Happy Birthday to Roy Wood - musical genius and founder member of The Move, the Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard.

From the moment the needle hit the vinyl and the sirens screamed, I was hooked on Roy Wood’s music. His single “Fire Brigade” was 2 minutes of perfect pop with the best opening lyric I’d ever heard

Cast your mind back ten years
To the girl who’s next to me in school
If I put me hand upon her leg
She hit me with a rule.

I’d have to cast my mind back farther than 10 years to recall the girl who sat next or near to me in school. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d put my hand upon her knee, but do know she grew up to be a cop, who made headlines for her sexual shenanigans, and is up before the beak for perverting the course of justice. But, so much is life.

“Fire Brigade” charted in February 1968, and was The Move’s fourth single, it’s a work of sheer bloody brilliance that later helped the Sex Pistols with “God Save the Queen”.

I don’t think Roy Wood has ever received the full respect and recognition his musical talents deserve. Founder of 3 highly successful bands - The Move, The Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard, and a composer of a jukebox full of hit singles, Wood is as important as Goffin & King, Lennon & McCartney, Jagger and Richards. But where they all had writing partners to bounce ideas off, Wood was on his own. He is one of those rare solo geniuses like Pete Townshend or David Bowie.

Roy Wood was born on 8 November 1946, in Kitts Green, Birmingham, England, He tested his mettle with various bands before forming The Move with Chris “Ace” Kefford, Carl Wayne, Trevor Burton and Bev Bevan. By dint of writing the songs, Wood was the band’s unofficial leader, yet his lack of confidence saw him share lead vocals with Wayne.

Wood was also a multi-instrumentalist, which made him and The Move far more experimental than any of their rivals, and this includes The Beatles. Take for instance, The Move’s first single “Night of Fear”, from 1966, which sampled Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture to create a song about the downside of LSD. The subject matter reflected the band’s interests in the pop sherbets - particularly Burton and Kefford, who were “the ones out of their brains on drugs,” as drummer Bev Bevan later recalled.

In 1967, Kefford tripped out of his mind and the band during a fancy dress party at Birmingham’s Cedar Club. As he later told Mark Paytress for the liner notes for The Very Best of the Move:

‘There were all these little men sitting around me with pointed heads and big noses and long fingers that touched the floor. They were with me all night, man. Acid screwed my life up, man. It devastated me completely.’

It wasn’t just drugs that brought The Move national notoriety, their stage show involved the chain-sawing of motor cars, and at one point, long before Punk, they were banned from nearly every venue in the UK.

On the upside, The Move’s popularity led to their single “Flowers in the Rain” used to launch BBC’s Radio 1 in 1967. It should have been a crowning moment, but turned out to be a painful loss. The Move’s original Manager Tony Secunda decided to promote the single with a satirical postcard of then British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson in bed with his secretary, Marcia Williams. The postcard was Secunda’s idea, and had nothing to do with Wood or the other band members. Unfortunately, Wilson sued for libel, and won. All of Wood’s royalties for the single were paid over to Wilson, who donated them to charity - a situation that continues 16-years after Wilson’s death.

In a way, this story captures the essence of The Move, a band more dangerous than The Stones, more original than The Beatles, but too often short-circuited by their own and others’ actions.

The Move followed Wood’s musical direction through psychedelia (“Night of Fear”, “Disturbance”, “Flowers in the Rain”, “Lemon Tree”, “I Can Hear the Grass Grow”), pop (“Curly”, “Omnibus”, “Tonight”, “Blackberry Way”, “Beautiful Daughter”), Heavy Metal (“When Alice Comes Back to the Farm”, “Brontosaurus”) and Rock (“California Man”).  These were all stunning songs, but The Move never achieved legendary status because they didn’t conquer America. By the time the US music press did pay attention to the band, it was too late, as John Mendlesohn noted for Rolling Stone in 1971:

“The Move is the most under-rated rock group and deserve to be put in the same category as Led Zeppelin and The Faces.”

Wood had three other careers going by the early seventies. After Trevor Burton left in 1969 and Carl Wayne in 1970, Wood invited Jeff Lynne to join the group, and also suggested starting a second group The Electric Light Orchestra, together with Bev Bevan, which would mix classical music with Rock ‘n’ Roll, and “start from where The Beatles left off”.

