Harpswell Hootenanny 2011, Part 1-- Beatles or Stones?

The internets should've been lighting up--- In late March of this year, we managed to convene a veritable rogues gallery here at the Harpswell Estate, for the inaugural version of what we hope to make a yearly, ragtag,  floating rock session, beer slaughterin' and general gathering of friends from near and far. After a few months of calendar co-ordination, gear acquisition and song selection, Roadkill flew up from Charm City, and Roggie drove up from the new Sorkin Compound in lovely Florence, MA.  Gold stars went out to Dillo, who made the trek up from the Chapel Hill metro area (with his own prosciutto!), and to Paulie Bonanos, who caught a transcontinental flight from San Fran just to take part (and make gumbo). Platinum star, as ever, to Miss Oonagh, who put up with all this nonsense with poise and wit.

Anyway, a great time was had by all over the course of the weekend.  We yowled and hooted, swapped instruments, put a dent in our stores of libations and comestibles, and had a fine go of things, even putting a little hard work into the musical end.  To show for it, we have passel of fine tunes (some still under construction) and a bunch of silly pictures to share.  Already we've got our sights on spring '12 for the next go-round.

So here you go, for the first couple of cuts from the Harpswell Hootenanny 2011: one Beatles and one Stones.  I'm not sure if you can really call it a "battle", to put one of the all-time greatest Beatles tunes from one of their bestest albums ever ("Revolver", '66) up against a pretty deep Stones cut (from '67's "Between the Buttons-- another absolutely essential disc).  But, whatevah.....

And Your Bird Can Sing:


Paul B- rhythm/ lead gtr; Rog- lead/ harmony voc, rhythm gtr; Dillo- bass; Road- drums; JK- tambourine, harmony voc

Connection:

Paul B and Dillo- guitars; Road- drums; JK- bass, keys, tambourine, voc

Airliner

Airliner:



As the song says, "It's a two lane stretch of blacktop, it ain't nothin' 'bout a plane".  "The Airline" is the stretch of US Route 9 that runs between Bangor and Calais (pronounced "kal-lis", of course), which lies at the far southeastern border of Maine and looks across the St. Croix River to St. Stephen, NB, Canadia.  There are a few ideas as to why the road's called the Airline, the most likely being that the alternate route along the Downeast coast would have been the "shoreline" route.  The inland route crosses some of the tallest hills in the area, and at times it does feel like you're up in the clouds.  The road's been nicely resurfaced and generally improved in recent years but it still bears some of its old mojo as a trucker's ribbon winding through the hills, lakes and endless forests of Hancock County.  When you're crossing a hilltop in the dim grey middle of a cold winter day, maybe with some snow falling and not a soul in sight, you really feel you could just get swallowed up and not be found again.

I believe this particular song would've been mighty in the hands of the old Dillo or Pourbillies bands, but here's a solo version. Later on this week, we'll get some more of the collaborative stuff posted, and hopefully some photos.

jk

You're So Serious

You're So Serious:


Ah, the garage rock!  Who among us does not love it?  Even if, in this case, it's actually garage rock with a bit of psychedelia thrown in.  It's a classic combination-- two great tastes (or one great one and one OK one) that taste great together. For those of you who are "lumpers" and not "splitters", as we call 'em in the pathology biz, the fine points of rock music categorization are probably a snooze, but us geeks find them fun and sort of useful.  Admittedly, that's "useful" in that "turning-off-the-ladies-and-causing-their-eyes-to-glaze-over-until-their-patience-runs-out-and-the-irritation-takes-over" way, but also in that inside baseball way.  Shorthand.  Like "fuzzed-out, overdriven R&B revival with odd retro techno touches"

The garage rock, anyway, has one of the deepest pedigrees out there-- It's snotty and unpolished music, though generally not angry, and usually it's loud and sloppy enough that you indeed might want to banish it to whatever outbuilding you had handy.  Having played in several garages in my time, there's something about the smell of trash and gasoline, and the tools and junk and storage, and the way the cacophony bouncing off the concrete surfaces that's pretty darned appealing.  But what made me post this particular song and rant it that I'd been thinking of a quote from Lester Bangs, our quintissential development-arrested, self-destructive slop-rock critic, on the Troggs' "Wild Thing", one of the cornerstones of garage rock.   From his essay "James Taylor Marked for Death", 1971:

"It's that kind of a song, 'cause it's about you when you had a good time and went mad for real and reared for release 'cause you were too young and naive to know any better. .... if kids are really too smart and cool to just loon about anymore, if first day of summer means rolling one after another from new lid and plopping hour on hour in front of television or record player instead of tearing into the street and hunting out buddies and leaping and yupping till at least some of the scholastic poison accumulating like belladonna ever since September is plain crazied out of your soul, if all of that's a pipe dream and I'm just an old fart now-- cranking out complaints about the New Generation regular as TB spittle-- if all that's true, then THE LESSON OF "WILD THING" WAS LOST ON ALL YOU STUPID #%$@^-ERS sometime between the rise of Cream and the fall of the Stooges, and rock n' roll may turn into a chamber art yet or at the very least a system of Environments."

So there!

Note: As summer's getting short and the pile of "hit rekkids" is undiminished, next week we start two-a-days, so take heart, have patience, get some rest and drink plenty of fluids.

