This Could Be the Night/"He had good mike technique, good delivery"

Man, one of the best singles of the sixties goes unreleased and just keeps sounding better. A song that links the No Neck Blues Band (via Jerry Yester) to Fred Neil (via Cyrus Faryar) to Phil Spector, Harry Nilsson, Brian Wilson, the Sidewinders (Andy Paley) and the Monkees. Not to mention Henry Diltz and Rodney Bingenheimer. Just waiting for the choicest set of covers lps you never heard via Home Brewed Nuggets to tackle this gem of our radio teendom.

The Modern Folk Quartet had opened shows for both Woody Allen and John Coltrane before their link with Phil Spector and rebrand as the folk rock MFQ. Spector hoped they could be his Byrds. Underused in my opinion as the theme to the follow-up to The T.A.M.I. Show, The Big TNT Show, Nilsson wrote the song as a Brian Wilson tribute who then brought the song to Spector who shelved it for "River Deep, Mountain High." According to Mark Ribowsky’s He’s A Rebel (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1989), one night in 1966, Spector jumped on stage with the MFQ at the Trip with a twelve string guitar while they were doing their set and did a set of fifties covers backed by the MFQ. According to Kim Fowley who was there: “Amazing, man, and the pity was that there was a lot of kids in there who didn’t know what the fuck was happening . . . I think about it now and it’s like, how’s that for a memory? And he was good too. I’d never heard his voice. He had good mike technique, good delivery. He sounded like he would’ve been a good lead singer.”

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.

"I Wanna Bite Your Hand"/"The Essence of Teenage Pre- or Post-Wasteland American rock 'n' Roll"/Rendezvous!

The last time I saw Andy Paley, he was playing keys with the Patti Smith Group at the Santa Monica Pier a few years back. Leigh was last heard playing bass live with Blondie. The Sidewinders eponymous debut from 1972 had so much going for it. Great songs that hearkened back to the golden age of rock and roll, the first band to have a residency at Max's since the Velvets and signed by RCA around the same time as Bowie, the Kinks and Lou Reed. Not enough promotional dollars to spread around to the Sidewinders, eh? Some nice cover snaps from the Chelsea Hotel below.




With a very sympathetic and warm production from Lenny Kaye and no lack of positive ink - see Bangs' glowing 1972 review from Creem and Billy Squire-era article in Rock Scene (though Squire is not mentioned other than as Billy) from the barn archive, we can only ask why the album didn't really chart. I know Joey Ramone wondered that as well. A short, positive review of the Sidewinders debut from the May 24, 1972 issue of Billboard:



One of the best tracks from the lp, "Told You So," with some slight (to my ears anyway), Flamin' Groovies influence?








Here is the great Spectoresque production of Bonnie and the Treasures' "Home of the Brave," no doubt a big regional hit in the Boston area. A favorite of Andy Paley and a great showcase of the Wrecking Crew.



And lastly, here is Lester's favorite, "Rendezvous" off the lp. There is rumbling we may yet get to hear the live 1971-1972 Sidewinders that Lester was so fond of. Really essential as we have two first hand accounts here that the Sidewinders were the equal of the Yardbirds and/or MC5 live !