For me the sixties finished when When Roy Wood announced the end of The Move and his departure from the Electric Light Orchestra. Thereafter, the ELO was Jeff Lynne’s band, which never realized the potential of Roy Wood’s original idea.

But Wood wasn’t finished yet, he was about to become the Grandfather of Glam with his next band Wizzard - a Brummie fusion of Rock ‘n’ Roll and Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. The seventies started when Wizzard released their first single “Ball Park Incident”. I can still recall the sensation when I first heard it, an epiphany akin to Jesus walking on the water and turning it into wine. Here was the past and the future all rolled into one.

Wizzard flourished with a series of hit singles and the albums Wizzard Brew (1973) and Introducing Eddie and The Falcons (1974). Then there was Wood’s solo work, firstly the superb album Boulders, originally recorded between 1969 and 1971, and released in 1973. Then the brilliant follow-up Mustard in 1975.

Between 1970 and 1975, Wood recorded 8 hit albums - 3 with The Move (Shazam, Looking On, Message from the Country; 1 with ELO; 2 with Wizzard and 2 as a solo artist. The quality and consistency of these albums is unparalleled, and when compared to the output of Lennon or McCartney at this time, Roy Wood puts the former Beatles in the shade.

From this he deserved to go on to greater success, but his career was drastically cut short by his asshole manager, Don Arden, as Wood explained in an interview with the Sunday Mercury in 2009:

“I was contracted to Don Arden for longer than I should have been,” he sighs. “When I broke away he stopped me from recording in any London studio. I ended up booking in under false names but I was soon recognised.

“He ruined the momentum. After Wizzard it was difficult. People haven’t got very long memories and suddenly you fall out of favour. When that happens it’s really hard to get back if you’re not high-profile. I was working flat-out but to little effect. After that, I was just mucking about with musicians and going into local studios. We had an album called On The Road Again that was originally going to be on EMI but wasn’t promoted at all.”

Sadly, Wood disappeared from the music scene, releasing the solo albums On the Road Again in 1979 and Starting Up in 1985, to little affect. Now, to those in the UK, Roy Wood is generally associated with his 1973 festive hit “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday”, rather than as a highly talented musician and performer, and a true pop genius. But, then again, so much is life.

Happy Birthday Roy!

Roy Wood will tour the UK this November and December, details here
 

The Move “Fire Brigade” - Live 1969
 
More of Roy Wood’s golden hits, after the jump…
 

 
It was forty years ago today that Led Zeppelin IV (AKA “Zoso”) was released. Lacking the group’s name or a title, just symbols chosen to represent each of the band members (and never intended to be read as “Zoso”), the album sold huge right out of the gate. It entered the UK charts at #1 and remained a best-seller for well over a year. Although it never topped the US charts (it peaked at #2) it has always been the band’s most popular effort, and includes their best-known, most loved song, the eight minute rock anthem “Stairway to Heaven.” It’s on virtually every “top whatever” rock and roll lists you can name, normally in the first ten items.

Interesting to note that three outtakes from the Led Zeppelin IV IV recording sessions, “Down by the Seaside,” “Night Flight” and “Boogie With Stu” were later included on the sprawling double album Physical Graffiti in 1975.

Below, Led Zeppelin perform “Black Dog” and “Misty Mountain Hop” at Madison Square Garden in 1973.
 

No love for Danzig at Fun Fun Fun Fest. Photo: Mirgun Akyavas.
 
Glenn Danzig makes it so easy to dislike Glenn Danzig. It’s almost as though he’s begging to be hated. This past Friday at Austin’s Fun Fun Fun Fest Danzig unsuccessfully attempted to start a riot after his band’s power was cut by fest promoters when his show went beyond the city’s curfew. Danzig tried to pin the blame for the aborted performance on the fest organizers when actually it was his fault for going on stage 45 minutes late. His arrogance is legendary and must be related to the fact that he’s roughly the same height as a fire hydrant. He’s Mini-Me in Jim Morrison drag. Or as Scott Evil might put it a “vicious little Chihuahua thing.”

​FFFF Founder Graham Williams of Transmission Entertainment posted the following on the fest’s Facebook page:

Hi. I book the fest. Someone has your money and ripped you off. His name is Glenn. Stop by his house in LA with some kitty litter in trade for your refund, but we still had to pay him and he didn’t deserve it after what he pulled. Here is how it went down…check the timeline:

-glenn flies in this morning and says he has a cold and doesn’t feel like playing the show. he demands french onion soup and vitamins brought to his hotel suite. he wants the soup now and wants it hot. we get it.

