That's why award show numbers are flaccid.
No one knows most of the faces.
And even with the ones who are slightly familiar, no one gives a shit.
As Suzanne Somers life & business partner since 1968, at the top of our list is REINVENTION.
When one's career arc is cresting at the peak of a parabola, you must change direction or the sands of time will bury you.
Showbusiness is a blood sport designed to build you up with kudos & cash and just when you think you've 'made it', They tear you down.
Once you truly understand this concept & are savvy enough to recognize objectification coming your way from the same folks who worshipped you,
REINVENTION saves the day.
There Is No Big Time!!
Alan Hamel
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Subject: Re: The State Of Stardom
Bob,
As a "famous comedian" I can tell you that you're 100% right. I have dug in on the old way. I'm all about content and the live part goes up and down. I'll still do comedy specials and release albums. It all streams but sometimes the reaction is a shrug. Other times a big reaction. The only thing I control is the content. Everything else is noise. Maybe I'm antiquated. But I'm going to keep going this way and retire when I've hit the point of if a tree falls in a forest.
Yours in good looks,
Jeff Garlin
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From: Dale Janus
Subject: football
Hi Bob,
Just read your very interesting post on football and I agree with most of it. I was a little surprised at some of the responses, but to each his/her own.
I lost interest in NFL a long time ago when Bill Belichick was coach of the Cleveland Browns and he fired local star Bernie Kosar for disagreeing with him.
I am more aware of the football player mentality than most as my brother-in-law played college for KSU (full scholarship) and then for the USFL.
We often went to college games and one day on the trip home he mentioned he's have to go see the trainer on Monday because he got hurt. I thought it was because they would fix him, but he said so matter of factly for a 20 year old, " no, they fix it so you don't hurt". And this was at the college level.
He played 3 years for USFL, with Herschel Walker, Kent Hull, Bernie Kosar and Doug Flutie. After that he had a pretty successful business career, (he did graduate from KSU with a degree in business) but the CTE and alcoholism eventually took over. He died two years ago at age 57. We sent his brain to the CTE institute, where it was diagnosed with CTE.
So I'm with you, I can't tell what's pass interference. Hell, I can't even tell what constitutes a foul in the NBA.
Maybe the NFL should eliminate the holding penalty and let the big dudes slug it out however they feel like. That would make it more like the gladiators. After all, that's what it is, bread and circuses.
I would have loved a Kansas City - New Orleans superbowl. I agree with you the Boston mentality is do whatever it takes to win and if you get caught, well, that's just the cost of doing winning business.
I doubt I'll even watch the superbowl year.
But you and I are in the minority, judging by your email responses. I think it will take a few (well,maybe a lot of) generations, but football will eventually fade.
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From: Rob Fraboni
Subject: Re: Unjustifiably Forgotten-SiriusXM This Week
Hi Bob,
I've waited too long to write you. I very much appreciate what you do & it's interesting how no one else has what it takes to do what you do. The Dean's List is good, but as you know, different.
I saw this post and thought you'd be interested to know the story behind Lonely Traveler.
I recorded & co-produced Sail On Sailor which is how I met Blondie Chaplin & Ricky Fataar. After Blondie's unfortunate fracas with Steve Love on the tour for the Holland album, he was shattered & recovering & I suggested he do his own record. I approached David Geffen with some songs we had demoed. He liked them.
The resultant record is the one you mentioned here.
The story behind Lonely Traveler:
We were in the middle of takes on a different song and suddenly Blondie broke into Lonely Traveler. He never had played it, wrote it down, etc. It just came blasting in from the ether, complete in lyrics, etc. He started playing it, sitting at the piano, the band followed him and we got it in one take, in between takes of the song we were working on. That's the version on the album. The only other time I ever witnessed something like this was during the recording of Planet Waves.
I love that you pointed to it and the 'fine' comment.
Blondie mentioned to me that you met him at the Hollywood Bowl Brian Wilson show.
I live in Weston, CT & unfortunately was out of town for the Fairfield Lefsetz vs Flom event in October. I did hear a Sirius Archive of one of the shows. Good stuff!
Thanks again for what you do. It's important in my opinion...
