Changin’ Times – Pied Piper

The Changing Times on Shivaree

Listen – Changin’ Times – Pied Piper – MP3

Greetings all.
I figured I’d start the week with something I’ve been holding in abeyance for a little while (waiting for a suitable lapse in time after I last ran a tune by this band).
Last we heard from the Changin’ Times, it was via their smoking slab of garage fuzz ‘How Is the Air Up There’, a personal fave of mine that I chased like Ahab for many a year.
You can catch up on that group’s history back at the original post, and regard the tune I bring you today as a supplement of sorts (like a folk rock multivitamin). Once you pull down the ones and zeros, the tune may sound simultaneously familiar, and un, on account of it’s the obscure OG of a song taken high up into the charts by another artist entirely. And, as is often the case in these situations, I feel that the original is superior.
The hitmaker in this case was a singer from the UK named Crispian St. Peters. St. Peters had had a hit in the UK in 1966 with a version of the Ian & Sylvia tune ‘You Were On My Mind’ (a hit in the US the previous year for We Five). His fourth 45 was his cover of the Changin’ Times ‘Pied Piper’, which became a major Top 10 hit in the summer of 1966.
The original – which I bring you today – was recorded and released by the Changin’ Times in 1965, and promptly went nowhere. Fortunately for the bank accounts of Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff, the cover was a little more successful.
Where St. Peters version sounds like a middle of the road crooner attempting to crash the youth market, the Changing Times OG is a very tasty slice of 1965 Sunset Strip folk rock, with the jangle, and the Dylan-esque whine and what not.
I dig it, and I hope you do too.
I’ll be back later in the week with a drug induced freakout.

Peace
Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a solid funk 45

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Advertisement

Harumi – Samurai Memories

Harumi and his band

Listen – Harumi – Samurai Memories – MP3

Greetings all.
Here’s hoping that you have arrived at the beginning of a new week physically and spiritually refreshed.
I have not.
Life is currently kicking me in the ass, and I come to you today fatigued in all aspects. Life and work are both currently offering nothing but challenges, and to be frank, I couldn’t be less interested in dealing with them.
I’m just tired…..so, so tired.
But, I have just enough vim left in the tank to get a beginning-of-the-week post up on the blog, so that the place – as they say – will be held until I am able to refuel and attack the task as hand with the energy and dedication required.
Naturally, slackjaw that I am, I have decided to do the blogging equivalent of the old DJ trick, wherein, when a break is needed (say, to head to the lav) a long record is put on, and the studio vacated.
The track I bring you today is a sidelong number from one of the most intriguing psychedelic artists of the 60s, Harumi.
That’s it…just Harumi. I’ve never been able to discover is that was his first or last name (or his real name at all), or for that matter much of anything else about him.
What I can tell you is this: He was Japanese. He came to the US to record one ambitious, somewhat rare album (two record set no less), and then pretty much packed his bags and vanished into the ether.
What happened to Harumi? Is he hiding among the last bits of a commune somewhere in the hills, or did he return to his homeland for a nondescript life as a salaryman?
I don’t know, and I haven’t been able to locate anyone who does.
That said, that 1968 LP features two sides of psyche pop – much of it excellent – and two sides (one ‘song’ on each) of extended, free-form freakout. The tune I bring you today is one of those sides, ‘Samurai Memories’, which features spoken word contributions (in Japanese, naturally) from Harumi’s family, and whole lot (19 minutes worth) of lysergia-au-go-go.
The album was produced by the legendary Tom Wilson (Velvet Underground, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan et al), and is really – and this is an overused term, yet entirely fitting in this case – an exercise in eclecticism. Keeping in mind that this was the same label that released both ‘Heroin’ and ‘Sister Ray’, this was not out of character for Verve/MGM, yet in an era where the sidelong ‘opus’ was coming into vogue, and as institution was more often than not abused horribly, ‘Samurai Memories’ (forty years down the pike) sounds more like an actual experiment than the kind of drug-addled noodling that diggers of psychedelia have come to expect.
It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I dig it.
Oddly enough, this album has developed a rep as a costly rarity. I think it falls into that unusual category of records that are rare, but not really expensive. I scored my copy for less than $20USD, and if you’re patient you can probably get your own for a similar price (or less).
I hope you like it, and I’ll be back next week, hopefully somewhat more restored to me normal self.