-glenn says it’s freezing in austin and he can’t go on. says it’s going to be 28 degrees tonight and he won’t perform (keep in mind, it’s currently 71 and sunny with a night forecast of maybe 50+). he says we have to move the show/festival inside if we want him to play (obviously, that’s not possible).

-we rent stage heaters (no other bands, public enemy, mcd, passion pit, etc need or want heaters on stage…it’s warm up there and not cold out) for glenn per demand, as well as bring in an onsite doctor to make him happy and be there if his cold doesn’t go away.

-agents and managers assure us he’s going to play now.

-glenn’s band/crew arrive before him in the afternoon and load gear. they said it all works, they get up the danzig banner, check lights, are happy.

-glenn arrives at 7:45 (half hour before showtime, they go on at 8:15 exactly and have a 90 min set…park curfew by the city/police is 10pm sharp)...when he arrives, he says he’s not going to play. says he doesn’t like how the banners are hung on stage and doesn’t like the lighting or stage size (all this was advanced in email and phone well in advance and the band/crew loaded in mid day and were happy with it and said it would work…stage wasn’t small at all). he wouldn’t leave his trailer to go look at the stage, though, so the lighting company drew up specs for him to look at of the stage lighting 50 feet from his trailer and brought it to him to look over and prove him wrong.

-in the meantime, glenn’s bodyguard gets pushy (literally) with murder city devils manager and tells them they can’t have their friends watch MCD from stage and wants them to cut their set. kicks them off stage and gets physical with the band and stafff….oh, also danzig says he’s just as big as slayer and slayer is playing a bigger stage on sunday and that’s bullshit and wants to play the same stage slayer is playing…or won’t play. makes him look bad.

-it’s now 8:15 and time for them to go on. the band is ready, corpse make ups done, guitars tunes. glenn says he’s not playing and that it’s too cold outside. he said big stages should have windscreen so wind can’t blow on him from the side. the stage managers then goes and gets tarps and tarp the entire side of the stage so no wind will hit him.

-it’s now 8:40. we explain that it’s cutting into the set and he’s going to have cut the 90 min set if he doesn’t play soon, as park curfew is 10. he says he doesn’t feel like playing. says “i got a deathbug. if i go on stage and get sick, i’ll die. i’m not getting sicker for this show” (NOTE: he totally looks and seems fine…no coughing, no paleness, no vomiting, just some balding and a gut, from what i can tell). we get the Dr and he says he can do a b12 shot or anything he needs if he feels bad…danzig says he only treats illnesses naturally, so won’t do that. we finally get him to agree to play and have already informed his crew that it’s only 60 mins (9pm at this point) and they start cutting some songs from the set list, so they can still do misfits, but obviously didn’t cut enough.

-they went on almost and hour late due to the HANDS DOWN biggest rock star moment we’ve ever dealt with and then he tries to start a riot and blames the fest, the city, the cops and everyone, but himself. goes backstage and tries to fight a few ppl and get in the van and leaves.
the end….

Here’s a video from Friday of Danzig ranting and failing to incite a riot. What a miserable prick.
 

 
On Saturday, in the true spirit of rock and roll and with a wicked sense of humor (check out the wig), Ted Leo and The Pharmacists covered some Misfits songs that Danzig didn’t get around to the night before. Overnight, Danzig had become the laughing stock of the festival. The Damned made some choice cracks about Glenn’s hissy fit during their set.

Hey Glenn, check Ted out. This is how it’s done.
 

 
Ken Kesey died 10 years ago this month, on the 10th November. In memory of the great man who was “too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie”, here is a brief film interview with the Merry Prankster, where he discusses the characters he met through the Acid Test; the Grateful Dead and The Beatles and the Power of Music; looking for the crack that brings the magic and the Deadheads - what Fame meant and their Legacy.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Ken Kesey: The Merry Pranksters’ Magic Trip

Ken Kesey hits back at critics of ‘One Flew Over the Cucloo’s Nest’

 
Les Avortés - a film to set your hair on fire, made by a group of friends, who shared a love of Artaud, Dreyer, Stroheim, and the Living Theater. Directed by Jorge Amat, with a soundtrack by Captain Beefheart, from 1970.
 