Best, Rob
Rob Fraboni
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Subject: Re: The Klarman Letter
Independent stocks trader and former Wall Street fund manager here (and one who rubbed shoulders briefly with Klarman back in the day, though he would not remember me). I think Klarman's context is something like this:
While Wall Street was never a charitable institution, it did well when it accepted the constraints FDR imposed on it, implemented through agencies like the SEC and FDIC. In the booming markets of the '50s and '60s, and even into the '80s, US companies spent lots on R&D, invested in plant and equipment -- and domestic workforces. Longterm value was created. And even though they didn't try to grab it all, bankers, traders, and portfolio managers happily made their tens and even hundreds of millions. Now only billions are enough and most of the time (unless you are the founding tycoon of a major company) you get that by legalized cheating of one kind or another.
Klarman is saying, that if business people don't remember what ethical conduct looks like, either someone like Bernie Sanders will take the business community to pieces, or the short term mentality will bring America down. And he's right.
Jonathan Bernstein
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From: Ulysses Hüppauff
Subject: Re: 823
Hi Bob,
I'm based in Berlin, Germany. For various reasons physical still is stronger here than in most other countries in the world.
Let's see for how long though.
You are spot on reg. chart regulation.
The German system also counts in all streams and has an equivalent for an album sale. But due to single charts (we have here too) we do not allow the two strongest songs being allocated into the album sales. And we only allow a max of 12 songs being allocated into the calculation. Only these little change in calculating makes it so much clearer.
That all being said the real question is: What do we still need album charts for? The old argument of retail visibility and additional programs is long gone. And no serious media reviews album charts in any way.
Best, Ulysses
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From: Andy Vale
Subject: Re: 823
"Would "Baby Shark" have hit the chart in a sales era? No."
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From: James Day
Subject: Re: Re-Baby Shark
Hey Bob I am a loyal reader and an Organist of a professional sports team... this song is played at almost every arena except mine because I work for a team very closely related to the song...think NHL.. the other teams troll us with the damn song!!
JMD
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Subject: Re: The Klarman Letter
Among the other cultural advancements that "boobs started" in this country was an interest in foreign films.
dennis brent
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Subject: Re: Re-Pledge Music
hey bob
it's sad and really frustrating to see this happening. the crowdfunding business is like the music business: it's a small pile of laundry and any and everything can get stained by association. i've never used pledge - i was a loyal kickstarter user before i moved to patreon pretty much full-time.
but the main sadness here is the general trust that it chips away at, in the subtle subconscious opinion of the user/audience/fan/supporter....in a world where the public is already suspicious and wary of direct-crowdfunding tools. doubt is sparked and then everybody's just a little more fucked...people get scared fast. look at what happened with romaine lettuce, or apples at halloween.
for any/all the artists out there who are wondering aloud to you where to head, i think patreon (and/or platforms like it that will probably spring up in its wake) is pretty much the next untapped oil field of artists getting fairly and predictably paid (until that magical day when someone who actually understands how to merge blockchain, micropayments and musicians' salaries gets off their ass and saves us all forever).
i'm grossing about $50-80k a month there and my community, about 15k members now, is really liking it. i've especially been appreciating the off-facebook (fuck facebook) nature of it, it's like getting back to 2007 when people still read blogs and hung out in forums and smaller, rational-discussion communities on the net, not unlike this bob-curated list you've got going here.
some of the tools are still in beta and clunky, but the proof of concept is there: subscription works. people who love artists - really love them - are generally happy to support them off and on cycle and give them a "working salary". anyone here who wants to ask me how i've made it work is free to hit me up on twitter - i read my entire feed and i like helping people figure it out.
amanda palmer
@amandapalmer
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Would you believe on the very eve that Pledge was sending me an automated email to remind me to upload my songs for the release the news of them was to hit the streets? I uploaded the songs because it was too late for me to back out after promising my supporters that the album would be in their inbox on Friday.
Today arrives and no email back from them. I wrote these two guys:
Rob Knight rob.knight@pledgemusic.com,
Jim Heindlmeyer Jim.heindlmeyer@pledgemusic.com
and not a word back.
Here's my take. I am but a one-man operation over here. I don't have a manager or an agent or a lawyer to speak on my behalf. I'd rather not take the angry route, because I must remind myself that there are people in this world with life-threatening problems right now and all I'm dealing with is another potential music business shyster who isn't very good at managing money. It just hurts because Pledge or crowdsourcing companies like them are perfect for guys like me who want to put hardly anything-like a record company-between them and their art, but then even they turn out to be liars? It hurts and a part of me wants to pull a full Emily Dickinson and just make art and put it in a trunk in my room and work some mindless job where I can retainmy creativity somehow. As it is I have to cancel my album release tour then borrow the money from my daughter's savings account to pay for the manufacturing of the merchandise because my fans have spent their moneyon it- money that they thought was going to me.
