DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS

MARRY ME, LAURA!

GONNA TAKE A MIRACLE by Laura Nyro with Labelle  (1971, Columbia)

When I was in high school, dating Cindy, every time The Fifth Dimension’s Wedding Bell Blues came on the radio, with it’s repeating plea - “MARRY ME, BILL!” -her family would tease us mercilessly. I couldn’t escape the power of that record. Later, I realized that that song was created by the ultimate singer-songwriter’s singer-songwriter, Laura Nyro, who’s other familiar hit compositions include Eli’s Coming (3 Dog Night), and And When I Die (Blood, Sweat, and Tears). Laura herself, however, remained a cult attraction. 

The benighted Nyro (born Nigro, the child of Russian-Polish parents in the Bronx) died young, like her mother, of ovarian cancer at the age of 49. Prior to the ordeals that characterized her later life, the musical atmosphere of that borough bathed the budding songsmith - (as it did Dion DiMucci) - in deep, resonating waves of doo-wop, soul, R&B, and pop. This album of covers is a trembling masterwork of tribute to those influences, assisted by the one and only Patti Labelle, who had become a sort of caretaker for the fragile Nyro. On the tour that preceded this recording Labelle would cook for her friend. 

Laura’s love life was fraught, her careerist stumbles are the stuff of legend: (Best friend David Geffen was heartbroken when she re-signed with Columbia, instead of joining him on his fledgling Asylum label), but her music remained pure, and timeless. 

This recording has always been my favorite of mine - a time traveler’s dream, since I first heard it. R&B titans Gamble and Huff oversaw the production from their seat of soul, in Philadelphia - (although, reputedly, Laura was the one fully in charge throughout the proceedings). However it came to be, GONNA TAKE A MIRACLE is a true miracle. Every cut brings tears to my eyes, and delight to my ears. 

"He looked cool in the jungle"—Moulty on rock and roll hair

Interviews in the essential Ugly Things magazine rarely disappoint. In the latest issue, writer Greg Prevost and editor and publisher Mike Stax talk with the Barbarians' legendary, hook-handed drummer Victor "Moulty" Moulton (in a conversation edited from two sit-downs spanning twenty years). Apart from some execrable homophobia —Moulton became a born again Christian after his career in rock and roll, and his attitudes about playing with the Barbarians in queer clubs in his hometown of Provincetown are unfortunate—the interview's a terrific glimpse into the Barbarian' rapid ascent and just as rapid commercial decline. It's another UT must-read for anyone interested in mid-1960s rock and roll and the record business.

My favorite line occurs when either Prevost or Stax asks Moulton about his band's notoriously long hair, a collective mane born in the band's small town which contributed to a pretty savage look (and sound) for 1964. Moulton explains:

http://www.nosuchthingaswas.com/2016/04/he-looked-cool-in-junglemoulty-on-rock.html

Mesmerized, O & E, episode 7

“The Dream Continues On.”

One night E comes to O in a dream: she tells him to meet her in the woods - he should follow the stream until he comes to a gate, the portal to another world.  There will be a 3 headed creature guarding the gate. O will have to convince the sentinel to let him pass, but he is susceptible to the charms of music. She will be waiting on the other side. 

MESMERIZED, O & E, Episode 8

“Lay Down”

O follows the instructions that E gave him in his dream. He slips out of the house and pads his way, quietly to the stream. He follows the path along the water, until he arrives at the portal to the Nether-World. And, there, standing on alert at the gate, is the 3-headed Dog-creature, Cerberus, snarling and snapping his jaws. O approaches him gently.

Then, following the lead E gave him, O croons hypnotically, attempting to quiet the beast with a dreamy lullaby.

Mesmerized, Vol 2. 

O & E, episode 9

“The Equation”

O has made it past Cerberus, and has entered through the gate of the Netherworld, where he meets E.

E hesitates about returning to the material world, because she has doubts about O’s ability to retain belief in his newly realized faith in the “true” nature of reality. She tests him with a metaphysical question: Can you completely trust in what you cannot prove? 

John Coltrane departed this mortal plane more than fifty years ago; today he remains among us, more alive than ever. His sound continues to grab the ears of an ever-widening circle of fans. His legend is stone solid: planted firmly in our culture as that of any 20th century musical giant. His saxophone sound—brooding, searching, dark—is still one of the most recognizable in modern jazz. His influence stretches over styles and genres, and transcends cultural boundaries. The modern ideal of music serving a deeply spiritual, connective purpose? A defining facet of John Coltrane.

To Coltrane, a musician was a message-giver; making music was an endeavor tied to a larger, greater good. “I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music,” Coltrane wrote in 1964 in a letter to his listeners, telling of a prayer to God. In 1966, less than a year before his death, he stated:
“I know that there are bad forces, forces that bring suffering to others and misery to the world. I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.”
Jazz journalist Nat Hentoff, who interviewed and championed Coltrane, praised him more soberly. “By the time A Love Supreme hit, Trane struck such a spiritual chord in so many listeners that people started to think of him as being beyond human. I think that’s unfair. He was just a human being like you and me -- but he was willing to practice more, to do all the things that somebody has to do to excel. The real value in what John Coltrane did was that what he accomplished, he did as a human.”