 
Texas has been suffering through a drought for what seems like an eternity. The past year has been the driest since 1895, when the state began keeping rainfall records. Not even Rick Perry’s prayers have brought a respite from the desert-like conditions in my neck of the woods, Austin.

In this collection of photos shot by my wife Mirgun Akyavas at this past weekend’s Fun Fun Fun Fest you can see how some folks dealt with the clouds of dust being kicked up by a steady and unrelenting flow of gusty winds. The fans and bands were assaulted all day Saturday by nasty little dust devils and an incessant mouth and nose clogging mineral mist that resulted in some rather stunning fashion statements both utilitarian and expressive.
 

 

 

 

 
Nomadic rockers Tinariwen (The Deserts), who hail from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali, arrived from their homeland well-equipped to deal with the gritty conditions in Austin. They must have felt at home in the swirl of sand and dust. Their performance at FFF Fest was a highlight of the three day gathering - soulful, bluesy and beautiful. Check out the live footage of the band after the jump. And if you’re not familiar with their music, the new album, one my favorites of 2011, Tassili, is an excellent place to start. Watching their performance at FFF Fest, I was once again reminded of how every culture has its blues music and how fundamentally similar they are. The music goes deep into something universal - the heart that hurts.
 
More dust bowl fashion and the deep grooves of Tinawiren after the jump…
 

 
This past weekend at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin I met up with Captain Sensible of The Damned for a brief chat followed by filming some of their 35th anniversary show at the festival.

Earlier in the day members of The Damned gathered at the Waterloo Records’ tent to meet their fans. Lead singer Dave Vanian didn’t show up so in a sly bit of punk theater Captain Sensible discreetly grabbed a Vanian look-a-like out of the line of fans and had him fill in for the band’s elusive front-man. Of the hundred or so people who showed up for autographs, only a handful caught on to the ruse. I interviewed the impostor, Jake from Dallas (who was born around the time the band was formed), and as you can see in the video below, he was thrilled to have been Damned for a day.

So, here it is: a bit of Sensible,The Damned performing three of their legendary punk anthems and some faux-Vanian.

Dave Vanian − vocals
Captain Sensible − guitar
Monty Oxy Moron − keyboards
Stu West − bass
Pinch - drums

Shot with my awesomely groovy Sony HDR-XR500.
 

 

Damned for a day.

An interview with Jake from Dallas.
(In case you’re wondering, that’s M83 playing live in the background.)

 
Welcome to part III of my multimedia dossiers on the wild and wonderful recording career of that great American band, the B-52s. Today’s topic, my personal favorite of all of their releases, the 1982 EP produced by David Byrne known as Mesopotamia.

Yes, what is generally thought of as being one of their least successful records—it was critically savaged when it came out—is to my mind their very best work. The hiring on of Byrne, then at the height of his creative powers—he was simultaneously producing the seminal score he did for Twyla Tharp’s Broadway production, The Catherine Wheel—I thought was an inspired move on the band’s part. Byrne introduced the polyrhythmic African beats of Remain in Light and his Brian Eno collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts into the signature sound of the “tacky little dance band from Athens, Georgia’’ ” to great effect. I was a huge Talking Heads fan, so hearing elements of their “African/Eno-era” sound melding with the trademark B-52s wacky racket was heaven for me as a teenage rock snob. Byrne took their sound to a different place, and I felt nicely expanded on their sonic palette. The B-52s obviously felt differently, as Byrne was fired before a complete album could be recorded (hence an EP of the sessions was released).

Seriously, you have no idea how often I played this record. It falls into the “soundtrack of my life” category in a big way. But what many fans of the group do not know is that there are three very different versions of Mesopotamia: The “classic” short (US/Warner Brothers) EP version; the extended mix version mistakenly(?) released in Germany and in the UK by Island Records; and the 1991 CD version, which basically mixed David Byrne right out of the proceedings…

