tom petty streams more new tracks

In a time when you see some of the rock establishment being a bit mean spirited about open streaming (mentioning no names Mr Young) it's a very good to see how some of them really do get it.

In a lot of ways it's a really surprising thing to see tracks from Tom Petty's new album being streamed on Soundcloud. We posted the first one he put out a little while back, and now another new one has just appeared. This comes from a guy who you'd think surely doesn't need to reach out for new listeners on a wide open platform like Soundcloud.
But all credit to the man he's giving everyone a chance to hear his latest album, and after 4 years since his last release this suggests he's pretty darn pleased with the end result and wants as many folk to hear it as possible. So he should. This is very fine rock and roll and for some of us the best thing he's done. There's even some rip from a harmonica amongst those guitars.

He's got more tracks from 'Hypnotic Eye'. Go through the artist name on the widget or go here. The track below is "Fault Lines".

the last ramone

It's become a rather odd thing in the past few years that an obit for a musician should find it's way broadcast on the day by the BBC midnight news. It doesn't show up anywhere else in the news slots just the midnight news or maybe the hours after. Perhaps they think it's the time when those that might be interested in the passing of a musician might be listening to the radio. The night owl news.

So it was on Saturday night with the announcement that Tommy Ramone had died. And what a miserable thing it is to know that 3 of these lives were all ended with cancer as the cause. Dee Dee's death being from a heroine overdose in 2002.

And for those not aware of the other members deaths some years back, the sombre voiced BBC announcer informed us that Tommy was the last of the original members of the Ramones.
Damn it. There shouldn't be a time when there just isn't a Ramone anymore. It's like part of rock and roll has gone. Whether you were a long time fan of their music or not hardly anyone one could say they hadn't heard or known of the Ramones. They represented an image and sound of rock and roll that came from it's past and still perceived today. What is rock and roll without buzzing guitars, leather jackets and a snotty vocal.
It starts with a young Elvis in a biker jacket on a Harley Davison, to the Beatles in the Cavern Club and Hamburg, to the arrival of the Ramones themselves at The London Roundhouse in 1976, and where every young punk Londoner who was anyone packed the iconic venue and became immediately influenced by them and the sound and image of a new era in rock and roll. Now forward 4 decades to the Opening Ceremony of The Olympic Games in 2012 and you'll see the Arctic Monkeys play rock and roll in much the same way and dressed in leathers. You can similarly name anyone of hundreds between those decades. Sure it's different lyrics, and a different tune but the song remains the same.

The Ramones represented all of that like some cartoon characterisation of every rock and roll band you've ever wanted to see. Their songs were intelligent yet encapsulated like a graphic novel. Their sound was a wall of sound driven at relentless pace in 2 and 3 minute chunks with the only the shout of "1..2..3..4" between each number. Phil Spector wanted to produce them and they turned him down flat after a day or two in the studio with him. That's how great the Ramones were. Not even Lennon managed that one.

Tommy Ramone was a producer for them first and foremost before they realised he was also the only drummer to be able to stay the pace with them on kit. So through their classic years of 1974 until 78 Tommy held the drum stool and then went back to producing them after that. But he also always stayed a musician. In his latter years he played in a bluegrass-based folk duo called Uncle Monk of all things. Which sounds a might unexpected... from punk to blue grass? How does that work?
Maybe the resonance of the Ramone's early years playing at CBGB's (Country, Blue Grass and Blues) returned to Tommy in his later years.

Tommy :
"There are a lot of similarities between punk and old-time music. Both are home-brewed music as opposed to schooled, and both have an earthy energy. And anybody can pick up an instrument and start playing."
WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE

See that right there. It sort of sums up the Ramones.
Anybody can pick it up.. and thousands did. But no one ever sounded quite like the Ramones.

So long Tommy. You made a difference.

RAMONES - Live December 31st, 1977

bill hicks

Before you know it the years move by and you get one of those moments when you think "wait a minute was that really 20 years ago?"
It happened just recently when BBC2 ran a series of shows on the anniversary of it's BBC2 channel. Of course that was a lot longer than 20s years ago, but the series looked at many of the success' the channel had in Music, Arts and Comedy over the decades. And there were many moments over it's 50 years, some surviving well, some slipping into bygone.
Then a face comes up that instantly brings a recollection so vivid it seems only like yesterday you saw it. But you realise it's 20 years since that face and those words were last heard.
It's 20 years this year the American comedian Bill Hicks passed away.
To hear his acerbic and sharp observations of a world 2 decades ago in such clarity they could have been made yesterday was both a joy and a shock. Because it seemed like nothing had changed. It was still a world just like Bill had called it.

