A “two-fer” this month! Quite by accident, my CD’s by THE RICHMOND SLUTS and BIG MIDNIGHT wound up side by side (they still are in fact). I already had cleaned up the Richmond Sluts LP from the Katrina mud and had played it several times, though I didn’t know who the band was right away since there was only a photo on the label. I was playing some CD’s one day in my three-disc CD changer (part of my turntable system actually), and I was struck almost immediately by how similar the lead singers were on the two CD’s. They each had a similar up-note at the end of a line – Californians often talk as though each sentence is a question, and this was like singing in that way. I checked the CD’s and found that the lead singer and primary songwriter – Shea Roberts – was the same in both bands. Bassist Chris Beltran is in both bands as well; he is credited as Chris B in the Richmond Sluts. That made me consider other situations where bands change names, or where a band changes dramatically using the same or a similar name.
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Name changes are sometimes not up to you. As I wrote many years ago, when the Starfires came up with their signature song “Time Won’t Let Me”, Capitol Records told them to pick a new name, so they came up with the Outsiders. Later, Sonny Geraci and Tom King were each heading up a band called the Outsiders; when King legally won the rights to the name, Geraci’s band – which included Outsiders guitarist Walter Nims – changed their name to Climax and had an even bigger hit with a Nims song, “Precious and Few”.
Previous UARB Wild Blue was a popular Chicago band called Jinx that was ready to go national; but someone in California was already using the name, so eventually, they settled on their new name. As a nod to their roots, their first album was called No More Jinx.
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Jefferson Airplane was one of the major bands in the San Francisco Sound of the 1960’s. I once read frequent lead singer Grace Slick described as “the voice that launched a thousand trips”. She was not an original bandmember, however; Slick was previously in another San Francisco band called the Great Society. In the band’s entry in Allmusic, Richie Unterberger notes that the Great Society “were nearly as popular as Jefferson Airplane in the early days of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Instrumentally, the Great Society were not as disciplined as Airplane. But they were at least their equals in imagination, infusing their probing songwriting with Indian influences, minor key melodic shifts, and groundbreaking, reverb-soaked psychedelic guitar by [Grace] Slick’s brother-in-law, Darby Slick.” In 1967, Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane and brought with her the Darby Slick song “Somebody to Love” and her own song “White Rabbit”. They became her new band’s biggest hit songs, with both reaching the Top Ten, and she became the most prominent member of the group.
“Jefferson airplane” is slang for a split paper match that is used to hold a marijuana cigarette when it has burned down too far to be easily held. Many people think that this was the origin of the band’s name, but (as I suspected years ago) the reverse is apparently the case. Bandmember Jorma Kaukonen has the real story about the band’s name; as quoted from a 2007 press release in Wikipedia: “I had this friend [Steve Talbot] in Berkeley who came up with funny names for people. His name for me was Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane (for blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson). When the guys were looking for band names and nobody could come up with something, I remember saying, ‘You want a silly band name? I got a silly band name for you!’”
Another major San Francisco band was Big Brother and the Holding Company; like pre-Slick Jefferson Airplane, they were already a prominent all-male band before Janis Joplin joined up.
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Jefferson Airplane continued issuing hit albums through the end of the 1960’s but was beginning to run out of steam, so its members began spreading out and working on solo albums and side projects. When Grace Slick was recovering from throat surgery, Hot Tuna was founded and had a oft-changing line-up of various members of the Airplane and others. Electric violinist Papa John Creach joined Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna at the same time.
In November 1970, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick released an album called Blows Against the Empire that was credited to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, though the line-up had little resemblance to the band of that name that followed.
“Starship” is a word that was gaining currency in this time period – not least because of the Star Trek television program that ran from 1966 to 1969 (now known as Star Trek: The Original Series) – and represented an appropriate updating of “Airplane” from the original band. Jefferson Airplane had other old-fashioned touches in their work as well. As reported in the Wikipedia article on the band’s first retrospective album, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane: “Original pressings had a 1918 vintage Victor Talking Machine Company inner sleeve and bore late 1920s vintage Victor record labels.”
By this time, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick were a couple; in January 1971, Slick gave birth to China Wing Kantner (Wing was her maiden name), who later became a veejay on MTV. A well-publicized rumor is that China was originally named “god” (with a small “g”), but apparently, this was based only on a remark made by Grace Slick to a nurse.
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Jefferson Starship proper can be dated to the 1974 album Dragon Fly, but the album was still credited to Paul Kantner and Grace Slick as well as Jefferson Starship. Their first big hit song “Miracles” had a timeless quality, to me at least – it felt as though the song had always been there. The line-up included Pete Sears, an alumnus of past UARB the Sons of Fred.
In 1979, Mickey Thomas joined Jefferson Starship as a new lead vocalist and first appeared on Freedom at Point Zero (1979). His striking vocal style changed the direction of the band, as he had previously done with the blues rock outfit Elvin Bishop Group when he sang lead on the band’s biggest hit song, “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” (1976). Grace Slick appeared with the band on three more albums, beginning with the following album, Modern Times (1981).
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When Paul Kantner left Jefferson Starship in 1984, this last remaining founding member of Jefferson Airplane settled out of court with the other bandmembers that any use of the terms “Jefferson” or “Airplane” was forbidden unless all members of Jefferson Airplane, Inc. agreed. (You could tell that it wasn’t the 1960’s anymore when there is such a thing as “Jefferson Airplane, Inc.”). As a result, the 1985 album Knee Deep in the Hoopla was released under the name Starship. This band had more of a pop sound than either Jefferson Airplane or Jefferson Starship but was also the most successful: The first two tracks on the album, “We Built this City” and “Sara” hit Number One on the Billboard singles charts; and a third Number One, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” came out in 1987. When Grace Slick left the band for good in 1988, the last tie to Jefferson Airplane was severed.
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Manfred Mann was one of the original British Invasion bands; they had a major hit in America (it was #1 in the U.K.) with a bizarre Bob Dylan song, “Mighty Quinn”, along with an earlier hit song called “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”. But they deserve more State-side success than they had, so allow me to quote Bruce Eder’s article in Allmusic to give an overview of the band’s history: “An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. The fact that their range encompassed jazz as well as rhythm & blues, coupled with some elements of their appearance and presentation – co-founder/keyboardist Manfred Mann’s bearded, bespectacled presence – also made the Manfreds more of a thinking person’s band than a cute, cuddly outfit like the Beatles, or sexual provocateurs in the manner of the Rolling Stones. Yet, their approach to R&B was as valid as that of the Stones, equally compelling and often more sophisticated. They charted an impressive number of singles from 1964 through 1969, and developed a large, loyal international fandom that lingers to this day.”
