Lou Read Jr. likes to play and record real loud for like ten hours non stop. At some point we eat food. Then we play some more. Meditate some. Then we Listen to The Move and The Young Rascals for a while. Some days Lou Read Jr.  just watches film noir, or cheesy horror or sci [...]]]>  

Lou Read Jr. likes to play and record real loud for like ten hours non stop. At some point we eat food. Then we play some more. Meditate some. Then we Listen to The Move and The Young Rascals for a while. Some days Lou Read Jr.  just watches film noir, or cheesy horror or sci fi movies. Afternoons are always bathed in reverb. Feedback is like our mantra.The hypnotic effect of the steady rock beat is understood. Power chords warm the brain as we turn up the overdrive. We seek out the cool rock and roll, examining and fully experiencing it. Then we extract the essence and create real rock & roll . We used to rehearse in the garage but now we have the garage in our computer. We also like fuzz boxes a whole lot.

Each week SONGHEADS  features obscure video clips of some of the best bands you’ve never heard of. Also check out SONGHEADS top 50 obscure pop gems.

Murray departed from [...]]]> It’s hard to believe that  it’s a little known fact
that two of the biggest bands in rock history  made thier American debut perfoming in a weird series of concerts at a NYC movie theatre for promoter Murry The K. This was during a transitional period in the career of  popular disc jockey and radio personality Murray The K.  

Murray departed from his solo act and vocal group presentation and made a valiant attempt to capitalize on the new sound and face of rock by booking self-contained electric bands. Nevertheless, the show billed as “Murray the K presents Music In The 5th Dimension” marked the end of an era.

The shows took place over 40 years ago in 1967 from Saturday March 25th to Sunday April 2nd at the RKO 58th Street Theatre in Manhattan. There were five shows a day starting at 10 in the morning and lasting till after midnight.

Mitch Ryder headlined.

Don Lehnoff: It actually wasn’t “Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.” At the insistence of his producer, Bob Crewe, Mitch was embarking on a solo career andweappeared as the Mitch Ryder Show. I was part of a 10 piece band hired to back Mitch up … 5 guys from Baltimore, 3 from the Chicago Loop who opened the Ryder shows, plus a trumpet from Florida andguitarfrom New York. The “Wheels” declined the opportunity to be augmented with horns, so they parted company.

Hedging on his bet, Murray booked two soul acts – Wilson Pickett and Smokey Robinson. Smokey, even though advertised, never appeared.

Don Lehnoff: Smokey Robinson was hired for the show as advertised, but at the first rehearsal I sat in the audience seats andwatchedRobinson, still wearing his trench coat, arguing on stage with Murray the K. At one point Smokey stormed off the stage andup the aisle to the exit, not to return. It was my understanding that he walked out on the show because Mitch Ryder was billed above him, but I can’t swear to that. In retrospect, that would be considered absurd billing … but this was the high point in Ryder’s career and he was being seriously hyped by the serious hype machine of Bob Crewe. We headlined everywhere we played, with the one exception of a concert in Chicago where another Creweproduct, The Four Seasons, was billed above Mitch.

Nobody cared that Smokey no-showed. The Blues Project with a very young Al Kooper and The Young Rascals appeared, and two very historical moments in rock went down when The Cream (yeah it was Cream, but they were billed as The Cream) andThe Who both made their American debut. Bothbandswere billed as “Direct from England.”

The Cream did two songs per show, “I Feel Free” and “I’m So Glad” or “Spoonful, then The Who destroyed their instruments at each performance.

Pete Townsend of The Who: “We were smashing our instruments up five times a day. We did two songs – the act was twelve minutes long and we used to play “Substitute” and “My Generation” with the gear – smashing it at the end, and then we’d spend the twenty minutes between shows trying to rebuild everything so we could smash it up again.”

Don Lehnoff: What Townsendsaidin that quote is totally true. Keith Moon’s kit was set up on a raised platform on wheels … just a big wooden dolly. At the end of “Generation” they would crash the gear and Moon always flipped over his tubs and cymbals. As soon as the front curtain closed, their roadie would rush in and pile everything up on the dolly andwheelit straight back into a small scenery room back stage where he had set up a little work shop. With drills, screws, clamps andthe like he would piece everything back together in time for the next show. The banddecided it wasn’t worththeexpense of shipping the abused gear back to England, so on the 28th andfinal performance they boosted the smoke pots into explosive bombs and almost literally blew up the amps. A stage hand with a fire extinguisher had to be summoned to put out the fires.

