I so wish John Entwistle's live sound had been captured on tape. It was ASTOUNDING! No recording of him comes close to what he sounded like on stage. |
Bill, if you happen to hear of (or acquire yourself!) a clean copy of an RL cut lime green brown album, let me know, ay? Thanks---E |
Thanks Bill, I'll start looking around seriously now. |
Cream Progressive? I never heard them characterized as such. They were considered a Blues/Jazz Band, both music's (and Cream) heavy on improvisation (Progressive is certainly not, being very structured and produced, IMO). I saw them live twice, liking them a lot at the time. I had a couple of albums from the Group Jack and Ginger were in together before Cream, The Graham Bond Organization, which was a pretty straight-ahead British Trad Jazz Band (Ginger was already doing his "Toad" solo in The GBO). I have never fully understood what they and Clapton thought they had in common, other than a love of soloing! Clapton I knew from being in The Yardbirds, on the first John Mayall album, and on the Elektra Records sampler album What's Shakin' (there's that word again) as Eric Clapton's Powerhouse, but playing with two Jazz guys? Fresh Cream answered the question---what an amazing debut album!
Burton Cummings wasn't in the original Guess Who line-up. But it doesn't matter, because the song they did that I was actually thinking of was not "Summertime Blues", but rather "Shakin' All Over" (also done by The Who). The Blue Cheer version of "Summertime Blues" brought to mind The Who's vastly superior version (though nowhere near as good as Cochran's, of course!), but then my train of thought jumped the tracks to The Who's other cover of American Rock n' Roll, SAO. Whenever I think of SAO, I'm reminded of how great The Guess Who's version is (it was on the first pre-Burton Guess Who album, and also released as a 45RPM single, a hit in California). It's a scorcher bristling with unreleased tension (unlike The Who's, which is all release). It's the tension before the release that makes Rock n' Roll so sexual!
The MC5 were viewed very differently than Blue Cheer (BC looked like all the other San Francisco Hippie Bands, and played even worse than most of them). Maybe it's being from the San Francisco area (though I don't think so), but they were not respected for the same reason Big Brother wasn't---they stunk. No offense---I like some Bands/Groups who can't play, sing, or write very well, but that's not the nature of those bands appeal. Blue Cheer were trying to play as if they were like Cream, you know, accomplished musicians who had the command of their instruments. They weren't and didn't, they were a Garage Band who didn't know what makes a good musician good. Their tone was terrible, their playing was comically corny, and they were out of tune---and didn't have good enough ears to know it. I love Garage Bands (was in a few myself), but not when they're unaware of their limitations, and embarrass themselves.
The MC5 weren't a Garage Band, they were a Rock n' Roll Band, based on Chuck Berry style songs, guitar playing, and songwriting. They could have done a killer version of SB, and SAO! The San Francisco Band most like The MC5 (who openly expressed their like of them----and visa versa), were the rarely mentioned Flamin' Groovies. They were (and are) both a Garage Band AND a Rock n' Roll Band!. They do a good version of SAO, based on The Guess Who version, not The Who's. The MC5 and The Groovies saw kindred spirits in each other, often playing together when The Groovies traveled East. |
Ghosthouse---Loomisjohnson is absoluely correct. In the 70's it was cool to find Prog rock uncool, especially amongst the influential New York critics. The whole Punk movement was often said to be a reaction against it. Of course, fans of Prog may just as easily find Punk beneath contempt---they couldn't be more diametrically opposed! Those wanting Rock n' Roll to stay true to it's roots felt Prog was getting above it's raisin', as they say in Country. The claim of many Prog musician's of having beem "Classically trained" became a sort of red flag, ya know? Well la de da, Mr. Classically trained.
ELP were a despised group by every musician I knew in the Bay Area, but I saw Keith Emerson in his pre-ELP Group The Nice live at The Fillmore (along with Leslie West in his pre-solo Group The Vagrants) and found them interesting. Prog started with the Psychedelic movement, LSD making some people want to take the music where no one had gone before. |
Ha---Blue Cheer! Considered the worst Group we had ever heard. Painfully poor musicianship, laughably bad, with no redeeming qualities to counter-balance that failing. The lamest version of "Summertime Blues" imaginable. The Who's wasn't very good either, the great version being by the unlikely original version of The Guess Who.
I loved (still do) Procol Harum, and what made their "Classical training" (mostly on the part of organist Matthew Fisher---responsible for the Bach motif heard in "A Whiter Shade of Pale, rather than pianist Gary Brooker) different from Progressive Groups ( I don't consider them as such), was that they didn't flaunt it. They used their knowledge of music theory to write their songs and create their parts, not performing Classical pieces as a Rock Band, a bad idea IMO. "Pictures at an Exhibition" performed by a Rock trio? No thanks, ELP. |
There is a really great clip on You Tube of Clapton talking about The Band and what he thought when he heard Music From Big Pink. That hearing resulted in Eric's disbanding (ha) Cream. It's funny, because when I finally got The Band (took about a year---I wasn't quite ready for them at the time of MFBP's release), I also lost interest in Cream and their ilk (long solos, lack of ensemble playing, mediocre songs, not much harmony singing). He went to Big Pink for a couple of weeks, waiting for them to ask him to join (?!), until finally realizing they didn't need him. No duh. "Badge" is the only Cream song I ever feel myself longing to hear.