Hicks had been successful in the UK for many years, more so than his home land at the time, and his audiences reveled in his stand up shows. Seen often on the small screen here he was the closest comedian we ever saw in the UK who could be compared to the likes of Lenny Bruce.
In Bill Hicks we heard rock and roll as comedy probably for the first time.
And that's why he's being written about here. Bill Hicks you are fucking missed.

rock at the british pathé archive (part 2)

Here's another dip into the British Pathé Newreels, the year is 1965 and the Beat boom is well underway. With many young men (mainly) queueing up to get hold of an electric guitar just like their heroes played there also came one big problem.
In the mid 60's imported American guitars to the UK were far too expensive and rare so your average aspiring Hank Marvin were looking to get hold of anything their own considerably lower budget would meet. Hence an avalanche of cheap copies on the market. Many imported from Holland. All well and good for twanging around on in the bedroom but once it became a bit more serious and you got down the youth club well... you had to have something with a bit more elan to plug into your Vox Amp.
But in 1963, Jim Burns along with co-founder Alice Farrell had come up with the smart move of manufacturing their own brand of electric guitars for the homegrown rocker in the making.
The Burns workshop and small team of technicians had a renowned reputation in their early days for some very original thinking when it came to guitar design and electrics, it's even said Lennon went to him for some tweaking to his Rickenbacker. That's early Beatles days right.
Anyway by the mid 60's the Burns brand of guitars had expanded rapidly and were to become a classic of the era and latterly described as the British Fender due mainly to it's similar styling. They're now highly collectable with some rare models reaching eye watering sums.

As a result the Burns brand was now a real credit to UK business, so with that now seen as a somewhat curious and unexpected addition to the economy along comes British Pathé to let everyone know what actually is going on in this mysterious world of guitar manufacturing.
The narrator informs us of how a team of craftsmen and technicians are all going to be part of assembling just one of these guitar things... "all this to make a bedlam of adolescent noise" he says cheerily, over the meandering tuneless noodling of the saxophone bedlam going on in the background which was presumably considered real music.

You'll note here the divide between the adolescent teenager and the adult is still very much in full swing as it was the year earlier in the 1964 post on British Pathe.
We now see a man testing the sound quality of one of the newly built guitars and the narrator adds
"Surprising when you consider the noise they make that each and every guitar is scientifically tuned just as if they were REAL musical instruments!".
Ah the ever present condescending tone of the adult viewing this laughably child like toy. All intoned in a plumby English public school accent.
Yes indeed the 1960's teenager had much to rebel against.. and that was just the accent !

So now the shiny new guitar is finished and held aloft for us. It happens to be a Burns Shortscale Jazz and probably wouldn't be first choice for a beat group (still capture right).
But the tour of the Burns factory is now cut off rather sharply as Part 2 was obviously in the can and yet to be edited on.
The guitar is now to be handed to an actual beat group member who is going to use this new fangled device to make that said "noise".
We can go to that below Part1.

And that Beat group is... 'Unit Four Plus Two' performing their hit song "Never Been in Love Like This Before" in a nightclub setting.

Actually it was named as the Ad Lib Club, London and there didn't appear to be an audience so presumably the Pathé crew thought that a good location and anyway handy for a drink after the shoot. A good day out for all. They probably had a few of these locations lined up around London for the right moment.
Trouble is, that wasn't quite as seamless a link as might have been hoped for because the guitar handed to one 'Unit Four Plus Two' member is not the one he receives in Part Two.
In fact that doesn't look like a Burns guitar at all. However on the next shot we do see a close up of another 'Unit' actually playing a now very rare Burns TR2 semi-solid body. (still capture right). The bass player also plays a Burns model.
The whole thing's shot in superb quality. Another slice of life in the swinging 60's world of Pathé newsreels. As seen at your local bug hutch this weekend.

Part 1. The Burns Factory

Part 2. 'Unit Four Plus Two'

rock at the british pathé archive

Last Monday (14th April) British Pathé uploaded a staggering 50,000 films from their archives to YouTube, (bringing their channel total to 85,000 videos!). The logistics of collating and cataloging that lot are mind boggling enough but the very idea that it could be uploaded to their YouTube channel is... well, crazy!
For those of us who have uploaded video to them it would seem an impossible task, British Pathe must surely have sent a very large hard drive to Google and have them dump it into their servers. Oh well however they did do it, the archive is something quite extraordinary.
For those not familiar with Pathé newsreels this is their description -

Since the invention of the moving image in the 1890's, British Pathé began recording every aspect of global culture and news, for the cinema. With their unique combination of information and entertainment, British Pathé's documentaries, newsreels, serials and films changed the way the world saw itself forever.

