AARP The Magazine

AARP THE MAGAZINE
 
 
AARP The Magazine  is an American bi-monthly magazine, published by the American Association of Retired People, AARP, which focuses on aging issues.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
The current (August/September 2016) issue of AARP The Magazine – a perk for anyone who joins AARP that keeps getting better every year – includes a section called “Surviving the ’80s”.  The item about the Walk This Way remake reads, quoting Darryl McDaniels (aka D.M.C.):  “[Producer] Rick Rubin gives us this yellow notebook pad.  He tells us, ‘Go down to D’s basement, put the needle on the record.’  We go down to my basement and put on the record, and then you hear, ‘Backstroke lover always hidin’ ’neath the covers,’ and immediately me and Joe [Joseph Simmons aka Run] get on the phone and say, ‘Hell no, this ain’t going to happen.  This is hillbilly gibberish.’”
 
(September 2016)
 
*       *       *
 
 
 
AARP The Magazine had a neat article in their June/July 2016 issue recently about a virtually unknown garage rock band called the Sloths that were putting together an album 50 years after the 1965 release of their crude single Makin’ Love. The article was about as long as a companion piece in the same issue about the Rolling Stones. (I believe that this is the article where Mick Jagger expressed his wonderment about how it must feel for most people who live in a world where the Stones have always been there).  
AARP The Magazine has gotten to be a great musical resource in recent years; when Bob Dylan released his first album of standards a few years back, Shadows in the Night (2015), the only interview he granted was with this magazine. The reporter had previously worked at Rolling Stone magazine. From Wikipedia: “The album has received universal acclaim from critics for its unexpected and strong song selection and for the strength of Dylan and his band’s performance and arrangements. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, making Dylan the oldest male solo artist to chart at number one in the UK.” 
While the other members of the Sloths moved on after the band broke up, Mike Rummans stuck with it. As reported in the AARP The Magazine article: “His musical résumé is a kind of pocket history of American pop. There he is on bass in the bubblegummy Yellow Payges [I just ordered an album, finally, by this band], the glam-tastic Hollywood Stars, the neo-rockabilly Kingbees. His Beatle bangs blossomed into a magnificent ’70s shag, then retreated as the ’80s arrived. Often, his bands flirted with success — the Stars were hyped as the West Coast’s New York Dolls, and the Kingbees charted two singles.”  
The AARP The Magazine article mentions Mike Stax a couple of times: “Unbeknownst to any Sloths, ‘Makin’ Love’ had become an object of fascination after it landed on an influential LP compilation [Back from the Grave, Volume 4] in the early 1980s. ‘The Sloths were something special,’ says Mike Stax, a San Diego musician and garage-rock superfan who publishes the rock zine Ugly Things. ‘“Makin’ Love” was the standout track on that album. So primal, so elemental. It had that caveman primitivism about it.’” 
After interviewing the bandmembers and writing them up for Ugly Things, a few years later the Sloths started making noises about “putting the band back together”, and Mike Stax gave them a shot by hiring them as the opening act for a concert by the Loons. As reported in AARP The Magazine: “They sounded rough, but kids turned out in droves to see a real-live 1965 band in the flesh. Tommy [McLaughlin] recalls the exuberant reaction at one early show in East L.A.: ‘We were like the Stones up there for them. I was like, We gotta do this.’”  
(June 2017)
Last edited: April 7, 2021