Rodney Bingenheimer's Bed with Debbie, Chris and Flame/Did John Cassavetes Film Bobby Pyn? [repost]

Although it may only start with John Holt's "Ali Baba," and you may take a turn to Dr. Alimantado's "I Killed the Barber," then on to the good doctor and Jah Stitch on motorbikes on "The Barber Feel It" and then Stitch's "Bury the Barber" you will return to whence it came. Dizzyingly you end up full circle back at the Paragons. Yes, back on a Saturday morning over coffee and "The Tide is High." Who knew it would end up like that. It is amazing how many times Blondie played in LA in the early years of 1976-1979. Given their time in LA it was no surprise that they had such a rabid fan base, including Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Pleasant. They were also one of the early phone guests on Rodney on the Roq on KROQ and where I first them before they became part of the regular rotation on the station. I just missed Blondie here and wished I had gone . . . Let's see the dates laid out:

• February 9-12, 1977 at the Whiskey a Go Go (with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) - any discussion backstage that there already was band called the Heartbreakers back in NYC since 1975 and who were just on the "Anarchy in the UK" tour in December 1976?

•  February 16-20, 1977 at the Whiskey a Go Go with the Ramones 

• April 15, 1977 at the Santa Monica Civic opening for Iggy Pop

•  April 20-23, 1977 at the Whiskey a Go Go with Deaf School. According to the Blondie gig guide, on the 23rd, Joan Jett joined Blondie for an encore of "Anarchy in the UK" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog" with Joan on guitar, Rodney Bingenheimer on keyboards and Tony and Hunt Sales, and also Clem on lead vocals and Debbie as "the dog."

• September 23, 1977 at the Hollywood Palladium with Devo! 

•  September 28, 1977 at the Golden Bear (Huntington Beach) with Ala Carte 

• September 29, 1977- October 3, 1977 at the Whiskey a Go Go. Advertised for all shows except the awesome last one as with the Canuck band Max Webster who apparently took time off from heavy touring and jamming with Rush (!???) to play with Blondie.  As seen below, for the last show the LA Times lists "Blondie/Devo/The Germs" (at 4pm) and "Blondie and Devo" (at 9pm and 11:30pm).  Incredible.  What is also incredible about this particular stand of Blondie at the Whiskey is that John Cassavetes filmed a large portion of it.  Cassavetes, Bobby Pyn Debbie, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Kid Congo and Devo all together - a classic 70's moment if there ever was one.  To think I was only a half hour away . . . 

• April 25-26, 1978 at the Starwood

• November 21, 1978 at the Santa Monica Civic

•  August 15-16, 1979 at the Greek Theater with Rockpile! and

• October 4, 1979 filming the Midnight Special in LA

Kustomized Al Kooper

From a thrift store, beater copy find of "Grape Jam" earlier this week. Kooper's "Backstage Passes" has always made me quite fond of the guy, and the first edition that book is well worth seeking out if only for the great photos.

Marc on Marc/John's Children "Desdemona"

On the heels of the last post of Joseph Fleury raving about the Sweet as a great singles band, here is another related post. At a benefit for Joseph back in 1990, Danny Benair dedicated a cover of John's Children's "Desdemona" to him as something they bought as kids. So, I dug this clipping out of the archive. Ah, the humility of Marc Bolan! According to Marc, it only took him 25 seconds to write "Desdemona"! I believe him. And I kinda like the idea of artists reviewing their own work when their egos are as large as Marc's! What would M.E. Smith make of it all? As Marc states that the lyrics are "all rather complicated and difficult to explain" ("Lift up your skirt and fly"), I feel you need to read it as prose to truly enjoy Marc's lightening fast process. Also enjoy the Marsha Hunt cover of "Desdemona" which is a great story in and of itself according to Tony Visconti.

Desdemona just because you're the daughter of a man
He may be rich, he's in a ditch, he does not understand
Just how to move or rock and roll
To the conventions of the young

Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona - Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona
Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona
Lift up your skirt and fly

Just because my friend and I got a juke joint by the Seine
Does not mean I'm past fourteen and cannot play the game
Oh, I'm glad I split and got a pad
On Boulevard Rue Fourteen

Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona - Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona
Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona
Lift up your skirt and fly

Just because Toulouse Lautrec painted some chick in the rude
Don't give you the right to steal my night
And leave me naked in the nude
For just because the touch of your hand
Can turn me on just like a stick

Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona - Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona
Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona - Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona
Desdemona - De-De-De-Desdemona
Lift up your skirt and speak 

"If you dropped the name of the Sweet in the course of rock chat"

So Claw Hammer is playing here next month, and I am not sure if I saw a band more often in the late 1980's to the mid-1990's than those guys in both the Rick Sortwell and Bob Lee era. I was thinking of all the covers the band played at one time or another, and in the deep, deep fog of my memory, I seem to recall Claw Hammer covering this nugget by the Sweet. Is that even right? That plus inspiration from the late, great Joesph Fleury's OVER THE TOP intro to his "Will Success Spoil the Sweet?" story from 1973. :

On the Shelf

Alan Licht channels James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio and we get one of the best music/film books for some time. Great concept and execution, with some real insight by Will on an otherwise inscrutable process. Had me searching for records that have not been played in some time, as do all good music books. And that is when we don't get some real dish on his contemporaries and elders. A "you are there" conversation, and definitely will be a reference guide for future bios. A real left field add to the cannon, and as unexpected as Will's subtle play in "Old Joy." Score one for Faber and Faber and file next to "Lennon Remembers: The Rolling Stones Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono."

