for those who never gave up their turntables
I MOVED TO CALIFORNIA from Pennsylvania in June 1978. I naively believed I would find some semblance of “the sixties” hidden away in San Francisco. But in only a few years, most of it had been blotted out. There were still a lot of hand-painted Victorian houses and a few hip coffee shops and bookstores.
THIS IS THE EIGHTH in a series of ten articles listing and addressing the #1 records of the year as they appeared on Cash Box magazine’s Top 100 chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “Hey, There Georgy Girl, Penny Lane, And Ruby Tuesday! [Continue reading]
LAST WEEK, I RECEIVED AN EMAIL from a young musician that I had never heard of. (No big deal there: my ignorance of musicians young or old of the past few decades might cause you to titter in wonder at the immensity of it.) His name was Lawrence Bray, which set off no alarms of memory in my aging brain. [Continue reading]
DO MOST YOUNG PEOPLE know what “surf music” is? That’s REAL surf music, the kind played by a guitar-and-rhythm-section-and-no-singer group! Many people—including non-record collecting older folk—think of the Beach Boys’ early harmonies when they hear the term “surf music,” but that was never considered surf music by surfer guys and gals (dudes and bunnies?). [Continue reading]
ARGUING THE ‘BEST’ ROCK GUITAR PLAYERS of the ’60 is probably a pretty dumb way to waste time—and “Surfing Guitars” will not be doing that! Considerably more constructive and interesting would be an argument as to who were—and that’s intentionally plural—the most ‘creative’ players. Of course, to reach any kind of consensus there would require that we first agree on a definition of ‘creative’ in that context! [Continue reading]
TO MANY MUSICIANS AND FANS, John Francis Anthony Pastorius III—or Jaco to everyone who knew him—was arguably the most inventive and most influential electric jazz bass-player of the past forty years. His flair in both playing his instrument and in onstage performance earned him the nickname the ‘Jimi Hendrix of the bass.’ He [Continue reading]