrote the lyrics. Johnson’s contribution seems to have come somewhere between that of an arranger and of a songwriter, and he deserves some credit at least morally, if not under the ridiculous legal situation that made arrangements uncopyrightable. [Excerpt: “Maybellene” guitar solo showing interplay of Berry and Johnson] “Maybellene”’s success was in part because of a very deliberate decision Berry had made years earlier, having noted the success of white performers singing black musicians’ material, and deciding that he was going to try to get the white people to buy his recordings rather than the cover versions, by singing in a voice that was closer to white singers than the typical blues vocalist. While it caused him problems in early days, notably with him turning up to gigs only to be told, often with accompanying racial slurs, that they’d expected the performer of “Maybellene” to be a white man and he wasn’t allowed to play, his playing-down of his own blackness also caused a major benefit — he became one of the only black musicians to chart higher than the white cover version. It would normally be expected that “Maybellene” would be overshadowed on the charts by Marty Robbins’ version, especially since Marty Robbins was a hugely popular star, and Berry was an unknown on a small blues label: [excerpt: Marty Robbins, “Maybellene”] Instead, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts, Berry’s recording went to number five on the pop charts. And other recordings by him would follow over the next few years. He was never a consistent chart success — in fact he did significantly less well than his reputation in rock and roll history would suggest — but he notched several top ten hits on the pop charts. “Maybellene” did so well that even “Wee Wee Hours”, released as the B-side, went to number ten on the R&B charts. And Berry’s next single was a “Maybellene” soundalike — “Thirty Days” [Excerpt: “Thirty Days”, Chuck Berry] It’s a great track, but it didn’t do quite so well on the charts — it went to number two on the R&B charts, and didn’t hit the pop charts at all. The single after that, “No Money Down”, did less well again. But Berry was about to turn things around again with his next single: [excerpt: *just the guitar intro* of “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry] You don’t need anything more, do you? That’s the Chuck Berry formula, right there. You don’t even need to hear the vocals to know exactly what the record is. That record is, of course, “Roll Over Beethoven”. It’s worth listening to the lyrics again just to see what Berry is doing here. [Excerpt: “Roll Over Beethoven”, Chuck Berry] What we have here is, as far as I can tell, the first time that rock and roll started the pattern of self-mythologising that would continue throughout the genre’s history. Of course, there had been plenty of records before this that had talked about the power of music or how much the singer wanted to make you dance, or whatever, but this one is different in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’s talking about *recorded* music specifically — Berry isn’t wanting to go out and listen to a band play live, but he wants to listen to the DJ play his favourite record instead. And secondly, he’s explicitly making a link between his music — “these rhythm and blues” — and the music of the rockabilly artists from Memphis — “don’t step on my blue suede shoes”. And Berry’s music did resemble the Memphis rockabilly more than it resembled anything else. Both had electric lead guitars, double bass, drums, and reverb, and no saxophone and little piano. Both sang sped-up hillbilly boogies with a hard backbeat. Rock and roll was, as we have seen, a disparate genre at first, and people would continue to pull from a whole variety of different sources. But working independently and with no knowledge of each other, a white country hick from Tennessee and a sophisticated black urbanite from the Midwest had hit upon almost exactly the same formula, and Berry was going to make sure that he made the connection as clear as possible. If there’s a moment that rock and roll culture coalesced into a single thing, it was with “Roll Over Beethoven”. And Berry now had his formula worked out. The next thing to do was to get rid of the band. “Roll Over Beethoven” was the penultimate single credited to Chuck Berry & His Combo, rather than to just Chuck Berry. We’ll look at the last one, recorded at the same session, in a few weeks’ time.

Today The Menace's Attic/Just Another Menace Sunday#interview w/ The Crookes6pm-8pm EST Bombshell Radio bombshellradio.com Bombshell RadioRepeats Wednesday6am-8am EST #BombshellRadio #melodicrock #radioshow #rock #alternative #TuneInRadio#justanothermenacesunday #dj #DennistheMenace #radioreplay #today #TheCrookesThis Week – Episode #551 A CONVERSATION WITH THE CROOKES(07/20/2014)Theme SongJust Another Menace Sunday Theme (Dennis The Menace) - Mighty Six NinetyHour 1A CONVERSATION WITH THE CROOKESJust Another Menace Sunday Theme – Mighty 690OPENING SONG: Afterglow – The CrookesTHE CROOKES MUSICAL SANDWICHOPENING BREAD: Play Dumb – The CrookesMake It Easy On Yourself – The Walker BrothersOur Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe – Okkerville RiverIce Of Boston – The Dismemberment PlanClassic Cars – Bright EyesOnly The Lonely – Roy OrbisonFeedback In The Field – Plants and AnimalsStep Right Up – Tom WaitsIn The Aeroplane Over The Sea – Neutral Milk HotelBuddy Holly – WeezerGalveston – Glen CampbellTonight The Streets Are Ours – Richard HawleyCLOSING BREAD: Don’t Put Your Faith In Me – The CrookesHour 2NEW MELODIC ROCK AND ROLL!OPENING SONG: Trouble In Utopia – Wunder Wunder (Dovecote)Killer Bangs – Honeyblood (Fat Cat)Figure It Out – Big Deal (Mute)Last Forever – Fenech-Soler (SO)The Heat – Jungle (XL)Speak – Gates (Playing In Traffic)Adult Diversion – Always (Polyvinyl)Dreams – The Cranberries (Island)Push You Away – Camcorder (Self Release)Uma – Panama Wedding (Glassnote)I Won’t Let You Down – OK Go (Paracadute)Hour 1: Interviews with Rock and Rollers of Note and their Musical Sandwich.These ARE NOT be the classic 10 minute hype the latest music interviews. Dennis the Menace talks to bands and artists in the casual, conversational style he has become well known in his over 30 years as an air personality. http://bombshellradio.com/shows/just-another-menace-radio-3/

