Showing posts with label Canned Heat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canned Heat. Show all posts

September 7, 2021

Jim Kweskin articles/mentions

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mentions:     
Canned Heat ~ The New Age   
     
     
     
    
     
     
      
     
     
     
      
Jim Kweskin     
date & photographer unknown     
     
      
     
     
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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August 28, 2019

20,000 vinyl LPs 194: Woodstock ~ Looking back after 50 years

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Woodstock vinyl LP gatefold cover open
left photo photographer unknown, right photo by Burk Uzzle
photo of album cover by Styrous®


Fifty years ago this month, in 1969, a miracle called Woodstock was staged on a remote 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York and music as well as the world was never the same. 

My favorite film dealing with the event is Taking Woodstock directed by Ang Lee and based on the memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte.     

I was going full speed ahead with my corporate ambitions (I would "drop out" a few months later) so did not go to the event, unfortunately, but my friend Genie was there and here's what she had to say about it.     

Genie:   
"I haven’t really thought about it much in the years since. My memory is that it was an extremely peaceful event given the incredibly stressful situation with rain, mud, lack of water and other things . . .  toilets. I don’t remember ever seeing any fights break out, I don’t even remember drunken things, people being drunk and obnoxious. Now, we know there were other mind altering drugs but I think that was very amazing.    

Yes, everyone was using mood altering stuff to enjoy this incredible party but even when it was raining and mud still, there was an amazing magic kind of thing because it was just really peaceful, helpful and joyful people. 

I remember trying to get to a potty and walking through crowds and crowds of people and wondering if I would find my way back to my people. But we did and it was some magical thing going.   

The music was obviously out of this world and never to be experienced again. I think most people at the moment, including myself, weren’t thinking much of the history, only of the moment, but then we all kind of went back to the “Summer of Love” thing. It was just very much all about finding a new way, you know.       
It was very hard because there was no food. Mr. Yazgur had cows and some of the more daring young men went out and got corn, we ate what I called “cow corn”; we would roast it and eat it. It was just terrible food but it was better than nothing.         

Max Yazgur farm - 1968 
photographer unknown

It was such an enormous group of people, so things could have been happening that we would never have known about where we were in that massive group of people. So, I have a recollection of that [the sandwich distribution] but my people didn’t go running for the sandwiches because there was no way they could have fed all those people.  

Woodstock Opening Ceremony 
photographer unknown

Anyway, by the time the sun came out, it was still a mess, I mean the mud and the steam and all that happens in that kind of weather. It’s something you really DO want to forget because it is really awful.      

Woodstock rain
photographer unknown


Over arching was the art, the music, the joy, the people getting along no matter what and no matter how much drugs or alcohol people had it was all about the fun and the wonderment of it all coming together.

I think that what happened in the media was all true. The superstars were truly superstars. Everybody wanted to see Jimi Hendrix and he, of course, was a show stopper. So, I think that the truth is everything that was recorded by all others, every band that was given stardom really did take the show away.

And people played all night long, all day long. I can’t remember specifically anymore, many of the stars, let’s say, Grateful Dead and Big Brother, would play together when there was nothing going on. I remember to some degree, people in the crowd getting up on stage being able to sing or play instruments with these stars. It was everybody just getting along."     








Woodstock vinyl LP gatefold interior open
left photo photographer unknown, right photo by Burk Uzzle
photo of album cover by Styrous®    

     
     