Pete Townsend: We didn’t really know what was going on and we didn’t take it very seriously. And when it got to the last day, we all put funny masks on and went in and sat and listened to (Murray The K) with these masks on. I remember he asked us to take them off, demanded we remove them.” They didn’t. Turns out a lot of acts that Murray claimed were his best friends really weren’t. In fact many didn’t even like him.
Ronnie Spector: “The Beatles were only putting up withhimbecause he was a big New York disc jockey, but they thought it sucked that he called himself the fifth Beatle and they couldn’t wait to get rid of him.”

Al Aronowitz: “Everybody hated Murray, hated him for his power and success, hated him because he screamed and hollered and wore tight pants, hated him because he forced his ego down your throat like a hard-sell used car dealer who makes it seem like you’re going to buy the car anyway, but you’ve also got to take him along as part of the deal.”

Murray’s young fans, the kids, dug him, but the young punks known as The Who thought he was a joke.
Pete Townsend: “(Murray) used to complain because he had what he called his personal microphones, which used to come in for a bit of bashin’. And so we used to actually get daily lectures from him about abusing his personal microphone, which we thought was pretty funny.”

Roger Daltrey broke a total of 18 microphones during the entire run. To the Who and some of the other new acts Murray was like the strict school principle and they were the punk kids. Backstage it was chaos; Ginger Baker was drunk from first show to last, there were LSD trips, flour fights and flooded dressing rooms. As great as the show was on stage, the show backstage was the real rock androll experience. The new wave of rock stars were driving Murray crazy.

This brings it all back to Wilson Pickett, The Wicked Pickett, who had seen it all and didn’t like what was going down.

Don Lehnoff: Wilson Pickett was more or less the model for the new Ryder band, withRyderbeing marketed as the “blue-eyed soul” version. We even covered some Pickett tunes in our show. They even took Mitch down to the Apollo one night to sit in with Pickett on a later show. Pickett’s drummer at that time was Buddy Miles.

Pete Townsend: “Wilson Pickett called a meeting because we were using smoke bombs as well, and he felt that we were very unprofessional, and that the smoke was affecting everybody else’s act.”

The thought of Wilson Pickett lecturing KeithMoon with Murray the K, Mitch Ryder, Eric Clapton, Al Kooper, andPaul Simon hanging aroundin the background is mind boggling, but it happened.

My buddy, a teenager at the time, only worked at those shows selling candy so he could see each and every performance. He told me that on the last night, after the final performance, Wilson Pickett gave Murray, all the acts, the stagehands, and yes, even the candy vendors, a bottle of Scotch, and the party began. The golden era of huge holiday rock shows that started with Alan Freed and continued with Murray the K ended . . . with The Wicked Pickett.

______________________

Pete Townsend quotes from Musician Magazine.
The late Al Aronowitz quote from his website, The Blacklisted Journalist
Ronnie Spector from the New York Daily News

Here I would like to share some memories from Walter Rossi, who at the time was a twenty year old guitarist in Wilson Pickett’s backing band.

What is not mentioned in this article is that Sonny & Cher were the opening act followed by a Canadian bandcalled “Mandela” withmy friend the late Domenic Troiano on guitar. We were doing 3 shows a day and a matinee on Sunday. One of the nicest people was Ginger Baker (Cream’s drummer).

Wilson Pickett was headlining and right before us the Who played and yes, Pickett did complain about the smoke and the mess the Who left behind but at the same time he was also very much entertained by their performance.

 I’ve tried to find footage of that show many times with no success.

I got back with Pickett in 1989 andrecorded  an album with him entitled “I Want You” at the Morein Heights Studios,  was great to see him again after more than 20 years.

 This was one of music’s most important shows and it is frustrating to know it didn’t get more coverage than that. Meanwhile  I am left with such great memories

Walter Rossi    http://www.walterrossi.net

 I head heard of those huge Murray The K Doo Wop and early rock androll reviews at the Fox theatre in Brooklyn with groups like the Ronetts and the Crystals. But that era had been over for a few years and Murray and his shows had disappeared into oblivion. The K man was trying to change withthe times but his new shows just didn’t catch on or draw much of an audience. Can you imagine seeing all those just amazing bands for five or six dollars. My sister even remembers when security had to pull a frenzied female fan off the stage, as she ran up to hug a very young cape wearing Roger Daltrey. Daltrey was spinning around with this cape while also twirling the microphone in a wide loop, a move he has been doing for years to come. Cream was amazing as well. A young Clapton playing his legendary psychelisized Fool SG is an impression burned into my brain. We saw Mtich Ryder, the Blues Project and many others, but unfortunately missed the great Wilson Pickett and the Young Rascals. My Aunt Sonny got tired of holding her hands over her ears as I practically had to be dragged out of the theatre.

