I may have been the last interested person to hear the story of a lost 1966 “demoâ€Â/acetate version of the VELVET UNDERGROUND’s first album – complete with totally different versions of some of my/your all-time favorite songs – turning up in a warehouse for 75 cents and then going for broke on eBay for $150,000. I got the news that it even existed when the bidding was well underway, and was pretty bummed when my $105,131.69 max bid was trumped by someone else. So then I turned my sights onto getting a CD-R version of it for less than 50 cents, and in that endeavor I was much more successful (though you can trump even that by going to #1 superdope homeboy Brian Turner’s post on WMFU’s blog and downloading the songs yourself before they disappear). I’ve been accumulating Velvets bootlegs and alternate tracks for many years, and I was floored that such a treasure would just pop up out of nowhere – the quintessential record collector’s wet dream.
Imagine an alternate history of these recordings, one in which the band broke up after this session was laid down, and then pursued mediocre-to-nonentity musical careers that ended in failure and zero records. Presuming that the recordings would still ultimately be unearthed in Manhattan in 2005 or whenever it was, how would we have reacted to the earthshaking squall of track #1, “European Sonâ€Â (seriously! They originally intended for it to open the album!)? Or to the life-changing guitar work on “Run Run Runâ€Â and “I’m Waiting For The Manâ€Â? Or the hypnotic trance/ice-drone of “All Tomorrow’s Partiesâ€Â? I’m reasonably confident it would have caused a rock-n-roll revolution in the motherfucking streets. Me, I’m actually surprised that this is even better than I expected. Of the 9 songs on here (they added “Sunday Morningâ€Â and “There She Goes Againâ€Â to the eventual LP), unless I’m high, eight of them are mildly and in some cases wildly different from the later versions. Only “Run Run Runâ€Â is the same version, and even that one, like everything else on here, has muted “White Light/White Heatâ€Â-esque low fidelity production and tons of vinyl pops & crackle not on the later version.
The surprise winner for me was the wholly different Nico vocal on “Femme Fataleâ€Â, which also includes feminized Reed/Cale backing vocals. “European Sonâ€Â is massive, of course, and features a crazed guitar shitstorm every bit the equal of the later version. It unfortunately doesn’t have the chair dragged across the floor & the broken glass we all love so much. “I’m Waiting For The Manâ€Â is completely different, as is “Heroinâ€Â – I like the later versions, as these sound too much like demos, but hindsight is of course 20-20. In all, it’s one of the best “bootlegsâ€Â out there, and a total gift to the Velvets fan and the rock and roller at large. I’d recommend getting a version straight off of the acetate if you can, rather than wait for a cleaned-up official version – though of course you and I will buy that one too, right?
As I said last time, I spent more time listening to old music this year than I did to new music — when I bothered listening to music at all. Part of this is due to the fact that I have writing commitments to a couple of magazines and a radio show, all of which have to do with reissues or older music. Part of it, though, I have to admit, is that at least I knew what I was getting, and it wasn’t all confessional songwriting, which seems to have taken over these last few years — or at least taken over what shows up in my mailbox. At least there was some diversity in the reissues, and I appreciate that.
So, in no particular order, here are some of my faves. And, as with last time, remember that clicking on the link and ordering from it brings me a whopping 4% of the money, bringing me ever closer to getting out of Berlin — a worthy cause if there ever was one. Or, well, of course, that’s what I think…
: Amateur rock historians always talk about how Elvis pioneered the vital fusion between black and white popular music, but that’s hooey. Bob Wills was there first. So were a lot of other people, but none of them was as successful, and as successful for so long, as Wills and his parade of brilliant instrumentalists. West Texas fiddle tunes and hot swing jazz only sounds like a weird idea until you drop the needle on some, and this collection is by far the finest assembling of Wills’ output ever. And although Legacy has the jump on others who’d compile this stuff, since most of Wills’ best music was made for Columbia, Gregg Geller and Rich Kienzle, who put this together, managed to come up with a whole disc’s worth of stuff made after he left that’s top-drawer. This set is not only an education in itself, it’s some of the greatest American music ever recorded. You need it.
