sgcim

RIP.

He even recorded and gigged with the Bill Evans Trio back in 1967-68. RIP.

Sam Brown was on that album; a dude whose involvement with all types of drugs led to his suicide at the age of 39. RIP.

You're lucky you didn't join. I was in my 40s when one of my students told me that KISS stood for Knights In the Service of Satan. If you had joined their Army, word on the street is, when Army members die, they face an eternity of listening to KISS records as a reward.for their service..LOL!

When I was a HS music teacher, I used to have a day where the students brought in their fave music, to study the way melody, harmony and rhythm were either used or not used in the garbage they listened to. One really talented Black kid who had perfect pitch. brought in some great D'Angelo tracks every week . It was the only good music the students brought in. Very sad that he passed at 51, RIP.

RIP- As a kid I was nuts about the MB's. I saw them live at the Fillmore East for free, because my sister worked there. During intermission, one of my other sister's friend's (who was in the habit of 'servicing' rockers...) told me she had a surprise for me. She led me down the aisle, to the side of the stage, where Graham Edge was waiting. I shook hands with him, and he recoiled in horror, because my hand was so sweaty, and let out an 'Ugh!' All I could think of to say to him was, "Man, I really dig your poetry", and that was it. Later on, my late cousin Chuck, who was a bass player, had a Moody Blues album, and he put it on the basement stereo ( which was in a little room under the stairs- a tradition in suburbia back then) and I was shocked to hear them play not psychedelic rock music like "Ride My See-Saw", but the R&B song "Go Now". Years later I was even more shocked when I played 'The History of Rock and Roll" video for one of my music classes, and in the segment of "The British Invasion", they ended it by playing Bessie Banks' original version of "Go Now". I said to my class, " But this was done by The Moody Blues in the 60's! This is freakin' me out!" The class just looked at me and said, "He be buggin' again."

I still can't find the D.S al Coda is on any of your charts. I see clearly where the Dal Segno sign is (where you go back to to repeat a specific section, but I can't find the D.S al coda is that tells you where you should play up to before you repeat. Good selection of Nick Drake, EW&F,Steely Dan in the Pop section

Just finishing Ray Brown's biography by Jay Sweet. Today, Thomas Pynchon's new novel "Shadow Ticket" was released. It takes place in 1933, thus completing TP's cycle of a novel for every decade of the 20th Century. This one involves the disappearance of a cheese heiress, with a Private Eye hot on the trail. It seems she ran off with a big band clarinetist. to Germany. Was it of her own accord? We'll soon find out...

Thanks for the clarification on my post, Mike!

I love BJ.. He's one of the greatest steel string finger picking guitarists that ever lived. "Interesting does not mean jazz. I;d rather listen to him than any of the so-called 'jazz' guitarists of today. I'm just saying that they wouldn't have been able to play songs like "Reflections", and the one that they modeled after "All Blues" without a jazz rhythm section like Danny Thompson and Terry Cox.

Yeah, without either of those two guys, the jazz part is gone, and all you get are folk songs.

Well, it can't be much worse than Mickey Rooney playing him in "Words and Music (1948). To quote then NY Times movie reviewer, Bosley Crowther (great name for a NY movie reviewer), "t is played with fantastic incompetence by Tom Drake and Mickey Rooney in the principal roles".

RIP

I couldn't believe this when I first read it. My first reaction was HS! The VV Band is a tightly knit circle. He must have wanted to them to keep the BDC a secret.RIP

We were just playing "Little Girl Blue"the other night, and I had to look up at the music to see who wrote such incredible lyrics and great music. Sure enough, it was Rodgers and Hart. Hawke chooses such great roles.

Where da guitar, and what up wit dat bass intro?

The great British acoustic bass player has passed at 86. He played with many of my fave folk/jazz artists like Pentangle (that was his great solo arco introduction to "Reflection"), and Nick Drake (that was him playing bass on "River Man" (even though he had trouble reading 5/4 with the orchestra, he said, "Bollocks, I'll make up my own part!") . He also played with artists as diverse as Tubby Hayes, Kate Bush, John Martyn and Richard Thompson and many others.

The British Prog band Yes did a cover of "No Opportunity Necessary..."in their early days, and neither the OP of it nor any of the site's 200,000 members who listened to it had any idea it was originally written and recorded by Richie Havens. When I pointed it out and posted RH's version, only one friend of mine on the site posted that he thought they were equally good. The other posts were, "Golly, that was before Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman!" Richie Havens had a disco period, you call that "serious"?j That album by Jeremy and the Satyrs with that joke of a vocalist, was that laughfest serious, too?

