Good to see you back, you old tart  

Much of the recent stuff isn't really my bag, baby.

Sorry that The Move or the original (British) Nirvana haven't made an appearance, but they disbanded around 1971.

DAY 231.
Funkadelic................................Maggot Brain   (1971)








First came the packaging, a shrieking womans head erupts from the soil on the cover, while the sleevenotes quote the Process Church Of The Final Judgement

Then the music, brave and bold it meshes spine-tingling lyrics with an eerie, demented, transcendental score.

But the real power lies with the title track. Myth has it that frontman George Clinton discovered his brothers rotten body and cracked skull, sprawled in a Chicago apartment, hence the "Maggot Brain"


Gonna listen to "Blue" this afternoon, and this one tonight.

Last edited by arabchanter (01/4/2018 11:00 am)

DAY 230.
Joni Mitchell........................Blue   (1971)








Found this album good, but affy intimate and soul wrentching, Joni Mitchell is a burd a widnay want to fa' oot wi', next thing you know she's wrote a sang slating you!


Joking aside it's a grower I think, like Cohen's the other day, it get better the more familiar you get with it, there's no hiding Mitchell was one of the finest, if not the finest female singer-songwriters of her era.


"Little Green" is a beautiful, but heart wrenching song, about the child she gave up for adoption, this and the title track along with "Carey" were the stand outs in my humbles, this album will be getting put on the subbies bench, for future consideration, it's well worth a listen if you haven't heard it.




Bits & Bobs;

Her confessional lyrics and haunting voice have inspired artists from Taylor Swift to Madonna. But it was a tragic secret that gave Joni Mitchell her voice.



 Lying in her hospital bed watching the blizzard outside pelt snowflakes against the window, Canadian art student Joni Anderson makes a decision that is to change her life. In despair, she decides 
to give up her newborn daughter for adoption. She’s unmarried, just turned 21, has no job, no money and no roof over her head. This is the early Sixties and single motherhood is hugely stigmatised. In 
her mind, she has no choice. Little does she know that the aching despair and grief about what she is doing now will be a source of musical inspiration for the next five decades. The young mother would go on to become one of the most celebrated singer-songwriters of all time.

 Mitchell was raised in the rural province of Saskatchewan, in Canada, the only child of Bill and Myrtle Anderson; he was a grocer and she a housewife. Joni, a precocious, artistic child, remembers they weren’t well off. ‘My family could only afford the box of eight Crayola crayons, but I craved the one with all 24 colours,’ she recalled.Mitchell’s childhood was blighted, aged nine, when she contracted polio, leaving her left arm weakened and leading to muscular atrophy in later life. It was a terrible blow, but she remembers spending her time in hospital singing. And yet, it was art that was her overriding passion. A talented painter, she studied at a local college, and it 
was there that she accidentally fell pregnant. The father was a fellow artist called Brad MacMath, who, on hearing the news, fled to California. Terrified her parents would find out, Mitchell left her home town for Toronto. ‘I was the only virgin in art school. I was holding on to this precious thing and stupidly let it go. I got caught out immediately,’ she later said. ‘I was a criminal, a fallen woman.’
‘It was a huge scandal to be pregnant out of wedlock back then,’ says Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us, the book about Mitchell’s life upon which the biopic will be based. ‘It was like she’d killed somebody. So she goes and does this heroic thing – she goes across the country by herself to deal with it.’Unable to talk about what she’d done, Mitchell found her voice in music. She began singing and playing her guitar in local coffee shops, and weaved her internal agony into her lyrics. It was through the performance circuit in 1965 that she met her first husband, folk singer Chuck Mitchell. They moved to New York the same year and seemed happy for a while. But the marriage ran into difficulties because she felt he stifled her creative freedom. ‘To get away from him, I would go out and drink coffee and write,’ she explained. She also described the relationship as a ‘marriage of convenience’, saying he’d promised to help her get her daughter back if they married – but never did.

The marriage lasted just two years, and Mitchell’s subsequent divorce triggered a new sexual freedom for the singer, who moved into a flat on her own in New York. ‘It was unusual for a young woman to live by herself, to decide that she wanted to take a different lover,’ adds Weller. ‘That was very new then and Joni pioneered it.’ Mitchell’s astonishing, raw talent had New York’s music scene falling over itself to welcome her. Talent agent David Geffen, who later founded Geffen Records, one of the most successful labels ever, was an early champion, promoting her to his peers, while legendary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was desperate to work with her.Mitchell wrote some of her most memorable songs during this time, including Chelsea Morning and The Circle Game, inspired by her new single life. Her gravelly voice, the legacy of an ingrained smoking habit, became her trademark. Later, she would reflect on the irony of how quickly success came after she gave up her child. ‘Three years later, I had a recording contract and a house and a car, but how could I see that in the future?’