More Scruffy

As with his Mum's post, Doc once again perfectly captures the scene and what it felt like to get happily steamrolled by Scruffy.  But he soft-pedaled the many interactions that Buttsteak (the band) had with those fellows.  I fondly remember crashing at a house on St. Paul St. with Stephen and, Burns maybe?, after the Glass Pav show.  Stephen couldn't sleep and quietly sat reading the white pages of the Baltimore phone book.  Earlier that evening, we opened up for them, performing our own Scruffy min-set/tribute. It's been reported by several reliable witnesses that Stephen didn't recognize our "disco" version of their song Blue Russian. 

Of all the music I've performed or seen live, Scruffy set the high water mark at what must have been a low point for them. I'm speaking, of course, about the show at the DU house. That was the return wing of their last tour and if they hadn't decided to throw in the towel up until then, I'm pretty sure me standing on a speaker screaming "Buck Naked" probably pushed them over the edge.  Sorry folks. 

But even in those trying circumstances, they were consummate professionals.  They set up, loaded in, no sound checks, no flirting with willing young ladies, no extensive tuning and mic checks.  They just turned on and played a blistering set... one of those chapter room events where the floor bounced and even the ceiling was sweaty.  I've never seen any band come close to that show before or since.

-RK

You and Randall Lee

Hey friends-- Here's the song link up top this time, 'cause I might go on a while:

You and Randall Lee


Randall Lee Gibson IV, that is.  Fantastic drummer, and one of my faves.  Typical of that lot--- Stay in the pocket... don't mess with the flashy stuff... just drive that goddarn song, and MEAN IT...   Anyway, once when he was in Baltimore on one of those Scruffy tours, I saw him walking up 30th St. in Baltimore with a young lady.  The song came to me a decade later, and now we're another ten or so down the line.

You've already seen how much I love to try and dissect these songs and whatever primordial soup they may have arisen.  But I can promise you that I'm responsible for few more direct acts of musical tribute/ thievery/ pale imitation than the attached song-- It's a straight-up, 100% testimony to the impact that music, and a band, and a place in time can leave.  For a bunch of liquored-up, college kids in often bo-ring uptown Baltimore as the 80s were winding down, that band was Boston's Scruffy the Cat.

I recall the review of "Tiny Days" in the Baltimore City Paper: "Another Boston bar band quietly kicks ass."   My first show at the 8x10 Club sealed the deal.  Soon enough we were off a-shoutin' and a-baptizin', picking up steam and picking up converts.  This was IT!-- This was ROCK and ROLL!-- Or some kinda freewheeling hybrid of rock n' roll, honky-tonk, punk, R&B and lord knows what that was somehow hard-wired to our young rock n' roll souls. We'd read tea leaves, magazines and the CP listings for any sign of shows in Baltimore or DC, or maybe even Boston, NYC, Northampton, Port Chester or lord knows where.  Finally we realized we could just put Klausner on the case and just pay the band to play a gig for our own entertainment.  Huzzah!  And this despite the crimes that the Buttsteak and the Haggises 5 band routinely committed against "Mybaby..." and "Moons'" and "Betty" and "Rat" and "Russian".  (Hell, Fitz and I just sang, and probably once again ruined, "2day, 2morrow,4ever" across a campfire just this past weekend...)

Yep-- the Scruffy gigs were So Damned Good and the third LP was Going to Be #$%^'in Amazing.  But that was that.  Band breaks up, college is done.  Move it along, son.  Put it behind you.

Well, I was lucky enough to live in Boston after that, and saw a lot of Charlie Chesterman with the Harmony Rockets, and solo, and I dunno how many times with the Legendary Motorbikes, plugging away.  Plans sadly fell through to have the Motorbikes play at the Wack-Keating Belated Wedding Event/ Premature 2nd Anniversary Party a couple years back.  After that, I kept an eye out for Charlie gigs, hoping to catch up, but... nothing....  for many months....  strange....  Until, card-carrying stalker that I still must be, I happened to go to Charlie's ever-neglected and run-down website for the first time in a long while and...?  What the $%^&??  Cancer?  Benefit?  What the #%^#??

Well, more on all that business shortly.  In the meantime, this one goes out with eternal gratitude to Charlie and Randall and Stephen and Burns and Mac....

Honey Pie

Hey friends-

I have not much of note to prattle on about to accompany it, but I did manage to turn up a song to post: a companion piece to last week's bar-room rocker, recorded at the same time as that one.  The chassis was similarly lifted from the Stones-Faces design book, with maybe an additional nod to AC/DC along the way.  Thematically, though, it was spun off Beatle George's "Savoy Truffle" from the White Album.  Just another in a long line of Imaginary Foodstuff Rock Songs.... (insert Dessert Island Disc joke here.) 

Bonus Fun Fact That I Just Learned: Did you know that sometimes when blues and rock songs refer to sugar, candy, jelly rolls and other foodstuffs, sometimes they're always not speaking literally?  Sometimes they are.  Discuss among yourselves.

Aaaaanyhoo:

Honey Pie:

Mum's the Word

Doc's post on Mum's has it right. For a while, there was a choice to be made: Tio Loco's or Mum's? Actually, there were lots of choices to be made back then. Crazy Lil's, Sudsucker's, the original Captain Larry's and, if you were on a date or something, Sisson's or Bandaloops. The neighborhood was filled with shot-and-a-beer places that have slowly faded away to the point where it's hard to find a decent shufflebowl table anymore.

Management issues pushed Tio's into oblivion and shifted the focus to Mum's. Below is one of the relics that made the transition along with Brian and the rest of us:

Dillo and subsequent bands played Mum's with some frequency, the now-covered fireplace blazing away the skin from this drummer's back. There were plenty of sets with the Glenmont Popes, and that glorious holiday show with Dr. Tasty. And, who else... Splittsville, maybe? It's all a little hazy.

-RK