As they said "for the cinema", the Pathé newsreels were particularly well known in Britain from the 40's though to the mid 70's where these film shorts were screened before the evenings main feature at your local flea pit. After the mid 70's they just disappeared... guess time marched on for them.

Now you might well ask what's all that got to do with the goings on in the grimy corners of a rock and roll blog. It's this - just what did they collect from the era of rock and rolls early days?
Given that youth culture didn't really exist before the 1950's, until then any young person was considered to be a child and then an adult. No in between point, a child first and then around the age of 15 you turned into your father or mother. But in the 50's the new phenomena known as the teenager began. Mainly by commercial business when they realised they could sell stuff in large quantities to a young post war consumer, ie, the baby boom generation.
And right up there at the top of the list of retail was the music industry and its many splendid desires. And oh boy did the youth get that. And that's when the whole mess was started. Rock and Roll had begun. There's some interesting and amusing early rock and roll in the Pathé archive, not a lot but 1 minute and two minute shorts of these "crazy" early teenagers doing a mad jitterbug type dance (obviously a jive) to the backdrop of Bill Haley.
Pathé delivered their verdict on all this with a slightly bewildered "whatever next" tone. There's a very fine example we'll dig out for a later post. It's of a DIY skiffle group playing in the backstreets of the East End in London to a crowd of bemused onlookers. It finishes with the group being moved on by the plod. "Hello, hello.. what's going on here then" would be the usual approach. All captured in black and white film, and probably set up and encouraged by the film crew.
So hardly a riot going on, which is what the media were all scared of when rock and roll was mentioned. That came a year or two later when Bill Haley actually arrived on the UK shore.

But when it comes to the really good stuff in the Pathé archive we arrive in full technicolor 1960's. Yes, the swinging 60's were lapped up by Pathé newsreels, and we get the benefit of looking at this funfair of activity as if it were yesterday. It doesn't disappoint. This news report might be seen as the beginnings of the Swinging 60's.
Set in 1964 It's a slightly ham fisted attempt at bringing technology and music together called 'Age - AKA Slot Machine Age'.
This technology is a type of jukebox called a scopitone. Which, as it turns out is a fancy name for what would have been an early video player in concept. This jukebox has a screen and on it a beat group is playing. They're called Sandra Barry and Her Boys. (ha).
Then the boys are seen checking out guitars in a music shop (and wouldn't we all like to reach and grab a few of those classics today). The group then goes onto perform 'Really Gonna Shake' in the shop!.. blimey.
'The Boys' try to persuade Sandra to do the shake and she repeats, "No, no, I don't want to shake!" . But eventually she does. In her gold boots! Very slick at the time. Although she doesn't quite shake in the proper sense of "Shakin' All Over", she sort of sashays to the side and back rather gently.
But it is a real live beat group.. and 'The Boys' did go on (another story), only without Sandra who didn't have a hit with this not quite shaking record.
A beautifully clear film capturing the aspirations and hopes of the evolving decade all in 2 minutes. Although the scopitone didn't figure much after this demonstration.
The British Pathé archive on YouTube is here.

all things come around habibi

2 minutes and 15 seconds of the Detroit sound in 2014 !

the limiñanas

"Yé-yé was a style of pop music that emerged from France, Italy and Spain in the early 1960s. The term "yé-yé" derived from "yeah! yeah!" wiki(and was mainly led by female singers).
So that's where Yeah Yeah all came from and if your a fan of tough rock and roll, right now you'll be thinking "no thanks" to some lightweight European pop.
But you'll be wrong and missing the sound of a Vox amp with it's tremolo turned up to kill on this searing hot single released last year by The Liminanas (yes even that sounds bananas) "Votre coté yéyé m'emmerde". Who have quite simply redefined "yeah! yeah!" with this recording.
Stick that shuddering Vox, a swamp backbeat and the delicious Francez vocals of Francesca Cusimano on it and you have some mesmerizing psyche.
Oh yeah and if your wondering what "Votre coté yéyé m'emmerde" means, try "Your side yéyé fuck me"
This is a mean rock and roll sound. 7" Vinyl released on Nasty Records... and you can see why.
They're also on Bandcamp