: It was a total shock for the young folkies who’d been listening to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music that not only could some of these people still be alive, but that a lot of them actually were. After a number of them were located — and others, who’d never recorded, also showed up — there was a mad scramble to record them and present them live in concert. Probably the most notable concert series was run out of Izzy Young’s Folklore Center on McDougal Street in New York, by a group calling itself Friends of Old Time Music. True to their mission, they recorded every show, and the compilers of this three-disc set had their work cut out for them culling it down to what you see and hear here. What’s most remarkable — and, in a way, discouraging — is that most of what’s on this set is previously unissued; it’s discouraging in that the FOTM albums Folkways put out in the ’60s had some amazing stuff on them, and I don’t know where to point you to it. That said, this is heartwarming stuff, from Dock Boggs unveiling a new song to Mississippi John Hurt’s totally engaging on-stage presence. It’s a document of something that won’t pass this way again, captured when it was in its full flowering. Essential.
: It was only a short step from the folk revival to the birth of country rock, where various California cowpersons, would-be cowpersons, hippies, and Bakersfield malcontents — not to mention dissident folkies like Jim McGuinn — conspired to bring about a change in rock no less important than the one the Beatles had sparked. It wasn’t an easy transition, but it succeeded — all too well, as the birth of the Eagles attests. Compiler Alec Palao has done his homework, and this set not only includes some of the obvious — the Byrds, the Burritos, et al — but some worthy obscurities. Me, I’m really hoping for a Volume Two, but until then, this will continue to satisfy.
: Another byproduct of the folk boom was the eventual concession by the folkies that maybe electricity was okay after all, and the subsequent discovery by the rock crowd of the great electric bluesmen who were still among them. None benefited from this quite so much as B.B. King, whose guitar style was one of the touchstones of the electric blues revival. But one of the things people have always missed about him was that it was his voice as much as his guitar virtuosity which had made him popular with black audiences from the beginning. On this album, Lucille takes a bit of a rest — although she’s by no means silent — and the result is an album that King has always said is his favorite of all of his extensive catalogue. Fans have long clamored for a second one, and maybe now that he’s retiring, we’ll get one. Meanwhile, this more than does the trick. No, the blues isn’t the devil’s music.
and Hard Workin’ Man: The Jack Nitzche Story, Vol. 2: Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound? That was Jack Nitzche. Phil had the idea, but it was his arranger who put it on paper for all those musicians. Naturally, an ambitious guy like Nitzche wasn’t going to stay in Spector’s shadow for long, and he went on to produce and arrange albums by a huge number of people, from Doris Day to Willy de Ville, before moving to the even more lucrative field of film scores. These two records document a wide variety of his work, from his early single “The Lonely Surfer,” through an absolutely radiant arrangement of Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul” for the Everly Brothers, to his work with Neil Young (and his playing in Crazy Horse), all the way up to his last work, with the obscenely talented young Louisianan C. C. Adcock. Two of my most-played discs of the year. Incredible stuff.
: Another piece of good homework. Rockabilly can be terribly tedious, as we listen to washed-up or never-was country singers attempting to get down with the kids, or kids thrashing around trying to be as cool as Elvis. By recasting this movement as “punk and rockabilly,” complier James Austin not only builds a bridge to the present, but clarifies the past, so that the hillbilly component is only part of the mix, and outright zaniness comes to the fore where it belongs. I’ve got some quibbles with the selection, but overall, this is a wonderful presentation of an era in American popular music when nobody knew what the formula was, but didn’t figure that was any reason to stop.
: A figure in both rockabilly and country rock, Waylon Jennings was yet another of those Texas guys whose music didn’t fit in anywhere but refused to let that stop him. This four-disc collection is exhaustive, and I bet most of you will be satisfied with The Ultimate Waylon Jennings, which is a tidier selection, but then you’d miss Lenny Kaye’s liner notes and the version of “Jole Blon” Buddy Holly produced for him.