Mesmerized, with Bill Mesnik

O & E, episode 4

“I Can Breathe”

After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, O decides to take a hike around the property. As he meanders through the surrounding woods and fields, he can feel his body start to unwind. He feels at one with his surroundings, and grateful to be alive. 

Mesmerized, O & E, episode 5

“Too Late”

O hasn’t been checking his social media. In fact, he put the phone away altogether, and it hadn’t even been charged. It’s been a few weeks, and he’s gotten out of touch completely. One night, he decides to check in. He charges his phone and sees several texts from E, saying that she’s feeling sick and checking herself into the hospital.

O checks his Facebook, and sees a horrifying post from E, sent from Intensive Care, saying “Pray For Me”. .. and, then… nothing. 

Mesmerized, O & E, Episode 6

“The New Age”

O is out of his mind with grief. He feels guilty for driving E away, and putting her at risk. He is torturing himself that he deliberately avoided his phone for the last few weeks. He refuses to admit that E is dead. 

Leo and Carly have been in touch with E’s family, and they have made all the arrangements. They’ve tried to tend to O, who is becoming irrational. They are basically on 24 hour suicide watch now. 

O has convinced himself that there must be a way to communicate with E’s spirit.

WANNA KNOW WHAT IT WAS LIKE BACK IN THE DAY?

LIVE AT LEEDS by The Who (Decca, 1970)

The Who was one of the greatest live bands of all time, bar none, and this document proves it. In 1970 they were at the height of their powers, having just pulled off the coup of creating the first “Rock Opera” Tommy. They followed that miracle up with a massive US tour with the intention of recording the performances in order to put out a killer live album next. However, a burnt out Pete Townshend was reportedly not in the mood to be sorting through all those recordings to choose the best cuts, so he regrettably told the engineer to “burn all the tapes”. 

As a compensatory gesture, it was decided to schedule a two night gig in northern England, at The University of Leeds, to record those concerts (without audience noise), and release the results. And, wow. This momentous outing, combining their hit singles, cuts from Tommy, and old rockabilly has been preserved for the ages, a portrait of the original lineup of one of Rock’s most exciting combos at their absolute pinnacle. The original 1970 release distilled the results into 6 supersonic cuts, culminating in a scorching 16 minute collage of “My Generation.” For my generation this record, with its sly facsimile of a stamped bootleg cover, captivated every nerve ending in our bodies. 

All during my freshman year at the University of Iowa Pete Townshend’s power chords, leaping off of his SG Gibson, in “Summertime Blues,” reverberated throughout my dorm hallway, day and night. Every fledgeling guitar player, dreaming dreams of Rock n Roll glory, tried to jam on that riff, as we had, 4 years earlier, on the Trogg’s “Wild Thing” or Van Morrison’s “Gloria.”

Although those halcyon springtime days of youth are long past, those power chords still resonate with the same immediacy - forever fresh, forever torrid. 

THE STORY OF O AND E

Many writers and film makers have gone back to Virgil's classic for inspiration over the decades: Tennessee Williams with Orpheus Descending (1957); Marcel Camus' timeless film,  Black Orpheus (1959) is a Brazilian Carnavale take,  Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice is a theatrical staple, and more recently, the Broadway hit, Hadestown.

My offering was composed in the early months  of the pandemic, and still retains the urgency of those days.

Here are the first 3 songs/episodes, with my spoken introductions.
EP 1: OBSESSION - sets the neurotic scene.
EP 2: GET OUT! - O fantasizes an escape from the city.
EP 3: CHOP WOOD, CARRY WATER - Ensconced upstate, O takes some bucolic counsel.

for more reading on the original tale...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_and_Eurydice

In Virgil's classic version of the legend, it completes his Georgics, a poem on the subject of agriculture. Here the name of Aristaeus, or Aristaios, the keeper of bees, and the tragic conclusion was first introduced.[2]

Ovid's version of the myth, in his Metamorphoses, was published a few decades later and employs a different poetic emphasis and purpose. It relates that Eurydice's death was not caused by fleeing from Aristaeus, but by dancing with naiads on her wedding day.

Other ancient writers treated Orpheus's visit to the underworld more negatively. According to Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium,[3] the infernal deities only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. Plato's representation of Orpheus is in fact that of a coward; instead of choosing to die in order to be with his love, he mocked the deities in an attempt to visit Hades, to get her back alive. As his love was not "true"—meaning that he was not willing to die for it—he was punished by the deities, first by giving him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld and then by having him killed by women.[3]

WHY DID BOBBY GENTRY STOP SINGING?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/17/bobbie-gentry-trailblazing-queen-of-country

The 60s star – who didn’t just write her own songs but had her own TV show, made her own clothes and painted her own album art – could count Elvis and, later, Taylor Swift as fans. So why did she retire from public view in 1981?