It's very disheartening, but like I said, a quality problem in a world gone money crazy.
I will make songs and poems no matter what. It would be nice if people didn't try to rip me off in the process. It's already hard enough that music is mostly free these days, and then this happens? I will be going into my daughter's savings account and borrowing the money from an 8 year old with the hopes that someday Pledge can pay me and her back. It's the only way I can begin the process of making the downpayment for the merchandise orders. This is what it has come to for me, and I am a simple folksinger.
This machine kills apathy.
Rock on my friend, and thanks to anyone out there who supports independent art and music.
Tim Easton Whites Creek, Tennessee
P.S. They reached out to me today shortly after I posted on Social Media, so I must retract that they are not communicating with me. They asked for my patience.
Tim Easton
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From: Ryan Patch
Subject: Re: Neflix vs. the Oscars
Bob -
I had an amazing conversation with a good friend who works at Netflix over the holidays. I brought up this article: https://bit.ly/2Ba9kKW, which in essence, painted Netflix as the high-paying gravy train with little cultural meaning. That the "importance" of the film was being on the big screen, that was what connoted legitimacy, which is why Crazy Rich Asians MUST have opened on the big screen.
She fired right back that although CRA star Henrey Golding has 750k fans on IG, whereas To All the Boys I've Loved Before star Noah Centineo has 16.2 MILLION. Both go their break in 2018 in movies with a predominantly asian-american cast. One was released in theaters, one on Netflix.
It's not even close. Netflix doesn't reveal numbers, but you can see the difference in exposure.
While Hollywood is busy fretting over box-office numbers from a couple weeks or making sure their billboard is on the 405, Netflix is spending 1/4 of the marketing dollars, but launching a new movie or show every week in 190 countries at the same time. Hollywood wants the affirmation of that Monday-after-release glow of achievement, or the ratings to come in - the traditional affirmations, when in reality those metrics are relics, and measuring yourselves by them may feel good, but won't be good for you in the long run.
R
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From: Thomas Cussins
Subject: Re: Stick Figure Photos for StubHub Promotion
To: Maria Burke, Bob Lefsetz
Yeah thats a no from me... you want me to give you photos so you can scalp my clients tickets easier without including us in the revenue when we know very well that you are cutting deals on the side with the big promoters?
It makes me sick that you are selling tickets to our sold out Red Rocks show at up to 10x the face value of the ticket, and even if we were ok doing that to our fans (which we arent), we dont participate in the revenue or the customer data..
This is why I support Lyte, the only real fan to fan exchange that undercuts the scalpers like your client and drives prices back towards the face value.
I know you are just doing your job, but enough is enough. Have a great weekend.
On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 10:22 AM Maria Burke wrote:
Hello Thomas,
?
My name is Maria Burke from Six Degrees Rights & Clearances (www.sixdrc.com), a media clearance company in New York. I am contacting you on behalf of our client, StubHub, regarding a request for photographs that can be used to help promote ticket sales to Stick Figure's events.
StubHub will use the photos you can offer on their website, social media channels, online magazines and in their emails. They have contracted Six Degrees to try to find and secure permission to authentic photos that they can use in these promotions. We are reaching out to you to see if you can offer photos for this use that you own/control the rights to.
If you have photos that you can send me to offer to the StubHub creative team, please let me know. We can accept low resolution now for preview and then request the high resolution if they choose any.
I look forward to hearing from you and please contact me if you have any questions.
Kind Regards-
Maria
Maria Burke
Clearance Specialist
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Subject: Reggie Young
Date: January 16, 2019 at 8:15:34 PM PST
Bob,
Hope you are well.
I want to bring to you and your readers attention the last days of a wonderful and fantastic musician.
Every guitarist should be aware of the name Reggie Young.
I know many do , and i would just like to tell them that he is passing.
This man has played on some of the most memorable records of our time.
If you will look at his discography you will see classics like,"Drift Away", "Raindrops Falling on My Head", Elvis cuts and so many more.
One of the finest men I have ever met as well.
