Whats on your turntable tonight?

Not just for James Taylor @slaw, but also Jackson Browne, Carole King, and other L.A. singer/songwriters. Carole was the piano player in James’ band until Tapestry went to number 1! It stayed there for about a year, iirc.

The Immediate Family is Leland, Kunkel, Kootchmar, and guitarist Waddy Wachtel. Good musicians (though I don't care for Wachtel's guitar style), but not imo good songwriters or singers. It's like a body with no head. ;-)

Hank Williams: "No matter how I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world alive." Were truer words ever spoken?

@tomic601, I've been watching all of Leland Sklar's YouTube videos, including those regarding The Immediate Family. Though I think highly of Sklar as a bassist, I don't care at all for TIF. I felt the same about the albums Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Danny Kortchmar, and Craig Doerge made in the 1970's, when they were known as The Section. Good musicians, not good music. Happens all the time. ;-)

@reubent, if you aren't put off by hardcore Bluegrass, keep a lookout for Chris Hillman's 1980's albums on Sugar Hill Records (not the Rap Sugar Hill, of course!). I love them musically, and the LP's feature great sound quality. Chris was working in a Bluegrass group (The Hillman) when he was invited to join The Byrds, and on the Sugar Hill albums returned to his roots.

His work in The Desert Rose Band is also excellent. Fellow DRB members included Herb Pedersen (a great singer/songwriter. He and Chris have made some albums together), John Jorgenson (a fantastic Telecaster player, and a member of The Hellecasters), and one of the greatest living pedal steel guitarists, Jay Dee Maness.

@slaw, hey how is the Bear Family LP of that Buddy Miller album? BF have issued two of his albums that were on only CD in the U.S. at the time of their initial release, both of which I saw at my LRS (each priced at $31.99). I have a bunch of Bear Family LP's of 50's Rockabilly/Hillbilly/Rock 'n' Roll artists, and they are fantastic.

I too like the Rocket To Russia album; it's probably The Ramones' best in terms of songs, but Road To Ruin is my favorite in terms of them as a band. Marky replaced Tommy on drums, and is a much stronger player. Get 'em both!

Well @slaw, I’ve been wondering what the source is that Bear family is using for the LP pressing. Those two Buddy albums were on Hightone Records, which is out-of-business. So from where did BF get the recordings? If the LP’s were made from non-hirez digital files I’m not so sure I need them, ya know? Especially at over thirty bucks each!

Speaking of Hightone Records, that was a great label owned and run by Bruce Bromberg. They had an incredible artist roster (in addition to Buddy and Julie Miller, there were Robert Cray, Tom Russell, Rosie Flores, Chris Smither, Dave Alvin, The Blasters, Kim Wilson, Joe Ely, Bill Kirchen, buncha others), so I met with Bruce on a trip of his to Los Angeles, to give him a copy of the recordings I had participated in making in Atlanta with Evan Johns. Evan had done three albums for Rykodisc, and had developed quite an underground following. Bruce passed on the Johns’ album! Perhaps if he had released it Hightone would still be in business ;-) .

@slaw, Oh, I didn’t mean that Buddy Miller albums don’t sound "good"; they have a great deal of "in-the-room presence" and "aliveness". But Buddy isn’t adverse to using a great deal of compression, particularly on drums. I actually ask the engineers on my recording dates to use compression on the overhead mics; it gives a very percussive "click" to the sound of ride cymbals, a sound I love. Buddy also sometimes uses extreme equalization to achieve a "period" sound (to make a song sound like it was recorded in the 50’s or 60’s). In other words, he’s not a purist/audiophile recording engineer, which is fine with me!

I have everything available from both Buddy and Julie Miller, in every format---except the two Buddy Miller Hightone albums now available on Bear Family LP’s. I’m willing to pay $30 for them, but I would like to know the provenance of the source material BF used to make them.

By the way, before Julie started recording with Buddy, she was a solo artist in the Christian Music field. I also have her album from back then, on CD. Their new album (due next month) is of all Julie-written songs. Buddy himself doesn’t do much writing, but nonetheless finds great material to record. His version of Tom T. Hall’s "That’s How I Got To Memphis" is absolutely magnificent!

Wow, great albums @slaw! That first Butterfield Blues Band album was a huge influence on all the San Jose musicians I knew when it came out in '66. The s/t Lovett remains my favorite of his. I just bought a copy of the McGuinn, Clark, & Hillman LP for $2.99 (and it's Mint!), but haven't played it yet. I missed it when it was originally released.