Loomis, my questioning of Cream being considered Progressive was not in response to your post directly above mine (it hadn't "appeared" yet), but rather to Ghosthouse's above it.
I also don't consider Procol Harum Progressive, even with Matthew Fisher's Classical training. One great thing about a Group/Band being so good is that they create their own genre, of which they are the only member. They were, by the way, also really good live. The first three albums are great, but when Matthew left, guitarist Robin Trower kind of took over, turning them too bluesy for my liking. Having no blues influence was one of the things that had set PH apart from the other Brits of the late 60's/early 70's.
The MC5 never really took off on the West Coast for some reason (actually, they never took off anywhere!), but their influence was pretty big in the Punk Bands that followed them a few years later (The Ramones especially). I didn't take them seriously, thinking they were just the house band for the White Panther Party! Another Group that didn't translate to the counter-culture West was Iggy & The Stooges. I don't remember either of them playing in San Francisco or Los Angeles.
The Groovies really felt like fish out of water living in San Francisco (they had nothing in common with The Grateful Dead and the rest of the hippie bands, doing short, Pop songs with no improvisation. And, they wore suits!). They went East to play a lot, ending up in England with the great Dave Edmunds producing their classic Shake Some Action album, as Loomis said, an absolute masterpiece. It has a very odd sound, very thick and dark, sort of like what Daniel Lanois gave Dylan on the Time Out of Mind album. it didn't work (for me) with Dylan, but does on Shake Some Action.
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Sorry for my sometimes "tone", Ghosthouse. When I use a work like "stinks" to characterize the quality of, say, a Group/Band's playing, it is done in a very literal sense. In other words, it means they play poorly, objectively. That does not necessarily make their music worthless, it is said only to make a point such as, that to play like Cream, a Band's members MUST possess a certain degree of technical ability to make the music work. If a Band/Group plays within it's capability level, they won't "stink" at it.
I went to a Vintage Drum Show (I deal in them) at which Jeff Hamilton (Diana Krall's drummer) did a Q & A session. He talked about seeing the infamous first Ed Sullivan appearance of The Beatles, and laughing at Ringo's lack of technique. Though much younger than Ringo, Jeff had learned the drum rudiments (the equivalent of scales in tuned instruments), which Ringo's playing revealed he had not (he still hasn't. McCartney still doesn't read musical notation, requiring the services of a musician who does to notate his "Classical" compositions). I bristled when Jeff said it, but that may have been because of his smug tone.
I wonder if Jeff and Elvis Costello (Diana's husband) have talked about Ringo, whose playing Elvis loves. See, technically advanced players (Jazz being a music requiring the "chops" to perform well) consider drummers with that ability by definition "better" than those who without it. My question to Jeff, had I asked one, would have been: "Do you think The Beatles music would have been 'better' if they had a drummer with more technical ability than Ringo? Does that ability alone automatically guarantee that music created by such a musician will be superior to that of one possessing less of it? I'm sure his answer would have been a qualified yes. |
Oh, here's something some may find interesting: The piano part in the middle of "Layla" was composed and played by drummer Jim Gordon. Jim was a 1st call session drummer in L.A. whom George Harrison had brought over to England, to play on his first 3-LP album. Eric met him, and asked him to join D & TD, which he obviously did.
Jim was a relatively young, straight (studio musician's have to be "together" to keep getting recording dates) guy, but he took to the drug environment of D & TD quickly. Unfortunately, that resulted in his undiagnosed schizophrenia leading him to kill his mother with a hammer (the voices in his head told him to). I absolutely adored Jim's playing (he was really, Really, REALLY good, in a musical sense), and have managed to acquire one of his Camco drumsets! |
One last note on a related matter, that of a musician's "taste". When a musician has attained a certain level of technical proficiency, he will (hopefully) come to realize that technique is of value only in the service of playing what that musician thinks will be a good musical part; a means to an end, not the end itself. Some musicians never have that realization, and their playing tends to be viewed as "vulgar" by more musically-minded musicians (such as Jim Gordon, who was very musical, though also possessing a high degree of technique). Along with that, the "tone" a musician is able to produce out of his instrument is determined by the musician's taste.
You would think that tone is a subjective matter, but you would be surprised by how much agreement there is on the question of the quality of tone some musician's are known for. For instance, Ry Cooder's tone is universally considered unsurpassed amongst electric guitarists. Not to be insulting, but the guy in Blue Cheer's tone was about as bad as it gets (really "cheesy"). It might also surprise you, but the assessment of a musician's taste in playing is also not as subjective amongst musician's as it is amongst civilians (;-). The caveat is that a musician has to have acquired a sufficient degree of taste to be able to recognize it in another. Ry Cooder is universally acknowledged in that regard as well. Again, the guy in Blue Cheer (sorry Ghosthouse, nothing personal!) was considered extremely vulgar.
Amongst drummers, Jim Gordon is universally considered amongst the all-time greats, with as good a sounding instrument (drums and cymbals) as I have ever heard. On the other end of the spectrum, Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge, Rod Stewart) is certainly as vulgar a drummer as I can imagine. That the appreciation of another musician's taste is determined by he doing the appreciating, consider that Eric Clapton asked Jim to be his drummer, and would NEVER have asked Carmine, Clapton's got taste! |
