GA Russell

Happy Birthday Erik!

Happy Birthday Captain Wrong!

I'm with Peter King.

The Eskimos have put Jesse Lumsden on the nine game injured list. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/eski...article1210064/ ***** The Roughriders have hired Marcus Crandell to be their quarterbacks coach. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/cran...article1209603/ ***** Mike Kelly has announced that Derick Armstrong will never again play for him and the Bombers. The team has offered him to the league as trade bait, and there have been no takers. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/arms...article1210037/

Lala got in 128 jazz releases this week. About 100 of them are from Denon, which is to say Savoy and Muse. This includes the boxes of The Complete Savoy... of Charlie Parker (and Dial too), Lester Young, and Stan Getz.

7/4, don't you think she was cute? Judging by looks alone, I would guess that she was pretty popular with the boys.

Just last week I was emailed some jokes about the economy. "The economy is so bad that..." One of them was, The highest paying job is jury duty! A couple of others were: I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail. The bank returned my check marked "Insufficient Funds", and I had to call to ask them or me.

I read yesterday that the girl was an Iranian immigrant and a member of the Bahai faith. The Bahai's believe in interracial marriage, so maybe she was brought up to date black men. No big deal to her. The medical examiner is now saying that the fact that she bought the gun two days before makes it very likely that it will be ruled a murder-suicide. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/evid...article1209350/

It is my recollection, could be wrong, that Paul Revere and the Raiders were the first rock act on Columbia Records. Mitch Miller was Columbia's a&r man, and he disliked rock 'n' roll, so all of the company's rock acts were signed to the Epic label. Shortly after that came The Byrds. That's how I recall it.

Happy Birthday 2009 Randy!

Those of us who were born at the right time watched Where the Action Is upon our return from school each weekday in the mid-60s. This was a Dick Clark show which featured a repertory cast of singers with (as I recall) one guest act per day, all lip-synching their songs. One of the regulars was Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the show catapulted them to popularity. Clark did what he could to make household names of each of the members. Their lead guitarist was Drake. His most famous solo, such as it was, was on their hit Just Like Me, which had the same feel as Louie, Louie. Here's his LA Times obituary. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,2699826.story Drake Levin, guitarist, dies at 62 Email Picture Drake Levin, far right, died Saturday at his home in San Francisco after a long battle with cancer. Levin was lead guitarist in the '60s for Paul Revere & the Raiders but left to form his own bands and establish himself as a top blues player in the Bay Area. By Randy Lewis July 7, 2009 Drake Levin, lead guitarist for Paul Revere & the Raiders during the quintet's hit-making prime in the mid-1960s, died Saturday at his home in San Francisco after a long battle with cancer, according to his longtime friend and former Raiders bandmate Phil Volk. He was 62. Levin's four-year stint with the Raiders, known for its campy Revolutionary War uniforms, thigh-high black riding boots and tri-corner hats, coincided with a string of top 10 hits including "Kicks," "Hungry" and "Good Thing." For a time he was one of the most recognizable American rock guitarists through the group's weekly appearances on the Dick Clark-produced music series "Where the Action Is." The band's 1965 hit "Just Like Me," prominently featuring Levin's double-tracked lead guitar, is on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll." "I've lost my dear friend, my Raider buddy, and the music world has lost a guitar icon," Volk said in a note posted on his website. Drake Maxwell Levinshefski was born Aug. 17, 1946, in Chicago, and after his family moved to Boise, Idaho, he began to gain recognition as a musician with bassist Volk in the Surfers. Nebraska-born Revere also had moved to Boise, where he formed the first incarnation of the Raiders in the late 1950s. That edition of the group charted a top 40 single with "Like, Long Hair" in 1961, making it Boise's best-known rock band. Revere invited the Surfers to open a Raiders show outside Boise in 1963, with Raiders drummer Mike "Smitty" Smith sitting in. This put the group on Revere's radar screen, and when his guitarist left, he offered the job to Levin. Volk soon followed him into the Raiders. The group relocated to Portland, Ore., looking to build on its regional following. Revere and the Raiders recorded Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" a week before it was put on tape by another Portland band, the Kingsmen, whose version became the national hit and established it as one of the quintessential songs of what came to be known as "garage rock." Levin's guitar work came to the fore in "Just Like Me," a gloriously sloppy number with a chord progression and overall sound similar to "Louie Louie" that reached No. 11 in early 1966. Levin, Volk and Smith left the Raiders in 1967, leaving behind Revere and lead singer Mark Lindsay, and formed the Brotherhood. By the time the Raiders landed their only No. 1 hit, "Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)" in 1971, Levin was long gone. Levin's prominence as a guitarist helped him land subsequent work playing with organist Lee Michaels, singer-songwriter Emitt Rhodes and others. After settling in the Bay Area, he became one of the region's top blues players and formed groups of his own, including Billy Dunn and Bluesway. He last played with his Raiders cohorts at a 1997 reunion in Portland that featured all the mid-'60s band members except Revere, who has continued touring with his own lineup. Levin is survived by his wife of 37 years, Sandra; sons David and Darby; his mother, Charle; his brother Jeff and his sister Lori. A memorial service is planned for July 18, but details have not been settled. When finalized, arrangements will be posted on Volk's website, philfangvolk.com.