The first time I heard Ode to Billie Joe was on a 1967 Radio 1 special. Amid ornate psychedelic pop sounding a little like Strawberry Fields Forever, this tale of suicide, loneliness and familial breakdown was unlike any record I had ever heard. The place names – Tallahatchee, Carroll County, Choctaw Ridge – were cinematic, the singer’s voice was husky, the string arrangement was minimal and eerie. What I heard was thick mud, damp moss, a barely moving river, dead air. The song was an inescapable fug. You couldn’t move. You had to listen...

A recently released eight-disc box set, The Girl from Chickasaw County, covers the bulk of her recording career: seven albums crammed into a brief period of intense fame between 1967 and 1971. Gentry’s stock has risen over the last decade as she been name-checked by country stars such as Nikki Lane and Kacey Musgraves. Taylor Swift has been coy about the subject of her 2012 song The Lucky One, but it is almost certainly Gentry: “They still tell the legend of how you disappeared, how you took the money and your dignity, and got the hell out.” Gentry effectively retired from the studio in 1971, from the stage in 1981 and hasn’t done an interview in 30-odd years. It was an almost impossible disappearing act, the kind many would love to pull off. She seems a very modern figure, a pioneer for women in pop, and her unavailability has only enhanced her mystique.

CAN YOU DIG IT?

SHAFT by Isaac Hayes (Enterprise, 1971)

As a 19 year old, I didn’t realize that history was being made, but when I saw Isaac Hayes on the Oscars, bedecked in chain-mail, at the keyboard, being wheeled onstage in a cloud of dry ice to sing The Theme From Shaft, I knew something was up. The chicka-chicka of the wah-wah guitar riff had already surgically implanted in my head by AM radio, along with Haye’s chilled delivery of “That Shaft is a baaaad Mutha…” Together, these elements excited the entire country in new and electric ways. 

Richard Roundtree said years later that he had an instinct that John Shaft would certainly be the best role of his career -  (Hayes was considered, but Gordon Parks wisely persuaded The Black Moses to create the indelible ambience instead) - but, he couldn’t have prepared for the seismic impact that this film would deliver. Director Parks wanted to make a “fun” picture with a Black Action Hero, but Shaft transcended all that. All the creatives and many of the crew were also black; it was filmed largely in Harlem, and tapped into the prevailing Black Power aesthetic zeitgeist, and the film changed the “Blaxploitation” genre forever. Before Shaft, MGM had been struggling, but the studio was rescued by the film, which made 13 million from a half a mil budget. 

The soundtrack, with it’s laid back, jazz infused arrangements by Johnny Allen, and bolstered by Haye’s compatriots at Stax, The Bar-Kays, went platinum. In 2014 it was entered into The Library of Congress list of essential recordings. 

I coveted a black leather coat like the one that Shaft wore - but the closest I could get was a brown bomber jacket. Nobody was as cool as Shaft or Isaac Hayes - nobody could be. “Damn Straight!”

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/johnny-rivers-mn0000203639/biography

Johnny Rivers Biography 
by Bruce Eder

Johnny Rivers is a unique figure in the history of rock music. On the most obvious level, he was a rock star of the 1960s and a true rarity as a white American singer/guitarist who made a name for himself as a straight-ahead rock & roller during the middle of that decade. Just as important behind the scenes, his recordings and their success led to the launching, directly and indirectly, of at least three record labels and a dozen other careers whose influence extended into the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond. 

Rivers was very much a kindred spirit to figures like Buddy Holly and Ronnie Hawkins, with all of the verve and spirit of members of that first wave of rock & rollers. He had the misfortune of having been born a little too late to catch that wave, however, and took until the middle of the next decade to find his audience. Born John Henry Ramistella on November 7, 1942, in New York, his family moved to Baton Rouge, LA, in 1948, and it was there that his musical sensibilities were shaped. His father, who played the mandolin and guitar, introduced him to the guitar at an early age, and he proved a natural on the instrument. 

In 1957, he went to New York and wangled a meeting with Alan Freed, who was then the most influential disc jockey in the country. This led to a change of name, at Freed's suggestion, to the less ethnic, more American-mythic Johnny Rivers (which may also have been influenced by the fact that Elvis Presley had portrayed a character named "Deke Rivers" in the movie Loving You that same year), and to a series of single releases under his new name. Johnny Rivers' official recording debut took place with an original song, "Baby Come Back," on George Goldner's Gone Records label in 1958, arranged by renowned songwriter Otis Blackwell. Neither this number -- which sounds a lot like Elvis Presley's version of Blackwell's "Don't Be Cruel" -- nor any of Rivers' other early singles, recorded for Guyden, Cub, Era, or Chancellor, was successful. He made his living largely performing with the Spades and cutting demos of songs for Hill & Range, primarily in Elvis Presley's style. 

It was as a composer that Rivers experienced his first taste of success off of the stage, when a chance meeting with guitarist James Burton led to one of his songs, "I'll Make Believe," finding its way to Ricky Nelson and ending up on the album More Songs by Ricky....
(read the whole article on  the Allmusic website)