 In late 1967, Mitchell’s private life took a new turn when she met David Crosby, of Seventies supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and moved to LA with him. They lived in Laurel Canyon, a neighbourhood famous for its hippy inhabitants, including The Mamas & The Papas. The Beatles and Rolling Stones would stop by for parties whenever they were in town. Her relationship with Crosby briefly flourished, but Mitchell was a complex character. ‘It was very easy to love her, but turbulent,’ he said. The relationship ended a year later, with Mitchell, who was embracing the free-love movement of the Seventies, moving on to a fling with his bandmate, Graham Nash. Other lovers to share her bed over the coming years would be fellow singer-songwriters James Taylor and Jackson Browne, actors Sam Shepard and Warren Beatty and jazz musician Don Alias.While her love life was complicated, musically Mitchell hit her stride in LA, winning her first Grammy in 1970. Her first six albums sold 4.6 million copies, including the seminal Blue album, hailed as a masterpiece and one of the best of the past 50 years. Mitchell didn’t just bare her soul for Blue, she mined it, digging deeper than any songwriter had ever dared. Everything that had happened to her – losing her child, broken love affairs, struggling with fame – tumbled out. ‘Joni’s lyrics were hard fought,’ says author Weller. ‘She had to work hard to go so deeply inside herself. It was a moment of great vulnerability when she pulled those lyrics out.’
Overnight, Mitchell’s fame eclipsed the other popular female singers of the day, mainly Aretha Franklin, Carole King and Janis Joplin. FÍted by critics and fans alike, two of the greatest performers of the time, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, asked to cover her songs, and her gigs were instant sell-outs. But at the time, she was criticised and acclaimed in equal measure for her emotional honesty. ‘I was being told that people were horrified by the intimacy [of Blue],’ explained Mitchell. ‘People said it was shocking. It wasn’t. It was about human nature. It’s a soul trying to find itself and seeing its failings and having regrets.’Taylor Swift ranks Blue as her favourite album of all time. ‘Joni wrote it about her most haunting pains and her deepest demons,’ she’s said. Every major music star, from Prince to Courtney Love, has since covered Mitchell’s songs. Madonna cites Mitchell as a major influence on her career, saying, ‘Blue is amazing. I would have to say of all the women I’ve heard, she had the most profound effect on me from a lyrical point of view.’ But the knock-on effect of Blue’s success meant Mitchell had to perform those deeply personal songs at one sell-out gig after another. The emotional toll was huge. ‘Some people would call it a nervous breakdown, but I just hit that pocket that everyone does on some point in their journey through 
their lives,’ she recalls. ‘That identity crisis, that “Who am I, really?” If you’re lucky, it hits you early, like me.’

She was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort McLeod, Alberta, Canada. She played a variety of instruments when she was young, but her primary interest was painting. In 1965, she was married for a short time to the folk singer Chuck Mitchell, which is where she got her last name.


 
Mitchell is a very honored artist: She is a member of the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame and the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame. Billboard gave her their Century Award in 1995, and in 2002, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.


 
She smoked cigarettes since the age of nine, when she took up the habit with other girls in her church choir.


 
Mitchell had beef with Rolling Stone, which she claims was over a personal issue with a guy at the magazine. Rolling Stone named her "Old Lady of the Year" of 1971 and ran a diagram of the men whose hearts she supposedly broke.


 
She is confident in her abilities, and has referred to herself as "an arrogant artist." Mitchell says she detests false humility.


 
In 1965 she had a daughter, Kelly, with a boyfriend who left when she was three months pregnant. In an attempt to keep the baby, she married a musician named Chuck Mitchell, but not long after their nuptials, Joni gave up Kelly for adoption. Kelly was renamed Kilauren by her new parents, In 1997, Joni reunited with her daughter (now named Kilauren Gibb), but in 2001, they broke off contact.


 
Mitchell had a very distinctive guitar style and used a panoply of alternate tunings. This made it very difficult to replicate her sound or draw up accurate chord charts for her songs.



"Little Green"


Little Green is about the child that Joni Mitchell gave up for adoption in 1965:

you sign all the papers in the family name
you are sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed
little green have a happy ending



Mitchell gave birth to the child, who she named Kelly Dale, six months earlier, traveling from Saskatchewan to Toronto to so and keeping it secret from her parents. The father was out of the picture, but she tried to keep the child and establish a family by marrying a singer named Chuck Mitchell, but it didn't work out. She explained in a 1998 interview with Toronto Globe and Mail: "I was dirt poor. An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child. It was difficult parting with the child, but I had to let her go."




Joni and her daughter were reunited in 1997, but it did not have a happy ending - they broke off contact a few years later.


 Mitchell's daughter Kelly Dale Anderson was born February 19, 1965. Mitchell chose the name Kelly after the color kelly green, which represented spring - thus the song's title. Kelly's adoptive parents David and Ida Gibb renamed her Kilauren.


"Carey"

This song was written during Joni Mitchell's time in the caves of the island of Matala, Crete, in March through June of 1969. It was a popular retreat for 1960s hippies, who went there seeking enlightenment and wound up sleeping in the old Roman burial crypts.


 
Carey was a real person Joni met in Matala. He had flaming red hair and often wore a turban. They met, says Mitchell, when Carey "blew out of a restaurant in Greece, literally. Kaboom! I heard, facing the sunset. I turned around and this guy is blowing out the door of this restaurant. He was a cook; he lit a gas stove and it exploded. Burned all the red hair off himself right through hiswhite Indian turban. I went, 'That was an interesting entrance-I'll takenote of that.'"




The following transcript of the introduction to this song that Mitchell gave during a performance at the Troubadour is on this site devoted to Crete;


"I went to Greece a couple years ago and over there I met a very unforgettable character. I have a hard time remembering people's names, like, so I have to remember things by association, even unforgettable characters I have to remember by association, so his name was 'Carrot' Raditz, Carey Raditz, and oh, he's a great character. He's got sort of a flaming red personality, and flaming red hair and a flaming red appetite for red wine and he fancied himself to be a gourmet cook, you know, if he could be a gourmet cook in a cave in Matala. And he announced to my girlfriend and I the day that we met him that he was the best cook in the area and he actually was working at the time I met him – he was working at this place called the Delphini restaurant – until it exploded, singed half of the hair off of his beard and his legs, and scorched his turban, melted down his golden earrings.