Side one
  1. "I Had a Dream" (John Sebastian) – 2:38 (2:53)
  2. "Going Up the Country" (Alan Wilson) – 3:19 (5:53)
  3. "Freedom (Motherless Child)" (Richie Havens) – 5:13 (5:26)
  4. "Rock and Soul Music" (McDonald, Melton, David Cohen, Barthol, Hirsh) – 2:09 (2:09)
  5. "Coming into Los Angeles" (Arlo Guthrie) – 2:05 (2:50)
  6. "At the Hop" (Artie Singer, David White, John Medora) – 2:13 (2:33)
Side two
  1. "The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" (McDonald) – 3:02 (3:48)
  2. "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" (Roger McGuinn, Gram Parsons) – 2:08 (2:38)
    • Performed by Joan Baez & Jeffrey Shurtleff.
  3. "Joe Hill" (Alfred Hayes, Earl Robinson) – 2:40 (5:34)
  4. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" (Stephen Stills) – 8:04 (9:02)
  5. "Sea of Madness" (Neil Young) – 3:22 (4:20)
Side three
  1. "Wooden Ships" (Stills, David Crosby, Paul Kantner—Kantner not credited on original release) – 5:26 (5:26)
  2. "We're Not Gonna Take It" (Pete Townshend) – 4:39 (6:54)
    • Performed by The Who. (The performance on the album picks up mid-song at the very end of the "We're Not Gonna Take It" portion and then finishes with the "See Me, Feel Me" and "Listening to You" sections.) The final 1:50 of the track is an emergency announcement and the statement that declared "It's a free concert from now on".
  3. "With a Little Help from My Friends" (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) – 7:50 (10:06)
    • Performed by Joe Cocker. In the CD version, the first disc would close with this track, with a 1:30 long recording of the rainstorm.
Side four
  1. "Soul Sacrifice" (Santana, Rolie, Brown, Carabello, Shrieve, Areas) – 8:05 (13:52)
    • Performed by Santana. The first 3 minutes of the track is the "Crowd Rain Chant," a chant started by the crowd as an attempt to stop the rainstorm.
  2. "I'm Going Home" (Alvin Lee) – 9:20 (9:57)
Side five
  1. "Volunteers" (Marty Balin, Kantner) – 2:45 (3:31)
    • Performed by Jefferson Airplane. The final 34 seconds or so of the track is a speech by Max Yasgur, praising the crowd for coming to the festival.
  2. "Medley" (Performed by Sly & the Family Stone) – 13:47 (15:29)
  3. "Rainbows All Over Your Blues" (Sebastian) – 2:05 (3:54)
Side six
  1. "Love March" (Gene Dinwiddie, Phillip Wilson) – 8:43 (8:59)
  2. "Medley" (Performed by Jimi Hendrix.) – 12:51 (13:42)
    • "Star Spangled Banner" (Traditional, arrangement, Jimi Hendrix)– 5:40
    • "Purple Haze" (Hendrix) – 3:28
    • "Instrumental Solo" (Hendrix) – 3:43 (retitled and re-edited when Hendrix's Woodstock show was released more fully in the 1990s. The improvised, fast solo section immediately following "Purple Haze" was heavily cut in the original Woodstock film and soundtrack, and most of the track here is what would later be titled "Villanova Junction", a slow bluesy ballad with the band joining in the background. The uncut version of the solo was restored in the director's cut of Woodstock and on the video of Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock and titled "Woodstock Improvisation")
     
     
   

     
Viewfinder links:     
       
Joan Baez      
Canned Heat       
Joe Cocker      
Jerry Garcia     
Grateful Dead       
Jimi Hendrix      
The Who      
        
Net links:     
       
Woodstock website       
Rolling Stone ~ Woodstock: ‘It Was Like Balling for the First Time’ 
Consequenceofsound ~ How much each artist earned from playing Woodstock         
Rockhall ~ Woodstock at 50 exhibition          
CBS News ~ Woodstock at 50       
Smithsonian ~ Woodstock—How to Feed 400,000 Hungry Hippies           
NBC News ~ Woodstock 50: How the golden anniversary festival went off track    
USA Today ~ Woodstock 50: What has gone wrong?      
Vice.com ~ Canceled Woodstock 50        
       
YouTube links     
     
     
     


   

Genie - 2013
photo by Styrous®





"It was amazing!"
                        ~ Genie - August 25, 2019

       
       
       
      
Styrous® ~ Wednesday, August 28, 2019            







     
       
      
     
       

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March 5, 2014

101 Reel-to-Reel Tapes 49: Canned Heat ~ The New Age

reel-to-reel tape label detail
photo by Styrous©




I have hundreds of reel-to-reel, pre-recorded tapes in addition to my 20,000 Vinyl LP collection I'm selling. This is an entry about one of them (links below). I will have the reel-to-reel tape, The New Age by Canned Heat, for sale on eBay in a few days. Interested? Contact me by email please, not by a comment.



reel-to-reel tape album cover
Art Direction & Design by Dave Bhang
cover photo by Norman Seeff
photo of album cover by Styrous©


The historic photo archive from photographer Norman Seeff, The New Age cover photographer and former creative director of United Artists Records, is available for sale through ICAP Media (link below).