Peace, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a new podcast focusing on the great Lou Courtney

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Nino Tempo & April Stevens – Deep Purple

April Stevens and Nino Tempo

Listen – Nino Tempo & April Stevens – Deep Purple – MP3

Greetings all.
I figured I close out the week with something unsual (at least in the context of what you’re used to hearing in this space), that also happens to be one of my all time fave records.
Though I can’t remember when I first heard ‘Deep Purple’ by Nino Tempo & April Stevens, I’d bet that it was probably back when I was a very small child.
As I’ve stated here before, the biggest musical influence on me in my formative years was the pioneering oldies station WCBS-FM in New York City. I heard ‘Deep Purple’ on that station countless times, and I loved the record (especially the arrangement) having no idea that it was in fact a very old song. The tune was first written and published by Peter DeRose in 1933, and it was a big hit the following year for Paul Whiteman* and his Orchestra. Mitchell Parrish wrote lyrics for the song in 1938 and it became a standard, being recorded many times by many different artists through the years.
The first ‘rock’ version of the tune was in the mid-50s by the Dominoes.
Nino Tempo and April Stevens were actually brother and sister (real last name, Lo Tiempo) who both had verying degrees of success as music performers through the 50s and early 60s. When they recorded ‘Deep Purple’ in 1963, Tempo was a member of Phil Spector’s studio band. They initially recorded the song as an afterthough (reportedly in just two takes), and supposedly Ahmet Ertegun though the record an embarrassment.
The A-side of the record flopped, and DJs started turning the disc over, making ‘Deep Purple’ a Number One hit, and eventually winning it the Grammy for Best Rock’n’Roll Record, one of many such questionable awards during the early 60s (won in 1962 by Bent Fabric for ‘The Alley Cat’ and in 1964 by Petula Clark for ‘Downtown’ and in 1965 by Roger Miller with ‘King of the Road’). This is not to say that ‘Deep Purple’ isn’t a great record, it just doesn’t set off too many of my rock’n’roll sensors.
That said, something I’ve come to appreciate over the years is a certain ‘New Orleans’ feel to the record, with a rolling piano and chugging rhythm section that wouldn’t have been out of place on any number of Allen Toussaint productions from the same period. I also dig the harmonica (played by Tempo) comping behind the band as well.
Not to mention the fact that that Tempo and Stevens harmonies are infectious, updating the classic melody with a bit of a Mickey & Sylvia feel to the call and response. Interestingly enough, ‘Deep Purple’ was only one of several reworkings of older, standard material by the duo. Previous to ‘Deep Purple’ they had recorded ‘Sweet and Lovely’ and ‘Paradise’, and following it they hit the charts with ‘Whispering’, ‘Stardust’ and ‘Tea for Two’ among others. It seems odd today, but was certainly not unusual at the time, as witnessed by a number of reworking of standards a few years later by Chris Montez.
As I said before, ‘Deep Purple’ has been one of my favorite records for a long time. I hope you dig it.

Peace
Larry

*Whiteman was one of the most successful popularizers of jazz in the 1920s and 1930s. Though his orchestra’s recordings pale (no pun intended) in comparison with much of what was coming out of smaller bands in New Orleans and Chicago, they were an important bridge between harder edged jazz and the pop audience. This and the fact that his band employed some of the greates musicians of the time, including Bix Beiderbecke.

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a slamming Hammond organ 45

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Mungo Jerry – Alright Alright Alright