: Damn those Brits! When you think you’ve discovered all the great soul singers there ever were, they go and launch another CD full of astounding vocal work backed with great arrangements at you! Wiggins was from New Orleans, which figures, although his work didn’t partake of any of the Meters/Toussaint brand of exotica but went straight for fine country soul, which was what Goldwax did best. This is as fine a collection of his stuff as you’ll find, and I recommend you get it before the next amazing soul singer’s CD slides into my mailbox.
: Wanda Jackson wasn’t fazed by the fact that she didn’t become the female Elvis — at least in sales, since artistically she more than met her goal. She slid gracefully into a career as a country singer, and she sure had the pipes for it. So it’s hardly surprising that this collection is as good as it is, since the compilers were able to omit the so-so stuff that was a fact of life for every Nashville-based entertainer at the time and concentrate on stuff which extends her legacy. And when the new tough-girl Nashville gals — read Loretta Lynn — started happening, Wanda was ready: check out the bizarre “This Gun Don’t Care (Who It Shoots).”
: Can I hear the congregation say, “Just plain weird?” Amen! This actually takes me back to the gospel shows I wrote about in my post about Village Music. The headliners would be in the grand tradition, but somewhere down the bill would always be a couple of groups of ambitious young local kids who just loved to jam, and, I bet, later wound up working the secular side of the street. But this, like most of the Numero Group’s releases, is completely idiosyncratic and bizarre, a collection of releases on private labels and limited pressings by funky gospeleers working a style that never took off and was eventually crushed by the ’80s mass choir movement. This has shown up on a lot of year-end best-ofs, and no wonder.
: You know that “Funky Broadway” Dyke and the Blazers were singing about? It wasn’t in New York. It was — of all places — in Phoenix, Arizona, and Dyke was just the most successful of a whole bunch of funky guys, many of whom were captured on wax by — who else? — a white guy from Liverpool, who seems to have considered it his mission in life to document the Phoenix Scene. Some of these recordings are rough, but some are exquisite. Eccentric soul, indeed.
: Oh, go ahead, listen to this. You won’t turn gay. I haven’t, anyway, although this does bring back the days when gay taste ruled the dance music scene in New York and the rock kids would gingerly approach clubs like the Paradise Garage, where Levan ruled the decks, if they were feeling adventurous. This collection is pretty much a primer of New York in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and ought to get any intelligent person re-thinking the opprobrium levelled at “disco” — or even whether such a label makes sense or ever did.
: She was too old when she started, her career had a disastrous start with a jazz album (included here) that’s all but unlistenable, and then she cut a single that couldn’t be topped — by anybody, let alone herself. Lorraine Ellison had rough luck, if you want to look at it that way. But she also had the great good luck to hook up with one of the greatest soul music producers of all time, Jerry Ragovoy, for that single, “Stay With Me,” and then to make one more excellent album with Ted Templeman, a producer I’ve never liked. It’s all here, along with a whole disc of her demos, recorded with members of her family gospel group. Soul was giving way to funk when Ms. Ellison was doing her best work, but this is definitely worth hearing. Well, except for the jazz album. Jerry, what were you thinking?
: Yeah, we lost him this year, but here’s how we got him in the first place. He burst onto the scene with “Please, Please, Please,” described by his ever-articulate label-owner, Syd Nathan, as “the worst shit I ever heard,” and then sold so many copies of it that he had to cut pale imitations of it for Nathan for four years in the hopes of achieving another blockbuster success. It wasn’t until he used his own money to cut a demo of a ballad, “Try Me,” and convinced them to let him record it that he had another hit. But then he was on his way, inventing a whole new kind of music. This starts slow, but Disc 2 takes off like a rocket.
