40 Year Itch: JoJo Breaks Up With Electricity

The Modern Lovers were so far ahead of their time, by the time anybody "got" their Velvet Underground meets the Boy Wonder dynamic, the band's leader was already heading in another direction.

    It is the Fall of 1973. Based on 1972 demos like,  "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso",  recorded under the supervision of John Cale, Warner Brothers signs The Modern Lovers. That should be great news for singer Jonathan Richman, bassist Ernie Brooks, future Talking Head Jerry Harrison and future Car David Robinson. 

    But the band is in no mood to celebrate. During a residency at the Inverurie Hotel in Bermuda, Richman discovers the joys of acoustic music as played by Calypso bands. Richman sings about that life changing period on Having a Party 's  "Monologue About Bermuda".

Richman no longer wants to play electrified rock and roll. It didn't sound right and it isn't good for the planet.

Drummer David Robinson told Spin Magazine

Jonathan was obsessed and we couldn't talk him out of it. He wanted to play acoustic on street corners and at rest homes  and I was supposed to play a rolled-up newspaper by banging it against my fist. I was the first to leave.

Sensing trouble, Warners cuts the band which soon breaks up. In 1976 Beserkley Records releases the Cale produced demos as The Modern Lovers. Critics go gaga. Eventually so do I. But Richman isn't coming back to amplification. He's busy singing about little insects and martian martians.

40 Year Itch : C'mon If You're Coming

 

[Purchase]

In a recent poll I conducted with the NRBQ Appreciation Society 1973's Workshop ranked right up there at the top among fans of this always listenable but impossible to pigeonhole band. 

Spencer Duncan summed up the feeling:

     "I consider it like a sister album to (1972's) Scraps and I rank Scraps as one of the greatest albums ever made. So yeah Workshop is up there."

      This is the big man, Al Anderson's,  second album with the Q but the first one he could legally sing on. Workshop kicks off with "C'mon If You're Coming", a rocking version of the song Anderson recorded on his brilliant Vanguard Records solo. Let's listen to the solo version ( because most Workshop tunes can't be found on YouTube)



Other Workshop highlights are Joey Spampinato's sweet sounding  "Mona", the Terry Adams rave up "R C Cola and a Moon Pie" and "Deaf, Dumb and Blind". Curiously the band's only charting single "Get That Gasoline Blues" ( US#70, 1974),  never even came up in a spirited discussion about the album. Fans don't even want to think NRBQ ever flirted with stardom.



   Workshop is the last album to feature drummer Tom Staley. When Staley failed to return to the stage for an encore, NRBQ fan Tom Ardolino was invited to fill in for the rest of the night. In 1974 the easy going Ardolino got the gig for good.



For the next two decades the classic NRBQ lineup developed a huge cult following. At a show I caught in New York in 1999, I'm pretty sure I recognized a few well known musicians but the only ones I talked to were members of Del Amitri. Ardolino died in in January of 2012.
   By the way some joker on Amazon is trying to sell a used Japanese Workshop CD for $2,996.94.

40 Year Itch : The Who Perform "5:15" on Top of the Pops

On September 15, 1973 The Who performed their first single from the forthcoming Quadrophenia. The announcer is wrong when he says this is the band's first single in two years. "Join Together" went top 10 in 1972. "5:15" would peak at #20 in the UK charts.

To celebrate the release of the Directors cut of Quadrophenia in 2011, The Who held a worldwide "5:15 video" contest. Here's a to link to the winning entry by Jeff Rodenberg.

Here's the "5:15" B side: "Water", recorded in 1970.

And the band's infamous interview that year with Russell Harty

Underneath the Bridge

Underneath the bridge /
The tarp has sprung a leak
-"Something in the way"    

 When you visit Aberdeen WA you get a peek at the tortured soul of its most famous son. This is a dreary place that doesn't offer teenagers much in the way of hope or good times. Just a lot of rain , logging trucks and a muddy river that doesn't seem to be headed anywhere.

 Where the hell does a smart kid go to get some time to himself?

For Kurt Cobain that place was evidently underneath a bridge that crosses the Wishkah Bridge. He even claimed he lived there. His house was actually two blocks away. But Cobain did spend time here, writing lyrics as he listened to cars rumble overhead,  and when he died one third of his ashes was shaken into the river.

