"Velvet Underground: Music and Mystique Unveiled" in June 1970/When Mel Brooks met Mel Lyman by Proxy [repost June 2011]

I swear when the Velvets decided to reform and tour Europe in 1990, it was pretty tempting to sell everything I had at the time and go follow them around.  Friends can attest to that aborted plan.  It didn’t happen and I thus still own the June 1970 issue of Circus below.  I have derided Circus in the past, but occasionally, there were some astute pieces.  The cover story on the Airplane was set to go to press almost at the exact time Spencer Dryden was being ejected/retired from the group.  Luckily, the editors found that photo of Joey Covington to slap on the cover as Dryden is still mentioned in the pages as drummer.  That said, Covington’s contribution “Thunk” from the underrated “Bark” is one of the better Nashville Skyline/doo wop/funk hybrids out there and a reet track to boot. Unfortunately, when Dryden left so too did all of his early Zappa-inspired creations ("no man is an island!"). As I have said previously on these pages re early JA up through "Bark": file next to Royal Trux.  And why the fuck is the Howling Hex not hitting these shores this year?  A future post on the greatness of even the concept of  a Victory Chimp audiobook when I hear it.

But I digress. When Clinton Heylin published his Velvets reader All Yesterday's Parties, he did include the great piece below on the Velvets just on the cusp of releasing “Loaded.”  In the end, Chris would have been a better choice to edit the thing and methinks Heylin knows that in his bones.  But as I have said before, it is far better to SEE and read the primary source.  It must have been weird in that spring of 1970 to now have all these folks claiming they were always fans of the Velvets.  Nothing could be further from the truth but just look at the critical consensus gaining speed when you read them all together in All Yesterday's Parties. Where were all these hacks when Cale was around? At least Gleason reprinted his SF Chronicle VU swipe in his Airplane book.  And why is Richman so prissy as to not have his Velvets juvenilia reprinted in Heylin’s book – I may need to scan it myself and post.  I have been listening again to the essential “Fully Loaded Edition” from a few years back and the outtakes are fantastic to hear in better fidelity than the late 1970's boots.   The whole thing just warms you up like that Plastic People of the Universe live tape of all Velvets covers from 1971 (or '72 or is it as late as '73?) which reeks of broken pint bottles sloshing around the floor - the atmosphere is that good and thick as to rival the Live at Max's lp .  This Circus article hit the newsstand and drugstore racks in June 1970, Brigid Polk records the band at Max’s on August 23, 1970 and Lou is out of the band within weeks.  Go figure.







So the back cover of the June 1970 Circus is an ad for the soundtrack to Zabriske Point.  You would get the impression after reading How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life that Fahey would at least get a mention in the ad.  This is all the excuse I need to post the Mel Lyman "cult stars" of the film Mark Frechette & Daria Halprin schmoozing and doing the creepy crawl with the irrepressible Dick Cavett – and Mel Brooks and Rex Reed (most action post the 7 minute mark).

Major Label Guitar Soli

According to Jorma, "Embryonic Journey" dates from 1962 as part of a guitar workshop in Santa Clara. Yet, clearly Jorma and Fahey would have crossed paths in the Bay Area pre-1965 (by which point Fahey was there) and Jorma would have seen him and Basho playing? Similar influences bring us back around to close to the same place but not quite. Still like Jorma's Quah lp (great cover art on that one out of the Liquorball/Blackjack Records variety) and his electric guitar work on those first 5-6 JA albums is as underrated as Neil Michael Haggerty. Anyway, my first introduction to the American Primitive method though I just didn't know it at the time. The second version of the major label variety is none other than the great Leslie West who managed to sneak in this piece amongst all the O Rex approved heaviness on 1970's Climbing. Readers, lets hear of more major label examples in the comments.

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.”

Over Easy

I am pretty sure that Charlotte Caffey first tipped me off to the excellence of Mimi Pond's illustrated memoir of 1970's California, Over Easy (Drawn and Quarterly, 2014), which includes her stint at art school and subsequent work at an Oakland cafe. Over Easy straddles the post-hippie era into fully fledged new wave-dom. A nice way to spend several hours transported back in late 70's Northern California. File it alongside Michael Ritchie's unsung film Smile from 1975 which captures another slice of California life. What did startle me though (in a good way) was the actual cameo of Ted Falconi from Flipper. Great stuff and apparently there is a part two on the way.

Tomata du Plenty and David Lee Roth

As you would expect in David Lee Roth’s Crazy From the Heat (1997 ed.), there are not many references to punk, though in an amusing conflation he oddly and belatedly hands the year 1978 over to Van Halen, the Sex Pistols and the Bee Gees. All three get a passing nod. There is also a passing reference to Henry Rollins and to LA scenester Tequila Mockingbird. I know that Pleasant has thought that David Lee Roth was an investor in the Zero Zero gallery as you can read here. There are also references to the club in the excellent Peter Ivers bio In Heaven Everything is Fine. In Crazy From the Heat, Roth confirms that he was in fact a partner, and was where he had his initial meeting with Steve Vai “actually after a police raid at the local Zero One Gallery, an after hours spot where I was a partner. We got busted every three months: there is supposedly no after-hours in L.A.” Arguably the better anecdote and one that has only somewhat recently been brought to my attention is that DLR and Tomata du Plenty knew each other and that the Zero Zero was the common denominator.