Here is Nashville, there is the "Musicians Hall Of Fame", and he stands out as one of the best sideman that ever did a session.
Want to pay tribute where it is truly deserved.
http://reggieyoung.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGapa99Y1Hw
Best,
Felix Cavaliere
(Note: Reggie died the next day: https://nyti.ms/2CV2MQH)
____________________________________
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I had the Wheels of Fire album and remember when they started playing the single, White Room on AM Philly radio. One day, while listening, as the song was ending, Jack Bruce sang out, 'At the party.....' .... they played the album version! All five minutes... quite exciting back in the day.
David Cantor
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My friends and I made a type of necklace with our 45's, our version of a playlist, so when we showed up on our sting ray bikes to someone's house, we showed up with our music.
White Room was on my necklace.
Kim Bullard
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And that amazing intro in 5/4! Who the heck was doing that?
White Room was the best Cream song!!
Rich Madow
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Could not agree more about the magnificence of White Room. The magic of Jack Bruce's voice on this track in the 2005 Royal Albert Hall reunion show is testament to his greatness - even in what would be the sunset of his life. Clapton sings his balls off in the first two runs of the chorus, and then Jack takes the chorus to only where he could. No one sounds like Jack Bruce. A god on bass and on mic.
https://youtu.be/dCc00pX_pFA
Jim Mulhern
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My old friend and artist Pete Brown wrote the lyrics to 'White Room', as well as 'Sunshine of Your Love' and 'I Feel Free'
among others.
I once asked Pete what 'White Room' was about. He said he was
meeting Jack Bruce that day to write songs. He was living in a white flat with black curtains by Belzise Park tube station. So he just came up with the words as he was leaving his flat to take the tube.
Aaron Sixx
Aura Records
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The story behind White Room from the guy who wrote the song:
https://youtu.be/Jr1xkRkUlMk
Dennis Maille
____________________________________
.....And Bob,
The holy grail was the Dunlop Wah Wah...... you'd be long gone.... for hours....down in your basement!
Amen brother.......
Steve Chrismar
____________________________________
Thank you for reliving so many of my life highlights. It's funny, though I never saw Cream in person. I deified them from the stereo.
Which was plenty sufficient until I subscribed to a cable package which includes AXStv.
The network recently aired the 2006 Cream reunion concert. I calculated their ages, and remember noting that Jack was 62, Ginger was 65 and Eric was only 60. And then it hit me.
There was no one else on stage in this show. The original three guys. All playing and singing every note. As well as they ever did. Many reunion shows are lip syncing extravaganzas.
Not Cream.
They rose to the top.
Bill Capps
Pittsburgh
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I was lucky enough to see Cream right after Disraeli Gears came out, late in 1967, at University College in London, where my draft board and my parents thought I was studying for the year. I still have the ticket: 8 shillings, about a dollar. Kids were literally hanging from the rafters to get a look at the band. They played like fire.
Les Jacobson
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I still have the hollow body Danelectro I bought from Bob Abbott for $25 back in high school so I could play along with Fresh Cream and East West. Inverted lipstick pickup, Masonite body, Formica top. Neck by Gibson w/full set screw. Fun ax. Later, I took lessons with Sal Salvador in Bridgeport, later to study with Archie Shepp and Max Roach and managed a few jazz and reggae bands, sitting in occasionally. Highlights include performing Elvis songs on guitar to drunk East Germans partying on the deck of a tour boat on the Elbe River and jamming with Arturo Rodriguez and his band New Years Eve at the Hotel Deauville in Havana, Cuba, playing My Favorite Things Coltrane style!
Still, I was just a half talent. You remember little Al Ferrante at Warde? Played Sunshine of Your Love note for note the day it came out. Neil Steubanhaus, went to play with Billy Preston. But they were nothing compared to the dueling leads of Goodhill's Stan Cooney and John Stowell. W/George Miller on bass, they could play anything, even their own. Their lead vocalist, Harryson Buster, had the sweetest voice in town and the hearts of all the girls in our school in his pocket. He's still performing.
Anyhow, you do best when you remember!
Keep those memory cells strong!