Yeah, that's a really good record. I stumbled on to that when I was doing a search on the Jeremy and the Satyrs album. It really struck me how respectful the audience was of Tim and his music. You could hear a pin drop when they were playing, and they were so hip, they could tell what song Tim was going to play by the chords he played as an introduction to each song. The same musicians were on Richie Havens album "Something Else Again", Eddie Gomez, Warren Bernhardt and Donald MacDonald. I thought "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed" was from "Mixed Bag", and I flipped out when I heard it on"Something Else Again". I knew some great song was not on "Mixed bag", but I forgot which one it was. A lot of the great folk artists back then like Richie, Tim, Nick Drake, Judee Sill, and Kenny Rankin were all hip to jazz, and used jazz musicians on their records

Thanks, Niko! Those three musicians who worked together in the NYC club and studio scene of the 60s and 70s, Gary McFarland, Sam Brown and Donald McDonald, all died at relatively young ages. Brown, of suicide at the age of 38, McFarland of a still unsolved case of drug poisoning/OD at 38, and McDonald of an undisclosed illness at 41.

I listened to Essra Mohwk's (Sandra Hurwitz) first two albums and thought she and Sill were doing two very different things. I found Sill's first two albums to be vastly superior musically to Mohawk 's pounding out minor 11th chords and wailing out unmemorable melodies. As Robert Christgau said of her, ""Here is a vocalist who should throw away all her Leon Russell records. When she calls herself a 'full-fledged woman,' it sounds like 'pool player's' woman, which given her persona makes more sense."[ Also, lumping her in with Judee Sill as a 'forgotten singer/songwriter' makes no sense, as she released twelve albums in her long career as a singer/songwriter, and had gigs with, as background vocalist and lead vocalist, such well-known artists as Carole King, The Grateful Dead, Kool and the Gang and John Mellencamp. There is also the fact that she was a beautiful woman, and had a relationship with Frank Zappa, who encouraged her and signed her up with his record company Bizarre Records. She even sang with The Mothers for a while. Sill, on the other hand was not what you'd call an attractive woman, was ignored by Zappa (even though her husband played keyboards with the MOI), and she publicly outed the head of the record company she was signed with (David Geffen of Asylum Records) calling him a"little,fat fag who wore pink shoes", causing him to drop all advertising for her records, which resulted in poor sales. I don't know of anyone who ever heard of her who lived outside of her tiny contingent of fans in a small section of California. Sill also had the same addiction problems her husband had, and severe back problems from a car accident. It also hurt both singer/songwriters that they were not playing what was then considered 'commercial' music. A few of the same sidemen on both albums ; Eddie on Bass, the mysterious Donald McDonald on Drums , and Steig on winds. I'm referring to the Jeremy and the Satyrs album and Sandy Hurvitz' first album on Reprise. If anyone knows what became of McDonald, please chime in here. I can't find anything about him anywhere,

Yeah, Bob Harris(1) was the Leaves' drug dealer. They didn't even know he was a musician. He walked over to a piano while he was making a 'delivery' to them and played the schist out of the piano, and they freaked out. He wound up playing keyboard for the Leaves on some obscure tracks. Then Pons got Harris and Sill involved with the Turtles and got Harris into the "vaudeville" Mothers. Or about that Jeremy and the Satyrs album with that horrible singer?

The piano player on "Live at the Fillmore East album in 1971 playing his Wurlitzer was a junkie dude named Bob Harris, who was a great jazz pianist and also played and did arrangements for The Turtles. He got the gig with Zappa on the recommendation of Jim Pons, bass player for the Turtles and then Zappa in 1971 . Harris was also the husband of Judee Sill, the first artist David Geffen signed for Asylum Records. Sill had written Lady-O, which was one of the last tunes the Turtles did before they broke up. The Turtles had her on salary as their songwriter for about $35 a week.Sill's first album was co-produced by Jim Pons, the Turtles bass player, , and John Beck, guitarist of The Leaves. I never heard of Judee Sill until about 1990, and flipped out over her music, so I wanted to find out who the hell she was. I emailed Mark Volman about her, and he seemed to be bugged about her, and kind of blew me off. He seemed annoyed about all the interest in Sill some 20 years after her two Asylum albums were released. I tried Volman again, and this time he answered all my questions, but was still negative about Sill, but very positive about her husband, Bob Harris (not to be confused with another Bob Harris, who played keyboards and sang for Zappa in 1980). I read Howard Kaylan's bio, and he has nothing but great things to say about Sill, so there must have been something going on with Sill and Volman. I guess we'll never know, like that middle finger deal on "Overnight Sensation" T.D. mentioned. Anyway RIP Mark Volman.