"Anyway, one day he decided he was going to cook up a feast, you know, so we had to go to market because, like, in the village of Matala there was one woman who kind of had a monopoly – well actually there were three grocery stores, but she really had a monopoly, and because of her success and her affluence, she had the only cold storage in the village, too. So she had all the fresh vegetables and all the cold soft drinks and she could make the yogurt last a lot longer than anyone else, and we didn't feel like giving her any business that day. Rather than giving her our business we decided to walk ten miles to the nearest market.



"So I had ruined the pair of boots that I'd brought with me from the city, because they were really 'citified,' kind of slick city boots that were meant to walk on flat surfaces. The first night there we drank some Raki and I tried to climb the mountain and that was the end of those shoes. So he lent me these boots of his which were like Li'l Abner boots – like those big lace-up walking boots - and a pair of Afghani socks, which made my feet all purple at the end of the day. And I laced them up around my ankles and I couldn't touch any – the only place my foot touched was on the bottom, you know, there was nothing rubbing in the back or the sides – they were huge - and he wasn't very tall, either, come to think of it, was kind of strange – I guess he had sort of webbed feet or something. But we started off on this long trek to the village, I forget the name of it now, between Matala and Iraklion – and started off in the cool of the morning. And by the time we got halfway there we were just sweltering, me in these thick Afghani socks and heavy woolens and everything. So we went into the ruins of King Phestos' palace to sit down and have a little bit of a rest, and while we were there these two tourist buses pulled up and everybody got off the buses in kind of an unusual symmetry, you know, they all sort of walked alike and talked alike and they all kind of looked alike. And they all filed over to a series of rubble-y rocks- a wall that was beginning to crumble – lined themselves up in a row and took out their viewing glasses, overgrown opera glasses, and they started looking at the sky. And suddenly this little speck appeared on the horizon that came closer and closer, this little black speck.



"Carey was standing behind all of this leaning on his cane, and as it came into view he suddenly broke the silence of this big crowd and he yells out, 'it's ah MAAGPIE' in his best North Carolina drawl. And suddenly all the glasses went down in symmetry and everybody's heads turned around to reveal that they were all very birdlike looking people. They had long skinny noses – really – they had been watching birds so long that they looked like them, you know – and this one woman turned around and she says to him (in British accent) "it's NOT a magpie – it's a crooked crow." Then she very slowly and distinctly turned her head back, picked up her glasses, and so did everybody else, and we kept on walking. Bought two kilos of fish which would have rotted in the cave hadn't it been for the cats.



"When we got back from that walk, Stelios, who was the guy who ran the Mermaid Cafe, had decided to put an addition on his kitchen, which turned out to be really illegal and it was so illegal, as a matter of fact, that the Junta dragged him off to jail. And torture was legal over there – they burnt his hands and his feet with cigarette butts mainly because they hated, you know, all of the Canadians and Americans and wandering Germans living in the caves, but they couldn't get them out of there because it was controlled by the same archaeologist that controlled the ruins of King Phestos' palace, and he didn't mind you living there as long as you didn't Day-Glo all of the caves. And everyone was, like, putting all of their psychedelia over all this ancient writing. So they carted him off to jail."


 
The Mermaid Cafe in Matala was a popular place in the late '60s, boasting a battery-operated radio and bare-wire lightbulbs strung through the tree branches for lighting. The owner of the Mermaid, Stelios Xagorarakis, was arrested during the hippie occupation of Matala for some dubious illegal non-menu items that he allegedly cooked at his restaurant. According to Stelios himself, he was held for three days and not only survived, but thrived, now the owner of 7 health food stores in the Southern California region where he lives.


 
The standard fare on the menu at the Mermaid Cafe included fresh oatmeal, grilled cheese with onions, omlettes, and always halva, which is described as a "dense, sweet confection."



Sorry Joni, but this version is so much better, please indulge an old man.;




 
 
 
 
 

 

Like I said, only recently appreciated Maggot Brain.  A few different tales exist about the background to the song, ranging from the band stumbling on a movie set, to Clinton finding his brother's decomposing body.

How many new vinyl albums have you purchased so far, A/C?

Last edited by PatReilly (29/3/2018 9:14 am)

PatReilly wrote:

How many new vinyl albums have you purchased so far, A/C?

Only 18 I'm afraid.


The 11 that I posted a picture of a while back, and the 7 pictured below, would love to have bought more, but financial constraints (the kids) dictate when I can buy them, but probably works out at 1 a fortnight.






A few in there I would never have listened to, let alone purchased, if it wasn't for this book!

 

DAY 232
Janis Joplin....................................Pearl    (1971)









Although I always kinda liked Janis Joplin, to be honest her screamin' sometimes got a bit much for me, "Pearl" showed me another side to her vocals that I probably didn't hear before or, perhaps this album brought her all round talent to the fore.


Always felt for her, she seemed to be constantly searching for love/approval, but unfortunately couldn't/wouldn't accept it when it came along, as if she felt unworthy of praise.


Amateur psyche moment over, really enjoyed this album, her backing band didn't try to overshadow her, as happened (in my humbles) with previous backing bands, I enjoyed "Get It While You Can" and "Cry Baby" obviously "Me And Bobby McGee" but the one that gave me a tingly feeling was "Mercedes Benz" and that was before I knew it was the last song she sang, and "Buried Alive In The Blues" the one she never laid the vocals down to, was also a stand out.


Will I buy it?  probably, but not yet as a lot of albums are in front of this one at the mo'

If you like your chanters giving every ounce of themselves, look no further, this album should be mandatory listening, if you like passion and emotion.