As a reminder, the first new album in over ten years by Julie and Buddy Miller drops later this month. Hope it's as good as their previous ones!

Keith Richards looks old, but Jerry Lee Lewis is a generation older. When Jerry Lee was making his seminal Sun Records recordings, Keith was still in short pants (now there’s an old expression). Last man standing (all the other main Sun artists---Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison---beat him to the finish line), JLL just got out of rehab.

Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry toured together in one of those "caravan" shows in the late 50’s. Every act got only a few songs, and the one who got the best crowd reaction was given the honor of closing the show. Both Jerry and Chuck, each having a fairly-large ego, figured it should be he who did so. The tour organizer alternated between them, and each tried to outdo the other. On a night Jerry Lee preceded Chuck on stage, during his last song Lewis took out of his pocket a can of lighter fluid and squirted the fluid onto his piano’s keyboard. He then took out his Zippo lighter and lit the keys on fire, playing the rest of the song through the flames. As he and Chuck passed each other at the edge of the stage, Jerry Lee said to Chuck "Follow THAT, n*gg*r."

I consider 1950’s artists and 1960’s artists to be of different generations. Same with 1960’s vs. 1970’s. Completely different in regard to culture, society, and mores. A generation used to mean approximately twenty years, but that was before change became so rapid. Now a generation can be as short as the four years of high school, if not less. Yeah, I know that’s not literally what constitutes a generation, but the meaning of words change.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

@tgilb: Yes! Once again, thank God for Chad Kassem (and mastering engineer Kevin Gray). Who but Chad would think to reissue the entire 1962-67 Capitol Records Beach Boys catalog (stopping before Wild Honey, for some reason).

I have six different issues of Smiley Smile, and the AP version is by far the best. Do you also have the 2011 Capitol Records boxset of the Smile Sessions? It contains every foot of tape recorded for that aborted project. Only for the obsessed ;-) .

@slaw, Patty’s really tight with Julie and Buddy Miller, and has joined them onstage, though not recently (Julie hadn’t done a live show for over ten years until she and Buddy very recently did one in Nashville to announce the release of their new album).

I myself just got the Hiatt Eclipse double-LP set (I already had the CD), can’t wait to hear it. One of our greatest living artists! Have you seen the clip of the assemble artists at the first Americana Music Association Awards Show after the death of Levon Helm, performing "The Weight" as a tribute to him? Watch Hiatt’s face as the young black girl sings a verse---it’s priceless! Also onstage are Jim Lauderdale (the ceremony’s host), Levon’s daughter Amy, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Richard Thompson, Bonnie Raitt, Larry Campbell, Don Was (on electric bass), Sam Bush, and Booker T. Jones. It’s magnificent!

James---Howdy, neighbor! I’m actually in Vancouver, but come into Portland frequently. In L.A. I had Amoeba on Sunset Blvd., an incredible record store. Music Millennium’s pretty good, no complaints. I was up here briefly at the end of 2009/beginning of 2010, and worked at MM for the Christmas rush, just December, then returned to SoCal.

I just discovered Everybody’s Records! The old owner sold the store to a young kid (well, in his 30’s, I would guess. To me that’s a kid ;-), and the store moved from it’s old location on Main Street in Vancouver (that storefront is now a weed dispensary ;-) to right by the I5 entrance on Mill Plain Blvd. I’ve already bought about ten LP’s from him, all in great shape and REALLY cheap ($3-5).

Confusingly, there is also a local chain named Everybody’s Music, which isn’t so hot. That kid Fremer has had at his house gave the impression EM is good, which imo it is not. On Mike and the kid’s most recent video (Fremer was in town a few months ago), they went to Music Millennium together (the kid had not been there before), and Fremer was freaking out! Their prices are kinda high imo, but that means they give you more in trade in. I just took in a box of duplicate LP’s, Punk/New Wave/Indi 45’s, and got $400 for them. Easy money!

Geez, James, I really AM confused! You’re right, it’s Everyday Records. The store on Sandy Blvd. is pretty junky, like a clearance-price woman’s clothing store. I’ve been there twice, last time on this year’s Record Store Day. At 8 AM they were already out of almost all the titles. I went straight over to Music Millennium, waited over an hour to get it, stood in the line that wound through the store from one end to the other for another hour, and they still had lots of every title in stock.

