The Quick in the Studio with Kim Fowley and Earle Mankey (Mondo Deco sessions)/Rodney and the Flamin' Groovies/Dee Dee on L.A. & More/Blast Celebrity Rock Magazine December 1976

The December 1976 Rolling Stone magazine covers: Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and Maurice Sendak. Almost a parody that Belushi would have had a field day with if given more writing time during the 1976-77 SNL season. Blast which billed itself as a "Celebrity Rock Magazine" (my kinda celebs for the most part, I might add) in their December 1976 issue: the Who on the cover with generous features on BOC, Bryan Ferry, Burning Spear/Toots/Marley and Tosh, as well as a 1960's SF rock family tree ala Zig Zag. Gotta say that Blast wins the December 1976 battle royale with a team including Jon Tiven, Trix A. Balm (Lauren Agnelli) and edited by Michael Gross (who had some nice NME articles circa 73'74). The Ferry piece was written by Mick Rock who also supplied the photos. Also among the contributing photographers for this issue are a who's who of rockist photographers including  Richard Creamer (who I consider the Brassaï of glitter Hollywood), Richard Aaron, Chuck Pulin, and the great Brad Elterman, my man from the SFV. For your enjoyment are two thumbnail photos by Brad a little larger for your perusal (where are the full negative sheets of these sessions!!). Historically, I think these two pictures would now get the full feature treatment given how important the events documented in the photos. The Quick at the Mondo Deco recording sessions.  The Flamin' Groovies with Rodney was taken by my guess at the joint Ramones/Flamin' Groovies bill at the Roxy, August 12, 1976. Sire Records double bill.  In the audience we can only guess the Denney Bros., Claude and Philomena, Mike Kelley, the entire nascent Masque scene, the Runaways, the Back Door Man crew, Plez and Kid Congo, Greg Shaw, Gene Scalutti, Gregg Turner (was Meltzer in LA by late 1976). Anyway, Brad WAS there to take the photos. Any crowd shots? Even better is Dee Dee's take on LA nightlife circa 1976 . . . .

The announcement of the start of Rodney on the Roq!

 

The Snoop Sisters and Alice Cooper/People Magazine March 4, 1974/Lance Loud & Dennis Wilson

I saw Alice Cooper last November in Las Vegas (at a casino!) and it was one of my favorite shows of 2013, and easily the best performance by any 65 year old I have seen recently (not to be ageist, U Roy put on an incredible performance last year as well and he is into his 70's!). But those great Cooper years of 1964-1974 (the same years covered in the excellent rarities/outtakes 4 cd set "Old School" that came out a few years ago). The good years when Alice Cooper was still a band and not a person. There are lots of good Alice Cooper Band covers though some days I am partial to the Laughing Hyenas takedown of "Public Animal #9," featuring one of the top vocalists/frontpersons of the rock era (Alice included) , John Brannon.  Anyway, sometimes the over-the-counter culture magazines do feature an inkling of what was bubbling up. So from over 40 years ago this month, we take a look at the March 4, 1974 issue of People Magazine found at the local thrift shop. So post "Muscle of Love" and pre Hollywood Vampires, we get Alice helping kindly Helen Hayes infiltrate a coven of satanic witches on NBC prime time. Try getting that on TV today, but in a Watergate/Manson girls/Exorcist world it all made total sense. See kids, things WERE better back then. And clearly Glenn was taking note of the Crimson Ghost suit in between spinning Sabbath records back in Jersey.

So watch Alice (sans band) guesting on "The Snoop Sisters":



What also jumps out in the March 1974 People Magazine, is the continued coverage of the Loud Family. So far the performance of LOUD from the Cavett vaults has yet to surface but we really hope it does. See the Santa Barbara public access performance of the classic, soon to be classic Mumps track, and we can only hope to see the Cavett performance. By the way, anyone ever see Dennis Wilson and Lance Loud in the same room together? I hear Dennis grew the "Pacific Ocean Blue" beard to keep people from calling him Lance!

Lemming "Father John," "Queen Jacula"and "Lucifera"/"Don't Look Behind (Trampa macabre)

One of my favorite contemporary video pieces that I saw in Mexico City back in January, at the show "La voluntad de la piedra" at el Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, was "Don’t look behind (Trampa macabra"), Leo Marz's giallo-inspired, critical exegis of terror (or is it curatorial horror given the Mexican art world cameos).  I doubt Leo is familiar with most excellent Dutch glam rockers Lemming but I think he would like the low budget Argento/Suspiria vibe that their Dutch television performances from 1974 to 1975 reek of: the essential "Father John" (about a monk!) and "Queen Jacula."  And I will posit it here first. Is not Lemming's great dancer in these clips, Lucifera (RIP), the continent's low budget glam answer to Stacia? Thanks to Robin for originally introducing me to the greatness of Lemming back in 2006.