: Motown Select has now gotten to the real nitty-gritty. 1964 was the year of the Supremes’ “Baby Love” and the beginning of the Motown juggernaut. You can still hear them tinkering with the formula here, but this is where they found it. Even the flops are hits. I’m most of the way through the 1965 box and have the ’66 sitting waiting to be heard. This series has its occasional bad tracks (less so after this volume, when Gordy finally abandoned his — yes! — country label, Mel-O-Dy), but this is a project no student of American music can pass up.
That’s just the best; I’m out of energy for the rest. Anyway, this’ll give you lots of listening pleasure, and I’ve got to get busy with next year’s batch. I mean this year’s. Enjoy.
This cheery and high energy combo is distinguished by the sweet, warm tones of vocalist Beth Filla and by its charming tunes. I especially fell for the sunny C86 sensibilities of “I Know That You’re High” and the jangly, anxious “Whisper Down The Lane,” which sounds like a lost Barbara Manning track filtered through the Throwing Muses.
On our old blog we wrote about mainstream TV’s early 80s reaction to punk rock – that was before the magic of You Tube. Here’s the evidence. First, some QUINCY:
1. Go to Wikipedia. 2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year). 3. List three events that happened on your birthday. 4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. 5. List any holidays 6. Post it.
So, for April 12 – Three Events
1633 – Inquisition of Galileo Galilei begins 1861 – US Civil War Begins 1955 – Polio vaccine is declared safe and effective
April 12 – Two Births, One Death 1922(b) – Tiny Tim 1947(b) – David Letterman 1945(d) – FDR
April 12 – Holidays
The Roman holiday of Cerealia begins. Yuri’s Night, an international celebration of the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin; in Russia (and formerly in USSR), the Cosmonautics Day.
If you’re as old as I am you remember when punk rockers actually terrified the heartland and the music industry at large. Here’s a great clip from 1979 of some fake punks doing a spot for Chicago’s Q101 – what we used to call an “easy rock” station, playing “Fogelberg”, The Eagles, etc. You’ll definitely dig on the punk rock namechecks – especially “Flesh Eater”! Enjoy.
In which I try to recommend some newly-created albums in a year when I pretty much gave up listening to music completely. The reasons for that will have to wait — I’m going to write about it at some point, but it’s not a priority at the moment and so I’m putting it off — but suffice it to say that I’ve never listened to less new music in the course of a year than I did in 2006. And only part of that is because a lot of what I heard just plain wasn’t very good.
At any rate, the small list below will be dwarfed by the reissues I’ll be posting next — I listened to far more old music than new, and not just for work-related reasons — and it’s always appropriate to remind readers that if you click most of these links, you’ll be taken to Amazon.com, and buying any of these records through this blog causes them to cut me a check, which will bring me a millimeter or two closer to getting out of Berlin. So it’s for a good cause.
: Okay, so I’m a classicist. This isn’t insurgent country, Americana, or any of that other stuff, it’s just plain country music, played by a hand-picked band of stellar old-school pickers steeped in the Nashville and Texas traditions, sung by a great interpreter. Given all the idiotic costumes country music’s been forced to wear since it’s become the pop genre of choice for suburban 25+-year-old religious females (which is its current demographic), I sometimes need to be reminded that I once loved it. This is the kind of record that reminds me. Walker was a top-quality writer of lyrics, and not half bad with a melody, either, and it’s no wonder that so many of the songs here were classics. And good on Willie for being able to get this record out before Ms. Walker passed away this year. I’m tempted to say that even people who don’t much like country music will like this, but I underestimate their dislike most of the time. And it does, yes, have steel guitar. Excellent steel guitar.
: Charanga Cakewalk is Michael Ramos, a percussionist I used to see in some of the better Austin bands, and this album is a testament to the anybody-can-make-an-album ethos which has resulted in so very much terrible product being released. Ramos used time off on the road, playing as a hired hand with various outfits, to sketch this stuff on his laptop, after which he took it back to Austin and added a few things, most notably vocals from some of his friends. This is “Americana,” in the very best sense of the word, for those of us who don’t believe “America” is restricted to the United States. Atmospheric, almost abstract in places, yet also rooted, this is an album I’d like to see do well enough that Michael can make a couple more of them, if he wants to.