Ken Shain
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Thanks,Bob
I like the way you describe being back in the moment with the old songs
Cream rocked my Junior High world in Maplewood, New Jersey, and listening to the seemingly infinite Spotify stream brings me back to those days (and nights)
Music is timeless, and it helps keep me ageless
Thank you for my Daily Lefsetz
Sincerely
Joyce Ann Martin
San Diego, California
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Love your posts and thanks for the always insightful and thought provoking commentary. Have you checked out the new Cream Album on Spotify: Live in San Diego '68. It sounds like a boot or one of those radio broadcast type albums that have been popping up by loads of Classic artists over the past few years but the tunes and playing are all there. White Room is the first track, Jack is in great voice, the bass is sublime (especially his backing over the solo at the end which is totally different to the record), Ginger is all over the kit and Eric gives it the full wah-wah treatment that only he could in '68.
Thanks and best wishes,
David Duggan
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Cream accomplished the hard thing: had musicians talking and the punters listening and buying.
Don't forget the contribution of lyricist, Pete Brown. Scorcese is a fan of his. I asked Pete how he ended up writing lyrics for Cream. He said that he was a poet and knew Jack when poetry and jazz were part of the same scene. He said Cream would be on the road and be told that when they got home, they had two weeks to do an album before they had to go out again. So, Pete was called in at crunch time to help with the writing. Pete wrote a book, "White Rooms and Imaginary Westerns", that will give you the whole story.
"I Feel Free" was also one to remember,
Al Staehely
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Nothing changed music for us like the three Cream Albums and the three great Hendrix Albums
Amazing to think about all these years later .
Gerry
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To say that Cream was huge, and an influencer of young musicians already enraptured by The Beatles is an understatement indeed! I remember carrying the majestic & silvery Wheels Of Fire album around under my arm for literally one entire school year, (my eighth grade) from fall 1968 to the end of our school year 1969. It went everywhere with me, and I'm so glad to read that I wasn't alone in my unbridled enthusiasm and adoration.
Before that I was weaned on (and fell in love with) the sound of high fidelity audio blaring from my best friends dad's component stereo system with it's Wharfdale speakers blasting Disraeli Gears.
I didn't realize at the time that Eric Clapton was God, but I have certainly learned since. What a band. The basis of much of what we know about rock music still, today.
Brian Malouf
Producer | Mixer
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Interesting. Your guitar journey was very similar to mine. I Feel Free guitar solo freaked me out and shook me out of my Folkie bondage. Then it was all downhill from there when Hendrix hit a year later
Kenny Lee Lewis
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"White Room"!! Now you're talkin'! Isn't it all true! Everything you said. We all wait over and over again in anticipation sitting at the end of our seats during that pause right before the iconic solo. Then we crank up the volume until our ears hurt while Clapton lets loose on the Wha-wha pedal (funny that, I wonder how that thing got its name? Did the inventor just spit out the sound when describing it??).
At any rate, for my money, that's when Clapton played and sounded best. And that SOUND!!! That's what riveted though me—I couldn't get enough. That's what turned the corner for me wanting to really learn how to be a real guitar player—that sound, those riffs (gotta say Jeff Beck's Truth helped a bit there as well). But I couldn't figure it out, wasn't hip to what a Les Paul, SG, or any Gibson cranked to the max could do. But I knew it had something to do with volume. I was playing a 6 string Rickenbacker at time and plugged it into my makeshift amp stack of Fender equipment, but of course the Ricky's pick-ups are designed to be ringy-dingy and not even close to a humbucker, much less the thin semi-hollow body. A band mate gave me his Gibson Melody Maker and I was finally off to the races!
Without any formal lessons, I discovered vibrato, learned to play triplets (not knowing what they were) and copying Clapton's hammer-ons and pull-offs. Like most players, listening to Clapton lead me back to discover Freddie King and all the rest. The electric guitar means so much to me and has been such a big part of my life. Michael Bloomfield and Keith Richards (playing Chuck Berry riffs) were my earliest influences, but it was Clapton who got me off the couch with the burning desire to be able to learn how to speak with a guitar.
Thank you Slowhand,
Paul Rappaport
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In 1968 Cream played on a Wednesday night in the little gym at Union Catholic H.S. in Scotch Plains, NJ -about a half mile down the road from my childhood house. I was 16 and a junior in Scotch Plains' public high school. Tickets were $2.50, no pre-sale; we just showed up at the back entrance of the school, lined up & walked in like going to a high school basketball game. They played the entire "Wheels of Fire" repertoire that night (this was the tour on which they recorded the LP so no one had yet heard the material). The show lasted for over three hours...Ginger solo'd on "Toad" for 40 minutes; "Spoonful" went on and on for almost a 1/2 hour. We all went nuts.