The first two B-52s albums are classics, and to my mind, perfect in every way, but a third album in that same style would have probably been one too many. Byrne’s involvement, for many fans, took the band a little too far away from their inspired amateur beginnings perhaps, but who else but Byrne was capable of coming up with such amazing grooves back then? And haven’t the B-52s always been about the beat? David Byrne was on fire then creatively. I’ve read that the B-52s felt that his production made them sound too much like the Talking Heads, but hey, what a valid direction that was for them!. True, certain elements of their sound (Ricky Wilson’s Venusian surf guitar for one) were diminished, but other elements (Wilson’s striking use of dissonance in his compositions) are given free rein with different instrumentation (like the nearly atonal horn lines). Their sound was nicely expanded upon by Byrne’s “dubbier/trippier” and more-layered production approach, if you ask me, but the B-52s didn’t ask, and it’s their call, ultimately…

Still why not release a special collector’s edition of Mesopotamia with the original David Byrne mixes, the longer Byrne mixes and the known outtakes: “Queen of Las Vegas,” (see below), the original “Big Bird” and “Butterbean” (both recut for Whammy) and the out of character Fred Schneider ballad “Adios Desconocida” (which I found here)? In any case, the longer, “alt” David Byrne version of Mesopotamia, unavailable now for nearly 30 years and never released on CD can be downloaded at The Same Mistakes blog and elsewhere)

PS I don’t hate the 1991 remix of Mesopotamia, but I’d never choose to listen to it over either of the David Byrne versions. Ever. Nuff said.
 

Kate, Fred and Cindy on the set of The Guiding Light soap opera in 1982 (see below for video clip)

Compare the nearly 8-minute version of “Cake” with the shorter version that was released ex-UK and Germany. This song minus the horns at the beginning? A sacrilege!
 

 
And to think that at one point, I actually thought this song really was about baking a cake… Short version of “Cake” (US version):
 

 
Below, “Deep Sleep.” It’s true that this would very much sound at home on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but would anyone doubt that this is the B-52s once the vocals come in?
 

 
A slamming live “Mesopotamia” from the Rockpop Festival, Dortmund, Germany, 1983:
 

 
After the jump, the B-52s make a guest appearance on “The Guiding Light” soap opera in 1982… and more!

 
Somebody really loves kittens and rock and roll over at The Kitten Covers. I’m not a cat fan but I sure do like these covers.

Some real cool kitties.
 

 

 

 
More kitten covers after the jump…

Billy Gibbons Painting by Eileen Martin from Fine Art America

This is taken from today’s Guardian newspaper’s Film & Music section, which has been guest edited by David Lynch, and it makes for one of the most bizarre “music” interviews ever published:

Gibbons and Lynch – but mainly Gibbons, with the occasional “Doggone right” and “Exactly right, Billy” from Lynch – are talking about the beauty and power of industry. About the roar of factories, the growl of engines, about how the clang and clank speak to something within us. We’re meant to be talking about the block and tackle pulley system, but it’s pretty clear from the start that none of us can sustain a conversation about that, and so the block and tackle is just the key that starts the motor that in turn drives our discussion down the highway.

For Lynch, in any case, the block and tackle seems to be as much metaphor as literal device. It’s a system of pulleys, designed to enable a person to lift a greater weight than they could unaided. The pulley was invented around 2,400 years ago by the Greek philosopher Archytas, a scientist of the Pythagorean school (he’s also thought to have been the first person to invent a flying machine. Bright boy; his mother must have been proud). Then Archimedes realised the simple pulley could be expanded into something with even greater power – the block and tackle system, which he designed to help sailors lift ever greater loads, according to Plutarch. Thousands of years later, the basic system is unchanged: the block is the pulleys – the more pulleys you put in the block, the less the force you need to apply – and the tackle is the rest of the of the apparatus.

“I heard about the block and tackle and I’ve seen it work and it seems so magical,” Lynch says of his fascination. “It’s connected in my mind with the American car” – one of its common usages is to lift the engine block from the body of a vehicle – “and it’s kind of perfect that Billy talks about it. Billy had got a kind of guitar power – I always like the idea that his guitar is gasoline-powered.” That’s not quite the only reason Gibbons is joining us today. When Lynch originally asked for a piece about the block and tackle in this week’s Film&Music, we pointed out that the section dealt with film and music, rather than physics and mechanics. Lynch, though, was insistent. OK, he said, if you’re only going to do it if it’s got a film or music angle, then you can have ZZ Top talking about the block and tackle. And here we are

.

Read the full article David Lynch and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons dream about machines over at The Guardian.