Bits & Bobs;



Joplin was found dead in room 105 of the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles after a heroin overdose. The hotel was later renamed The Highland Gardens.



In her last will and testament she left over $1,500 to her friends for a big party. . It was held at The Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, on October 26, 1971. The Grateful Dead performed.
She made these changes to her will just two days before her death. The tickets were printed with, "The drinks are on pearl."


 
She was on the cover of Newsweek May 26, 1969 with the headline, "Rebirth of the Blues." She was slated for the cover in April, but got bumped when former president Dwight Eisenhower died.


 
Her idol was the blues singer Bessie Smith. When Joplin found out Smith was buried in an unmarked grave, she bought a headstone that read, "The greatest Blues singer in the world will never stop singing."

[img]https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/webdr01/2013/1/18/13/enhanced-buzz-18157-1358535297-2.jpg?downsize=715:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto[/img]

The 1979 movie The Rose, starring Bette Midler, was based on Joplin's life.

 
In 1963, she was voted "The Ugliest Man on Campus" at the University of Texas, Austin, (absolute Cunts) This prompted her to leave her home state of Texas and go to San Francisco.


 
She was going to be married in 1966, but backed out to join Big Brother and the Holding Company. Other dating exploits include going to a barbecue with the future United States Secretary of Education William J. Bennett and hitting Doors frontman Jim Morrison over the head with a broken bottle when he tried to pick her up.


 
Joplin appeared in many movies, mostly because of her music. These include Janis, Woodstock, Festival Express and Petulia (starring George C. Scott and the Grateful Dead).


 
Love, Janis is a biography of her written by her sister Laura, who is also a psychotherapist.


 
She played with many bands over her career. She started with Big Brother, and then used the Joplinaires, the Kozmic Blues Band, and the Full Tilt Boogie Band as backing groups.


 
She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 - the same year as Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers Band, Frank Zappa, Al Green, Martha and the Vandellas, and Neil Young.


 
Her ashes were scattered off the coast of California.


 
Joplin: "Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me."


 
In 1967, one of Janis' lovers was Joe McDonald, of Country Joe And The Fish . They were reportedly quite happy together; they would typically lie together in their apartment and crank up the radio whenever either a Country Joe or a Big Brother (Janis' band) song would come on. Janis joked that for a while their bands merged into "Country Brother and the Holding Fish." They broke up very amicably, parting more for their careers than anything else.


 
Probably one of the greatest tragedies that shaped Janis' worldview and hence life was her having been born and raised in the small oil town of Port Arthur, Texas. Many times she would refer to the relentless bullying she'd been a victim of in that most conservative of US states. She spent most of her adult life seeking the approval and acceptance she'd never found in school. In 1969, just after a September concert at the Hollywood Bowl, she played for a packed audience in Austin, Texas, in October. Of the audience described in the papers as "frantically enthusiastic," she remarked afterwards "I used to go to school here and they never treated me like this!"


 
Janice's father Seth Joplin was an engineer at a Texas plant in Port Arthur. Both he and Dorothy East, his wife and Janice's mother, wanted their daughter to become a schoolteacher.


 
Producer John Simon recalls that Janis Joplin would methodically practice various kinds of shrieks and screams which, of course, were made to seem like spontaneous, instinctive explosions of emotion in concert. "She'd go, 'How about this scream?' She'd say, 'Tina Turner does this,' or 'Mama Thornton does it this way.'"

In his memoir Clive: Inside the Record Business, then-Columbia chief Clive Davis, a friend and fan of Janis, tells about the release of "Me and Bobby McGee." At the time Billboard reviewed new singles under the prediction headings Top 20, Top 60, Top 100, and Also Possible. Davis was staggered to hear that the top trade magazine was about to rate the posthumous release "Also Possible." He had already placed a two-page ad in the publication publicly calling the single an "instant classic."


 Clive phoned Billboard and asked that in the interests of discretion the categorization not be printed. The magazine acquiesced and no review appeared. As Davis wrote, "It was the only time that I ever tried to interfere with Billboard's critical judgement -- and I was glad that it didn't prove an embarrassment to either of us."


 She had also started working on an album with  a new producer, Paul Rothschild. For all her talent and all her fame, Joplin did not see much future  for herself as a singer. ‘She gave so much to singing that her expectation was that she’d blow her voice out,’ Cooke says. ‘She said, “When that happens, I’ll buy a bar in Marin County – ‘come to Janis’s’.”’ 

 But Rothschild offered her a different vision of the future. ‘Paul saw in Janis this greater singer that she didn’t even know about yet,’ Cooke says. ‘And that was a revelation to her. ‘He said to her once, “Janis, sing for me like  you did in the church choir,” and she came out with this absolutely pure soprano. He wanted her to explore the different voices she had at her command, to consider the dynamic range and to consider using full power more judiciously. He saw  the possibility of a singing career that would last far longer than she had expected. He said to her, “Janis, 30 years from now I want you to be making your greatest album, and I want to be making it with you.” So she’s thinking, “Fifty-seven! Wouldn’t that be something!”’

 But Joplin evidently still nurtured a fatalistic sense of her future. On September 18 Hendrix died. ‘Goddamit,’ Joplin told friends, ‘he beat me to it.’ Two weeks later, on October 3, following a recording session at Sunset Sound Studio in Los Angeles, Joplin returned to the Landmark motel, where she was staying. The following day Cooke found her dead in her room from a heroin overdose. 