Union Catholic had presented The Who in their gym the year before ( they blew up their stuff in front of the first row of folding metal chairs where the teachers were seated... a bunch of nuns, brothers & priests in their black frocks....the crowd literally climbing over their poor heads to get a piece of Pete Townsend's guitar neck!!). Notwithstanding that first mini riot, the school nevertheless continued these shows for a few years thereafter into the early '70s until costs, liability concerns, etc. became prohibitive...The Beach Boys, The Association, an early big metal act (Metallica I think...I was by then off to Dartmouth) catching them mid-week literally in between shows in Philly & NYC....one local cop at the door as security, the bands playing on choral risers, with the audience a bunch of kids standing behind a couple of rows of metal folding chairs for the staff five feet from the "stage".
One of the experiences from my teen years (including seeing Hendrix in 1967 when I was 15 in NYC in a tiny auditorium at Hunter College) that inspired me to play professionally after college and then become an entertainment attorney.
I'll never forget....
Paul B. Ungar, Esq.
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"Funny how music can bring you back. It's not a memory of, you're right in the moment, you're a teenager once again, when the goal was to be a guitar hero, when we only talked about music, when radio was our religion and music drove the culture."
November 4, 1968 - I was 13. It was time. My uncle (mom's younger brother) lived in "the village" and bought the tickets. I think they were a rather lofty $6.50 to be in cavernous Madison Square Garden, where I had previously seen The New York Rangers and Ringling Brothers both stink up the joint. I'm sure a joint or two stunk up the Garden that night as well, but I was about 7 weeks and a place called the Fillmore East from learning about that.
My uncle was "cool," working for Ed Sanders of the Fugs at the Peace Eye Bookstore. I was a Junior High School student in Forest Hills. That night would be my first concert.
I had dozens of records. Beatles, Stones, Herman's Hermits, Dave Clark Five all come to mind immediately, but Hendrix, Joplin and Cream were all being ushered into the mix as Mrs. Brown and her lovely daughter segued into a real kind of hush (oh yeah, Deep Purple!)
The opening act was just two years younger than my Uncle Joe, five years older than me. His name was Terry Reid, and from the opening notes of his cover of "Bang Bang" to his long camel haired coat, I fell in love on so many levels. Terry, his voice, his band, his presence, and his repertoire would be a staple in my world for life. Those first two Epic records are among my personal top 20 of all time. The mid-liner was Buddy Miles, who, as I soon learned, could midline a 45 minute version of "Them Changes" at the drop of a hi-hat.
The lights went down a third time, and I swear to you, while I don't remember what row, seat or section I was in, I do remember that they harmonized on that opening note and began their farewell set with "White Room." I hear it today, in my head, as it was that night. I would and could never forget it. The set was magnificent, but that single note was perfection!
Marc Nathan
What the hell am I doing in
Nashville, TN
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My parents used to be bring me to visit my Uncle Lou and Aunt Anne and their son, my cousin Izzy in The Bronx when I was a kid. Isadore Meyrowitz was eleven years older than me, weighed 400 pounds, had the most mind-blowing MacIntosh-powered home stereo of anyone I've ever known, and lived in the apartment next door to his pal Larry Weinstein (later aka Leslie West).
In 1967 when I was eleven and Izzy was twenty-two, he sat me down in a bedroom with black lights and black light posters, slapped Koss headphones on my head, and said "Shut up and listen to this". He put on the new album Disraeli Gears. SWLABR was his favorite, but it was all Godhead to him (especially Eric). And soon to me, too.
To your point, Bob, Izzy showed up the next year with Wheels of Fire - two completely separate experiences - the studio disc and the live disc. Of course I loved the foil cover, but by that point all I wanted was to slap the headphones on and slip into the power and majesty of White Room. Nothing else on the studio disc matched that opening track. Jack, Eric, and Ginger sounded like equals, which of course they were, but White Room is really Jack's. Ginger drives with his titanic drumming, and Eric wah-wah's the track to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, but it's Jack's song (with songwriting partner Peter Brown), and Jack's voice is so dramatic and unforgettable that it has never mattered that the lyrics' meaning remains a total mystery. (I must also note here that Side Three - the live recordings of Crossroads and Spoonful - remains the most over-the-top explosion of combined live musical innovation and amplification ever, and for me will never be equaled... listen again sometime under headphones).