: Dave Alvin is grumpy, irascible, passionate about a lot of things that have nothing to do with what he does for a living — enough like me that I mistrust my own reactions to his records. Not all of this collection of under-known songs by California songwriters is up to his usual high standards — a doo-wop group doing the Beach Boys’ parts on “Surfer Girl” is a notable miscalculation — but he also manages to remind us of how wonderful John Stewart’s “California Bloodlines” is, as well as reminding us that Kevin “Blackie” Farrell, a criminally neglected songwriter I happen to know about because he used to run with the Commander Cody/Asleep At the Wheel crowd and write songs for them, is worthy of further investigation. And anyone who can get me to sit through an entire Jackson Browne song — and like it — has definitely still got something going for himself.
: It’s been years since I’ve been to Louisiana, and even longer since I’ve relaxed with one of those tiny beers in Richard’s Club just outside of Eunice, but it appears that zydeco is still a contemporary, living, kind of music. Buckwheat’s been one of my favorites — okay, so I’m a little old-fashioned that way, although I was also a great fan of the late Beau Joque — ever since I used to see him in Houston’s Third Ward at the church dances back in the early ’80s. The great thing about Jackpot! is it’s not Buck trying to cross over. Been there, done that, didn’t, apparently, much like it. Homefolks are forgiving, though, and this is an album for them. Maybe not the best place to start with zydeco if you’re not used to it, but for those of us who’ve been on board a while, a nice enough way to pass a good time.
: It’s a jam band! It’s a bluegrass band! Awww, who cares? As long as the musicianship’s this good, the communication between the players so utterly clear, and the songwriting’s not obtrusively bad, it’s fine with me. A guilty pleasure, and, admittedly, something of a lesser one in terms of number of spins, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be going back to this again some more.
: I have no idea who these guys are, but I suspect I’d enjoy seeing them live. Once again, California and Americana, but with a weird overlay of darkness that’s perfectly expressed by the nighttime gas station on the cover. They’re a bit of a throwback — I could see them as some tangential Byrds spinoff that I’d have to use one of Pete Frame’s family trees to decipher, but that’s not a bad thing at all. I might try to rustle up their previous record next time I’m in the States. They’re that interesting.
: Again, not a perfect record, but an interesting one without a doubt. Two amplified harmonicas, a tuba player, drummer, guitarist, and trumpet player. Oh, and the occasional Tuvan throat singing. There are lots of things you could say about this if all you wanted to do is crack wise — the Delta Blues goes to Mars, world music from another world — but although the eclecticism wears over the course of an album that’s a bit longer than it absolutely needs to be, the elements which are brought together are approached without too much reverence, but a lot of respect, if that makes sense to you. Another outfit I’d like to see live, but maybe only for one set.
: Whut th’?!? Sorry, but there’d be more stuff like this on this list if I’d been exposed to it. I love pop, and I love smart people, and there’s certainly no doubt in my mind that Neil Tennant shares my sentiments. Tennant’s at his best when he’s pissed off or downcast, at least to my taste, and I’d like to see another songwriter this year who came up with something as wrenching as “I Made My Excuses and Left,” or as nuanced as “Twentieth Century.” You may think you’ve outgrown this sort of thing, or you may only know the PSB through “Go West” or the campy like, but this is the other side of the picture. The nearly all-black cover is quite appropriate. As (heh) is the shocking pink disc inside.
: No-brainer: Jon Dee Graham puts out an album, it winds up here at the end of the appropriate year. Yeah, it’s not as good as his last one, and I’d have been shocked if it had been because then it’d be tempting to think he wasn’t human. It’s not as boisterous, not as wide-open personal, and yet it’s still him because nobody else in the world writes songs like this. I’m looking forward to seeing him in Texas (or maybe over here, since he does well in Holland), and I’m sure he’ll make better and lesser records for years to come.