 ‘She had taken so much pride in what she had achieved from quitting, putting her new band together and going out on tour,’ Cooke says. ‘But she had that addictive gene. She was feeling so strong, and then the little demon says, “You can handle this, why not give yourself a little reward?” If that one thing had been different, she might  still be here. That’s why it’s a tragedy.’


 
"Buried Alive In The Blues"


 
There are no vocals on this track. Joplin's band, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, the recorded their parts on October 3, 1970 at Sunset Sound studios in Hollywood. Joplin listened to the track and was scheduled to record her vocal the next day, but that night she was found dead from a drug overdose at the Landmark Hotel. The instrumental track was left on the album as a tribute to Janis.


 
Pearl was released three months after Joplin died. It was her most commercially successful album, going to #1 in the US. It only reached #50 in the UK. "Pearl" was one of Joplin's nicknames.



 
This song was written by Nick Gravenites, who also wrote the 1969 Joplin songs "As Good As You've Been to This World" and "Work Me Lord"

 
Paul Butterfield, who included the song on his 1973 album Better Days, was the first to record a version with lyrics. The song is about someone who is so lonely and tormented, he feels like he's buried alive.


 
Love, Janis is a book by Janis Joplin's younger sister Laura Joplin, a biography of Janis. Quite a chunk of the book's content is letters from Janis. Since she couldn't be here to sing this track (which you can tell would have been a knock-down-drag-out hit), we'll share this Jack Nicholson anecdote: Backstage at an Elton John concert, Nicholson was there complaining to Janis' manager Albert Grossman about his not having released Janis from her schedule for her to appear in the film Five Easy Pieces. Janis would have played Helena, had the deal gone through. Janis came to her manager's defense: "My managers are terrific. Whatever they wanted to do, they had a reason." Laura notes that one of Janis' defining traits was loyalty.


"Mercedes Benz"

This is based on a song called C'mon, God, and buy me a Mercedes Benz by the Los Angeles beat poet Michael McClure. Joplin saw McClure perform it, and on August 8, 1970 she reworked it into her own song, which she performed about an hour later.




As recounted in the Patti Smith memoir Just Kids, before her show at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, she went to a nearby bar (likely Vahsen's, later renamed Little Dick's) with her good friend, the songwriter Bob Neuwirth, and two more recent acquaintances, the actors Rip Torn and Geraldine Page. Joplin started reciting the line, "Oh, Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz" - the first line of McClure's song. The four started banging beer mugs on the table to form a rhythm, and Neuwirth wrote down lyrics he and Joplin came up with on a napkin. They finished the song, and Janis performed it at the show, introducing it by saying, "I just wrote this at the bar on the corner. I'm going to do it Acapulco."




That show was recorded and widely bootlegged, as it was her penultimate performance and the debut of "Mercedes Benz." Joplin played her last concert on August 12 at Harvard Stadium, and died on October 4.


 
The song is a social commentary on how many people relate happiness and self-worth with money and material possessions. Sung acapella in a blues style, Joplin was poking fun at the mindset that luxury goods will make everything better.


 
Janis Joplin is from Port Arthur, Texas, a small city close to the Gulf of Mexico near the Louisiana border. In the second verse, the line "Dialing for Dollars is trying to find me" refers to a segment the local NBC station ran called "Dialing for Dollars." The station would announce a password on the air, then call a local phone number at random later on. If whoever answered knew the password, that person would win a cash prize. Variations of "Dialing for Dollars" ran in many cities throughout the United States and Canada in the '60s and early '70s.

 

Janis Joplin never got a Mercedes Benz, but she did have a 1965 Porsche that was painted to become a piece of hippie art.


 
This song spoke to the shift in the counterculture, as some of the impoverished musicians speaking out against the system were now very rich. As Barney Hoskyns, who wrote about Joplin and the song in his book Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock told us, "Rock was now big business, and a lot of money was flooding into the pockets of people who never expected to make it. This set up a mixture of expectation and guilt – they were acquiring a taste for the finer things but knew that a good hippie shouldn't be materialistic. By the early '70s it had all changed, and rock stars were the new Yuppies."


 
Joplin recorded this song at Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles on October 1, 1970 with producer Paul Rothchild, famous for his work with The Doors. It ended up being her last recording session, as she died three days later (she also recorded a version of "Happy Trails" as a 30th birthday present for John Lennon" in this session).




The Pearl album was just about finished when Joplin died. Rothchild included her raw take of "Mercedes Benz" on the album, leaving it acapella. A quip Joplin made before her vocal take - "I'd like to do a song of great social and political import" - was included as an introduction. In its unadorned state, the song showcased Joplin's humor and raw vocal talent.


 
In the mid-'90s, Mercedes used this in commercials for their cars. It was one of the great misappropriations of a song in a commercial, as Joplin's song was meant to convey the message that owning a luxury automobile does not make you a better person. Joplin's estate - sister Laura and brother Michael - allowed Mercedes to use it.


 
There are three credited songwriters on this track: Joplin, Michael McClure, and Bob Neuwirth. McClure says he never earned a cent from his poetry, but "Mercedes Benz" paid for his house in the Butters Canyon section of Oakland, California.


 
In an interview published in hE@D Magazine Michael McClure said that Joplin called him before recording the song to get his permission. She sang him the song, then he sang her his original version, and they both liked their own renditions better. "Then she asked me if she could sing it, and I agreed," McClure said. "I had no idea that her songs were worth so much money."




 
The soul singer Bobby Womack claimed credit for inspiring this song. According to Womack, Joplin got the idea for the song after riding in his new Mercedes 600. Womack was having success as a songwriter, and Joplin commissioned him to write a song for her Pearl album, which turned out to be "Trust Me." She recorded that one (which also appears on the Pearl album), and asked for another


.