When Cobain died the Young Street Bridge became an unofficial memorial. People would come and leave messages, flowers and other items -- in the same way people visit Jim Morrison's Grave at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

  Some of the messages I read:

"Kurt you got me through my teens and early 20's"

"You were too big for this town"

"Welcome to the ghost town. The trees are the most alive"

I ran into Texan Edward Shanahan and his girlfriend Christina there. Shanahan says he bought Nevermind when it came out.

"That was a big deal in the house," he says. "You couldn't have a naked baby swimming in the water."

His mom threw the CD out.

"And like a good ole rebellious teenager I just went down the street and bought another one."

For the longest time, there was no official memorial for Kurt Cobain in Aberdeen. Don Sucher, who owns a Star Wars shop in town, got so many questions about Cobain he made a map to tell them where to find the bridge and the music store where Kurt bought his first guitar.

"Nobody had done anything to celebrate Kurt's life or whatever." he says. Soon Don gets around to telling his Cobain story:

"Back when he was a junior in high school, him and Kris (Novoselic) came in the furniture I was managing. They were looking for a Summer job. I think we furthered their music career because moving hide-a-beds isn't easy. Kurt lasted one day and Kris lasted two so yeah I didn't think it was their cup of tea doing manual labor back then."

Don has some real respect for Cobain

"What most people in the community don't realize is what he did to a whole generation of people all over the world. It's like what Elvis did for me."

  Finally in 2009 Aberdeen erected a memorial to Cobain. Here's what it says:

             

40 Year Itch : David Bowie's "Diary"

[Purchase]

From 1973 to 1973, David Bowie was supposedly contributing an exclusive weekly diary to the UK teen music magazine Mirabelle. It wasn't until 1998 that Bowie confessed his American publicist Cherry Vanilla, a former member of the Andy Warhol entourage, wrote the column. "The cute thing," Bowie said, "is that every now and then she'd write how I had just come from seeing this great new performer whom everyone should know about...Cherry Vanilla".

Cherry Vanilla and Bowie

8th September 1973 

   I've just remembered that I never told you about the party I had at the Café Royal after my last concert, so I'll make this week's letter about that...

 Oh, what a night it turned out to be! Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Jeff Beck, Lulu, Spike Milligan, Dana Gillespie, Ryan O'Neal, Elliott Gould, Ringo Starr and Barbra Streisand... all there at my last concert party at the luxurious Café Royal - everyone looking so lovely in their sparkling evening clothes and colourful make-up... dancing, sipping champagne and tasting delicious salmon and big fresh strawberries and cream. The disc jockey played lots of really good soul and rock 'n' roll records, and the dance floor was absolutely packed all night. Cherry Vanilla (my American publicist, a wonderful lady) fell off her gold platforms and split her strapless Chinese dress right up the front, but got up and just kept on dancing and grooving, black suspenders peaking out from newly-opened slit, and that ever wide smile on her face! 

   I got a little off balance myself when Mick and Bianca and Angie and I were all dancing together to 'Honky Tonk Woman' - but managed to stay on my high heels for a few more songs. Most of the evening I spent answering everyone's questions about my decision to stop touring and concentrate on movies and recording. 

  Angie and I arrived a little late because we had gone back to our hotel to change into our party clothes, and then got very involved in conversation with Mick and The Spiders and Gloria (my secretary) - you can't imagine how many telephone calls we received, even though we thought nobody knew where we were. 

   When we made our entrance, Angie in a brand new chartreuse and brown knit ensemble by Freddy, me in my ice-blue iridescent Freddy suit, they announced us over the speaker system, and everyone stood up and applauded.

    Oh dear, I'm running out of space again. Looks like I'll have to save the rest for next week. 

Twiggy and Bowie shot for album cover Pin Ups

 September 22   

  Well, friends, I don't feel I've done justice to that fantastic chateau we stayed at in France. I think I would like to tell you some more - quite a bit more - about it. 

     The Chateau D'Herouville was the name, and what a lovely place to record an album. Warm, summer sunshine, a lovely chateau and a fantastic 16 track recording studio. Enough to please any hard-working, city-weary, young musician. The chateau is in the village of Herouville just outside Paris. We spent three wonderful weeks there, recording my new album 'Pin-Ups'. It's all those fun and fabulous songs from the mid-sixties that never really got quite the attention their lovely easy beats deserved. Ronno, Trevor and Mike Garson were there with us, and Aynsley Dunbar came along to play drums. 

    There seemed to be an endless stream of visitors, like Jean Millington (Fanny), Nico, that really wonderful singer, with a friend of hers, Kid Jensen (of Radio Luxembourg fame) and a lovely French singer called Christine.