Mungo Jerry

Listen – Mungo Jerry – Alright Alright Alright- MP3

Greetings all.
How’s by you?
Me, I thought I was going to have a peaceful weekend, that would allow me to recover from several straight weeks of chaos.
Little did I know….
We went out to run some errands, and as we drove down the block to our house, what should I spy on our front lawn but a rather large limb, that had just that morning been attached to a rather large tree. Sometime after we went out the wind convinced said tree to relinquish said limb and it came crashing to the ground.
Naturally I had to postpone my date with the sofa, and head out to the shed to get an axe (which I haven’t had cause to unsheathe in about five years), a wheelbarrow and various and sundry other implements of destruction, all of which I used to dismantle the limb.
All told, a hoot.
So, I sit here, and my typing fingers are the only part of my body that are not sore, thus the blog post.
Way back I March of this years I dropped a tasty bit of punky Gallic beat by the legendary Jacques Dutronc. That tune, ‘Et Moi Et Moi Et Moi’ is, as you’ll see if you go back, pull down the ones and zeros and soak in it for few minutes, a killer.
At the time, I saw that there had been a cover/reworking of the tune in the early 70s by Mungo Jerry. I was – how do they say – intrigued, and pasted that tidbit on the walls of my brain for future reference. I didn’t have to go that far into the future, as about a month later, I was down in Washington, DC on a family trip and did a little digging, and what should I turn up but an old Mungo Jerry comp that happened to have that cover (‘Alright Alright Alright’) on it.
Now, if you’d asked me before the Dutronc connection, would I buy a Mungo Jerry record, I would have, in all likelihood rolled my eyes and kept on walking, sure you were some kind of nut.
I mean, I like ‘In the Summertime’ as much as the next slob, but there’s just no way in hell I need to go out and buy a copy of the record, since it gets played heavily on oldies radio, and is used in commercials all the time.
Once I heard about them covering Dutronc, I was – as I said – intrigued, and when I found the LP in question for a low, low price, I figured if it sucked, I could always turn it into one of those ‘melt your record into a chip bowl’ thingys.
As it turns out, that was unnecessary, because the ‘cover’ (they use the same tune but the lyrics have little or nothing to do with the OG) is very cool. There are still traces of the loose limbed skiffle-i-zation of the early Mungo Jerry sound, but here they’re mixed with a certain glam ne sais quoi (I dig the drums and guitar too). The tune was a big hit in the UK and on the Continent, and even managed to chart regionally here in the States.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something unusual.
Peace
Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for another groovy cover

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Woody Carr & the Entertainers, The Dillons and Dorsey Burnette

Woody Carr & the Entertainers

Dorsey Burnette

Listen – Woody Carr & the Entertainers – Hey Little One – MP3

Listen – Dillons – Simple Way of Living- MP3

Greetings all.
I hope all is well on your end, and that your weekend preparations have you prepared for some garage jangle (and dirge).
Today’s post is yet another example of the record room heaving up an unexpected helping of synchronicitous good fortune.
Knowing that the wife was taking the little one down for a nap, and that my older son wanted to chill with Spongebob Squarepants, I dashed into my office and grabbed a handful of recent acquisitions, as well as some stuff I’d put aside for digimatization.
The Dillons ‘Simple Way of Living’ comes from the new pile, an almost blind purchase from the crates of my old pal Haim. Woody Carr & the Entertainers ‘Hey, Little One’ is a somewhat older buy, which I grabbed after picking up one of Carr’s later (and much funkier) efforts (see today’s Funky16Corners post).
On the surface, aside from a vague temporal similarity (I’m guessing both records hail from a 1965/1966 window), what these two records have in common is authorship. Something I had no clue about until I sat down with the laptop and the turntable and took a look at the labels.
The interesting thing (for me anyway) is that the author of both songs is no anonymous schlub, but rather a very interesting cat from the early days of rock’n’roll. He was a charter member (as bassist) of the Rock’n’Roll Trio with his brother Johnny Burnette and Paul Burlison, with whom he recorded the monumental, distorted (and hugley influential) version of ‘Train Kept a Rollin’. ‘
Though the Burnettes were from Tennessee, they relocated to California in the late 50s, where they would record together, and as solo artists.
Dorsey Burnette even recorded for the early Motown subsidiary Mel-O-Dy records in 1964 (the year his brother Johnny drowned while on a fishing trip).
Though he didn’t have any hits, he continued to record singles for a variety of labels, as well as writing for (and playing on sessions) for a wide variety of country, rock and pop artists.
The Dillons recorded the very first 45 for the LA Impressions label in 1965. Other than that, and the fact that the tune was written by (and the recording produced by) Dorsey Burnette, I can’t tell you anything about them.* Their record on the other hand is absolute, garage-folk perfection. The opening guitar jangle, the pounding, reverbed snare drum and the harmony vocals all add up to a proper dose of moptop teen angst. Even the mellow little breakdown after the verse is very cool, especially since it opens up into a scream and a wild guitar solo. I live for shit like this (I only wish I had more of it).
Woody Carr and the Entertainers were a Pacific Northwest combo that recorded a 45 for the storied Jerden label (Carr recorded two other 45s under his own name, one for Jerden – see Funky16Corners – and one for the Jerden subsidiary Picadilly). Aside from the coolness of their records, they are noteworthy for the fact that they had a black singer (Carr).
‘Hey Little One’ was initially recorded by Dorsey Burnett on a 1960 45, and was later covered by both Glen Campbell and the Grateful Dead (YES, the Grateful Dead…). Though I can’t say I like the other side of this 45 too much (‘Just Another Fool’), ‘Hey, Little One’ is really very interesting. There are traces of 1966 (combo organ, a touch of fuzz) but the whole thing is taken at a dirge-like pace. Not everyone can pull it off, but Carr and the Entertainers manage to find the groove and settle in. Though the tune isn’t remotely psychedelic – in the conventional, unconventional sense – there’s no mistaking that the roots of that sound are present, and I suspect that if this band was still performing this song a year or two later, that’s the direction they’d take.
That said, I hope you dig the tunes, and make sure you head over to Funky16Corners to check out the funkier side of Woody Carr.