As recounted in his Womack's book Midnight Mover, he took her for a ride, and she was impressed with the new car. After a few blocks, she started singing: "Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedez Benz..."




When they returned to the studio, the band had gone home, but Joplin put down the vocal track.




This took place on October 1, 1970. As Womack told it, Joplin got a phone call, which he presumed was her drug dealer. She asked him to leave, they hugged goodbye, and Joplin was found dead three days later.


"Me And Bobby McGee"



This was written by Kris Kristofferson, who has written hundreds of songs for a wide variety of artists. Kristofferson would become a successful solo artist and appear in several movies, but it was Janis Joplin's hit cover of this song that brought his career to the next level. "'Bobby McGee' was the song that made the difference for me," he told Performing Songwriter in 2015. "Every time I sing it, I still think of Janis."


 
The founder of Kristofferson's record label, Fred Foster, rang him just as the struggling musician was about to leave Nashville for his helicopter pilot sideline job. He said that he had a song title for the songwriter - "Me And Bobby McKee." Kristofferson recalled in Mojo magazine March 2008 that his label boss suggested: "'You could make this thing about them traveling around, the hook is that he turns out to be a she.'"




Kristofferson was not sure at first. "I hid from Fred for a while but I was trying to write that song all the time I was flying around Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I had the rhythm of a Mickey Newbury song going in the back of my mind, 'Why You Been Gone So Long,' and I developed this story of these guys who went around the country kind of like Anthony Quinn and Giuletta Masina in (Fellini's) La Strada. At one point, like he did, he drove off and left her there. That was 'Somewhere near Salinas, I let her slip away.' Later in the film he (Quinn) hears a woman hanging out her clothes, singing the melody she (Masina) used to play on the trombone, and she told him, 'Oh, she died.' So he goes out, gets drunk, gets into a fight in a bar and ends up on the beach, howling at the stars. And that was where 'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose' came from, because he was free from her, and I guess he would have traded all his tomorrows for another day with her."




The song's final defining image came to Kristofferson as he was driving in heavy rain to the airport for the flight home. "I went, 'With them windshield wipers slapping time and Bobby clapping hands we finally sang up every song the driver knew.' And that was it."


 
Fred Foster used a secretary's name as inspiration for the title. Her name was actually Bobbi McKee. By naming the character in the song "Bobby," it made sure a female singer could sing it without changing the name, since "Bobby" could refer to a man or woman.


 
Kristofferson is quoted as saying: "I had just gone to work for Combine Music. Fred Foster, the owner, called me and said, 'I've got a title for you: 'Me and Bobbie McKee,' and I thought he said 'McGee.' I thought there was no way I could ever write that, and it took me months hiding from him, because I can't write on assignment. But it must have stuck in the back of my head. One day I was driving between Morgan City and New Orleans. It was raining and the windshield wipers were going. I took an old experience with another girl in another country. I had it finished by the time I got to Nashville."


 
This was first recorded in 1969 by a country singer named Roger Miller, who is known for his hit "King Of The Road."


 
Kris Kristofferson released this in 1970 on his first album, Kristofferson. A year later, when it became a hit for Joplin, Kristofferson's album was re-released as Me And Bobby McGee to take advantage of the song's new popularity.


 
This was released after Joplin died of a heroin overdose. Her death gave the album a lot of attention, and Pearl went to #1. It was the second song to hit #1 in the US after the artist had died; "Dock Of The Bay" by Otis Redding was the first.


 
The lyrics tell the story of two young lovers who travel together, but break up so they can discover the world on their own. The characters in the song were a lot like Joplin, who was known as a free spirit.


 
In the March 2006 issue of Esquire magazine, Kristofferson was asked where he was when he came up with the line, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." His reply: "I was working the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs, flying helicopters. I'd lost my family to my years of failing as a songwriter. All I had were bills, child support, and grief. And I was about to get fired for not letting 24 hours go between the throttle and the bottle. It looked like I'd trashed my act. But there was something liberating about it. By not having to live up to people's expectations, I was somehow free."


 
The line, "I pulled my Harpoon from my dirty red bandana" can be interpreted two ways. The more sanitized version considers the "Harpoon" as a slang word for harmonica. The second interpretation considers it a hypodermic needle, since a bandana was often used to tie off the arm before an addict shot up. (always wondered about that, still none the wiser)


 
The version on Joplin's 1995 Greatest Hits album 18 Essential Songs contains an alternate version recorded as a demo.


 
Jerry Lee Lewis covered this in more of a country style several months after Joplin's version was released. His version hit #40 in the US.


 
This was Joplin's only Top 10 hit. She was a very influential and well-known singer, but her bluesy sound kept most of her songs off the pop charts.


The same year Joplin's version was issued, Kris Kristofferson released The Silver Tongued Devil and I, which was a successful album and finally solidified his place as a singer/songwriter.



 
Kristofferson performed an acoustic version of this song when Joplin was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013. Kristofferson, who had a brief affair with Joplin, recalled hearing her rendition on the day of her death. He explained to Rolling Stone magazine: "Her producer gave me the record and it was pretty hard to listen to. I was listening to it at my publisher's office where we used to hang out, there was nobody there and I was playing it over and over again just so I could hear it without breaking up."