In Minute 106 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny finish up their time with Maxwell Demon's goodbye number, the sprinkling of flower petals gets us talking about the secret origin of confetti and the fragility of avians, we look at Arthur in the crowd at the Tommy Stone show, Tommy Stone's sorta-fascist logo, rock and roll logos throughout history, and rock and rollers who use symbols instead of words for their albums and own names. And then we talk about the personal dimension of Arthur in 1984, and how the world of music changed around him, and how Velvet Goldmine might be more about the personal rather than the political, going to gigs as a 40-something, and Tommy Stone's impromptu stage door press conference, the egoistic impulse to market a mask of your own face, and Tommy's weird mid-Atlantic accent. Find us on the web at thewholeshebangpodcast.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon at wholeshebangpod.

In Minute 28 of The Whole Shebang, Mike, Jenny and guest host Amy tackle the quite uncomfortable predatory undertones (and overtones) of Brian and a younger schoolboy, the discomfiting presence of sexual abuse in British public schools, among the gay jetset, and among 1960s and ‘70s British entertainers and rock and rollers, the cosmopolitan genderbending clientele (and dodgy supper menu) of the Sombrero Club, the changing drag aesthetic over the past half-century, the authenticity of the costumes, hair, and set decoration in Velvet Goldmine's Sombrero Club, and our first look at Mandy Slade and the complicated cultural interchange between the UK and the US. Find us on the web at thewholeshebangpodcast.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon at wholeshebangpod.

From Horton Heat to DUI attorneys, and ether martinis to dogfighting, from Admiral Ackbar to Hillary Clinton, and Hunter S. Thompson to Gonzo host Justin Fort, this Garage Hour will not disappoint.  This is a great old Garage Hour reload - all of the excellent topics, all of the digression, and you can really feel the on-air talent figuring out if they've got any. Dip into this one for something special - a truly schitzo journel with rock and rollers, getting lost in the woods with cohost Grizzly Chris, "Fun with Drugs" (it's a song - no hateful emails, please), cylinder control in the Sopwith Camel, Michael Medved versus Charlie, My Other Brain (and sometime cohost), and the all-loving topic of [not] chasing drunk drivers on the 5 south right into their garages.  Seriously, the rich fool parked her 'Benz at 30mph and then wanted it to be OUR fault.  Screw you, lady. We're going to try something new with this episode - you can grab the iTunes-friendly version here, or the MP3 at the matching upload of the same date.  The exact protocol for the go-here/go-there links isn't figured out yet, though, so bear with us.  The Garage Hour will make it work, and if we need to force it (or use the force), well, we're the guys to do it.

From Horton Heat to DUI attorneys, and ether martinis to dogfighting, from Admiral Ackbar to Hillary Clinton, and Hunter S. Thompson to Gonzo host Justin Fort, this Garage Hour will not disappoint.  This is a great old Garage Hour reload - all of the excellent topics, all of the digression, and you can really feel the on-air talent figuring out if they've got any. Dip into this one for something special - a truly schitzo journel with rock and rollers, getting lost in the woods with cohost Grizzly Chris, "Fun with Drugs" (it's a song - no hateful emails, please), cylinder control in the Sopwith Camel, Michael Medved versus Charlie, My Other Brain (and sometime cohost), and the all-loving topic of [not] chasing drunk drivers on the 5 south right into their garages.  Seriously, the rich fool parked her 'Benz at 30mph and then wanted it to be OUR fault.  Screw you, lady. We're going to try something new with this episode - you can grab the iTunes-friendly M4A from the same date as this MP3, but it's not marked "MP3".  The exact protocol for the go-here/go-there links isn't figured out yet, though, so bear with us.  The Garage Hour will make it work, and if we need to force it (or use the force), well, we're the guys to do it.

Many thanks to Jared Ingersol for bringing The Honey Dewdrops to CAU. They are absolutely brilliant and authenitic. They are two of the nicest people on a mission to keep the sounds of the Blue Ridge Mountians in the minds of today's rock and rollers.Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish make their home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Author/Researcher R. Gary Patterson Joins Darkness Radio for two hours to talk first about the conspiracy of the supposed "death" of Paul McCartney of the Beatles and his replacement by a totally different person who took his place and name Then,  Gary Talks with us about the infamous 27 Club, the one club that most Rock and Rollers don't want to belong to!  Rockers who have mysteriously passed away at the age of 27, and it all may have been started with one deal with the devil! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Author/Researcher R. Gary Patterson Joins Darkness Radio for two hours to talk first about the conspiracy of the supposed "death" of Paul McCartney of the Beatles and his replacement by a totally different person who took his place and name Then,  Gary Talks with us about the infamous 27 Club, the one club that most Rock and Rollers don't want to belong to!  Rockers who have mysteriously passed away at the age of 27, and it all may have been started with one deal with the devil!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.