Jon Hardy and the Public: Observances: Another no-brainer, from a guy who I think — and I seem to be the only person in the world who’s aware of his existence — is one of America’s great songwriters. You can’t even get his stuff on Amazon (although you can on eMusic), but you can get it from his website. As with Jon Dee’s album, this ep isn’t quite as good as his debut album, but I suspect he’s been frustrated by lack of gigs and lack of opportunity to record, and I’ve been dragging my heels on getting some music he asked for to him, so I’m guilty, too. But maybe this year his application to SXSW will come through and someone else will figure out what I hear in this guy’s writing and playing and he’ll get to make another full-length album and maybe even tour outside of St. Louis. He’s too good to get lost in the torrent of mediocrity, but man, swimming that stream is tough.
: Possibly the only album out of all of these which’ll show up on anyone else’s list, this, I suspect, fulfills a long-time dream of Al’s: to make a John Cale record. I know, the sensitive chronicler of the Mexican-American family and the bittersweet edges of love gained and lost and the guy who screamed “They say FEAR is a man’s best FRIEND!” seem one hell of an odd couple, but Al’s been doing Cale’s “Amsterdam” pretty much ever since he broke up the True Believers, and we should never forget that he’s had a nasty, loud, hard-rocking side to him since he started. Yes, the story this year has been his remarkable uphill climb from almost dying from Hepatitis C, but for me the news has been this wonderful Cale-produced bunch of songs, with Al letting Cale run riot in the studio and keeping up with him every step of the way. Now, Al, about doing one with Oontah…
So that’s it. Pretty anemic, huh? Mind you, I stand behind every one of those choices, and there were a lot of albums that hit the toss stack, but I’d have liked more rawk, more British stuff, more variety last year. Ah, well, there’s always this year. If I get around to listening to anything, that is.
So, you though we were done, huh? You thought we’d quit? You thought our widely celebrated and lethally well-timed Robert Altman issue (#7 of the High Hat) was all you were going to get out of us this season?
Nah. Nah. We don’t dance no mo’ at the High Hat. We’re right back up in your business with a specially supplemental issue #7.5, where ten of our sexiest contributors expound on ten of their favorite cultural thingamadoos of 2006.
Simply by pointing your browser thisaway, you’ll get:
Founder & editor Hayden Childs on ten things you should have paid attention to this year.
Composer & classical music blogger Steve Hicken on ten significant developments in concert music.
Film prof and High Hat editor Gary Mairs on ten of YouTube’s finest.
Writer, editor and literary gal about town Shauna McKenna on the ten best websites for fiction.
Cartoonist and raconteur “Calamity” Jon Morris on the ten best — and worst — superhero comics of the year.
Writer, thinker and author of “Against Polemics” David Nordstrom on the year’s essential films and DVDs.
Semi-professional arbiter of everything Phil Nugent tells us what movies made it okay to laugh again.
Blogger, High Hat editor and freelance what-have-you Leonard Pierce on the year’s best bests.
Film critic and America’s movie janitor Scott Von Doviak on the year’s worst worsts.
Culture vulture and movie death match referee George Wu on what he was watching in 2006.
Please take a moment from your busy schedules to use your spare eyeballs and brain cells on the latest offering from what we like to think is one of the more consistently snappy journals of arts and cultural criticism on this big truck called the internet, won’t you? And stay tuned; issue #8 will be coming your way this February. (We’re also still taking pitches for the next issue; contact us at highhatsubmissions at gmail dot com if you’re interested.)
Our Robert Altman issue was one of the best yet, thanks to the hard work of our editors and some amazing contributions from our always-excellent writers. We’re getting a higher profile with every edition, and we have you to thank for that. As always, we appreciate your support and kindness.
We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties in the archive since the move to the New! Improved! Blogger. None of the photos are showing up. Our team of seasoned experts (oregano, basil, some thyme) are hard at work. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Very shortly, my summary of this past year’s music. Please be patient.