Peace
Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for the funky side of Woody Carr

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Pearls Before Swine – I Saw the World

Pearls Before Swine (Tom Rapp in vest)

Listen – Pearls Before Swine – I Saw the World – MP3

Greetings all.
As we gather together to mark the beginning of a new week – and, as of last Tuesday evening a new era – I bring you one of my favorite unheralded (except by collector types and folks that were there the first time around) 60s tunes, and a musical marker of sorts for the changing of the guard.
Before I picked up an import CD comp (the name of which is lost to time) back in the 80s – when I was first buying CDs – I had never heard of the group Pearls Before Swine, or their first label, ESP Disk. The first time I heard today’s selection ‘I Saw the World’, it was one of those instances where I immediately hit the repeat button and gave the tune another listen, and then another, and another.
I was struck by the raw emotion in the song, as well as all of its sonic elements, the seagulls, the crashing surf, subdued guitar and above all, Tom Rapp’s odd but hypnotic vocals.
That was – as far as I knew – the last I heard of Pearls Before Swine for many years.
Oddly enough, around the same time I was spending a lot of time listening to one of that group’s songs without knowing it. The group This Mortal Coil had recorded a cover of the PBS tune ‘The Jeweler’ on their 1986 album ‘Filligree and Shadow’, and it had become something of a fave.
That said, I can’t remember what compelled me to dig further into the sounds of Tom Rapp and Pearls Before Swine, but when I did it was like having a curtain that had always been there pulled back to reveal something wonderful.
Though my initial exposure had been to their second ESP Disk LP ‘Balaklava’, the real revelation was their second Reprise LP ‘The Use of Ashes’. Though Rapp’s voice – a pleasantly vinegary one touched by a pronounced lisp is something of an acquired taste, once acquired, the listener soon realizes that it is the perfect vehicle for the delivery of his literate, bittersweet songs.
‘I Saw the World’ is – in his catalog – is at once among the most melancholy, and hopeful of his songs. When I used the phrase ‘raw emotion’, I wasn’t kidding. Rapp sounds as if he’s quite literally exposed his heart to the listener. It is simultaneously a love song, anti-war message and Taoist lesson in eternal reciprocity (pretty deep for a song so short), yet in the end, the lasting effect is that of having heard a very pretty song.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back later in the week with a joint Iron Leg/Funky16Corners post

Peace
Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Sir Doug – She Digs My Love