MM is very reminiscent of the late-60’s record store/head shops in San Jose and San Francisco. Don’t you detect the lingering scent of patchouli oil in the store ;-)? For those who haven’t been here, the city’s motto (seen all over the place) is Keep Portland Weird. Beards are plentiful, as are man-buns. Ugh ;-) . People are a lot nicer here than in L.A.

@bkeske, The Trolls did one 45 I believe, a cover of a Beatles song.

There was a guy who headed the Garage Band resurgence of the late-70’s---Greg Shaw of Bomp Magazine and Records fame. He was (R.I.P.) a great Rock ’n’ Roll historian/writer, with a particular love of regional music and singles by Garage Bands. His 7"/45 RPM collection was massive---over 100,000 of ’em! I filled him in on some of the finer details of the San Jose Garage scene of the mid-to-late 60’s. Such as:

The history of The Watchband on Wikipedia contains one glaring mistake: it names Pete Curry as their original drummer. That is incorrect. What happened was, The Watchband had been rehearsing (in the garage of my Jr. High and High School School friend (Chuck Kemling) parents house for months. Chuck’s brother Jo was in the band at that point, playing a Vox Continental organ. When they were ready to play out (during the Summer of ’65), they decided to hold a giant party near the California coast (slightly north of Santa Cruz iirc). They rented a portable power generator (running on gasoline), and placed it in a hole they had dug in the sand, which they then covered with boards and blankets (it was very noisy). On the very day of that maiden voyage Watchband drummer Gary Andrijasavich took sick, and Pete Curry (a very good friend of both Chuck and I. It was on Pete’s drumset that I did my first practicing) was enlisted as his replacement, for that one show only.

By the way: Pete’s been playing bass in Los Straitjackets for over 20 years now. He and I played together in a coupla bands over the years. He is also a good recording engineer, with a 16-track 2" 3M machine is his home studio. He recorded the demo my late-70's Pop group made for Howie Kline of 415 Records, the label that gave us some of the best San Francisco groups of the Punk/New Wave era. That Pop group (The, ugh, Donuts ;-) can be heard on the 415 Records label sampler LP.

Anyway, Greg Shaw also had a mail order record business, with an office/warehouse on San Fernando Road in Burbank, which I visited on several occasions. He served as The Flamin’ Groovies manager for awhile in the 70’s, and put them together with Dave Edmunds. Dave took them to Rockfield Studio in Wales, and the resulting album---Shake Some Action---is fantastic, the best English Invasion-based album I’ve ever heard.

@tomic601, Thanks mate, I’ll keep an eye out for your package.

@reubent: Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, imo the best music combo in the world at the moment. What a group! Drummer Harry Stinson is a world-renown drummer and harmony singer (he is not just a session drummer, but also a session harmony-vocalist), guitarist/singer Kenny Vaughan is a master Telecaster stylist who was in Lucinda Williams' road band on the original Car Wheels tour (he has a fine solo album out), bassist/pedal steel guitarist Chris Scruggs is a 1st-call Nashville studio player. And then there’s Marty! He and Buddy Miller, the best band leaders working today.

Nick Lowe is a long-time favorite. I saw him with Dave Edmunds in Rockpile live in 1980 (three nights in a row at The Country club in Reseda California, with Moon Martin opening the show), in their time the best Rock ’n’ Roll band in the world imo. He was a big favorite in the Power Pop community I was a part of in L.A. in the 90’s and early-2000’s. He came to town early in the decade, with his new band containing some great UK musicians. His opening act on the tour were Dann Penn & Spooner Oldham. What a double-bill! For anyone not familiar with Penn & Oldham, look them up. Master songwriters, heroes of Nick Lowe. The fact that they were opening for he is a cruel injustice, but that’s showbiz for ya.

@slaw, the quote you cite was from master guitarist Ry Cooder, on his way home with Jack Nitzsche (Phil Spector’s arranger and orchestrator, later in Crazy Horse for a couple of albums, including Neil Young’s Harvest, which Jack produced) and record producer/A & R man Denny Bruce (Fab T-Birds, Leo Kottke) from seeing & hearing The Band at The Pasadena Civic Auditorium in 1970. Ry said "I like them because they look and sound like men, not boys."