 
The B-side of the single was a song called "Half Moon," which also appeared on the Pearl album. That song was written by John Hall and his wife Johanna. It was the first song they wrote together, and a huge break for the couple, who were able to buy a buy a house and a sailboat with the royalties. John Hall got a lot of credibility in the rock realm from co-writing it, and his career took off. A few years later, he formed the group Orleans, which had hits with two songs he wrote: "Still The One" and "Dance Witrh Me."

 

Last edited by arabchanter (01/4/2018 11:02 am)

I’ve really enjoyed looking through this thread the past few weeks, even if some of my favourite music has been slagged . Thanks for taking the time to post all this stuff arabchanter, much appreciated.

Thirs a bra’ vinyl shop in the Ferry btw, just in case you need to purchase more. Sure you will be aware of assai though.

TangerineDream wrote:

I’ve really enjoyed looking through this thread the past few weeks, even if some of my favourite music has been slagged . Thanks for taking the time to post all this stuff arabchanter, much appreciated.

Thirs a bra’ vinyl shop in the Ferry btw, just in case you need to purchase more. Sure you will be aware of assai though.

Thanks, glad to hear you're enjoying it, everyone's welcome to post their views, there are no right or wrong opinions!

DAY 235.
Flamin' Groovies.......................Teenage Head  (1971)








The Groovies most fertile time was between '68 and '71, when they were a great garage band and wrote a slew of memorable songs. "Teenage Head" was the last album to be recorded by the original line up and the tensions between guitarist Cyril Jordan and singer Roy Loney are reflected in the records tough, rumbling sound, the title song is an anthem of adolescent alienation.


Still to listen to The Faces, but gotta feeling I'm going to enjoy listening to both these albums today.

Last edited by arabchanter (01/4/2018 11:33 am)

 DAY 235.
Flamin' Groovies.......................Teenage Head  (1971)








Another group that I've heard of but never actually heard, but this for me at least has to rank as one of the finds of the book so far, absolutely loved it from the opening track to the last.

There music put in mind of  Eddie And The Hot Rods/Dr Feelgood two bands that I don't think will be in this book but in my humbles should.
,
After hearing Teenage Head Jagger stated that the Groovies did a better job than the Stones did on Sticky Fingers.


Why is it so good? for me it's the variety of tunes, from the hard driving Proto Punk  title track, to tight acoustic blues numbers such as a revamped version of Robert Johnson's 32-20 and City Lights, then moves into areas such as the high energy rockabilly number Evil Hearted Ada, or the easy going cool of Doctor Boogie, while containing a couple of power ballads such as Yesterdays Numbers and Whiskey Woman, along with a couple of no nonsense rockers like Have You Seen My Baby? and the fantastic High Flyin' Baby.

Is this album worth the entrance fee? Hell yeah! I'd even pay a touts inflated price for this one, if you haven't listened to this album, I really do recommend you to do yourself a favour and listen, you wont be disappointed.

Will be ordered tonight!

Bits & Pieces;


 The Flamin’ Groovies were a San Francisco band who began playing together in 1965, while the members were still in high school. Singer Roy Loney came out of an acting background and had previously played folk music informally with friends, before the advent of the Beatles steered him towards pop music. The band played the usual Beatles, Kinks and Rolling Stones covers at high-school dances and Battle of the Bands events.. Guitarist Cyril Jordan, the other mainstay of the band, was still learning to play guitar when the band made their first record, the 10” EP Sneakers, (1968 Snazz) released on their own label. The record, a blend of Lovin’ Spoonful-influenced goodtime jug music and fifties rock ‘n’ roll, helped to get them signed to Epic Records. They released Supersnazz (1969 Epic), their first proper album, the following year. The album continued the musical style shown on the earlier EP, but suffered from over-production that threatened to sink the simple rock 'n' roll numbers in string and horn sections. Supersnazz failed to sell and Epic quickly dropped the band within a year of signing them. Their second album, Flamingo (1971 Kama Sutra) found the band dropping the folkie side of their material in favor of harder rocking songs that still retained the humor of the earlier material, particularly in the almost vaudevillian melodrama of “Coming After Me.”


  It has often been said that the Groovies’ music was out of step with the popular music of their time, but this viewpoint over-simplifies the matter. At the time of the release of Supersnazz, both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had shaken off their psychedelic trappings and released albums that returned to their simpler, early 60s records. Bob Dylan had turned his back on the excesses of the Woodstock generation and released the quiet folk album John Wesley Harding and the double album Self Portrait, which consisted of mostly pre-rock 'n' roll cover tunes. And Creedence Clearwater Revival, (possibly the biggest American band at the time), with their workaday appearance, string of top ten singles and frequent covers of 50s rock ‘n’ roll, were the antithesis of hippy jamming and endless guitar solos.


  The Groovies were also influenced by the high-energy Detroit bands, particularly The Stooges and The MC5. Flamingo shows these latter influences, from its clangorous Little Richard cover to originals such as “Heading For the Texas Border,” which could fit comfortably on a Creedence Clearwater Revival album. But like the previous release, the album suffered from a flat-sounding production, particularly the rhythm section, which sometimes sounds as if it were recorded from another room. Onstage Roy Loney was a powerful and compelling performer, a ball of energy, which went a long way toward masking his journeyman vocal skills. But on record, these shortcomings were more obvious.


  The band stuck with Kama Sutra long enough to release their finest effort prior to Loney’s departure from the band. Teenage Head (1971 Kama Sutra) was reportedly compared favorably to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers by Mick Jagger himself. Teenage Head melded their 50s influences and proto-punk sound into a mature and consistent whole. Opening track “High Flyin’ Baby” bears a very strong vocal and instrumental resemblance to Captain Beefheart’s “Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do” - an unlikely source of influence for this supposedly retro-pop act. The rest of the album does evince a strong Stones influence, with acoustic and slide guitar-driven country pastiches, as well as a requisite Robert Johnson cover. Popular as the record was among fellow musicians and hardcore fans, it failed to sell in any great numbers, likely due to lack of label support and a lack of any serious touring.


