Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Large chunks of the story of Crosby Stills Nash & Young are already well-known, but this doesn’t detract from Peter Doggett’s biography of the band.  Some parts of the history of the band have been retold so many times that the facts have become blurred.  Who first named Buffalo Springfield, for example?  Doggett gives the various claimants space, and then moves on.

What is undoubtedly true is that there was an immense amount of talent up in the canyons (Laurel, Topanga, etc) above LA in the late 60s and throughout the 70s, with many musicians and artists who went on to become household names living in the area and bouncing ideas off each other.  It was up there that CSN first sang together and discovered their magic harmonies.  Their egos were massive.  They thought they were changing the world.  CSN&Y were fairly typical, in this respect.  They consumed massive amounts of drugs, and things didn’t turn sour until cocaine became the recreational drug of choice.

I’m not a particularly big fan of CSN&Y’s music, but I love reading about this period in rock music history, and have written about it before.  CSN&Y were one of the first ‘supergroups’ made up of notable individuals from other groups.  They argued a lot, they fell out a lot, and they made some pretty good music on the way.

Hindu Temple parade near Varkala

We were walking along the clifftop at Varkala Beach one morning at the end of February when we noticed a poster which seemed to be advertising a parade, including elephants, at a temple.  A tu-tuk driver noticed us and said that if we came back at 4pm he could take us to the temple in question, for a reasonable price.

Well, it was too hot that afternoon to walk all the way back to the cliff, but at about 4pm I asked one of the tuk-tuk drivers who parked outside our hotel if he knew about the parade, and he said yes, he would take us there and back.  We didn’t find out the name of the temple, but it was about 20 minutes away, and just as we arrived, the parade started.  A wonderful experience – very noisy, with lots of enthusiam from the drummers, and at first it seemed chaotic, but it was actually well organised.  People with gold sashes seemed to be in charge.  We never knew what was going to appear next on the road – a giant model fish on the back of a truck, or a giant model tiger.

Click on the image above to watch a short video of the procession.

Just north of the cliff, where most of the hotels, restaurants and shops were located, was a small fishing village.

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There was a good turnout for Tinariwen at the Queen’s Hall last night.

Tinariwen are a popular group of Tuareg musicians.  They appeared in full, exotic rig-out and went down well with the crowd.  I find the acoustics in the Queen’s Hall difficult, and couldn’t find a good spot to listen to them.

I remember hearing one of their CDs in a hotel in M’Hamid where we’d stopped for lunch after a camel ride.  The acoustics were much better, and their music fitted in well with the scenery.

Girl groups of the sixties & sivinties

This is not intended to be a detailed post, like Out of the Canyon was about Laurel Canyon, but instead will be quite brief, unless I get diverted.

I somehow happened upon the above remarkable YouTube video of Tiny Tim.  The girl singing with him, who doesn’t always manage to keep a straight face, is Eleanor Barooshian.  She was in a girl bang called The Cake, who released two albums.  Jack Nitzsche, who was name-dropped in my post about Laurel Canyon, and who helped Phil Spector create the ‘Wall of Sound’, and Jackie De Shannon, who I also mentioned in the Canyon post, wrote Baby, That’s Me, sung by The Cake.

You can hear elements of Spector’s ‘Wall’ in Baby, That’s Me, above.

The Cake consisted of three girls, Jeanette Jacobs, Eleanor Barooshian and Barbara Morillo, and you can read more about them here.  Jeanette Jacobs was the one who didn’t move.  The other two danced pretty well, but in the above video Jacobs staggers after stepping off the revolving stage, and then stands still.  Two of them move in the video below, but Jacobs doesn’t.

There are differences of opinion as to why two of them moved and one stood still, but it makes for interesting videos.  Jeanette Jacobs went on to be a friend of Jimi Hendrix.

The long tail of the Internet is great for discovering what’s happened with obscure, and not so obscure bands of the past.  My favourite girl group was the Shangri-Las, on Red Bird, who were produced by Shadow Morton, who had a similar wall of sound to Spector.  The bass on Out in the Street made my Dad’s stereo shake.  Later on, in the seventies, Fanny really rocked.  Here they are performing on the OGWT.  Here they are playing Badge with a lot of raw power.  They could play!

They can still play!

AWB

The second and final show we went to at the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival was the Average White Band (AWB), at the Festival Theatre last night.

AWB is an excellent band.  Great vocals, fantastic saxophones and good, tight all-round sound.  AWB was Lindsey’s choice – she’s long been a fan.  The crowd enjoyed every minute, and many people were up and dancing.

Refreshing Jon Cleary

Lindsey waiting to buy a CD from Jon Cleary, after the gig

After a meal with the Tall Thin One & wife last night, we went to see Jon Cleary and The Absolute Monster Gentlemen play a set in the Spiegeltent, St Andrew Square.  This was part of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival.  Very refreshing, foot-tapping blues-funk music from New Orleans.  Here are some examples.  Here’s Jon Cleary’s website.

A mistake

I knew it was a mistake to invite Fat Mac to the Brian Wilson concert, but I had extra tickets due to JD not being able to attend, and all of Shaun’s friends were out of town.