The quote is in the recent book The Story Of The Band; From Big Pink to The Last Waltz by Harvey Kubernik. I’m about a third of the way through it, and boy is it good. Another quote from the numerous music professionals asked for their thoughts on The Band:

Australian writer/critic David N. Pepperell on seeing Dylan and The Hawks (soon to change their name) in 1966: "To this day I will still say that Dylan and The Hawks was the greatest music concert I have ever attended. The Hawks made all the previous groups we had seen---including The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones---sound like amateur outfits, almost kids’ bands. This was an aggregation of adults, people who understood dynamics as much as volume (me: SO few Rock bands understand this), tapestry of sound rather than just harmonics, and the way that playing less can be playing more."

That last concept (less is more) is well understood amongst jazz musicians. There is a quote, attributed variously to Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and others (it doesn’t matter WHO said it, it’s the wisdom of WHAT was said), that goes "The notes you DON’T play are as important as those you DO." Again, most Rock musicians absolutely do not understand the concept, or appreciate it’s wisdom. An awful lot of guitarists and drummers approach their instrument as if the more notes they play, the better a player are they. Listen to Ry Cooder’s guitar solo in John Hiatt’s "Lipstick Sunset." Now THERE’S a guitarist who gets it!

Dylan single-handedly transformed Rock ’n’ Roll from teenage music to adult. And The Band transformed what a Rock ’n’ Roll band could and should be. Eric Clapton on hearing Music From Big Pink (played to him by George Harrison): "Music had been headed in the wrong direction for a long time. When I heard Music From Big Pink, I thought ’Well, someone has finally got it right’." Clapton broke up Cream, and went to West Saugerties, New York to hang with The Band at the Big Pink house (in the basement of which in 1967 were recorded The Basement Tapes), waiting for them to ask him to join. Until, he says, he finally realized they neither required nor desired his services. ;-)

My pleasure fellas! I offer the knowledge I possess in the name of furthering everyone's appreciation of The Band. @slaw, I forgot to offer some info concerning one point you brought up. The "house" you refer to is, I believe, the one in which The Band recorded, not Music From Big Pink, but the 2nd, self-titled one (the "brown" album).

After recording MFBP in "normal' pro studios in NYC and L.A., they wanted to make the second album in a more relaxed, organic fashion. Pro studios put up gobos (baffles) between all the players (the amplifiers often in isolation booths) to maximize separation, the players then needing to wear headphones to hear each other. Can you imagine conversing with someone having to speak into a mic, and hearing the other's voice only through headphones? Very artificial.

For the second album, The Band talked Capitol Records into loaning them a 2" multi-track recorder (8-track, I believe) and a bunch of mics. They looked for a house in L.A. in which to record, ending up finding one in the Hollywood Hills (owned by Sammy Davis Jr.). The house had a large pool cabana, which they transformed into a studio. So they lived in the house for two months, and recorded the album in about one.

The pictures on the inside of the gatefold cover show them in that studio, set up facing each other, able to hear one another without headphones. And believe it or not, they recorded the vocals live with the instruments! I can't think of another band that could, or did, do that. Well, except for Bluegrass bands.

Another thing that amazes me about the brown album is that pianist Richard Manuel is the drummer on about half the album's songs. He is an incredible drummer in the musical sense, though technically rather crude. Chops ain't everything! His drum parts make perfect musical sense, and are parts no "real" drummer would think of.

Michael Fremer always talks about the unique drum sound on the second album, attributing it to the set of vintage tubs organist Garth Hudson found in a pawn shop in L.A. Baloney; if you look again at the studio pics, you will see the drums are Levon's good ol' Black Diamond Pearl Gretsches, the same ones he played all through the 60's in The Hawks. Levon really knew how to tune drums and damp their heads (putting padding on the plastic heads to cut their high-frequency overtones and ring, to make them sound closer to calfskin heads), to get the deep, "thumpy" sound he is known for. Ringo has made a point of talking about Levon's drum sound in interviews. He was after the same sound, only partially achieving it (he came close on Rubber Soul, then lost in on Revolver).

@tomic601, Levon Helm’s autobiography (co-written with an actual writer. The syntax of the narration does not sound like Levon speaking.) has long been my favorite telling of The Band story. But that telling is from his perspective alone; I believe this new book by Kubernik is the single best account, and that’s from having read only about a third of it. I haven’t read Robbie Robertson’s book, out of respect for and loyalty to Levon. ;-) If you know why I say that, you already know part of what went wrong in The Band.