wilko johnson - roger daltrey

"It was a case of hurry up so I can hear it. I mean blimey, I'm supposed to be dead already"
Wilko Johnson's doctor had told him he had until October last year. After diagnosed with cancer and his refusal to undergo any further treatment he'd already openly explained his decision with no regrets earlier in 2013.
Since then he'd settled for playing one off gigs while he felt strong enough, then came the chance to record one last time in November.
Alongside Roger Daltrey, who together created the new album 'Going Back Home', spoke in an interview given to the Daily Telegraph today about the new and likely last recording he'll likely ever make. They had hoped to record together for several years but circumstances had dictated a somewhat swift action.
Daltrey : "I said, I'll sing anything he wanted me to and it's turned out amazing. You lose all that kind of pretentiousness of trying to do something different, or something new, and just do what you do".

The final result is an album that is full of rock and roll. It goes back to the roots of their early years and has all the toughness and attack of the early tyro's of rock like Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.
From the very beginning of Dr Feelgood in the early 70's the young Wilko's guitar style was obviously influenced by the legendary Pirates guitarist Mick Green and The Who hardly need prove their early rock and roll credentials, but to hear Daltrey tackle these songs is a revelation. It's a voice you'll not be familer with when you hear this album preview track. The albums official release date is March 10.
They are doing a one-off gig on February 25th at the Shepherd Bush Empire, London. It is going to be some night.
Here is "I Keep It To Myself".

the rock and roll hall of fame or just plain lame

The self grandising corporate institution that is 'The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame' has at last nominated guitar legend Link Wray for the 2014 awards, and that is only nominated you'll understand. It has to be said that's rather an unfathomable lack of awareness over the last half century of rock from those in office at TRARHOF.
As one disenchanted commentor on the whole business said
"Mr. Wray should have been inducted into this hall of fame the very first year for 'Rumble' (1958)... I don't get it. Rock N Roll. R.I.P"
Well quite.

Link Wray whether you know of him or not was the man who changed the sound of an electric guitar with his overdriven fuzz created by punching holes in the speaker, and hence "influencing everything from Keith Richard’s “Satisfaction” riff to The Ramones, The Cramps, Jimmy Page and beyond" (Marc Campbell. Dangerous Minds.).
This nomination coming some 8 years after his death and a further 55 years after his sound breaking instrumental single "Rumble" could almost be described as willful neglect.
"Rumble" was released and subsequently banned for "inciting teenage hormones", yes folks it was 1958, and that has never happened since or likely to again, but you feel it sort of black-holed Wray from any mainstream rock acceptance. Not a bad thing in itself, John Lydon and Nick Cave have recently told them to place their awards elsewhere, although naturally one more politely than the other, but for those that feel artistry over commerciality should be recognised Link Wray's omission is a pretty raw deal in the roots and history of rock and roll.

If you like this sort of glad handing award thing here are the nominees you can vote for by December -
Nirvana, Kiss, Peter Gabriel, LL Cool J, Linda Ronstadt and Cat Stevens, Hall and Oates, the Replacements, Deep Purple, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Meters, Chic, Yes, The Zombies and of course Link Wray.
We'll all note the not so deserving amongst that lot are lucky to be included in a broom cupboard let alone a Hall of Fame. We also can only see it's doubtful whether Link Wray's name will rise above the list given the awards past record of inclusion. Let's see in December.

So here is a great rumble by Link Wray live in Winterland,SF. Nov. 19,1974. Part two of this gig is here.
And below that, our tribute to the man came a couple of years back by way of a track recorded here at The Garage called 'Big Foot'. And if you don't get the meaning, try 'The Missing Link'.

endless boogie

New York City heavy blues stoner psyche jam garage rockers. Endless Boogie and 'General Admission' taken from their latest album 'Long Island'.
"Ain't no guest list, no free drinks,"
Got it? Now turn it up.

the pink fairies do it

Don't think about it. Well all you've got to do is, do it. Well don't talk about it. All you do is do it, do it. Don't lie about it. Do it, do it. Write about it honey. Then we'll just do it. Yeah,do do do do do do do do do do do it. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it. You all just do it. Don't sing about it. If you ain't gonna, do it. Don't write about it man. If you ain't gonna, do it. Rock and roll. And the message is, do it. You're gonna rip me off man. You blew it, do it, do it, do it. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it. Do it.