Manfred Mann always had a chameleon quality and, unlike the top-flight British Invasion bands like the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones, had frequent changes in their line-up. As I noted last month, Jack Bruce, later of Cream was a member in the mid-1960’s.
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When Manfred Mann left EMI Records and signed with Fontana Records in 1966, this was a new direction for the band that was described as “Chapter Two”. A more definitive chapter was announced with the formation of the jazz/rock group Manfred Mann Chapter Three, with only Mike Hugg and Manfred Mann himself remaining from the original band – described on the liner notes as “the Manfred Mann pop group”. Their two albums – Manfred Mann Chapter Three and Manfred Mann Chapter Three, Volume Two in 1969 and 1970 – both marked a progressive rock direction for the band but made little headway in the charts.
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Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released their first album, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1972 and has an impressive discography by any standard. One of the endearing features of the band’s music is that they continue to unearth obscure Bob Dylan songs for their albums, with one of them, “Get Your Rocks Off” being used as the album name, Get Your Rocks Off (1973). I have been collecting Earth Band albums for close to 40 years and keep finding new ones every few years. Allmusic lists 21 albums by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
The best-known and probably best album by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band is The Roaring Silence (1976); the Wikipedia article comments: “Like other Earth Band albums, this includes material by other composers. ‘Blinded by the Light’, which reached Number One in Billboard’s Hot 100, is a cover version of a track by Bruce Springsteen; ‘Questions’ is based on the main theme of Franz Schubert’s Impromptu in G Flat Major; [and] ‘Starbird’ takes its theme from Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird.”
The original album cover of The Roaring Silence is beige; a reissue of The Roaring Silence with a blue cover included “Spirit in the Night”, which was released on the band’s previous album, Nightingales and Bombers but with the name shown on the album as “Spirits in the Night”.
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When Bruce Springsteen was putting together his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973), Columbia Records President Clive Davis said that the album needed a hit single. In response, Bruce wrote “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night”; the two songs, particularly “Blinded by the Light” feature a host of characters and cryptic lyrics whose meaning is hard to follow.
Quoting Bruce Springsteen about “Blinded by the Light” in Wikipedia (it is not hard to understand how these meanings would escape nearly all listeners): “According to Springsteen, the song came about from going through a rhyming dictionary and looking for rhymes. The first line of the song, ‘Madman drummers, bummers, and Indians in the summers with a teenage diplomat’ is autobiographical – ‘Madman drummers’ is a reference to drummer Vini Lopez, known as ‘Mad Man’ (later changed to ‘Mad Dog’); ‘Indians in the summers’ refers to the name of Springsteen’s old Little League team; ‘teenage diplomat’ refers to himself. The remainder of the song tells of many unrelated events, with the refrain of ‘Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night’.”
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I think of Joy Division as being a really extreme rock band, and one that could only have come from England. Suicide is sadly quite common among rock musicians and artists in other endeavors as well, but it is not hard to see that the intensity and extraordinary conviction found in the songs of Joy Division could lead someone to end their life. Lead singer and lyricist Ian Curtis also suffered from ill health for many years, including epileptic seizures while performing. In the summer of 1980, the band finally began to find commercial success when the re-release of their magnificent signature song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” went to #13 on the U.K. charts. Just two days before Joy Division was to begin its U.S. tour, Ian Curtis was found dead.
When a long overdue retrospective of Joy Division called Substance finally came out in 1988, one of the songs, “Atmosphere” got to #34 on the British charts, and the Spartan music video that played on the MTV program 120 Minutes made a deep impression on me as well. The moment when I found Substance at Schoolkids Records – located on Hillsborough Street across from the North Carolina State University campus – is one that is indelibly imprinted on my mind.
An overview of Joy Division and its importance in rock music by John Bush can be found in Allmusic: “Formed in the wake of the punk explosion in England, Joy Division became the first band in the post-punk movement by later emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the ’80s. Though the group’s raw initial sides fit the bill for any punk band, Joy Division later incorporated synthesizers (taboo in the low-tech world of ’70s punk) and more haunting melodies, emphasized by the isolated, tortured lyrics of its lead vocalist, Ian Curtis. While the British punk movement shocked the world during the late ’70s, Joy Division’s quiet storm of musical restraint and emotive power proved to be just as important to independent music in the 1980s.”
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After adding a keyboard player, the remaining three bandmembers in Joy Division dubbed themselves New Order and became a highly successful alternative rock band by combining the post-punk sound that they pioneered in their earlier band with elements of electronic dance music. Their 1983 hit, “Blue Monday” is the best-selling 12” single of all time. After a hiatus in the mid-1990’s and another about five years ago, New Order is still active and released an album last year, Lost Sirens.
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H. P. Lovecraft is a well regarded psychedelic rock band that was named after one of my very favorite authors, H. P. Lovecraft long before he gained any mainstream recognition. I knew he had arrived when I went through a big-city Barnes & Noble store 20-some years ago and saw a list of authors in their Horror section, with H. P. Lovecraft listed just below Stephen King. Their first album, H. P. Lovecraft came out in 1967 and is rated 4½ stars from Allmusic and (as noted in the article on the album by Richie Unterberger) “included an underground FM radio favorite, ‘White Ship’” (named after a Lovecraft short story, “White Ship”).
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Drummer Michael Tegza was the only original bandmember left when he reinvented the band H. P. Lovecraft.under the name Lovecraft and released an album called Valley of the Moon in 1970. Joe Viglione, writing for Allmusic says of this album: “For this 1970 Reprise release, they are dubbed Lovecraft and have abandoned the psychedelic Jefferson Airplane sound for a progressive Crosby, Stills & Nash-meets-Uriah Heep flavor. In 1975, drummer [Michael] Tegza re-formed the band again and separated the two words; their Love Craft album, We Love You Whoever You Are, took things into an almost Santana-goes-soul direction.”
I have the Love Craft album, and the addition of soulful vocals by LaLomie Washburn atop a dreamy pop-psychedelic sheen makes this a fascinating listen, though it has little similarity to the original H. P. Lovecraft. This record gets some grudging admiration by Joe Viglione in Allmusic: “The record sounds better than it looks, for they look like a glorified Holiday Inn band; but the creative spark is still there, with Michael Tegza producing this with LaLomie Washburn, and the band dipping into progressive jams, expertly played, but with little chance of obtaining Top 40 success.”
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It is natural for any band to evolve over the course of their career; though their core sound was intact, the Beatles who recorded Please Please Me in 1963 are quite different from the band who released Abbey Road in 1969. (The Beatles released one more album, Let it Be after Abbey Road; but most of this music was actually recorded earlier). Some bands change more than others, however.
One of my most memorable musical moments in college was when a friend introduced a roomful of us to Sailor (1968), the second album by Steve Miller Band. The opening track, “Song for Our Ancestors” is a lingering psychedelic rock instrumental that features frequent blasts from a foghorn, a sound that has fascinated me since I was a little boy. I acquired several of their albums over the years, including their first album, Children of the Future. I had no idea what the weird blobs on the cover were until I saw a small black and white photo of the gatefold album cover and realized that they blocked off the edges of letters spelling out the album name, “Children of the Future”.
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With their album The Joker (1974), Steve Miller Band showed a major shift in the music – though they had kept trying new things all along – but this also gained them Top Ten singles and strong album sales that had eluded them with their earlier work. Perhaps to acquaint his new listeners with their earlier work, the opening verse of the title song “The Joker” – “Some people call me the space cowboy / Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love / Some people call me Maurice / ’Cause I speak of the pompatus of love” – cited songs and lyrics from their previous albums; “Gangster of Love” for instance is on the Sailor album. Steve Miller Band is continuing to release albums – about a dozen since this one.
Many of their earlier fans grumbled at the reoriented sound of Steve Miller Band; but the fact of the matter is, music is a musician’s job – sure, some evidently don’t seem to mind singing for spare change on street corners, but most don’t want to sacrifice completely for their art. What sells is what keeps a roof over their head, and if “selling out” means that they don’t have to worry about putting food on the table, so be it. It is easy for their fans to gripe, since they all have regular jobs.
For myself, nothing would thrill me more than to see real success come to any one of the UARA’s or UARB’s that I write about. I am not at all invested in keeping these obscure bands obscure – far from it, for here I am writing about them. Some of the bandmembers in the UARB’s have had some real success already, and I am tickled to death to see it happen – that only proves that there was real talent there all along.
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Another important British Invasion band, Fleetwood Mac had a major change or two in direction over their career. Like Manfred Mann, they started off as an important blues-rock English band; after several line-up changes – including the addition of two women, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks – Fleetwood Mac evolved into a best-selling pop-rock band. Their 1977 album, Rumours (primarily named for the numerous personal upheavals in the lives of the two couples in the band, John McVie and Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) became the sixth biggest selling album of all time; Wikipedia reports worldwide sales of 40 million copies, with certified sales of 26.8 million. When Bill Clinton wanted a song to replace the ancient “Happy Days are Here Again” that had been played for 60 years at Democratic Party Conventions, “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” from this album was his choice for the 1992 Democratic Convention following his nomination for President.
The new direction for Fleetwood Mac was not limited to personnel changes or new musical experimentation; this has been common in bands long before rock and roll came along. Fleetwood Mac relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1970’s; also, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were Americans. Thus, it is difficult to know even how to define the band. Wikipedia calls them “a British-American rock band formed in 1967 in London”, but more than a few comments in the Wikipedia “Talk” section grumble about even calling their latter-day music “rock”. In Allmusic, their article starts off: “While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few groups experienced such radical stylistic changes as Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late ’60s, the band gradually evolved into a polished pop/rock act over the course of a decade. Throughout all of their incarnations, the only consistent members of Fleetwood Mac were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – the rhythm section that provided the band with its name.”
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Wikipedia has a brief mention of the Richmond Sluts in the article on their drummer Brad Artley, who also performed from 1995 to 1996 with a fairly prominent neo-psychedelic outfit called the Brian Jonestown Massacre. BJM has 14 albums listed in Allmusic, though Artley did not perform on any of them. Brad Artley is also featured in a documentary on the Brian Jonestown Massacre and another band, the Dandy Warhols called DiG!. (The former band name is a portmanteau of Brian Jones, a founding member of the Rolling Stones with Jonestown Massacre, the notorious mass suicide of the flock of Rev. Jim Jones in their compound in Guyana after assassinating Congressman Leo Ryan – the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” arose from what happened there – while the latter band name is a takeoff on the name of artist Andy Warhol). That gives you some idea of what does get into Wikipedia and what does not.
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As of the first week of 2014, the Richmond Sluts have a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/richmondsluts – and considerable information about the band can be found there, such as their self-description: “Hailing from the Richmond District of San Francisco, the Richmond Sluts are a revved up rock ’n’ roll band that is timeless. With influences from garage, punk, psych, and rock ’n’ roll, the Richmond Sluts are guaranteed to make you move, sweat, dance, and leave you begging for more. . . .”
The Richmond Sluts were founded by Chris B (Chris Beltran, on bass guitar) and Shea Roberts (guitar and vocals) in 1998; they shared similar tastes in music, such as the Clash, the Rolling Stones, New York Dolls, and the Stooges. After adding Justin Lynn (keyboards), the Richmond Sluts developed a distinctive sound and began performing with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Their first release came out in 1998 – a 7-inch single that is the sole release by Wicks World Records – “Rock-n-Roll Fantasy” b/w “Paddy Wagon”; the latter song is included on their album.
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Their sole album, The Richmond Sluts – released in both vinyl and CD – came out in 2001 on Disaster Records; the musicians for the album included Brad Artley (drums), whom they probably met while performing with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Their music is an amalgam of garage rock and straight-up rock with more than a dash of sleaze, and the music varies considerably over the course of the album; the keyboards fit in nicely with their punk-psychedelic persona. The album cover is pretty cool: a woman in reflective sunglasses with the bandmembers shown in the two lenses. Highlights of the Richmond Sluts album include the back-to-back cuts toward the middle of the record, “Sad City” and “Contagious”, plus “City Girls” and “Thought I Was Dead”; but it’s all good.
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Allmusic gives The Richmond Sluts 4 stars and says of the Richmond Sluts that “they explored the glam-slam-thank-you-ma’am side of punk”. Jo-Ann Greene comments about their inventiveness on the album in ways that are a little beyond my capacity to figure out: “Since categorization is a necessity in this age of overspecification, punk rock will do nicely, but doesn’t begin to encompass just how cleverly the group churns other genres through its blender. The Sluts connect the dots between ’60s garage punk and old school ’70s style, then toss just a dash of new school into the mix. Variations on this recipe reverberate across the album, and answer a slew of niggling questions along the way. Ever wonder what the [New York] Dolls would sound like covered by a psychedelic band? Kept up at night trying to imagine a cross between the Cramps and the Velvet Underground? Curious what the result would be if a time warp sent Richard Hell circa 1978 a decade into the past? And what if Eddie & the Hotrods were really the Ramones with English accents? The Richmond Sluts answer all these brain teasers and more you’ve yet to even imagine, and they do it without an ounce of pretentiousness or braggadocio.”
In 2002, the Richmond Sluts released a single on white vinyl on Disaster Records, “Sweet Something” backed with a 2002 recording of “Sad City”. No other music has been released on CD or vinyl since that time.
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Big Midnight is advertised on the Bomp! mailorder site as “former Richmond Sluts”, but I don’t remember it that way when I first ordered the album some years back. Now that the Richmond Sluts have reformed, that might be the best way to relate to this band. Still, this band has its own identity, exploring their more mature sound in varied ways rather than trying to mine all of their influences directly. Even Shea Roberts’ lead vocals are sung in a lower register.
The band was formed in 2002 by Shea Roberts (guitar, vocals, keyboards, percussion) and Chris Beltran (bass, harmonica, keyboards) of the Richmond Sluts, plus KC Kozak (drums, backing vocals), Elisha Drons (guitar), and Lydia Walker (backing vocals). Jimmy Willets plays guitar on one track. (The Richmond Sluts also have some uncredited female background vocals).
It took me a while to notice, but the album photography is pretty special: It has the same stagey poses that 1960’s and 1970’s bands employed. This is one way that they highlight their retro-rock sound – the Bomp! mailorder advert puts the band “in the retro-as-if-retro-never-happened category”.
Big Midnight also has released only one album, Everything for the First Time, which came out on Alive Records in 2003. Allmusic immediately notes in their review by Brian O’Neill, “Actually, there is nothing here that you will be hearing for the first time” and continues: “Everything for the First Time could have as easily came out in 1973 as it did in 2003. Call ’em ‘the Rolling Stooges’ and the band will have to plead guilty, as Big Midnight combines the nihilism of Iggy Pop (‘Love for Sin’ could have been a [David] Bowie or [Lou] Reed side written specifically with Ig in mind) with the bloozey, boozy swagger of Keith Richards crew.”
Great tracks on the album include the band’s single, “Doin’ All Right”. described by Creem magazine this way: “These denim-clad, sunglass-sporting, Rolling Stones-patched hombres from the Bay Area have crafted a great smoking-in-the-high-school-parking-lot vibe on this debut single.” “All the Dreams”, “Love for Sin” and “Spent Too Much” are slower, almost pensive numbers that are unlike anything on The Richmond Sluts; and “(You) Treat Me Too Bad” is another terrific number. As with the Richmond Sluts album though, every song is well crafted and well performed.
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The Richmond Sluts have reunited; besides the core members Shea Roberts, Chris Beltran and Justin Lynn, the band has added Jesse Nichols (guitar) and John Tyree (drums). While they have not recorded a new album yet, the band has a cool logo – fashioned from a thick tongue like their heroes the Rolling Stones – and a T-shirt that features the tag line, Born to Boogie. The Richmond Sluts have embarked on their first European tour this year.
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Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2012 – WILD BLUE
Once again, I mentioned the Flashback band, Wild Blue in the write-up of the current UARB; this sure has happened a lot. YouTube has a music video for “Fire with Fire” at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGpO-2gr6PU . The person who posted the video said that this was included in the soundtrack for a 1986 film, Fire with Fire. The video intersperses color clips from the film with both color and black-and-white shots of the band in performance. Wikipedia has an article on the film, whose cast include Virginia Madsen. Based upon a comment that was posted with the video, bandmembers Renee Varo and Joe Zanona married and raised a family.
A better-quality audio-only version of the song is at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiY1p2cNF0c . Unfortunately, “Fire with Fire” is the only song by the band that I could find on YouTube, but this is probably their best song.
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Picture Gallery: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2011 – THE UNKNOWNS
Here is the retrospective album that I have:
This is their EP, Dream Sequence on Sire Records that originally came out on Bomp! Records:
This is an album called Southern Decay that was released about 10 years after the EP that I was not familiar with:
Here is a promo shot of the Unknowns:
And another:
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Story of the Month: The Outsiders (from February 2010)
Tom King and his brother-in-law Chet Kelley of the Starfires came up with a gem called “Time Won’t Let Me”, a near-perfect amalgam of Motown and Merseybeat that even 45 years later is one of those songs that I never get tired of hearing. Under pressure from Capitol Records, the band changed its name to the Outsiders and had a string of Top 40 hits over the mid-1960’s like “Girl in Love” and “Respectable” that, sadly, are almost completely overshadowed by their biggest hit. They released a total of four albums in the 1960’s, all quite good; even the fake “live” album somehow works. Until Chicago came along with their Roman numeral series, the Outsiders had perhaps the most boring series of album names of the time: Besides the first that was named for their hit song, Time Won’t Let Me – and was originally going to be called simply The Outsiders – the others were Album #2, The Outsiders In and Happening Live!. Their recordings had judicious use of horns and paved the way for other bands like Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Buckinghams and Chicago that were more heavily dominated by their brass sections.
The Outsiders broke up at the end of the decade but almost immediately reformed – actually, there were two bands called the Outsiders for a time: one in Los Angeles headed by Sonny Geraci, and the other back in Cleveland led by Tom King. King won the lawsuit over the use of the name, so Geraci changed his band’s name to Climax. This new band had an even bigger hit in 1972 than “Time Won’t Let Me”: the Number One song “Precious and Few”. With the addition of this song to his Outsiders output, Sonny Geraci is clearly one of the best white soul singers of the 1960’s.
A “two-fer” this month! Quite by accident, my CD’s by THE RICHMOND SLUTS and BIG MIDNIGHT wound up side by side (they still are in fact). I already had cleaned up the Richmond Sluts LP from the Katrina mud and had played it several times, though I didn’t know who the band was right away since there was only a photo on the label. I was playing some CD’s one day in my three-disc CD changer (part of my turntable system actually), and I was struck almost immediately by how similar the lead singers were on the two CD’s. They each had a similar up-note at the end of a line – Californians often talk as though each sentence is a question, and this was like singing in that way. I checked the CD’s and found that the lead singer and primary songwriter – Shea Roberts – was the same in both bands. Bassist Chris Beltran is in both bands as well; he is credited as Chris B in the Richmond Sluts. That made me consider other situations where bands change names, or where a band changes dramatically using the same or a similar name.
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Name changes are sometimes not up to you. As I wrote many years ago, when the Starfires came up with their signature song “Time Won’t Let Me”, Capitol Records told them to pick a new name, so they came up with the Outsiders. Later, Sonny Geraci and Tom King were each heading up a band called the Outsiders; when King legally won the rights to the name, Geraci’s band – which included Outsiders guitarist Walter Nims – changed their name to Climax and had an even bigger hit with a Nims song, “Precious and Few”.
Previous UARB Wild Blue was a popular Chicago band called Jinx that was ready to go national; but someone in California was already using the name, so eventually, they settled on their new name. As a nod to their roots, their first album was called No More Jinx.
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Jefferson Airplane was one of the major bands in the San Francisco Sound of the 1960’s. I once read frequent lead singer Grace Slick described as “the voice that launched a thousand trips”. She was not an original bandmember, however; Slick was previously in another San Francisco band called the Great Society. In the band’s entry in Allmusic, Richie Unterberger notes that the Great Society “were nearly as popular as Jefferson Airplane in the early days of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Instrumentally, the Great Society were not as disciplined as Airplane. But they were at least their equals in imagination, infusing their probing songwriting with Indian influences, minor key melodic shifts, and groundbreaking, reverb-soaked psychedelic guitar by [Grace] Slick’s brother-in-law, Darby Slick.” In 1967, Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane and brought with her the Darby Slick song “Somebody to Love” and her own song “White Rabbit”. They became her new band’s biggest hit songs, with both reaching the Top Ten, and she became the most prominent member of the group.
“Jefferson airplane” is slang for a split paper match that is used to hold a marijuana cigarette when it has burned down too far to be easily held. Many people think that this was the origin of the band’s name, but (as I suspected years ago) the reverse is apparently the case. Bandmember Jorma Kaukonen has the real story about the band’s name; as quoted from a 2007 press release in Wikipedia: “I had this friend [Steve Talbot] in Berkeley who came up with funny names for people. His name for me was Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane (for blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson). When the guys were looking for band names and nobody could come up with something, I remember saying, ‘You want a silly band name? I got a silly band name for you!’”
Another major San Francisco band was Big Brother and the Holding Company; like pre-Slick Jefferson Airplane, they were already a prominent all-male band before Janis Joplin joined up.
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Jefferson Airplane continued issuing hit albums through the end of the 1960’s but was beginning to run out of steam, so its members began spreading out and working on solo albums and side projects. When Grace Slick was recovering from throat surgery, Hot Tuna was founded and had a oft-changing line-up of various members of the Airplane and others. Electric violinist Papa John Creach joined Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna at the same time.
In November 1970, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick released an album called Blows Against the Empire that was credited to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, though the line-up had little resemblance to the band of that name that followed.
“Starship” is a word that was gaining currency in this time period – not least because of the Star Trek television program that ran from 1966 to 1969 (now known as Star Trek: The Original Series) – and represented an appropriate updating of “Airplane” from the original band. Jefferson Airplane had other old-fashioned touches in their work as well. As reported in the Wikipedia article on the band’s first retrospective album, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane: “Original pressings had a 1918 vintage Victor Talking Machine Company inner sleeve and bore late 1920s vintage Victor record labels.”
By this time, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick were a couple; in January 1971, Slick gave birth to China Wing Kantner (Wing was her maiden name), who later became a veejay on MTV. A well-publicized rumor is that China was originally named “god” (with a small “g”), but apparently, this was based only on a remark made by Grace Slick to a nurse.
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Jefferson Starship proper can be dated to the 1974 album Dragon Fly, but the album was still credited to Paul Kantner and Grace Slick as well as Jefferson Starship. Their first big hit song “Miracles” had a timeless quality, to me at least – it felt as though the song had always been there. The line-up included Pete Sears, an alumnus of past UARB the Sons of Fred.
In 1979, Mickey Thomas joined Jefferson Starship as a new lead vocalist and first appeared on Freedom at Point Zero (1979). His striking vocal style changed the direction of the band, as he had previously done with the blues rock outfit Elvin Bishop Group when he sang lead on the band’s biggest hit song, “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” (1976). Grace Slick appeared with the band on three more albums, beginning with the following album, Modern Times (1981).
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When Paul Kantner left Jefferson Starship in 1984, this last remaining founding member of Jefferson Airplane settled out of court with the other bandmembers that any use of the terms “Jefferson” or “Airplane” was forbidden unless all members of Jefferson Airplane, Inc. agreed. (You could tell that it wasn’t the 1960’s anymore when there is such a thing as “Jefferson Airplane, Inc.”). As a result, the 1985 album Knee Deep in the Hoopla was released under the name Starship. This band had more of a pop sound than either Jefferson Airplane or Jefferson Starship but was also the most successful: The first two tracks on the album, “We Built this City” and “Sara” hit Number One on the Billboard singles charts; and a third Number One, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” came out in 1987. When Grace Slick left the band for good in 1988, the last tie to Jefferson Airplane was severed.
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Manfred Mann was one of the original British Invasion bands; they had a major hit in America (it was #1 in the U.K.) with a bizarre Bob Dylan song, “Mighty Quinn”, along with an earlier hit song called “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”. But they deserve more State-side success than they had, so allow me to quote Bruce Eder’s article in Allmusic to give an overview of the band’s history: “An R&B band that only played pop to get on the charts, Manfred Mann ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. The fact that their range encompassed jazz as well as rhythm & blues, coupled with some elements of their appearance and presentation – co-founder/keyboardist Manfred Mann’s bearded, bespectacled presence – also made the Manfreds more of a thinking person’s band than a cute, cuddly outfit like the Beatles, or sexual provocateurs in the manner of the Rolling Stones. Yet, their approach to R&B was as valid as that of the Stones, equally compelling and often more sophisticated. They charted an impressive number of singles from 1964 through 1969, and developed a large, loyal international fandom that lingers to this day.”
Manfred Mann always had a chameleon quality and, unlike the top-flight British Invasion bands like the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones, had frequent changes in their line-up. As I noted last month, Jack Bruce, later of Cream was a member in the mid-1960’s.
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When Manfred Mann left EMI Records and signed with Fontana Records in 1966, this was a new direction for the band that was described as “Chapter Two”. A more definitive chapter was announced with the formation of the jazz/rock group Manfred Mann Chapter Three, with only Mike Hugg and Manfred Mann himself remaining from the original band – described on the liner notes as “the Manfred Mann pop group”. Their two albums – Manfred Mann Chapter Three and Manfred Mann Chapter Three, Volume Two in 1969 and 1970 – both marked a progressive rock direction for the band but made little headway in the charts.
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Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released their first album, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1972 and has an impressive discography by any standard. One of the endearing features of the band’s music is that they continue to unearth obscure Bob Dylan songs for their albums, with one of them, “Get Your Rocks Off” being used as the album name, Get Your Rocks Off (1973). I have been collecting Earth Band albums for close to 40 years and keep finding new ones every few years. Allmusic lists 21 albums by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
The best-known and probably best album by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band is The Roaring Silence (1976); the Wikipedia article comments: “Like other Earth Band albums, this includes material by other composers. ‘Blinded by the Light’, which reached Number One in Billboard’s Hot 100, is a cover version of a track by Bruce Springsteen; ‘Questions’ is based on the main theme of Franz Schubert’s Impromptu in G Flat Major; [and] ‘Starbird’ takes its theme from Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird.”
The original album cover of The Roaring Silence is beige; a reissue of The Roaring Silence with a blue cover included “Spirit in the Night”, which was released on the band’s previous album, Nightingales and Bombers but with the name shown on the album as “Spirits in the Night”.
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When Bruce Springsteen was putting together his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973), Columbia Records President Clive Davis said that the album needed a hit single. In response, Bruce wrote “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night”; the two songs, particularly “Blinded by the Light” feature a host of characters and cryptic lyrics whose meaning is hard to follow.
Quoting Bruce Springsteen about “Blinded by the Light” in Wikipedia (it is not hard to understand how these meanings would escape nearly all listeners): “According to Springsteen, the song came about from going through a rhyming dictionary and looking for rhymes. The first line of the song, ‘Madman drummers, bummers, and Indians in the summers with a teenage diplomat’ is autobiographical – ‘Madman drummers’ is a reference to drummer Vini Lopez, known as ‘Mad Man’ (later changed to ‘Mad Dog’); ‘Indians in the summers’ refers to the name of Springsteen’s old Little League team; ‘teenage diplomat’ refers to himself. The remainder of the song tells of many unrelated events, with the refrain of ‘Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night’.”
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I think of Joy Division as being a really extreme rock band, and one that could only have come from England. Suicide is sadly quite common among rock musicians and artists in other endeavors as well, but it is not hard to see that the intensity and extraordinary conviction found in the songs of Joy Division could lead someone to end their life. Lead singer and lyricist Ian Curtis also suffered from ill health for many years, including epileptic seizures while performing. In the summer of 1980, the band finally began to find commercial success when the re-release of their magnificent signature song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” went to #13 on the U.K. charts. Just two days before Joy Division was to begin its U.S. tour, Ian Curtis was found dead.
When a long overdue retrospective of Joy Division called Substance finally came out in 1988, one of the songs, “Atmosphere” got to #34 on the British charts, and the Spartan music video that played on the MTV program 120 Minutes made a deep impression on me as well. The moment when I found Substance at Schoolkids Records – located on Hillsborough Street across from the North Carolina State University campus – is one that is indelibly imprinted on my mind.
An overview of Joy Division and its importance in rock music by John Bush can be found in Allmusic: “Formed in the wake of the punk explosion in England, Joy Division became the first band in the post-punk movement by later emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the ’80s. Though the group’s raw initial sides fit the bill for any punk band, Joy Division later incorporated synthesizers (taboo in the low-tech world of ’70s punk) and more haunting melodies, emphasized by the isolated, tortured lyrics of its lead vocalist, Ian Curtis. While the British punk movement shocked the world during the late ’70s, Joy Division’s quiet storm of musical restraint and emotive power proved to be just as important to independent music in the 1980s.”
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After adding a keyboard player, the remaining three bandmembers in Joy Division dubbed themselves New Order and became a highly successful alternative rock band by combining the post-punk sound that they pioneered in their earlier band with elements of electronic dance music. Their 1983 hit, “Blue Monday” is the best-selling 12” single of all time. After a hiatus in the mid-1990’s and another about five years ago, New Order is still active and released an album last year, Lost Sirens.
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H. P. Lovecraft is a well regarded psychedelic rock band that was named after one of my very favorite authors, H. P. Lovecraft long before he gained any mainstream recognition. I knew he had arrived when I went through a big-city Barnes & Noble store 20-some years ago and saw a list of authors in their Horror section, with H. P. Lovecraft listed just below Stephen King. Their first album, H. P. Lovecraft came out in 1967 and is rated 4½ stars from Allmusic and (as noted in the article on the album by Richie Unterberger) “included an underground FM radio favorite, ‘White Ship’” (named after a Lovecraft short story, “White Ship”).
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Drummer Michael Tegza was the only original bandmember left when he reinvented the band H. P. Lovecraft.under the name Lovecraft and released an album called Valley of the Moon in 1970. Joe Viglione, writing for Allmusic says of this album: “For this 1970 Reprise release, they are dubbed Lovecraft and have abandoned the psychedelic Jefferson Airplane sound for a progressive Crosby, Stills & Nash-meets-Uriah Heep flavor. In 1975, drummer [Michael] Tegza re-formed the band again and separated the two words; their Love Craft album, We Love You Whoever You Are, took things into an almost Santana-goes-soul direction.”
I have the Love Craft album, and the addition of soulful vocals by LaLomie Washburn atop a dreamy pop-psychedelic sheen makes this a fascinating listen, though it has little similarity to the original H. P. Lovecraft. This record gets some grudging admiration by Joe Viglione in Allmusic: “The record sounds better than it looks, for they look like a glorified Holiday Inn band; but the creative spark is still there, with Michael Tegza producing this with LaLomie Washburn, and the band dipping into progressive jams, expertly played, but with little chance of obtaining Top 40 success.”
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It is natural for any band to evolve over the course of their career; though their core sound was intact, the Beatles who recorded Please Please Me in 1963 are quite different from the band who released Abbey Road in 1969. (The Beatles released one more album, Let it Be after Abbey Road; but most of this music was actually recorded earlier). Some bands change more than others, however.
One of my most memorable musical moments in college was when a friend introduced a roomful of us to Sailor (1968), the second album by Steve Miller Band. The opening track, “Song for Our Ancestors” is a lingering psychedelic rock instrumental that features frequent blasts from a foghorn, a sound that has fascinated me since I was a little boy. I acquired several of their albums over the years, including their first album, Children of the Future. I had no idea what the weird blobs on the cover were until I saw a small black and white photo of the gatefold album cover and realized that they blocked off the edges of letters spelling out the album name, “Children of the Future”.
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With their album The Joker (1974), Steve Miller Band showed a major shift in the music – though they had kept trying new things all along – but this also gained them Top Ten singles and strong album sales that had eluded them with their earlier work. Perhaps to acquaint his new listeners with their earlier work, the opening verse of the title song “The Joker” – “Some people call me the space cowboy / Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love / Some people call me Maurice / ’Cause I speak of the pompatus of love” – cited songs and lyrics from their previous albums; “Gangster of Love” for instance is on the Sailor album. Steve Miller Band is continuing to release albums – about a dozen since this one.
Many of their earlier fans grumbled at the reoriented sound of Steve Miller Band; but the fact of the matter is, music is a musician’s job – sure, some evidently don’t seem to mind singing for spare change on street corners, but most don’t want to sacrifice completely for their art. What sells is what keeps a roof over their head, and if “selling out” means that they don’t have to worry about putting food on the table, so be it. It is easy for their fans to gripe, since they all have regular jobs.
For myself, nothing would thrill me more than to see real success come to any one of the UARA’s or UARB’s that I write about. I am not at all invested in keeping these obscure bands obscure – far from it, for here I am writing about them. Some of the bandmembers in the UARB’s have had some real success already, and I am tickled to death to see it happen – that only proves that there was real talent there all along.
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Another important British Invasion band, Fleetwood Mac had a major change or two in direction over their career. Like Manfred Mann, they started off as an important blues-rock English band; after several line-up changes – including the addition of two women, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks – Fleetwood Mac evolved into a best-selling pop-rock band. Their 1977 album, Rumours (primarily named for the numerous personal upheavals in the lives of the two couples in the band, John McVie and Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) became the sixth biggest selling album of all time; Wikipedia reports worldwide sales of 40 million copies, with certified sales of 26.8 million. When Bill Clinton wanted a song to replace the ancient “Happy Days are Here Again” that had been played for 60 years at Democratic Party Conventions, “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” from this album was his choice for the 1992 Democratic Convention following his nomination for President.
The new direction for Fleetwood Mac was not limited to personnel changes or new musical experimentation; this has been common in bands long before rock and roll came along. Fleetwood Mac relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1970’s; also, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were Americans. Thus, it is difficult to know even how to define the band. Wikipedia calls them “a British-American rock band formed in 1967 in London”, but more than a few comments in the Wikipedia “Talk” section grumble about even calling their latter-day music “rock”. In Allmusic, their article starts off: “While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few groups experienced such radical stylistic changes as Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late ’60s, the band gradually evolved into a polished pop/rock act over the course of a decade. Throughout all of their incarnations, the only consistent members of Fleetwood Mac were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – the rhythm section that provided the band with its name.”
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Wikipedia has a brief mention of the Richmond Sluts in the article on their drummer Brad Artley, who also performed from 1995 to 1996 with a fairly prominent neo-psychedelic outfit called the Brian Jonestown Massacre. BJM has 14 albums listed in Allmusic, though Artley did not perform on any of them. Brad Artley is also featured in a documentary on the Brian Jonestown Massacre and another band, the Dandy Warhols called DiG!. (The former band name is a portmanteau of Brian Jones, a founding member of the Rolling Stones with Jonestown Massacre, the notorious mass suicide of the flock of Rev. Jim Jones in their compound in Guyana after assassinating Congressman Leo Ryan – the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” arose from what happened there – while the latter band name is a takeoff on the name of artist Andy Warhol). That gives you some idea of what does get into Wikipedia and what does not.
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As of the first week of 2014, the Richmond Sluts have a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/richmondsluts – and considerable information about the band can be found there, such as their self-description: “Hailing from the Richmond District of San Francisco, the Richmond Sluts are a revved up rock ’n’ roll band that is timeless. With influences from garage, punk, psych, and rock ’n’ roll, the Richmond Sluts are guaranteed to make you move, sweat, dance, and leave you begging for more. . . .”
The Richmond Sluts were founded by Chris B (Chris Beltran, on bass guitar) and Shea Roberts (guitar and vocals) in 1998; they shared similar tastes in music, such as the Clash, the Rolling Stones, New York Dolls, and the Stooges. After adding Justin Lynn (keyboards), the Richmond Sluts developed a distinctive sound and began performing with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Their first release came out in 1998 – a 7-inch single that is the sole release by Wicks World Records – “Rock-n-Roll Fantasy” b/w “Paddy Wagon”; the latter song is included on their album.
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Their sole album, The Richmond Sluts – released in both vinyl and CD – came out in 2001 on Disaster Records; the musicians for the album included Brad Artley (drums), whom they probably met while performing with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Their music is an amalgam of garage rock and straight-up rock with more than a dash of sleaze, and the music varies considerably over the course of the album; the keyboards fit in nicely with their punk-psychedelic persona. The album cover is pretty cool: a woman in reflective sunglasses with the bandmembers shown in the two lenses. Highlights of the Richmond Sluts album include the back-to-back cuts toward the middle of the record, “Sad City” and “Contagious”, plus “City Girls” and “Thought I Was Dead”; but it’s all good.