 Perhaps in part due to the band’s relative lack of success, as well as growing differences between Loney and Jordan, who wanted to take the band in a more pop direction, Loney left the band not long after the release of Teenage Head. Jordan, now firmly in charge, moved the band away from hard rock and towards a heavily Beatles-influenced pop sound.


 Replacing Loney with singer and guitarist Chris Wilson, the band remained mostly quiet recording-wise, until 1976, when they recorded the album that most fans still regard as their greatest. Shake Some Action (1976 Sire), bore a strong Beatles influence, and featured a bass-heavy production by Dave Edmunds, himself a retro rocker skilled at re-creating both period production styles as diverse as the Sun Records reverb sound (“My Baby Left Me”), Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” style (Baby I Love You”) and the Everly Brother’s country pop (“Let it Be Me.”) The record was power-pop perfection. The choice of cover tunes was eclectic; Chuck Berry’s “Don’t Lie to Me” and WC Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” showed a continuing Rolling Stones influence, while the Lovin’ Spoonful song “Let the Boy Rock and Roll,” itself an adaptation of John Lee Hooker’s “Let the Boy Boogie Woogie,” was a nod to their earliest influence.


  The band began to tour more heavily than in the past - mostly in Europe, where they notably appeared on a bill with the Ramones at the Roundhouse in London, on July 4th, 1976 — the American bicentennial. In a reversal of earlier musical cross-pollination, e.g., The Beatles bringing American soul and R&B back to an America that had forgotten or overlooked it, The Groovies brought the Beatles sound back to an England poised between pub rock and punk rock. It’s ironic that The Groovies largely abandoned their raw rock side just when that style began to find acceptance with the emergence of punk rock and a newfound popularity for bands with a similar sound to the earlier Groovies.


  And while the band sounded at the height of its musical abilities on Shake Some Action, the over-obvious Beatles influence on cuts such as “Please Please Girl” betrayed a growing submergence of the bands individuality, in favor of rather unoriginal variations on Beatlesque melodies and vocals. Nonetheless, Shake Some Action became their most popular album and stands today as the finest work of their post-Loney days.


 Follow-up album Flamin’ Groovies Now (1978 Sire) borrowed its title from The Rolling Stones Now. Its British invasion sound showed even more clearly than on the previous record. With several cover versions — including two Rolling Stone songs, a Beatles tune and the Byrds’ “Feel a Whole Lot Better,” the record revealed a band performing excellently performed note-for-note covers and a few originals distinguished mostly by their lack of any originality. Jumpin’ in the Night (1979 Sire) was nearly all covers. It showed a band largely devoid of fresh ideas and simply marking time. The Groovies effectively disbanded not long after the release of Jumpin’ In the Night. Jordan kept the band name and toured Europe and Australia with a new crew of musicians, but to little interest from labels and diminishing interest to fans.


  Loney stayed in San Francisco and, after a few years of inactivity, resurfaced with Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers, who released several fine albums over the next several years. Loney had grown considerably as a vocalist, and the Phantom Movers — who often included the great Groovies’ drummer Danny Mihm — were a great live act as well. Loney continues to perform and occasionally record to the present day.



 Jordan retired from the music business for a number of years, focusing on painting — his other creative outlet — and collecting comic books. In the last few years he has re-emerged with a new band, Magic Christian, after the Terry Southern novel. The band features young vocalist Paul Kopf, Cyril as sole guitarist, rock historian and former Sneetch Alec Palao on bass, and, at various times, ex-Blondie Clem Burke or Tubes alumnus Prairie Prince on drums.


  Loney and Jordan remained somewhat estranged for a number of years, but the two have buried their differences in more recently, and have been playing shows togther as The Flamin' Groovies with various musicians filling backing them up. The band’s “Slow Death,” a live show highlight during the Loney years, has been covered and/or recorded by numerous bands, from Charlie Picket and the Eggs (who also crossed the Jordan/Loney boundary line to cover “Shake Some Action” as well), to The Dictators, who recorded the song for their third album, Bloodbrothers. (1978 Asylum). Fans of the Groovies generally appreciate both incarnations of the band.


I love this track



 

Last edited by arabchanter (02/4/2018 4:44 pm)

Flamin' Groovies: Teenage Head. Had a listen there, and while it's 'ok' I didn't find it too special. 

I'd want to listen to Dr Feelgood any time over that, been to see the various versions of the band quite a few times, but made an arse of an outing to see Eddie and the Hot Rods a couple of years back. They were playing 3 miles from my house, but I managed to get on the wrong train and eventually missed the entire show.

The evils of alcohol.

One question about all of this: the Flamin' Groovies, Dr Feelgood and so on are all RnB bands, but that term got hijacked a few years ago for a totally different form of music.

How did that happen, A?C?

DAY 236.
Gene Clark,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,White Light    (1971)








As anyone who has been reading this for a while will know, I have an unnatural hatred for The Byrds which unfortunately goes for them as solo performers also. This album is wishy washy country-rock, bland and boring, and I really have nothing more to add, if this album was being given out free on the street , I still wouldn't give it house room.


Bits & Bobs;


Have done the Byrds To death (I wish) so if interested have a look back (but I really wouldn't bother if I was you.)

Last edited by arabchanter (07/4/2018 8:05 am)