    Angie and Zowie came down every weekend, and one day we were photographed together by Terry O'Neil for the Daily Mirror. Angie wore some lovely things from the Paris collections, and I wore my favourite Freddy suit. Oh, and Justin De Villeneuve photographed me with his favourite model 'Twig The Wonder Kid' (Twiggy) for a Vogue magazine cover. 

    Dinners were really momentous occasions, with everyone seated at a super-long table with candles and dry wine, delicious food and all those beautiful faces with their suntanned cheeks and twinkling eyes. 

   The food was very French... though they did seem to serve an awful lot of potatoes! The vegetables and fruits were very fresh and lush, though - and with that famous Paris bread, everything tastes great. 

   It's a good thing we had a nice big swimming pool outside to let everybody burn up some calories each day - everyone but me, of course. I only ventured in once when the heat of the day got to be a bit too much. But Ronno and Jamie (my road manager) had a few good workouts every day.

40 Year Itch: Top 5 New UK Singles

These are the Top 5 singles debuting on the UK charts for the week ending September 15. The #1 song in the UK was Donny Osmond's "Young Love".

1. Rod Stewart "Oh No Not My Baby" (UK#22). A self produced single of the 1964 Goffin-King classic climed all the way to #5 in the UK and #59 in the US.

2. The Jackson 5 "Skywriter" ( UK#38) The funky third single from Skywriter would peak at #25 in the UKbut failed to chart at all in the US

3. Manfred Mann's Earth Band : Joybringer (UK#39)  A non-album single from busy Manfred Mann's Earth Band who also released two albums in 1973, Messin' ( Get Your Rocks Off was the US title) and Solar Flare. "Joybringer" would peak in the UK at #9.

4. Mott the Hoople "All the Way from Memphis" (UK#40) The sad story of a lost guitar would peak at #10 in the UK for Mott the Hoople. From the album Mott, one of 1973's best.

5. Status Quo: Caroline (UK#44) From the album Hello, this was a Top 5 hit for Status Quo. It started a golden streak for the band in the UK that lasted the rest of the decade. The US ignored the band the entire time.

   Further down the chart: two notable tunes:
     #46 Elton John: Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting
     #47 Wings: Live and Let Die

40 Year Itch : A Stone, Howling, Joyous Monster

"Bruce Springsteen has delivered another stone, howling, joyous monster of a record"

-Bruce Pollock, The New York Times

On September 11, 1973 Bruce Springsteen released his second album, The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. And if you think the title is a mouthful, so are the lyrics this skinny New Jersey kid tried to stuff in his epic seven minute + tunes.

The album's highlight is "Rosalita ( Come Out Tonight) , a musical autobiography, in which the singer with the big record company advance, tries to convince his girl to run away with him. It is also, as Springsteen noted in Songs, a "kiss-off to everybody who counted you out, put you down or decided you weren't good enough".

Remember: this album didn't sell at first. Despite outstanding review from the New York Times, Crawdaddy and the Village Voice, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle failed to even dent the Top 200 Album chart when it was released. 

The album kicks off with "The E Street Shuffle", the song that would eventually give his backing band a name. I've always liked the 57 second nod to Curtis Mayfield at the end.  

The first cut is the shortest. To make room for epics like the 9:55 "New York City Serenade" and the 7:47 "Incident of 57th Street", Springsteen had to jettison other cuts recorded during the sessions. Including some ( like concert favorite "Thundercrack" and "The Fever" that might have made this a better-selling album).

The first version of Wild was received by CBS executive Charlie Koppleman in this way:

"Fellas, we may have run to the end of our days with Bruce Springsteen. This is not an album we are going to put out."

Springsteen restructured the album. What he kept and what he dropped is  a mystery to me.

There's certainly no shortage of nicknamed characters on Wild. There's Spanish Johnny, Power Thirteen, Little Angel, Wild Billy, Puerto Rican Jane, Sloppy Sue and Big Bones Billy .

 With his first two albums selling poorly, his big advance dissolving to nothing, Springsteen began focusing on his stage show. First to go was drummer Vini "Mad Dog "Lopez. Ernest "Boom Boom" Carter helped the E Street band tighten up their sound. Springsteen also crafted stories he could tell between the songs . Then there were the oldies that brought the crowd to its collective feet. (In a November show at Max's Kansas City, with Halls and Oates opening, it was Wilson Pickett's "634-5789")

By the Spring of 1974, Springsteen "had his act together." Just in time for critic Jon Landau to catch a show and exclaim:

"I saw rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen."