In praise of the Flamin' Groovies

To steal a phrase from Kundera, I've always been a classical kind of listener, searching for an ideal (which is why "Do I really need this?" and "What parts of XYZ's discography can I do without?" are always part of my crate digging thought process), rather than an epic one, wanting to experience everything. This is especially true now that the vinyl resurgence has driven the price of many things above my $20 a record ceiling (which I've violated on occasion in the past). 

When I recently decided to replace the reissue LP of the Flamin' Groovies' Teenage Head that I foolishly let go a few years ago, I discovered that the least expensive vinyl copy on Discogs was $25. Which is why I opted for the '99 CD version (while "perfect sound forever" proved to be hype, CDs are once again the format I'm most likely to buy, because I'm a cheap bastard) -- which comes with the bonus of seven live-in-studio covers that are as hot as, I dunno, A Session with the Remains or something.

For my two cents, as a "classical" listener, Teenage Head is the one Flamin' Groovies rec you really need. The Sneakers EP and Supersnazz album both sound a little jokey, and reveal the underlying influence of the Lovin' Spoonful that affected a lot of Bay Area bands (the Dead among 'em). Flamingo, produced by Richard Robinson, as Teenage Head would be (he also did honors on the underappreciated first Lou Reed solo LP, as well as such critics' fave esoterica as Hackamore Brick), was harder edged -- they'd encountered the raging Detroit ramalama of the MC5, Stooges, and Alice Cooper out on the road -- but still thin-sounding and speedy in the manner of the Five's Back in the USA. And as much as people whose opinions I respect love the Groovies' later, Beatles/Byrds influenced, Chris Wilson-fronted incarnation, Shake Some Action is where I got off the bus.

As a teenage record store clerk, I took much shit from the older guys at the store where I worked for diggin' the Groovies, Stooges, Alice, MC5, and Nuggets. Fuck 'em. Historical validation wears the white Stetson. The aesthetic championed by Lester Bangs and Creem won out over the one advocated by Jon Landau and Rolling Stone. (Part of the problem, to my mind, with the first generation of rockcrits was that too many of them were English majors, more accustomed to explicating verse than describing sound.) But back in '71, some of us (including whoever it was that wrote the Rolling Stone review) compared Teenage Head favorably with the Stones' Sticky Fingers (which future Springsteen Svengali Landau lambasted for not sounding like they did in '64-'66). 

It wasn't a totally fair assessment, but at a time where it seemed like every band you heard was aping the '69 Stones, Teenage Head was as close of a Beggar's Banquet simulacrum as anybody had attempted. "City Lights" was a ringer for "No Expectations -- with pianist Jim Dickinson as the secret ingredient -- while "Yesterday's Numbers" was sort of a "Stray Cat Blues" with the psychedelic jam-out from the end of "Street Fighting Man" appended. There were other similarities, too. To these not-yet-feedback-scorched ears, the shattered longing of "Whiskey Woman" hit the same way as Velvet Underground "Oh Sweet Nuthin'," while the Groovies' blues and rockabilly homages were as silly-but-spot-on as the Move's country and rockabilly homages on Message from the Country. And I'd be remiss if I neglected to mention the title track's galloping menace, or opener "High Flyin' Baby"'s slide-driven raunch.

My favorite Teenage Head song, though, is their crunchy (in the non-granola sense) cover of Randy Newman's "Have You Seen My Baby," to which they apply the Stones' patented (although stolen from Chuck Berry) chug. I cherish the memory of playing this song with Nick Girgenti (RIP) in an aborted end-of-century band project from after we reached the level of desperation where we were going to attempt to sing. He had some originals he'd originally written to be sung by Frank Logan (also RIP) in another aborted band project, while I had this, the Velvets' "Head Held High," and I forget what. You didn't miss anything.

I got to interview original Groovies frontman Roy Loney for the I-94 Bar back in Y2K, and he sent me, among other valued artifacts, a promo shot of the band inscribed to me by himself, guitarist Cyril Jordan, and bassist George Alexander, the two guys with the most time in the lineup (George till 2018, Cyril to this very day). I never spoke to Cyril, but I got to see him during SXSW 2009, playing at Antone's Records with a band called Magic Christian that also included ex-Blondie drummer Clem Burke. I was there to see the Nervebreakers with my friend Tom Finn (RIP), who was shooting video, and must have walked in front of Cyril a dozen times without recognizing him. (Had I known he was there, I'd have been looking for a guy with a receding hairline, which he had in 1971, not someone with bangs like he has now.) It was only when I saw him strap on the Perspex Dan Armstrong from the Teenage Head cover that I realized my good fortune.

As Roy said at the end of "Yesterday's Numbers," "All's well that ends well."

Craig Taborn's "60 x Sixty"

Never say never again, James Bond: I was telling myself I was putting aside writing and playing for a minute to focus on politics, trying to get a rhythm going with phone banking (because with Covid numbers in my neck of the woods at February levels, blockwalking is not happening for your humble chronicler o' events) like I had with guitar last year and cardiac rehab gym the year before that. Then Craig Taborn's 60 x Sixty showed up in my inbox (traffic to which has been substantially lighter since I unsubscribed from a shit ton of mailing lists) and garnered my rapt attention.

Taborn's a pianist from the same cohort as Vijay Iyer and Kris Davis (both of whom he's duetted with), a Minneapolis native who was mentored by Marcus Belgrave while attending the University of Michigan and went on to play with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, James Carter, and Tim Berne. I first heard him on Davis' Duopoly and in Berne's Hardcell trio, but he also popped up in Dan Weiss's heavy metal-ish Starebaby, and one of his personal favorite projects is Junk Magic, in which he makes electronic music with Mat Maneri and Dave King. A musician with a wide range of influences and interests, is Mr. Taborn.

60 x Sixty synthesizes all of these strands seamlessly in a unique presentation. Streaming free worldwide, the work consists of 60 pieces, each approximately 60 seconds long, that stream in randomized order each time a listener initiates play. The numbers that appear on screen at the start of each piece refer to the order of the present playlist and are not tied to the individual pieces. Taborn says that in time, new pieces may be added and old ones replaced.

In spite of their short duration, each piece creates a sound world that feels complete, and their progression reminds one, as my wife says, of looking into the windows of different apartments in a cityscape (if you're a cinephile, think Tati's Playtime or Tom Noonan's What Happened Was...). Some of the piano miniatures recall Cecil Taylor encores (the dissonant chords, tone clusters, and wide intervallic leaps). Other pieces sound orchestrated and cinematic. Some delve into realms of pure sound and texture. It should surprise no one that this endlessly fascinating work is released on Kris Davis' Pyroclastic Records and produced by David Breskin, both of whom have impeccable track records when it comes to documenting creative music.

Binge-ing the Dead

Remembering the Grateful Dead show I attended with Mike Woodhull (RIP) at the Dallas Convention Center back in '78 (which Jeff Liles has hilariously written about elsewhere). The show is reputed to have been so egregiously shitty that Heads don't even trade tapes of it -- borne out by the setlist, which includes both "Estimated Prophet" (my GD equivalent of "Eminence Front," the Who song I loathe more than any other) and Donna Godchaux's vocal feature "From the Heart of Me"(she and her pianist husband Keith were about to get the wheels put under them). The second set ended abruptly with the exploratory "Wharf Rat," rather than the uplifting conclusion that usually followed the Dead's most "outside" excursions. (I find it charming that the Dead's sets mirrored the flow of an LSD experience; in the case of Dallas '78, the odd ending may or may not have been due to 16-year-old Liles, on his maiden acid voyage, bumming Bob Weir out). Woodhull surprised me by sleeping through more than half of the show. When I asked him about it later, he told me, "the secret to being a Deadhead is knowing when to wake up."

Since the pandemic took away the option of playing with people (I see folks doing it all the time, but with the Delta variant, I've also seen more people I know get Covid than I saw all last year, all but one of them fully vaccinated, and as a heart failure patient, I'm not taking any chances), I've become particularly attuned to the "group mind" in improvisation, and aside from Can, the Dead (on vehicles like "Dark Star," "The Other One," "China > Rider," "Playing in the Band," and "Scarlet > Fire") are probably the best place in rock to hear it.

I recently laid hands on a copy of the double Dead DVD The Closing of Winterland, December 31, 1978. I had my interest piqued when I realized that this show was just nine days after the one Woodhull and I witnessed and I wanted to see if the Dead of that era did any better on home turf.  Originally simulcast (remember those?) on KQED-TV (who gave me my first look at San Francisco rock via a couple of documentaries featuring Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Santana, as well as the Dead, that aired when I was 13-14) and KSAN-FM, the Winterland show isn't the greatest video representation of the Dead. That distinction belongs to Sunshine Daydream, the filmed document of an August 1972 performance in Veneta, Oregon, which in its DVD form concentrates for the most part on songs with transcendent jamming. One of the challenges to collecting the Dead, besides the expense, even used, of the multi-disc "Dick's Picks" series of complete shows is the high ratio of chaff to wheat in the setlists. The Grateful Dead Movie, shot on film, not videotape, at Winterland in 1974, is inferior to '78 if only because of the inclusion of the opening cutesy animation and much dispensable audience business. (The setlist in the original theatrical release was pedestrian, but some of the good stuff is now available in the DVD special features.) 

And Winterland '78 isn't back-to-front gems, either. At times while watching I was reminded of the boredom I felt during parts of their Dallas set. The first two sets both start running out of gas around the halfway point. The highlight of Set One, to these feedback-scorched ears, is a version of "Scarlet > Fire" that reminds me why that sequence was my favorite part of the Dallas show I saw. After that, though, comes a glacially-paced version of "Friend of the Devil" from which the energy level never recovers. (To hear the opposite of this, check out the peppy 1972 Frankfurt set released as Hundred Year Hall, for which I am indebted to Jerry Garcia biographer Blair Jackson's useful discography.) The first four songs in Set Two aren't the Dead's most distinguished material -- while I once rated Pigpen their weakest link, I now own up to being a partisan of the period when he was on board, in both the experimental psychedelic phase and the one where they morphed into a country-rock bar band that even Lester Bangs admitted to liking -- but they provide ample opportunity to scope out Jerry G.'s technique, and Weir's authority as a front man.

Garcia's no slouch, but he eschews all the attention-getting devices favored by the guys I grew up wanting to emulate (Hendrix, Beck, Winter, Zappa). No wide vibrato here, no saturated tone, no fast hammer-ons/pull-offs. Jerry picks every note (except for the occasional descending chromatic pull-off), can bend with any finger (unlike most rockers of his time, who were position dependent to allow bending with the ring finger), likes to phrase in triplets and use the mixolydian mode (also beloved by Zappa during the time when I could still sort of understand what he was doing, at least guitar-wise). Weir, who became the Dead's rockin' rabble rouser as well as its singing cowboy with Pigpen's departure, still tends to over-project his voice a little (you can see him struggle toward the end of the third set). And he plays more guitar than I gave him credit for -- lines and slide as well as chords, which he plays the way McCoy Tyner did for Trane, making the piano a little redundant, except for textural relief. 

After a nice "Playing in the Band," the second set runs aground on the shoals of a drum interval so tedious that even the presence of a couple of Merry Pranksters and the harmonica player from War can't salvage it. A lugubrious "Not Fade Away" follows. Fortunately, the third set's the charm, opening with abbreviated runs at "Dark Star" and "The Other One" (probably to mollify the picketing fan who was protesting the former's absence from the set for over 1500 days!), followed by "Wharf Rat" (apparently a favorite jamming vehicle that year), "St. Stephen" (also unplayed for more than a minute), and a flag-waving "Good Lovin'" on which Weir exhorted the crowd to "Turn on your light," recalling another beloved set closer from the Pigpen era. I see that John Cippolina from Quicksilver (aka "the good-looking Grateful Dead") was onstage for the encores. I didn't notice; no matter.

I'll admit to being pretty satiated on the Dead for now. People whose opinions I respect swear by Blues for Allah, which I remember as a sort of Doobie Brothers-Steely Dan take on the Dead. But my memory is unreliable. Perhaps next time I get a hankering to have this itch scratched, I'll go there.