There is a good documentary about Levon, entitled "Ain't In It For My Health". Lot's of great stuff in it, including Billy Bob Thornton sitting with Levon at the latter's kitchen table, asking him questions. Thornton is a huge Levon Helm fan, and plays drums in his own 4-piece Rock 'n' Roll band. They have a couple of albums out (haven't heard 'em), and tour occasionally.

Mike, I was in attendance at that Hendrix show at Winterland in '68, and believe it or not he was better in '67! Both times he had the original Experience band, but in '67 he and they were on fire (no pun intended ;-). In '68, Jimi seemed somewhat bored, like he was currently treading water and ready to change direction. By the way, Bill Graham did early and late shows at Winterland, but once you were in for the first you could stay for the second, which I did.

Unfortunately I never saw Fairport Convention live, but Richard Thompson numerous times. His guitar tone live is SO fine, much, much more to my liking than that of Hendrix, who made his Strat sound like barbed wire played with a metal pick, or I imagine what it feels like to chew foil. I realize I am in the minority in that opinion! The best guitarists I've seen live are Ry Cooder, Al Anderson (NRBQ), Dave Edmunds, and Albert Lee.

@slaw, I'll bet you know Death Can For Cutie got their name from the song of the same title by The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, found on their debut album Gorilla. And that it is they who are performing in the underground scene in Magical Mystery Tour, at the behest of McCartney.

Their first flurry of four albums are fantastic! I have some old friends who saw them live at The Fillmore, but I somehow managed to miss them, damn it. Their live show was quite an extravaganza. I wonder if videos are available?

Thanks for the reminder about the RSD version of BOTT, slaw. I brought it home, filed it, and forgot it! Is the SQ good enough to warrant buying the $125 1-Step version? I'll listen and reconsider. I like the music enough to want it, but Dylan's recorded sound is so spotty.

I love the sound of his album with The Band, Planet Waves. recorded at Village Recording in L.A., the studio Ry Cooder loves so much. By the way, I just finished Robbie Robertson's book Testimony, and let me tell ya, it is unbelievably good! Barnes & Noble has remaindered hard cover copies left in stock, $6.99 I believe. The best book on The Band I've read, and I've read 'em all. 

Part of it slaw is that terms are used too loosely. The multi-track master, the final 2-track-mix master, the production-master used to create the "mother" (for LP stamping), etc.

But there is also the matter of dishonesty and lying that is now considered acceptable and normal (even expected?) in the pursuit of profit (and power ;-) .

Hi @slaw. my LRS was selling the boxset at full price, and Amazon was discounting it only 10%, so I dug deep and found it for $117 on the Walmart website (of all places!). But I knew I would get an Amazon giftcard or two for Christmas (I did), so waited. Amazon is now selling it for $105, and my copy is on it’s way.

It has long been said that the master tapes for the brown album went missing years ago. So when Audio Fidelity released the Steve Hoffman-mastered gold disc version and claimed Steve’s source was the "Original Master tapes", the question was, what was meant by "master"? The 4-track 1" tapes producer/engineer John Simon had recorded? The 2-track 1/4" final mixes used for mastering? Or as is commonplace, a production master---a copy of the final mix tape?

Capitol is saying Bob Clearmountain created new mixes (Uh oh. I LOVE the mixes John Simon and The Band created) from "The Original Master Tapes." You can’t create new mixes without having the multitrack tapes. By the way, can you believe The Band recorded the album doing both instruments and vocals live (with additional parts added after an acceptable master take had been captured)?! By 1969, NOBODY was doing that, or perhaps even could. Except Dylan and the Nashville studio musicians he started recording with in ’65, of course.

The boxset includes the album split onto two 45RPM discs, along with a CD containing their Woodstock set, and another with unreleased tracks and alternate versions of released tracks (plus a book with essays and pics, their original 45RPM single, and some prints of pics by the guy who did those for the original album, which were SO perfect for the sound of the record. I love sepia.). By the way, Robbie Robertson’s book Testimony will make great reading while you listen to the album. It is really, really good. Barnes & Noble has remaindered hard cover copies left for about seven bucks.

Actually, it was Les Paul. He recorded those albums with his wife Mary on his own 3-track in the 1950's, in their basement, I believe. Over-dubbing multiple guitar parts, "bouncing" the recordings from channel to channel until he had all the parts on tape. The early Beatles albums were also done bouncing, as they also had only three tracks to work with, then four, eight for the white album, and then the first 16-tracks appeared.

Richard Carpenter came along much later.