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Allmusic gives The Richmond Sluts 4 stars and says of the Richmond Sluts that “they explored the glam-slam-thank-you-ma’am side of punk”. Jo-Ann Greene comments about their inventiveness on the album in ways that are a little beyond my capacity to figure out: “Since categorization is a necessity in this age of overspecification, punk rock will do nicely, but doesn’t begin to encompass just how cleverly the group churns other genres through its blender. The Sluts connect the dots between ’60s garage punk and old school ’70s style, then toss just a dash of new school into the mix. Variations on this recipe reverberate across the album, and answer a slew of niggling questions along the way. Ever wonder what the [New York] Dolls would sound like covered by a psychedelic band? Kept up at night trying to imagine a cross between the Cramps and the Velvet Underground? Curious what the result would be if a time warp sent Richard Hell circa 1978 a decade into the past? And what if Eddie & the Hotrods were really the Ramones with English accents? The Richmond Sluts answer all these brain teasers and more you’ve yet to even imagine, and they do it without an ounce of pretentiousness or braggadocio.”
In 2002, the Richmond Sluts released a single on white vinyl on Disaster Records, “Sweet Something” backed with a 2002 recording of “Sad City”. No other music has been released on CD or vinyl since that time.
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Big Midnight is advertised on the Bomp! mailorder site as “former Richmond Sluts”, but I don’t remember it that way when I first ordered the album some years back. Now that the Richmond Sluts have reformed, that might be the best way to relate to this band. Still, this band has its own identity, exploring their more mature sound in varied ways rather than trying to mine all of their influences directly. Even Shea Roberts’ lead vocals are sung in a lower register.
The band was formed in 2002 by Shea Roberts (guitar, vocals, keyboards, percussion) and Chris Beltran (bass, harmonica, keyboards) of the Richmond Sluts, plus KC Kozak (drums, backing vocals), Elisha Drons (guitar), and Lydia Walker (backing vocals). Jimmy Willets plays guitar on one track. (The Richmond Sluts also have some uncredited female background vocals).
It took me a while to notice, but the album photography is pretty special: It has the same stagey poses that 1960’s and 1970’s bands employed. This is one way that they highlight their retro-rock sound – the Bomp! mailorder advert puts the band “in the retro-as-if-retro-never-happened category”.
Big Midnight also has released only one album, Everything for the First Time, which came out on Alive Records in 2003. Allmusic immediately notes in their review by Brian O’Neill, “Actually, there is nothing here that you will be hearing for the first time” and continues: “Everything for the First Time could have as easily came out in 1973 as it did in 2003. Call ’em ‘the Rolling Stooges’ and the band will have to plead guilty, as Big Midnight combines the nihilism of Iggy Pop (‘Love for Sin’ could have been a [David] Bowie or [Lou] Reed side written specifically with Ig in mind) with the bloozey, boozy swagger of Keith Richards crew.”
Great tracks on the album include the band’s single, “Doin’ All Right”. described by Creem magazine this way: “These denim-clad, sunglass-sporting, Rolling Stones-patched hombres from the Bay Area have crafted a great smoking-in-the-high-school-parking-lot vibe on this debut single.” “All the Dreams”, “Love for Sin” and “Spent Too Much” are slower, almost pensive numbers that are unlike anything on The Richmond Sluts; and “(You) Treat Me Too Bad” is another terrific number. As with the Richmond Sluts album though, every song is well crafted and well performed.
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The Richmond Sluts have reunited; besides the core members Shea Roberts, Chris Beltran and Justin Lynn, the band has added Jesse Nichols (guitar) and John Tyree (drums). While they have not recorded a new album yet, the band has a cool logo – fashioned from a thick tongue like their heroes the Rolling Stones – and a T-shirt that features the tag line, Born to Boogie. The Richmond Sluts have embarked on their first European tour this year.
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Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2012 – WILD BLUE
Once again, I mentioned the Flashback band, Wild Blue in the write-up of the current UARB; this sure has happened a lot. YouTube has a music video for “Fire with Fire” at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGpO-2gr6PU . The person who posted the video said that this was included in the soundtrack for a 1986 film, Fire with Fire. The video intersperses color clips from the film with both color and black-and-white shots of the band in performance. Wikipedia has an article on the film, whose cast include Virginia Madsen. Based upon a comment that was posted with the video, bandmembers Renee Varo and Joe Zanona married and raised a family.
A better-quality audio-only version of the song is at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiY1p2cNF0c . Unfortunately, “Fire with Fire” is the only song by the band that I could find on YouTube, but this is probably their best song.
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Picture Gallery: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for June 2011 – THE UNKNOWNS
Here is the retrospective album that I have:
This is their EP, Dream Sequence on Sire Records that originally came out on Bomp! Records:
This is an album called Southern Decay that was released about 10 years after the EP that I was not familiar with:
Here is a promo shot of the Unknowns:
And another:
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Story of the Month: The Outsiders (from February 2010)
Tom King and his brother-in-law Chet Kelley of the Starfires came up with a gem called “Time Won’t Let Me”, a near-perfect amalgam of Motown and Merseybeat that even 45 years later is one of those songs that I never get tired of hearing. Under pressure from Capitol Records, the band changed its name to the Outsiders and had a string of Top 40 hits over the mid-1960’s like “Girl in Love” and “Respectable” that, sadly, are almost completely overshadowed by their biggest hit. They released a total of four albums in the 1960’s, all quite good; even the fake “live” album somehow works. Until Chicago came along with their Roman numeral series, the Outsiders had perhaps the most boring series of album names of the time: Besides the first that was named for their hit song, Time Won’t Let Me – and was originally going to be called simply The Outsiders – the others were Album #2, The Outsiders In and Happening Live!. Their recordings had judicious use of horns and paved the way for other bands like Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Buckinghams and Chicago that were more heavily dominated by their brass sections.
The Outsiders broke up at the end of the decade but almost immediately reformed – actually, there were two bands called the Outsiders for a time: one in Los Angeles headed by Sonny Geraci, and the other back in Cleveland led by Tom King. King won the lawsuit over the use of the name, so Geraci changed his band’s name to Climax. This new band had an even bigger hit in 1972 than “Time Won’t Let Me”: the Number One song “Precious and Few”. With the addition of this song to his Outsiders output, Sonny Geraci is clearly one of the best white soul singers of the 1960’s.
