The Killer makes it to 74

Goodness Gracious! Great Balls Of Fire
There's A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
as we wish a Happy Birthday to

Jerry "The Killer" Lee Lewis.

He's A Real Wild Child and 74 today.

He played Sydney's White City arena in 1970 and I was there (now wishing I could remember more than that it was just a rockin good time)
This 1959 photo from his appearance in a Melbourne radio station studio.
I guess their toes are tappin' ... or they are repressed by societal mores of the era. God knows, but bless you we know you still rock out dear Jerry Lee.

Many Happy Returns also to
Mick B.N.D.Harvey, and
Laurence J Richards, legendary Melbourne Music Promoter who, as well as booking Radio Birdman at his Richmond Tiger Lounge in 1978, ran The Crystal Ballroom and booked a sold-out Daddy Cool concert in Hamilton while he was still at school.

The Art of Chris Farlowe

Rhythm and Blues was the music of

Sixties MODS, and the soulful

Farlowe got as close to the black heart of R&B

as any white-boy could.

The Art of Chris Farlowe was released December 1966.

on Andrew Loog Oldham's incestuous IMMEDIATE Records label.

When we weren't at our typing jobs in the Melbourne CBD, or

dancing in our Prue Acton mini-dresses at The Catcher* and The Thumpin' Tum*,

we were drinking cheap cider and playing that Farlowe vinyl into onion rings.

These are the tracks that epitomise 1967 for me:

Side 1

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted

We're Doing Fine
Life is But Nothing
Paint It, Black
Cuttin' In
Open the Door to Your Heart
Out of Time.
Side 2
North South East West
You're So Good For Me
It Was Easier to Hurt Her

(co-written by Jerry Ragavoy who also wrote Stay With Me Baby, one of The Great R&B songs of all time)
I'm Free
I've Been Loving You Too Long

(this track has great rock-cello backing)
Reach Out (I'll Be There)
Ride On, Baby

We LOVED this album (still do).

You can find YuToobs of Farlowe and be rewarded.

We knew nothing about him at all back then, beyond the liner notes, except that it seemed the most wonderful music and people who could ignore it, mystified us.

*The Catcher (In The Rye) 471 Flinders Lane Melbourne, uber-hip Mod hangout with Members, founded by photographer Ron Eden and Graham Geddes.

*The Thumpin' Tum 50 Lt.Latrobe St Melbourne, founded by Ken Moate and Ken Minogue and was ultra-hip while they ran it in the 1960's. There was no better place or time to be a teenage girl.

Willie Nelson is God.
5 wives, 2000 songs, one hell of a legend.

I was saddened to read that his longtime stage manager died recently.
Poodie Locke led most of the audience and The Highwaymen on foot back to the Melbourne Hilton after their show at the Laver Arena and treated us like old friends.

A big guy.

This big: both of the Nelson crew buses had signs that said “Poodie’s on the other bus.”

If you laughed at 'Willie is God' above, you might benefit from

viewing a DVD of Edge Of Darkness -

the greatest TV series ever

and which featured his song

Time Of The Preacher sung drunkenly

by the 2 protagonists in a climactic scene.

The Edge Of Darkness was British excellence, so of course

it is now enduring a re-make Stateside - make sure you get the original.

Eric Clapton, who used to be God, did the music for the series and also performed it live (follow that final link for the story).

And here's a story from GodWillie:

A kid asks his mama, "How come you're white and I'm black?" And she says, "Honey, from what I can remember of the party, you're lucky you don't bark."

The link above to 'greatest show ever' quotes a reviewer -

"Edge of Darkness is a masterpiece.
It is one of those very rare television creations so rich in form and content that the spectator wishes there was some way of prolonging it indefinitely” ...

and that's how I feel also about Mr Willie Nelson, who is now 75 years on.

EARS Redux

This magnificent photo of
poet, writer, composer, artist, actor and singer,

Sam Sejavka
out in front of The Ears
and
revelling in the packed room at The Corner Hotel,
Richmond, on 16th August, 2009.

was taken by Andrew McDougall.
(Click the name - it links to his other great pictures of the gig.)
The Gig Explained
Memory Lane
Sam's blog

Most Under-rated Band In Rock History?

A US Country-music blogger I fell over via a profile at Norm Geras
(Emeritus Professor, cricket tragic, and Country music-maven) is
Setting The Woods On Fire.

STWOF asks his: "highly intelligent readers: Tell me, in your opinion,
what rock band (not artist)
suffers the injustice of having the widest gap between

Factor A (Actual Quality & Influence)

and

Factor B (Level Of Recognition & Acclaim)? "

I think for this we have to separate the UK, USA and UStralia.
We immediately think of our favourite song that did not lead to a 50-album career.
Mine for the UK would be The Zombies, and for the US I would nominate Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels for the Under-dog.

The Americans at STWOF however, think in terms of their 'British Invasion', and I was thrilled to see them acknowledge the fabulous and legendary Ray Davies

(but who cannot qualify for this survey since he has been inducted into the RRHoF).

A STWOF commentor mentions our GOBetweens, but imho they are over-rated here,

The Dingoes are about to get into the ARIA HoF so that's them sorted, and

maybe a lot more of the acts on this list should have been rich and famous, and

I wish the brilliant DUFFO was a band so I could nominate him instead of settling on

TAMAM SHUD - a Sydney group which

included the brilliant Richard Lockwood.

Yes I saw them live - at

a Happening (with Ellis D Fogg strobe-lightshow for full atmosphere)

at Paddo Town Hall in 1969, and many many times after.

anybody wanna remind me of a another Aussie musical inju$tice?

BloodyWood

The artist is Paul Karslake, brother of Mrs. Jo Wood.

The Daily Mail writes the story best,

and the photos there, are really worth the click-through.

Those mediocre paintings of Ronnie's that we have all seen, are clearly just poor copies of Karslakes entire oeuvre.

This is his vengeance for Wood "sucking the life out of my sister for 31 years".

The painting was a commission by the makers of TV series True Blood.

Ronnie hasn't realised that it is not What you do, but How you do it

- sucking the life out of a spouse for 30-odd years is quite normal, but

then dumping her to go off with a teenage slav-opportunist is quite another thing.

In the minds of The General Public, Wood has now joined Hewitt, James., and Hogan, Paul, in that men's club of love-rats, from which there is no parole.

lovely genius Hendrix

Dan Cairns, The Times writes a great review

setting out the reasons not to bother with this -

"book by James 'Tappy' Wright, a former road manager for Hendrix,

(which) suggests he was killed on the orders of his penniless manager

Mike Jeffrey, who wanted to cash in his £1.2million life insurance."

(Wright claims in this book, Rock Roadie, that Jeffrey admitted, a month before he was killed in a plane crash in 1973, that he had murdered Jimi.)

"Wright claims a gang broke into the London hotel room where the 27-year-old singer and guitarist was staying with his German girlfriend Monika Dannemann on the night of September 18, 1970, and fed him wine until he drowned.
'Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine. I have never seen so much wine.
Monika Dannemann, an ice-skating instructor, who was with Hendrix on the night he died, committed suicide in 1996. She always maintained he was alive when the ambulance arrived, but this has been vehemently denied by authorities."

(text above is By SIMON CABLE, Daily Mail 20th July 2009.

photo copyright Daily Mail UK).

Further reading:

Who KilledChristopher Robin, The Murder of Rolling Stone Brian Jones,

Terry Rawlings 1994 Boxtree Publishing.