One of America’s best record stores — hell, one of the world’s best record stores — will close on Sept. 30, 2007. Village Music, in Mill Valley, California, has fallen victim to the high price of doing business in Marin County, and proprietor John Goddard has decided to sell off his stock, as well as the mind-boggling array of memorabilia which covers his walls.
Actually, it’s not just the expense. As John notes in a press release I got the day after I got my annual (and treasured) Christmas card from him, this year’s featuring a photo of Little Jimmy Scott and Ruth Brown standing in front of the shop, “While the deciding factor in this decision has been the rent levels necessary to maintain a business in Mill Valley, this is only one of several reasons I’ve reached this decision. Basically — it’s time. I’ve had a great time here for a great many years. The things I’ve learned, the people I’ve met, and the ways in which my musical horizons have expanded (and, on some levels, solidified) have been probably the major focus of my life for 40 years. It has been, for the most part, wonderful.”
I’ll say. When I moved to California to work at Rolling Stone, it was my great good luck to rent an apartment in Sausalito, the town which lies at the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Not on the tourist side, but on the side overlooking the Bay where the fishing fleet (what was left of it), the houseboat community, and the residents’ shopping district on Caledonia Avenue were. My place had a stunning view of Mt. Tamalpais, at the foot of which Mill Valley sits.
Naturally, being in the business I was in, I got loads and loads of records, many of which I didn’t want. Just as I was about to be choked out of my home, one of the record reviewers I worked with mentioned a place where I could unload them, just a few miles away. That place was Village Music. John’s policy was simple: you got credit, or you could take cash. He bought stuff for half what he sold it for. New albums in the store were $3.88, three for $10. Used albums went from a dime to quite a lot of money if they were rare enough. And there were lots and lots of albums.
Not only that, John knew a lot about most of them. He seemed to treasure American musical history more than anyone I’d met to that point, and he was evangelical about the stuff he liked. “You’ve never heard that? Take that home today!” But John, I’ve only got $16 credit, and I’ve got this other stuff… And out would come one of the mysterious pieces of paper that lived in and around the cash register. “Okay, now you owe me.” And accounts would, inevitably, get settled. But this music wasn’t just something that lived on round pieces of vinyl for John. He had an unbelievable network of people alerting him to out-of-the-way clubs and concerts and churches where the people who’d recorded those records were playing. You’d get a telephone call if you were among the lucky inner circle: “Mighty Clouds of Joy, Tuesday evening, church in Oakland. Interested?” “Ernest Tubb is playing in Morgan City tonight. It’s kind of a haul, but I’m going.” And, of course, if you heard of something, you’d call him. I was plugged into the zydeco circuit and always passed that news along.
Eventually, his knowledge and his stash of records increased to where expansion was inevitable. One night, I cooked a big pot of gumbo at his house and we drove it to the store, where a number of people waited with sledgehammers and a case of beer to knock down one of the walls. He’d acquired a lease on the store next door, and was going to double his space. It took about a week for that to fill up, but it did relieve the congestion somewhat. Nor were these just record collectors with the sledgehammers. John’s clientele included a great number of people for whom access to the information in the grooves he sold was a matter of vital interest: professional musicians. And, this being Marin County and the ’70s, the great majority of them could be filed under “rock stars.” It wasn’t at all unusual to be shopping with Mike Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites, Marty Balin, Jerry Garcia, David Crosby, or Maria Muldaur. I’m still pissed off at Bloomfield, whom I met when we both reached for the same Barbara Lynn album at the same time. “I need this,” he said. But I saw it first! “Well, I’m Mike Bloomfield and you’re not and I need this.” We eventually became friendly, but that was also the only copy of that album I ever had a chance to own. I still haven’t heard it. And, just as with the live music, these people passed on the knowledge they got: one day I walked in on a warm spring day and the most beautiful acoustic guitar music was playing. I asked what it was and he said “Slack key. Ry Cooder found a bunch of it in Hawaii and brought some back for me. I don’t have any for sale, but I’ve got some ordered. Want me to save you some when it comes in? It’s expensive…” It was, but it was worth it.
