THE BEATLES - Fifty Years Later

February 9, 1964 was a Sunday, and that was the night the Ed Sullivan Show was live on television.  On that night, fifty years ago today, the Beatles debuted in America on that show.

On that long ago Sunday, I was practicing with my rock and roll band in my best friend's garage in the Kooser area of San Jose.  Joe was my best friend through high school, and is still a friend today.

Joe's mom stuck her head in the door to the garage and told us to come quick, and hear this new band on television.  We turned off our amplifiers, put our guitars down and sat on the floor in front of the television in the living room.  The Beatles came on and girls were screaming.  While the Beatles were singing and playing, captions appeared beneath each face giving the name of the Beatle on the screen.  The one beneath John's face read "Sorry girls, he's married."

What was striking about the Beatles was their appearance.  Gone were the Elvis-style pompadour hair helmets.  These guys looked like Little Boy Blue with their hair mops, devoid of pomade, but somehow, we liked it.  They wore cute little black suits with white shirts and black ties.  They used harmony singing, except for the Beach Boys, this was almost unheard of!  When the show was over, the Beatles bowed from the waist in unison.  We went back to our guitars and tried to pick out the tune to "She Loves You," but found it difficult.  This music was a lot different than the boogie woogie rock beat we were used to.

Early in 1964, we were all still in a blue funk over the assassination of President Kennedy.  Traditional rock and roll was dying out.  Anyone who could barely carry a tune was recording songs heavily overlaid with echo chamber effects (to hide their crummy voices), and instead of guitar, bass and drums, had whole orchestras providing the instrumentals.  It sucked.  Elvis was still making forgettable movies like "It Happened at the World's Fair" and Dion sang some monstrosity about "Do the Madison," another idiotic dance step.  It didn't catch on, thankfully.

The music fad just before the Beatles arrived was the hootenanny.  Hootenannies featured folks singers playing acoustic guitars and singing crap like "Don't Let the Rain Come Down -- My Roof's Got a Hole In It and I Might Drown."  One could could only hope.

If you weren't there, it may be hard to understand just how special the Beatles were.  They launched "the British Invasion," a whole slew of British bands that saved rock and roll and created a new genre of great music.  Following in their footsteps were the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Animals, and many more.

I saw the Beatles perform live at the Cow Palace near San Francisco in 1964 and 1965.  They were so cutting edge, so innovative, so talented -- George's fantastic guitar solos added so much to John's and Paul's singing, with Ringo providing the drum beat.  They seemed magical, and it was a magical time in those early days.

Now, fifty years later, John and George are dead, Paul and Ringo are in their seventies.  When I see a photograph of the foursome now, I remember that magic and how it felt, and they still seem cutting edge to me, even though they're not.  Cutting edge today is rap crap and stupid gimmicks, and "songs" that you can't even hum.

Now, like the night they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, popular music is in a low place, dominated by no-talent hacks, the great rock beat nowhere to be found.  Now is the perfect opportunity for a new rock group to emerge, to capture the public imagination, to restore the beat, revive the magic, and bring back the joy that rock music can bring.  I hope I live to see it.

  

Classic Rock, Classic Boredom: My Sudden Departure From My Band -- Looking Again

It's funny how one's long association with a band can end so suddenly.  That happened to me about ten days ago.  I was practicing with the classic rock band I have played with for three and a half years, on Sunday before last.  The guitar player was nitpicking and nagging me about my bass playing, something she has done since day one (she rags on all of the other band members too).  Even though I believed most of her comments and suggestions were wrong, I kept my mouth shut to avoid offending her, for the good of the band.  This turned out to be a mistake.

By not expressing disagreement, I allowed the irritation of her micromanagement to build up to a critical mass.  During this last practice, she had found a new obsession to feed her control freak streak:  the number of bass notes that I was playing on a brand new song (new to us, anyway).  The song was "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You."  I think Ringo originally sang it.

I was in the process of discovering the chord pattern and not overly concerned with how close I was playing it to the record.  That would come later, when I practiced the song on my own -- as I had done many times before on prior songs.  Our obsessive-compulsive guitarist, however, felt it necessary to tell me three times that I was playing "three times as many notes" as the bass player on the record.  She was referring, not to the correct chords vs incorrect chords, she was referring to the phrasing -- how the notes are played.  This is a legitimate point, but not one to overwork or over emphasize on the first couple of run-throughs.  I put the song on my list of "new songs to learn," but the third time she mentioned it, I lost my temper.  I told her to "Shut the hell up."  She said "Fuck you" and I returned the suggestion.  Then I packed up my stuff and left, never to return.

I hate to be micro-managed.  It is one of my pet peeves.

The guitar player, Lorraine, has been vigorously pushing the band in the direction she wants to go:  playing classic rock exclusively, as close to the original recording as possible.  I have a problem with the former, not so much with the latter.  Playing classic rock exclusively is boring to me.  Lorraine has pushed us into giving up some good jazz and blues songs, simply because they weren't "classic rock."

The truth is, I want to progress musically, and ridding our repertoire of more advanced forms of music is a big step backwards.  "Classic rock" is overdone and a hard sell, and there is much competition for gigs.  I want to play jazz, blues and standards.  I want to play my string bass as well as my bass guitars.  Now that "the Universe" has taken me out of my musical dead-end, I have the opportunity to find a band or bands that are more to my liking. I feel a sense of release.  Leaving this band was a good thing.

Bro and Stogie Jam Out With "Black Magic Woman" (Video) -- Hear My New Jazz Bass!

Over the weekend I visited my older brother (Bro) in Fallon, Nevada. We jammed for two days straight! In a jam, you play many songs that you may not have played before. Bro and I haven't played music together for three and a half years, but had a great time and were pleased with the results. Because it's a jam, the renditions will not be as polished like they would be if previously rehearsed. That adds a bit of fun to the efforts, because improvization is required. In the vid below, Bro is playing a black Fender Stratocaster guitar, but you can't see it behind his keyboard. Too bad, it's a beautiful guitar -- but you can certainly hear it well. I am in the fedora playing my new Fender Jazz Bass. Have a listen.

 

Here's the guitar Bro is playing:

Black Fender Stratocaster