Canned Heat ~ The New Age
reel-to-reel tape album cover back
Art Direction & Design by Dave Bhang
cover photo by Norman Seeff
photo by Styrous©



Canned Heat is an American blues/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1965.
It was launched by Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 Canned Heat Blues, a song about an alcoholic who desperately turns to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat". 

Canned Heat was started within the community of blues collectors. Bob Hite had been trading blues records since his early teens and his house in Topanga Canyon was a meeting place for people interested in music. In 1965 some blues devotees there decided to form a jug band (see: Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band) and started rehearsals. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists.




Canned Heat ~ The New Age
reel-to-reel tape album cover back detail
Art Direction & Design by Dave Bhang
photos by Norman Seeff
detail photo by Styrous©




The first big live appearance of Canned Heat was at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17, 1967. Richard Hite and Henry Vestine, with vocalist Bob Hite, performed the country and Chicago blues idiom of the 1950s so skillfully and naturally that the question of which race the music belongs to becomes totally irrelevant.





Canned Heat ~ The New Age
reel-to-reel tape album cover back detail
Art Direction & Design by Dave Bhang
detail photo by Styrous©




The New Age is the seventh studio album by Canned Heat, released in 1973. It was the first album to feature the talents of James Shane and Ed Beyer. Lookin' for My Rainbow was the last recording in which gospel singer, Clara Ward appeared. The music is a blend of blues and rock.








The New Age was released a year after I bought my BMW motorcyle. At the time, I liked any song having to do with motorcycles so, Harley Davidson Blues became one of my favorite songs. It's a bouncy, syncopated fun kind of tune .

Two of my all-time favorite songs (not on this album) are by Canned Heat, On the Road Again, became an international hit. On the Road Again was a cover version/re-working of the 1953 Floyd Jones song of the same name, which is reportedly based on the Tommy Johnson song "Big Road Blues" recorded in 1928. In turn, Road was covered by the French space rock band Rockets, released in April of 1978 on Tom n' Jerry Records. It's a fantastic version on their second studio album (links to music on YouTube below).

Let's Work Together (also not on this album) is the other song by Canned Heat I love, love, LOVE! Every time I hear it I just have to get up and move. But all the songs on the album are pretty terrific. 



Canned Heat ~ The New Age
reel-to-reel tape detail
detail photo by Styrous©




Canned Heat gained notoriety as "the bad boys of rock" for being jailed in Denver, Colorado after a Denver Police informant provided enough evidence for their arrest for drugs (an incident recalled in their song 'My Crime'). Band manager Skip Taylor was forced to obtain the $10,000 bail by selling off Canned Heat's publishing rights to Liberty Records President Al Bennett.





Canned Heat ~ The New Age
reel-to-reel tape label detail
detail photo by Styrous©



Track list:
Side 1:
  1. "Keep It Clean" (Bob Hite) - 2:46
  2. "Harley Davidson Blues" (James Shane) - 2:38
  3. "Don't Deceive Me" (Bob Hite - 3:12
  4. "You Can Run, But You Sure Can't Hide" (Ed Beyer) - 3:15
  5. "Lookin' for My Rainbow" (James Shane) - 5:24
Side 2:
  1. "Rock and Roll Music" (Bob Hite) - 2:29
  2. "Framed" (Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller) - 5:07
  3. "Election Blues" (Ed Beyer) - 6:04
  4. "So Long Wrong" (James Shane) - 5:36
Personnel:
Canned Heat:
Additional personnel:
Production:
  • Skip Taylor - Producer
  • Jim Taylor - Production Coordination
  • Nick Venet - Production Assistant
  • John Stronach - Engineer
  • Dave Bhang - Art Direction, Design
  • Doug Saxe - Mastering

Released in 1973 on UA Records

UA - UST 049-C



Net links:

Canned Heat website
Canned Heat discography
Norman Seeff photo archive sale on ICAP Media