Greg Shaw Reviews Clap's "Have You Reached Yet?"/Who Put the Bomp! Summer, 1974

I have been a huge fan of Clap’s 1973 lp “Have You Reached Yet?” lp ever since the first time I heard it on a kinda muddy sounding bootleg, and have mentioned them a bunch. Just a perfect out of tyme - or ahead of your time - lp for the 70's (kinda like Fortune Teller's "Inner City Scream"). "Have You Reached Yet?" was clearly one of those lps you didn’t think you would ever get to hold in yer hands, let alone a new vinyl edition of the lp in MONO (which sounds fantastic). So, I finally landed an out-of-print copy put out by perhaps the best reissue label in the world, Sing Sing outta NY. What jumped out in the new liners by Phast Phreddie Patterson is that he says: “around 1976, I gave my copy of “Have You Reached Yet” to Greg Shaw, who wrote about it in his Bomp! Magazine – thus igniting the legend of Clap.” Well, while I was researching to find real time reviews of the lp, I found that Greg Shaw reviewed the lp as early as the Summer 1974 issue of “Who Put the Bomp!” when the lp itself may have only been a year old (even though Greg says the lp is from 1971 in the review - perhaps said in the grip of "Love It to Death" comparisons). Did he end up reviewing the lp twice? What is intriguing is also that the review says “the cover’s great too – its got a photo of a lizard-skin platform boot on a stool with a flashlight beam on it!” Does anyone know whether there was an earlier press of the lp with that cover? The boot photo is on the back cover as a small snap, even smaller than the band photo or logo. Anyway, another essential purchase if you can still find it.

La Libre Expresión in México Canta ("The Magazine of the New Wave"), October 1970

A recent find in the D.F. has been México Canta, an underground Hit Parader of sorts. Heavy Beatles coverage in the two issues I have from 1970, and little did I know how big CCR was in Mexico ("Lodi" was #1 on the charts in the issue below from 1970) and the non-Fogerty CCR Revisited is playing at the awesome Auditorio Nacional in March. What jumped out was a feature on La Libre Expresión (assuming it is the same band). I have had a repress of the 1968 (or is it 1969) lp by this great Mexican psych-garage band for about a decade. Almost entirely covers (Creedence, Blue Cheer, Hendrix, Zombies X2, Bee Gees and the totally underrated (Young) Rascals - who need a post of their own - it just flows like an slightly mersh u-ground jukebox of the day (in Spanish of course). The same issue has a nice feature on Quicksilver Messenger Service as well. So, possibly reprinted for the first time in 43 years, una entravista con La Libre Expresión:

Slade en el D.F.

Made in Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos, 197? A recent find at one of the best Sunday outdoor markets in the world, El Mercado de La Lagunilla.

"But no dilettante filigree fancy beats the plastic you"/Chris D. on Roxy Music's "Mother of Pearl"

About six years ago I approached Chris D. about publishing a collection of his music writing (from Slash and elsewhere) and sent him a dvd of James Frawley's The Christian Licorice Store. Never heard back from him though I was happy to see the publication in 2009 of A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die: A Collection of Writing by Chris D (New Texture, 2009). I have written about the collection previously here but the collection itself is not oriented towards his writing on music and film, though the book is loaded with enough references to both to keep you busy for a while tracking them down. The intros to the various sections (on poems, dream fragments, screenplays, lyrics, novel excerpts, etc.) remind me somewhat of the super dense (albeit short) film reviews that Chris used to publish in Forced Exposure. How many would he cram into an issue, fifty? Though in this collection, there is a lot of memoir contained in the short intro write-ups (generally 2-3 pages) to make the collection stand out from a mere compendium of work. So while I have never had a chance to ask Chris about Roxy Music, I figured like everybody else he would find the first five records unassailable. Who knew that he should have been interviewed for that doco on the band a few years back given his great articulation of why that period is/was held in such high esteem. In the discussion of his still unpublished first novel with the Ballard-esque title Sacred World (an influence on the novel along with Genet, P.K. Dick, Diamond Dogs era Bowie, Burroughs, noir, euro art film and his own "romantic 19th century literary damage from high school and college), he writes:

The title Sacred World was taken from a lyric phrase from Roxy Music's "Mother of Pearl" from their Stranded album. That song perfectly captures the kind of transcendental modern romanticism I was going for here, and it is perhaps Bryan Ferry's shining moment as a singer and lyricist (before he descended totally into artifice). It is a masterpiece of testimonial love that updates the type of high society amor fou found in 1940's films like Gilda, Humoresque and Notorious to profound tragic 1970's melodrama - a sung monologue of obsessive love which raises the object of affection to fetishistic heights, elevating glamour to a surreal cosmology, yet still miraculously retaining a heartbreaking poignance. Disturbingly confessional when the listener can easily interchange the love object: with one line it is the ideal woman, with the next, is it the narcissistic singer himself? Let's put it this way ... is the ideal woman really meant only for the ideal man? Thus making this a double whammy of interlocked circular obsession? That's basically what I was striving for in my elliptical fashion (though you would have to read my whole unevenly-written novel to really get that.

Second that Dr. Chris about "Mother of Pearl." Maybe add in some then contemporary Fassbinder period melodrama damage into Ferry's cultural mix (from the same 1973-74 period of the Musikladen performance below) and stir. Enjoy the screen caps and dig Sal Maida from Milk 'n Cookies on the bass.