Interphase 1/100% Impure Punk/A Warholian Freak Show/A Mutant's Eye View of Black Oak Arkansas [from Jan. 2011]

I must have tracked this one down in the late 1980’s based on the $2.99 price. From Wilmette and Chicago/DeKalb Illinois comes Interphase 1, edited by Cary S. Baker, Jeff Silberman and Harlan Hollander. What interests us most about this 'zine is the unbelievable who’s who slice of pre-punk Americana straight out of 1975. This includes the writing crew that would coalesce into Gulcher the magazine, and the brilliant uber-teenage Gizmos, prior to their March 1976 recording debut. During the 1990’s, when there were a slew of must read magazines and zines, including Forced Exposure, Jewish Beatle, Black to Comm, Modern Rock Mag (later Rock Mag), Superdope, 200lb Underground, Wipeout, Feminist Baseball, Popwatch, Bob Bert’s BB Gun, Opprobrium and others, one of the best and hardest to obtain, i.e., least distributed, was Eddie Flowers’ digest size Slippy Town Times. Slippy Town Times was really the only one that could link you directly to the primordial days of original, early 70's high energy rock criticism which still included righteous coverage of current stuff such as the latest avalanche of Sun City Girls releases. You may know Eddie from his time fronting one of the best and unheralded free form rock bands of the past (what is it 25 years now and running?), Crawlspace. But Ed had a previous incarnation as one of the more astute music writers among the generation after Bangs, Meltzer and Tosches et al. Slippytown went online with a mailorder side as well sometime in the 2000's I think.



Included in Interphase is a great tag team interview of Black Oak Arkansas’ Jim Dandy by Ken Highland, Bob Richert and Eddie entitled “Jim Dandy to the Recluse” aka “Talking With Jim Dandy: A Mutant’s Eye View of Black Oak Arkansas in Middle America.” Sounds like a title to swipe for my cultural studies dissertation, no? Richert’s “Beyond Our Control” gets some repeated mention so it does pre-date Gulcher.


Also of note are write-ups on both the Dictators and Crème Soda PRE “Go Girl Crazy” and “Tricky Zingers.” Eddie wrote the piece reproduced here with the only available release at the time being “I’m Chewin’ Gum.” Eddie has put this on the Slippytown site though not in its original incarnation.





The “Innerfazing” list is a hoot. Claire Panke of “Prehensile Tongue” fame is described as “Chicago’s most curvaceous Anglophile, and believes that Alex Harvey is God,” David Newberger who gives the you are there account of the Dictators is described as “a rock enthusiast, a friend of Blue Oyster Cult’s and quite a nice dude.” Of course, “Eddie Flowers is to Southern rock what Ken Kesey is to acid” and Ken Highland is “a very enterprising rock and roll punk.” Amen. While special thanks go out to Lester Bangs, Adny Shernoff and Murray Krugman, who is Tim Love, described as “DeKalb’s top roadie, a Jim Dandy/Iggy nut and an expert on Mississippi River Rat Rock.”

Art Schaak of “Roller Reader” is the zines LA correspondent, but I have to say provides some very low energy rock and roll wattage given the total lack of Zolar X coverage and inclusion of Tull’s “War Child.” I will give a thumbs-up breakdown on the first JT lp at some point in 2011. Probably more I could scan but this should do. There are some sweet live shots of Steven Tyler by Claire Panke and a short MC5 write-up which I think I will post at some point: “the MC5 are deified Motor City rockers. Their three out-of-print albums go for anywhere from $1.99 in the bargain bins or $10 on the black market.”

Sparksiana via Joseph Fluery, December 1973/Sparks Ltd

One from the barn. From December 1973 and Alan Betrock’s The Rock Marketplace, Joesph Fluery as Sparks’ propaganda minister/shadow manager/#1 Fan in Heaven, sponsors a full page ad saluting Sparks for signing to Island. Was Joseph managing Milk & Cookies at this point in Brooklyn? Soon after, Joseph heads over to London to work with John Hewlett as Kimono My House is about to be unleashed onto the world (only a few months later than Joseph states - June instead of March 1974). Joseph is also given the unenviable job of terminating the great Martin Gordon right after the lp takes off, whose Rickenbacker sound on that lp should have been a mainstay on Sparks’ 70’s output. Joseph goes on to manage the Mumps, the Dickies (who play NZ for the first time Sunday night!) and of course Sparks. I have written about Joseph previously, but another secret tastemaker of the 70's who had the vision to see the music of the 1980's in 1973.

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