Music links:
The New Age (full album) on YouTube
Lookin' for My Rainbow on YouTube
Rock and Roll Music on YouTube
So Long Wrong onYouTube
Framed on YouTube
Election Blues on YouTube
Harley Davidson Blues on YouTube
My Crime on YouTube
Don't Deceive Me on YouTube 
You Can Run, But You Sure Can't Hide on YouTube 
On the Road Again by Floyd Jones on YouTube
Big Road Blues by Tommy Johnson on YouTube

 
reel-to-reel listings on eBay



Styrous® ~ Wednesday, March 5, 2014
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November 14, 2013

101 Reel-To-Reel Tapes 23: Barrabas ~ Power

 
album cover photo by Martin J. Luis
concept & design by Richard Field, 
L. Martin & Fernando Arbex
photo of album cover by Styrous®


In addition to my vinyl collection I'm selling, I have hundreds of reel-to-reel, pre-recorded tapes I'm selling. This is an entry about one of them that was for sale on eBay (see link below for others). I have the vinyl LP version as well. Interested? Contact me by email, please, not by a comment.

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Barrabas was a group from Madrid, Spain. It's music is a fusion of Latin-style rock, funk, r&b, blues, and even a prog feel in parts.

The song, Casanova, has an interesting pizzaccato bass guitar. A very fast beat drives the song on with a great organ riding the crest of it. The lyrics are not earth-shaking but the music makes up for it.

Children is a mellow sort of samba with a nice dance beat, kind of jazzy with a great flute during the instrumental break.

Keep On Moving is a syncopated, jazzy kind of train-movin'-on-down-the-track beat that is perfect for dancing.

Mr. Money is a bouncey, afro-feeling in the vein of Osibisa; a really nice dance song that got me up 'n dancin' on the dance floor.

The Horse is a moderately slow, jazz instrumental that is like a sorbet between courses song with great flutes.

Time To Love is a mellow cha-cha love song with a nice flute that makes for quality romantic close up dancing. Breaks out into a faster beat midway through the song.

My favorite song from the album is Boogie Rock which is in the vein of good 'ol rock 'n roll that puts me in mind of Canned Heat's, On the Road Again. A terrific dance tune with a fantastic harmonica.

Well, while I'm on the subject of On the Road Again, a French electro-disco group, the Rockets, did a terrific cover of the song which was released in April, 1978, on Derby, an early Italian disco label. I have a version released on Tom 'n Jerry Records, an early electro-disco label from New York, run by Tom Moulton, who was important in the the rise of disco (he was the originator of the remix, the breakdown section or "Disco Break", and the 12-inch single vinyl format), and his younger brother Jerry. The parent label was Salsoul Records.

Near the bottom of this post there are links to the songs mentioned on YouTube so you can hear them for yourself, if you'd like.

There was a rare Israeli pressing with a different cover on the RCA Victor label, LSP-10487 (3G3VPS 2019/2020). 

LP album cover
Israeli pressing
photographer unknown



album back cover photo by Martin J. Luis
photo of album cover back by Styrous®




reel-to-reel tape
photo by Styrous®



reel-to-reel label detail
detail photo by Styrous®


 Tracklist:

Side 1:

1. Mr. Money - 3:23    
2. Boogie Rock - 3:06    
3. Keep On Moving - 3:13    
4. The Horse - 4:45    

Side 2:

1. Casanova - 3:36    
2. You Know - 3:30    
3. Children - 4:02    
4. Time To Love - 4:07    

Personnel:


José Luís Tejada – lead vocals
Enrique "Ricky" Morales – lead guitar, vocals
Miguel Morales – guitar, bass guitar, vocals
Ernesto "Tito" Duarte – saxophone, flute, percussion
Juan Vidal – keyboards, vocals
José María Moll – drums

Produced by Fernando Arbex
Recorded at RCA Victor Studios, Madrid


Music links:

Mr. Money on YouTube
Casanova on YouTube
Children on YouTube
The Horse on YouTube

Keep On Moving on YouTube 

Time To Love on YouTube
Boogie Rock on YouTube
Canned Heat, On the Road Again on YouTube
Rockets, On the Road Again on YouTube


reel-to-reel listings on eBay

more reel-to-reel tapes on the Styrous® Viewfinder:
                                             reel-to-reel tape archive


All in all, this is a great album with some good dance songs that I've enjoyed very much. Thanks, Guys, well done.



Styrous® ~ Thursday, November 14, 2013
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