 I’m not sure if Simon & Garfunkel or Phil Ochs showed up, don’t remember Sonny & Cher. I think the Young Rascals played another night.Townsend  says they did  ”Substitute” and “My Generation” but I distinctly remember them doing “Happy Jack”. It also says that on the poster. History in the making!  
FUZZBOXMAN

It was Roger McGuinn and George Harrison’s arpegiated style of playing guitar, a sort of picking and sometimes strumming technique on a Twelve String Rickenbacker that has gone on to influence a universe of guitar bands, just ask Peter Buck!

  Influenced by folk, bluegrass, mandolin playing, banjo picking and other kinds of acoustic guitar music, Roger [...]]]>

It was Roger McGuinn and George Harrison’s arpegiated style of playing guitar, a sort of picking and sometimes strumming technique on a Twelve String Rickenbacker that has gone on to influence a universe of guitar bands, just ask Peter Buck!

  Influenced by folk, bluegrass, mandolin playing, banjo picking and other kinds of acoustic guitar music, Roger picked away as the engineer added some compression, went right into the board, and the rest was rock history, a new sound, and a group called The Byrds hit it big .

Here is a great site where you can learn how play arpeggios and learn how to use them. This is also a really fantastic site for lots of guitar playing knowledge.

Just how do you get that jingle jangle sound?

Now we have some input from the man himself…..

RM: The sound is a combination of several things. It’s compressed. I have to credit Ray Gerhard. He’s an engineer at Columbia Records. He came up with the idea because without compression the Rick kind of falls off. It doesn’t sustain a long time. And he compressed that into another, a serial compression.

The other thing is the arpeggio style I play comes more from a 5-string banjo. And then a lot of the folky stuff, like the Travis picking behind the lead break. Underneath it I’m playing (Plays), rolling. So, I’m overdubbing the lead break and doing the rolling underneath it.

I guess that’s the sound. Banjo picking, compression and some other little folk techniques I picked up along the way.

What is the best amp to use with a Rickenbacker
RM: The roland JC120

I would say a Vox AC30 would be in there. Here is a link to rickresource.com  ,the forum for all things Rickenbacker where you can see which amps hundreds of jangleheads use to get this heavenly guitar sound.

Here is yet another Rick forum  that talks about the wiring in those early Ricks   and more about which amplifiers the Byrds actually used live.

Roger, who has been into digital recording on his own for some time now explains how he now records his signature jangle without even using an amp. He goes directly into the computer!

RED: Do you mic an amp when tracking your classic “jingle-jangle” electric 12-string Rickenbacker sound?

RM: No, for that I go direct into the computer without an amp through one of my three I/O interfaces. I got into recording the 12-string electric this way back in The Byrds when we always went direct with it in the studio. That’s the clean part of the jingle-jangle sound with no hum or ambient room noise. It’s a very compressed sound, of course, and I achieve that by running the Rick through a pair of Jangle Box stomp boxes I love. Those are based on the compressor circuit built into my custom Rick model [Rickenbacker 370/12 McGuinn Limited Edition 12-string.] Once I’m in Adobe Audition with it, I don’t really need to compress the Rick any further because the two Jangle Box’s have already nicely compressed it. But I do like to hard limit the track once I’m in Audition to really punch the Rick to the edges of the envelope.

Here is a really insteresting post from Rickenbacker.com

Does anyone know the model Switchcraft toggle switches, pot and capacitor values for the original Byrds wiring? I’m not refering to the RM compressor model, I’d like to wire my guitar to the original wiring, from what I’ve been able to determine from the various forum info, it works with each individual pickup separately. Ideally I’d like to build a separate pickguard with the wiring.

assuming you are talking about a 3-pickup factory wiring in a 370-12, without the RM compressor, the factory wiring did not allow for individual pickup selection, the toggle switch came pre-wired for only 3 combinations:
1) neck pickup by itself,
2) neck pickup with center pickup,
3) bridge pickup by itself.

that’s how mine was in 1967. So I was missing the other pickup combinations which I wanted to have:
4) bridge pickup with center pickup, (very vintage sound)
5) bridge pickup with neck pickup, (very bubblegummy sound)
6) all three pickups together, (very thick and bright)
7) center pickup by itself. (very midrangy sound).