Extra tickets

Fat Mac eventually arrived outside the venue (the Usher Hall) five minutes before the doors opened, drooling incontinently due to his afternoon’s session with some vino collapso, and demanded his ticket and more beer.

I got round that one by buying him, and myself, a rum & coke.  He spilled most of his on the way to his seat, and then proceeded to complain that he wasn’t in the front row.  We were in row ‘J’, which was fairly near the front.  It was good enough for me however, and I very much enjoyed watching my hero, Brian Wilson, perform a variety of his superb songs.  Matt Jardine did a great job of singing the high notes that 73-year-old Brian can no longer hit.

Anyway, to cut a long and boring story short, I would just like to say that the hand above, yes that one in the photo above which is mine, not only high fived Blondie Chaplin twice down the front of the concert, but also at the end of the concert, shook the hand of Al Jardine, who is one of the founder members of The Beach Boys (but you know that obviously).

We are fortunate beings, so we are.

Margaret saved the day

After a difficult morning with Fat Mac on Tuesday, things went smoothly…but not for long.

Mac had told me that he was finally going to do some serious training for the Sikkim trip by walking to Porty, but in the event he arrived on the 42 bus.

“Kin yeez prunt oot ma e-tayket Roadz?”

“Of course Mac, but why not print it out yourself?”

“Ah cannae get ma prunter tae wurk”

“Have you connected it to your home network?”

“The prunter’s fecked.  Ah’m nae goanna waste onymair time on it.  Why the feck Ah hiv tae print oot ma ain tayket, Ah dunny ken.  Yeez dinnae used to hiv tae dae that.”

“In the seventies you didn’t.”

“Dinnae start a’ that again, Roadz, aboot ra sivinties.  Ah hiv tae gang tae ra bunk noo.”

“Why not bank online?”

“Roadz – life is enough o’ a war against machines wi’oot online bunking.  Ah cannae be ersed wi a’ they computery thungs ”

I gave Mac my copy of Third-class Ticket, by Heather Wood, which I’d not been able to get into at all, and after I’d pointed out that a surprising number of women with strong mothering instincts were following his training progress on Facebook, he left to go to the bank.  I then packed my overnight bag for Glasgow, where Lindsey and I had booked a room in the Campanile Hotel.  This is bang next to the SSE Hydro, where we were to see Jeff Lynne’s ELO that evening.

At least, we thought we’d booked a room.  It turned out that someone-who-shall-not-be-named-because-I-got-into-trouble-when-mentioning-this-elsewhere had booked it for the previous night, and then we found out that the hotel was completely full for Tuesday.

I was expecting a lot of flapping around whilst looking for somewhere to stay, but the girl on the Campanile reception desk, whom I could see from her name-tag was called Margaret, could not have been more helpful.  She went out of her way to find some alternatives, looked up Trivago and other websites, marked places on a map she gave us, and even let Lindsey book a room using her computer.  When I despaired of getting somewhere nearby with a car park, she said we could leave our car at the Campanile, and gave us the code for the barrier.  Thank you, Margaret!  I’ll definitely try to stay at the Campanile next time the need arises.  You deserve a medal!

We eventually stayed at a hotel in Royal Crescent, not too far a walk from the Hydro.  The room was fine.  I noticed that the vertical bits of carpet on the stairs (not the horizontal bits) were quite worn, which I couldn’t understand until I figured that they’d probably at some stage turned each bit round 90 degrees.

We enjoyed a tasty meal at Villa Toscana in Argyle Street, where within ten seconds of arriving we were twice referred to as ‘yous’, as in:

“A table for two?”

“Uf yous wait jes a sec..aye, yous kin sit rair [pointing].”

The Hydro is a very large auditorium, holding about 13,000 people.  It was full for the Jeff Lynne’s ELO concert, which was absolutely great.  They have such a wonderful back catalogue of songs, and the light show was fantastic.

King Ayisoba and Ayuune Sule

We went to see King Ayisoba and Ayuune Sule at the Summerhall last night, playing to an enthusiastic audience which very much enjoyed the music from Ghana.  Instead of the usual type of video of the band, I tried to show what happens when you enter such a venue, see the band playing, and then go on to the bar.  You can see what happened below.  Unfortunately the video cut out before I reached the bar.

Rodney on the ROQ

The Los Angeles music scene in the 60s, 70s and 80s was at times quite strange.  Not the music, but rather the scene.

I’ve written in the past about music from Laurel Canyon, and also about P.F. Sloan, a very peculiar character.  The other day I was listening to a CD called Mayor of the Sunset Strip, featuring selections by Rodney Bingenheimer.  Until I looked him up, I hadn’t realised that the CD came from a movie of the same name.

It is weird stuff.  Rodney had a difficult childhood and then started out as simply a music fan, though a fanatical fan.  He doubled for Davy Jones of the Monkees, and eventually became a famous DJ at KROQ.  The list of musicians with whom he mixed is endless.  Rodney is sort of a bridge between the famous and the non-famous.  The movie also features Kim Fowley, who looks like a thoroughly devious and nasty person.

At first I thought the whole ‘Mayor’ movie was a wind-up, but you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.