Just wrote the check.

My favorite is #2. Obviously, an unpopular choice. Anybody can have a neat graphic, but only a specific band can have a photo of its members.

It looks like Derick Armstrong (arguably the Bombers' best player) is through with the club. He suited up for last week's game, but refused to enter the game when called upon due to a dispute with new coach Mike Kelly. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Win...036621-sun.html ***** Ian Smart was injured in last week's game, so the Lions have signed Tyler Ebell. We'll see if he is able to perform after last year's injury. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/lion...article1208006/

The girl bought the gun Thursday, two days before the shooting. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/poli...article1208381/

Happy Birthday 2009 White Lightning!

Happy Birthday 2009 Jack!

Sun Record Company, Where Rock 'N Roll Was Born (Direct Source, a Canadian company), discs 1 and 2

The NY Daily News is reporting that the police think it was murder-suicide. There is a photo of the girl, who I think is attractive. I imagine that there is not a lot of interracial dating in Tennessee, and that this girl was a rare bird in more ways than one. As ss1 says, IMO. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football...lle_report.html

From that picture he was obviously younger than I had imagined him to be. Nobody would have heard of him if the record companies had paid the royalties they owed their artists in the first place. Maybe Chuck can answer this: I have long wondered why the record companies, who wrote the contracts in the first place, would promise to pay royalties if they had no intention of paying them. It wasn't just the indie labels. It was Klein who determined that RCA had not been paying Sam Cooke what they owed him.

Happy Independence Day everyone in the USA! In the past I have celebrated the day by opening up a Beach Boys album, the quintessential American rock 'n' roll band. But I've run out of them, so today I opened up disc 2 of a Sun Records compilation I found a couple of months ago. I figure that you can't get much more American than Sun Records!

Three books I ordered arrived in the mail today: St. Alphonsus Liguori - Preparation for Death St. Alphonsus Liguori - The 12 Steps to Holiness and Salvation Thomas a Kempis - The Imitation of Christ

Saskatchewan Roughriders 28....British Columbia Lions 24 Exciting game. The Riders dominated, but BC was able to keep it close on the scoreboard. Lots of fumbles. BC was driving down the field to win the game as time ran out. ***** Here's an article that says that Jesse Lumsden's contract calls for his income to depend upon the number of games he is able to play. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/foot...article1206431/ ***** Here's one last preview - a good analysis of the BC Lions. http://bclionsden.ca/blog/?p=856

Saskatchewan Roughriders 28....British Columbia Lions 24 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/foot...article1206548/ Exciting game. The Riders dominated, but BC was able to keep it close on the scoreboard. Lots of fumbles. BC was driving down the field to win the game as time ran out. ***** Here's an article that says that Jesse Lumsden's contract calls for his income to depend upon the number of games he is able to play. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/foot...article1206431/ ***** Here's one last preview - a good analysis of the BC Lions. http://bclionsden.ca/blog/?p=856

tm, the booklet is 20 pages including the front and back. There is a small photo on almost every page. Laurie wrote the liner notes in May. I haven't taken the time to read them yet.