Around 1972 I had a shop cut me a lower pickguard section and I drilled holes for three individual mini-switches, one for each pickup, and a master volume and master tone, (which I could have done without because I never adjust the volume or tone on the guitar itself, instead I use a Volume Pedal), but I guess I did it for tradition ).

Roger McGuinn used a 2-pickup 360-12 in The Byrds first two albums, (Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn), the 3-pickup 370-12 started in their third album, “My Back Pages” (I think), and it was fully exploited in their fourth album, “Mr. Spaceman”. The 370-12 sounds very explosive in that 4th album, and the 3-pickup sound is simply, delicious.

Just like The Beatles were awed by Jimi Hendrix, they were awed by The Byrds, and I think they realized they could not copy The Byrds without sounding like The Byrds, so they retired their original 12-string Rickenbacker until Harrison got a FireGlo 360-12 like Roger McGuinn’s and they used it in “If I Needed Someone”. ) (just my wild theories).

So I think you are talking about a circuit mod offered by Popes here in the forum.

Zurdo
1966 370-12

And as far as what amp he used with the original Byrds….I heard McGuinn several times, once with the fabled original 5 Byrds. He had the 2-pickup Fireglow 12, and played it through 2 Fender Super Reverbs. He was also using a Vox Treble Booster, and that guitar cut through everything. I imagine he used all kinds of combinations, but i only saw either Fender Supers or Twins, and the occassional Dual Showman. I think those Fender amps made all the difference in the world, just like the legendary Super Beatles by Vox…I’m just SAYIN’……

One of the most powerful forces known to all rockers, the thundering guitar sound emanating from the wall of over-driven speakers powered from Johnny’s stack of  100 watt Marshall heads.

Johnny developed his sound early on, brutalizing his Mosrite Ventures II and hammering those bar chords in a frenzied style that has had more influence on punk rock [...]]]>

One of the most powerful forces known to all rockers, the thundering guitar sound emanating from the wall of over-driven speakers powered from Johnny’s stack of  100 watt Marshall heads.

Johnny developed his sound early on, brutalizing his Mosrite Ventures II and hammering those bar chords in a frenzied style that has had more influence on punk rock than even his leather motorcycle jacket and ripped jeans. His chugging muted bar chords that exploded into thundering power chords literally defined the punk  rock guitar sound.  To read more about this guitar legend and find out exactly what equipment Johnny used to get his signature sound check out this site Compiled by Ian Harper & Chris Lamy.   

READ MORE

The Replacements had/have their cult following and Paul still has his loyal fans. With all the critical acclaim and stories of those legendary live shows Westerberg still never managed to attain the mainstream success and record sales of even those who were influenced by him to [...]]]>

Paul Westerberg First Act Guitar sold at Wall Mart

The Replacements had/have their cult following and Paul still has his loyal fans. With all the critical acclaim and stories of those legendary live shows Westerberg still never managed to attain the mainstream success and record sales of even those who were influenced by him to the point of being accused of blatantly ripping him off. There are many bands but the Goo Goo Dolls probably had the biggest success of any Westerberg Clones out there. John Rzeznek of the Goo Goo Dolls will be the first to tell you of Paul’s influence on him. And I do give John props for his workmanlike approach to songwriting and years of slugging it out on the road before attaining super stardom.

The Goo Goo’s can rock hard, and John has written some good tunes, but he just doesn’t have the depth and true emotional intensity Paul has. Could it be Johnny is better looking, or maybe it’s his two earrings or when he got the VH1 rock star makeover complete with his sexy new hair style. Paul would have none of that. He’ll just have to suffer with his cult status, critical acclaim (although much of his solo work is highly underrated) and his permanent status in the legends of rock who never had mainstream sucess hall of fame.

However through some of these articles like the very informative and comprehensive article by Ira Robbins “Paul Westerberg Comes In From the Ledge” you can see that Paul has come to terms with his past and was moving on and turning out some really high quality solo albums. Well that article was from 1993 so what has Paul been doing since?

Well, here is a link to his online only release from 2008 called 49:00. And you can find out what he is up to right now at The Latest Paul Westerberg News. And find out about the “Paul Westerburg First Act Guitar” sold at Wall Mart on the Paul Westerberg Message Board. I would never believe there could be such a thing. The reviews are actually pretty amazing for a $149 “beginners” guitar, read some of them and you can even buy one of these things, Paul Westerbergs Signiture Guitar from First Act. A Toy guitar that you can really rock out on, now that’s very Paul Westerberg!