Izzy turned me on to so much more. In June, 1969, I showed up at my sixth grade end of the year party in Queens with a copy of Second Winter - the searing three-sided Johnny Winter album with the unforgettable Richard Avedon cover - tucked under my arm. When I snuck the album's blazing opening track Memory Pain onto the turntable with the volume up, the other kids howled to "turn that shit off", and promptly returned to the Monkees, the Fifth Dimension, or whatever non-threatening pop of the moment. I knew it would be a lonely life ahead, and didn't care.
Izzy was hard-core Beatles, too, of course - everything. In '69, he couldn't get enough of the power and wit of I Want You (She's So Heavy), playing it over and over again on his monstrous and brilliant MacIntish sound system. And then Izzy couldn't stop talking about a new version of The Yarbirds, now calling themselves Led Zeppelin. At his urging, I bought their first album the week it was released at the "G.O. Store" in the basement of JHS 194 in Whitestone, Queens where I was in seventh grade. I'll just say that while White Room utterly expanded my mind the year before - in "How Many More Times", when Plant's howl "Oh Rosie... steal away now..." leads into Bonham's grinding earth-shaking drum rolls, I swear I felt like I understood something about sex for the very first time.
Izzy died in 1998 at fifty four. A year before he passed, I had the incredible pleasure of introducing him to Al Kooper, one of Izzy's music heroes, at The Bottom Line. Izzy is still flipping out under headphones, seated at a station in a white room with black curtains.
Danny Kapilian
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Pete Brown wrote the lyrics to "White Room." He was a well-known poet at the time and collaborated with the band, especially Jack Bruce. I interviewed both Pete and Jack for my book on Mose Allison.. I got to know both of them pretty well over the time I was writing and researching my book. Pete in a lot of phone calls over a couple of years because he was a Mose fan and also because he was very entrenched in the blues. I remember he was also very involved in British politics at the time. I also remember he appreciated the revenue stream classic rock was providing, especially White Room.
Jack is a longer story and fairly involved and started with a letter he sent me responding to my request for an interview for my book. His letterhead bore the bassline of "Sunshine of Your Love." We had similar backgrounds in conservatory training. Like me, Jack was a chorister. When he told me he was the boy soloist in Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," I was dumbfounded. For those of us in the classical choral world, that is huge. He premiered the "War Requiem" and worked personally with Benjamin Britten but he never talked about it!! The "War Requiem" stands alongside some of the most important works in the choral music repertoire, including the Requiems of Brahms, Faure and Mozart. Britten is one of the most important composers of the 20th century and to many, his work is considered as important as Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. Jack was a classically trained cellist as well. He totally downplayed his excellent musicianship and conservatory training. He had real, trained chops and his voice was powerful with trained technique. Nonetheless, he chose to take musical risks, he left the conservatory to explore other genres....and like me (who turned to the law) was like a "fallen angel" from the structure of that world, so we connected on that level and spoke a similar language. As a personality, Jack was generous, gregarious, engaging, funny and very normal…but like many artists of that era, he was also complicated. Many of those artists struggled with the reality that they were artistic pioneers enjoying the perks of celebrity and those perks were not consistent as they aged, when they took on jowls and bellies and were lumped in as has-beens or legends. It must have been very difficult to figure out.... But Jack Bruce was a special and unique soul and I was honored to share a meal at his home with his loving family, a pint and a rolled cigarette at his local pub, a drive in his aging Porche and many hours in conversation. Like being around Mose Allison, also a living legend, I knew I was in the presence of a great contributor to an important art form but it didn't feel like it – he was just like the guy next door, only English. But even though I knew he was the singer and founding member of the first power rock trio, I wasn't a fan girl, just somebody who got to meet and hang out with him for a while discussing a topic that made a difference to him.
White Room is not that simple of a song. The meter of that song is challenging- the famous intro is in 5/4 and then it shifts to 4/4 - there were a lot of meter shifts back then but not in songs that were on the radio.. -so that song was pretty much pushing the envelope at the time. Being younger, I really didn't hear WHITE ROOM until it was past its prime but I always knew it was an iconic work.
I was blessed to connect to that work through its backdoor, through its creators - and getting to know the people who wrote it was a gift.
Patti Jones
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