The knowledge that performers existed who didn’t perform in California got John to thinking, and this led him to start throwing his famous parties. There was a bar at the other end of town called the Sweetwater where a lot of the local musicians hung out and sometimes performed, and John started renting it twice a year for private invitation-only parties. One was for the store’s birthday in September, and the other was a Christmas party. Customers clamored to perform, and were nearly always routinely turned down; John had an iron-clad idea of who he wanted every time. Sometimes, of course, this meant building a backup band, so there was never any trouble finding musicians for that. But other times, the performers brought their own bands. The parties would be catered by barbeque joints or some of John’s customers in the food business, and there’d be a cash bar.
John sought out performers down on their luck, performers who he felt should have wider exposure, and he cannily invited people who could improve their fortunes to these parties. Within weeks of a story appearing in the Village Voice about the all-but-forgotten jazz vocalist Little Jimmy Scott playing rat-holes in Newark, he was on the stage at the Sweetwater astonishing a crowd that had never heard of him. Six months later, his first Warner Bros. album appeared to a swarm of enthusiastic, I-didn’t-know-he-was-still-alive reviews. The Christmas parties always featured Charles Brown, who, before Michael Jackson appeared on the scene, had the best-selling single by a black artist ever, “Merry Christmas, Baby,” recorded in 1947, and selling seasonally every year thereafter. Mr. Brown hadn’t been such a good businessman, and when he made his first Sweetwater appearance, he was eking out a living in Oakland teaching piano lessons. He, too, was amazed that this crowd knew him, and played one after another of his hits. Finally, he said “A very long time ago, we recorded a song that’s been very good to us ever since. It’s called ‘Merry Christmas, Baby.’ Would you like to hear it?” The crowd roared. Mr. Brown faked a double take. “Really? You do?” Pandemonium. His career saw an uptick, too, not long afterwards.
Not that contemporary performers were neglected. There was always something good to drink there, but I swear I wasn’t hallucinating when I saw Elvis Costello backed by Commander Cody, James Burton, Jerry Garcia, Sammy Hagar, Austin de Lone, “Teenage” Steve Douglas, and one or two others I’m spacing on at the moment. The audience was just as diverse. Carlos Santana and John Lee Hooker always shared a table, and I saw one show from a seat at the bar, where I was between Tanita Tikaram and Pearl Harbor — babe city!
The main thing, though, was that John has never thought of music as a product. Records, yes. Music, no. He’s always been a fan, which is why he nearly passed out the first time B.B. King (a major record collector himself) or Cab Calloway walked into the store. I can’t speculate on what he’ll do next, but I bet he’ll be doing something to do with his passionate love of American roots music.
As for me, I’m hoping I can get there once more before the place closes, and maybe even treat myself to a souvenir. The real souvenir — the word is, of course, the French verb “to remember” — is the education I got in that store and through knowing John Goddard all these years. You can’t put a dollar figure on that, but if you want, we can figure out a way to do it with credit.
I may have been the last interested person to hear the story of a lost 1966 “demoâ€Â/acetate version of the VELVET UNDERGROUND’s first album – complete with totally different versions of some of my/your all-time favorite songs – turning up in a warehouse for 75 cents and then going for broke on eBay for $150,000. I got the news that it even existed when the bidding was well underway, and was pretty bummed when my $105,131.69 max bid was trumped by someone else. So then I turned my sights onto getting a CD-R version of it for less than 50 cents, and in that endeavor I was much more successful (though you can trump even that by going to #1 superdope homeboy Brian Turner’s post on WMFU’s blog and downloading the songs yourself before they disappear). I’ve been accumulating Velvets bootlegs and alternate tracks for many years, and I was floored that such a treasure would just pop up out of nowhere – the quintessential record collector’s wet dream.