Texas Royalty – Sir Douglas

Listen – Sir Doug – She Digs My Love – MP3

Greetings all.
I hope all is well on your end.
I’m going to do something unusual today – a first in fact – in republishing, here at Iron Leg, a post that was one of the earliest at the fatherblog of the Funky16Corners blogging empire, that being (not surprisingly) Funky16Corners.
In its earliest days, Funky16Corners was a little closer to what would be launched two years later as Iron Leg, in that the musical scope was a little more free-form, with (though the blog was at the time only a month old) posts on folk, jazz, rock and pop. It wasn’t long before I decided to narrow my focus to funk and soul.
This week the Funky16Corners Blog will celebrate its 4th anniversary. The post I’m going to republish here today was a story of how in the course of single day I hit the lowest of lows, and then experienced a redemption of sorts standing in the audience of a performance by the Sir Douglas Quintet.
The song I bring you today has never been posted at either blog, and is a perfect example of why I started Iron Leg. I’ll start with a description of the record, and then go to the old post.
Though Doug Sahm – one of my true musical heroes – is best known for the SDQs biggest hit ‘She’s About a Mover’, he had a long and productive musical career, both before ‘…Mover’ and for more than three decades afterward, with the Quintet, as a solo and as the leader of the supergroup the Texas Tornados, before he passed away in 1999.
The tune I bring you today is from a very brief (maybe one record long) transitional period in Sahm’s career.
Like many of his Texan compadres, Sahm had been pretty much forced to head west to avoid police harassment and persecution. The SDQ, like the 13th Floor Elevators made themselves a second home of sorts in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the group would reestablish itself, and Sahm would revive his career in the late 60s.
At some point between ‘She’s About a Mover’ and the SDQ moving to Smash records, Sahm would record one 45 as ‘Sir Douglas’ (note the absence of the Quintet) for the Tribe label (home to all the early SDQ sides). Though I’m not positive, I’d place ‘She Digs My Love’ at some point around 1966/67. The record, while clearly holding echoes of ‘…Mover’ also bears the mark of the onrushing psychedelic era. The oddly modal fuzz guitar (dare I say Beatle-esque?) adds a set of mod bookends to a souled up (check out those horns!) edition of the classic Tex-Mex vibe.
It’s a very cool record, and one that doesn’t really turn up in discussion of Sahm’s early work.
I hope you dig the song.
Here’s the original SDQ-related post from November of 2004:

Back in early 1990, I had just returned from a grand tour of the South (with my brother Chris), in which we visited friends, family and tourist traps in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville. A fine time was had by all, and I returned to NJ well rested. The Monday after getting back, having affixed an Elvis sticker to the trunk of my Chevy Spectrum (in the most ironic sense possible), I left for work. About a half mile from work, I leaned over to tune the radio, and when I looked up I was a very short distance from the back of a car that has stopped to make a left turn. Naturally, I slammed on the brakes, but was way too close to stop, and promptly rammed that car, almost pushing it into oncoming traffic. That car was totaled. My car was totaled. I had a big cut on my forehead and some sore muscles, but was otherwise OK (thankfully, so was the person in the car I hit). The whole episode was a huge drag, which would haunt me financially for years to come (I’ll save that story for another time). My car was a few months from being paid off, and I hardly had the money to go out and buy a new one. Well…my Dad came and picked me up at the hospital, and I went to spend the night at my parents house. So, I’m sitting on my Mom’s couch, aching, generally feeling sorry for myself and dreading what kind of trouble (financial and otherwise) I was going to be facing when this all shook out (like, was I gonna get sued etc. and how as I going to get to work without what Long Duck Dong decribed as an “auto-mo-beeeeellll…”). Utterly depressed. Then, out-of-the-blue, a friend (who in the ensuing years has just about lost his mind after being ground up by the teeth of an adulthood he was ill equipped to deal with, and thus shall remain nameless) called and asked if I wanted to go see the Sir Douglas Quintet at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. Well, hell yes. I think I had known about the gig, but had written it off because I was supposed to be working that night. Serendipity, knowing what was good for me, stepped in and destroyed my car – and the car of another – so I might be there. Mysterious ways indeed. My pal came and got me, and we drove to Hoboken where I figured I could find succor and consolation in a mixture of righteous music and beer. All the way up I bitched and moaned about how terrible the fallout from this accident was going to be (completely ignoring how lucky I was that no one had been seriously hurt), and wondering what I was going to do. The irony in the fact, that I was being chauffered to this show by one of the WORST drivers this state has ever known (the kind of driver that makes you wonder how they could possibly keep getting insured) was lost on me. We managed to arrive safely in Hoboken, and right after finding a parking space managed to run into a couple of very good friends, who, after hearing my tale of woe, took a page from the friend handbook, and promptly got me high. Things were looking up. Not long after that we all walked up the hill to Maxwells. For those who don’t know, for a while Maxwells was the greatest rock’n’roll bar in America (maybe the world). One of the smallest music rooms around (which despite it’s size managed to host almost every major alternative – in the broadest sense of the word – act of the 80’s/90’s), fantastic selection of beer, quiet neighborhood (almost zero chance of getting mugged/robbed or having your car stolen), and it was in New Jersey. Anyway…we all walked into the bar, said our hellos to a few familiar faces and proceeded to enter the back (music) room. I found a bar stool and began to drink. So you’re reading this and thinking “So what? Glad to hear you managed to find some friends with whom to become intoxicated following your careless driving episode, but why should I care?” Man, that was cold…. But I digress. I was really, really depressed (did I already say that?). I knew, despite the fact that I was “up and around”, that the fallout from the accident was going to suck, and I didn’t really have any money, and blah blah blah….you know? The fact that in the space of a few hours I had managed to hook up with some good friends, get high, order a beer and sit waiting for a true hero of American rock’n’roll music to take the stage, was – as I saw it – a significant turnaround. The key part of that run on sentence, was the phrase “true hero of American rock’n’roll music”. The Sir Douglas Quintet or more specifically Doug Sahm was (at least in 1990) a relic of a bygone era. One hit wonders who jumped onto the national stage in 1965, and promptly fell off again. That’s the short version. The longer version – which you will always get here – sees the many incarnations of the band continuing to make great music on through the end of the 60’s and right up to the present. Doug Sahm started making records as a 14 year old in mid-50’s Texas, recording several R&B inflected sides before the birth of the Sir Douglas Quintet. That this birth took place in the diseased – though musically prolific mind – of Huey P. Meaux (otherwise known as the Crazy Cajun), is important. Meaux, deciding that he needed something to compete with Beatle-fueled Anglophilia, decided to give the band a decidedly English sounding name, and put them on the cover of their first album shrouded in shadows (to hide the fact that the Quintet was composed of a couple of Texas hillbillys and three Chicanos, and not another gang of tea and crumpeteers from the old sod). Even more remarkable is the fact that this ruse held together even though the miraculous product of this collaboration sounded like Ray Charles fronting a Tex-Mex band. ‘She’s About A Mover’ hit the Top 40 in 1965 and got the Quintet on Shindig, Bandstand etc, and launched Doug Sahm and his compadre Augie Meyers (he of the SDQ’s trademark Farfisa organ) on a 40 year odyssey. That the tune was a bit of genius is undeniable. That the pop charts were not ready for a continued assault from these synthesizers of R&B, rock, norteno, cojunto etc is similarly carved in stone. The band dropped off the charts (though recording several excellent singles for Meaux’s Tribe label) and following a 1966 pot bust Sir Doug put some flowers in his hair and headed for that Shangri-La that Sid Dithers once referred to as San Francisky. There, in 1969 a reconstituted SDQ crafted the absolutely brilliant ‘Mendocino’ LP, grazed the Top 40 yet again and went on to make a lot of outstanding, moderately successful records for a variety of labels. In the early 90’s, Sahm and Meyers hooked up with Freddie Fender and Flaco Jimenez to form the Texas Tornados, and had a few years of bonafide country stardom (and excellent albums) ahead of them. Anyway….When the SDQ took the stage that night, I just sat there and basked in the glow of great music, played and sung by great musicians in a tiny little bar in Hoboken, NJ (probably smaller than the places they played 25 years before back in Texas). I was transported (as all truly great music ought to be able to do) and for about 2 hours – as the SDQ laid down some of the most authentic “soul” music as has ever been played – my smashed up car (and the car that we had joined together to smash) and the cut on my head and the ache in my back and my uncertain future all vanished. It was just me, my friends, 75 to 80 other people and the Sir Douglas Quintet experiencing the kind of communion that happens on Friday nights in clubs all over the world, where people band together with their beer and their music and file their troubles away, at least for a night. Only here, in Hoboken, the music was so much better. It certainly helped that they ended the show with a brilliant medley of ‘She’s About A Mover’, the 13th Floor Elevators ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ and ? & the Mysterians ’96 Tears’ (kind of a Rosetta Stone of Texas 60’s punk). Maybe a year later, when Sahm and Meyers were touring as part of the ‘Last Real Texas Blues Band’ (with pigtailed Texas sax wizard Rocky Morales along for the ride) I had a chance to rap with Sir Doug (and Augie) at the bar, and he was every bit as cool as you’d imagine. Funny, down to earth and get this…he could not stand George Bush (that’s Daddy Bush, but I imagine had he lived to see Dubya in the White House he wouldn’t have dug him much either). Sir Doug passed away in 1999 (he was only 58). When I heard he was gone, I remembered how he and his music lifted me up that night in 1990, and I smiled.

Peace
Larry

PS I’ll be taking the rest of the week off for a short family vacation. Make sure you stop by Funky16Corners midweek to check out the anniversary mix.

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…