Sparks, the Stones and Elton

Being back in Los Angeles has one thinking of all things Sparks of course. Case in point was the first find of the trip: a 1975, Penthouse Publications cash-in on Eltonmania in the form of an eight page mini magazine/fold-out poster devoted to EJ. What is intriguing is that the editor decided to place Sparks alongside the Stones and EJ as the band/performer of the moment. Which had me thinking that in a 1975, pre-“Rumours” moment, somebody out there believed that the Mael Brothers could be the next megastars of the 70's to come out of Los Angeles. We don’t count the success of carpetbagging country rockers or do we? Reverse carpetbagging of the sort that the Mael Brothers engaged in is a-ok though. Of course, history has shown that the true quintessential, homegrown superstar Los Angeles band of the 1970’s are the brothers from Pasadena, no? Any other suggestions? Enjoy the back page Pioneer ad at the bottom.

Billy Squire and the Velvet Underground/Magic Terry & the Universe or How Klaus Flouride Met Jim Morrison

Those two Piper albums are pretty sweet, and "Who's Your Boyfriend" is a great post-Raspberries, shoulda-been AM radio hit. I would love to hear recordings of Billy's time in the Sidewinders in the post-RCA era (a union orchestrated by Ben Edmonds), especially the set where Andy Paley and Billy backed Ronnie Spector as honorary Ronettes. Cant locate the Rock Scene with his Sidewinders photo in it cause I am pretty busy packing, but they apparently were proper reet live according to the Robinsons. Do the original u-ground Boston rock and rollers rate him in the same way the Gulcher folks dropped Johnnie Cougar? Mind you, is 1985's "Scarecrow" an equal lp to "Bad Moon Rising" from the same year with beefier drumming (sorry Bob)? Yer call on how ya define "roots" rock. That said, Edmonds' excellent liner notes to the "Reach for the Sky" comp make a strong argument that his credentials are pretty unassailable, including time in the must hear legendary Boston band Magic Terry & the Universe. In my research I have discovered that none other than DK's bassist Klaus Flouride may have been a fellow bandmate (more on that below). Fast forward to 1980 (or is it 1981?), and Billy was unstoppable, riding on the crest of "The Stroke" among other mega anthems. Enough of a force to merit Metal Mike's attention. There it is at the 3:28 mark: "I Got One Thing to Say ... Billy Squire." Why oh why does this one part of the Angry Samoans' "New Wave Theater" appearance still linger in my memory after the original broadcast decades later? One of my legal brethren's imitation of Metal Mike's "Squire comment" ad nauseum over the years since the broadcast never fails to bring a smile to my face, nor does Peter Iver's nonpareil interviewing technique for that matter:



Edmonds' excellent liner notes to the "Reach for the Sky" contains this great anecdote:

As AM airwaves gave way to FM we haunted the Boston Tea Party, the area's first psychedelic ballroom. One particularly memorable evening, Billy and I ventured in to see the Velvet Underground & Nico, bigger stars in Boston than they ever were in New York. Wandering in as the light show playground between sets, we stubmbled down from the balcony - and smack into Andy Warhol and Nico, who were trying to negotiate their way past us up the stairs. We turned on our heels and followed them back to the balcony, where two sixteen year old suburban boys found themselves with the best seats in the house. We watched the Velvets, we watched Andy Warhol watch the Velvets, and we watched Nico watching nothing at all. (If we'd known where to look we could've watched Jonathan Richman, a kid our age from the next 'burb over, watching this too. Many years and several biographies later, I discovered that we'd been witness to a momentous episode in Velvet Underground lore. Warhol and Nico had flown all the way from Europe for this gig, only to be informed by Lou Reed that the band had hired a new manager and had no further use for a chanteuse. It is cliche to say you watch history being made every day, but we were blessed to have been deposited in a time and place where that was the literal truth. Thanks!)

Now, anybody out actually heard Magic Terry & the Universe? Klaus, any tapes. From an interview with Klaus here:

In 1969, I was in Magic Terry and The Universe. This guy looked sort of like Rob Tyner from The MC5. He didn't really sing, but he read poetry over hard rock music. And he did all these characters. This was before Ziggy Stardust. And we had rehearsals from midnight until six in the morning, and people would show up. Jim Morrison showed up with these bigwigs from Elektra. Morrison ripped off one of Terry's pieces for "An American Prayer." That was Terry's. But we were young... We were getting attention from RCA, and there was a bidding war. We played a show opening for Ten Years After, and Terry mooned the audience. It was supposed to be four dates, but we got kicked off. We should have been playing with The Velvet Underground. They were still playing then. But we were all like "Fuck this business." It wasn't until ten years later that I got with Dead Kennedys. I was like "Music isn't going to take me anywhere career-wise, so I may as well have fun with it." It's probably a blessing, because if we had made it with Terry, I'd probably be an acid casualty.