Never Never Land. 1971.

wilko johnson interview

There's been many interviews with Rock musicians that have been made only months before their demise, of course their own mortality is never a question in the interview as their future at the time couldn't possibly be predicted.
But this mornings interview with Wilko Johnson on BBC Breakfast TV was possibly one of the most amazing moments in rock and roll interview history as he spoke for the first time on national television about his recent diagnosis of cancer since his managers open letter to the press at Christmas (> see post) . Wilko has declined any treatment for the disease.
A clip has since appeared on the BBC website of the interview. This transcription tries to capture the way in which Wilko talks, with sentences and thoughts running on in staccato fashion. Rather like those famous guitar riffs.

BBC interviewer : How are you right now?
Wilko : "I'm feeling fit and fine at the moment.. I received this diagnosis that I have pancreatic cancer just before Christmas and um .. the effect on me has er .. well not what I would have expected when they gave me the diagnosis.. it was a surprise to me but I remained absolutely calm, not a flutter and um.. when I walked out of the hospital into the sunshine suddenly I felt this elation.. I just felt so alive, everything was tingling.. I'm looking around and everything.. and everything.. I'm alive!
As I say I'm not feeling ill.. and er by the time I got home I was most euphoric it seems to me that...finding this out I dunno that somehow I'd completed my life and er.. I've had a good life no cause to complain really and er.. I was feeling fine. Being by nature a miserable so and so.. this is bound to come down crashing tomorrow morning or something but I'm happy to say it hasn't. I have remained feeling in very good spirits since. "

At this point a section seems to have been unnecessarily edited out of the clip is his further view on only 6 months to live.. this part is paraphrased.
"with 6 months to live I thought I don't have any more to worry about. It was like a relief to me. I can't do anything about the past and there isn't much of the future, I won't have say to worry about er.. the tax man or the rubbish man, everyday things.. I just live now in the present." The clip continues

Wilko : "I've been told.. I was told that I've got maybe 6 months I can expect to feel healthy before the cancer starts its work.. and er so anyway the first thing I did was er I went for two weeks to Japan which is a place I love very much, I've toured there very often, I have many good friends there and er.. it was, it was the right move and er.. and so we're just thinking if we got 6 months before I get sick then.. right 2 weeks in Japan, then I did some gigs in France last week, working an album er.. cuz you know when I'm working an album er.. I just slap it down, don't fiddle about right so it won't take up too much time and .. hopefully I'll still be fit in March to complete this farewell tour"

BBC interviewer :Tell us about the tour because you've had your fans really excited about it, a sell out.
Wilko : "Er yeah as I said most of this.. er most of this interest that's been shown in this whole business happened while I was away in Japan, I came home to find myself (laughs) besieged by reporters and photographers (laughs).. I should have thought of this years ago you know.. but um.. we've chosen the venue.. I say we, they did it really my mates you know but er.. obviously I had to get venues that were available at that time you know.. got to do it as quickly as we can before I start to crumble. So we picked venues that were firstly available and secondly we have had good time at in the past."

Sadly the website clip ends here. You might think the BBC would have the decency to show the entire interview without editorial interference especially since it's now on line and would use little more of their precious 'publicly owned' web space.
Wilko did go on to talk about his love for astronomy and the dome he has on his roof that houses his telescope and the times he spends in there even when it's raining and cloudy.. "you can still line the telescope up.. it's operated by the computer".
Also when asked how he liked seeing himself in Dr Feelgood in 1975 (several clips of which shown before the interview) he simply replied "I don't like looking at myself"

If anyone's real character can be measured by how they face their own mortality then Wilko Johnson is truly a giant of a man. His self deprecating humour and honest view of what will be his final months alive visibly left the two BBC interviewers open mouthed with wonder at the open acceptance of his own mortality as if they could have been interviewing the Dalai Lama himself.
In a time when the clamour of self inflated ego's are streaming to us by the day on all platforms of the media Wilko's selfless expression of his life and future was and will be a very rare and inspirational moment for anyone who saw it.
Make no mistake Wilko Johnson is a genuine Rock and Roll hero.
Here is the mighty Dr Feelgood back in 1975.

family reunion

Roger Chapman, Poli Palmer, Rob Townsend and Jim Cregan back together again as Family for the first time in 40 years are playing the Shepherds Bush 02 Arena on Friday and Saturday night (1st & 2nd Feb). Sadly guitarist Charlie Whitney, now living in Greece, won't be joining them which will be a little disappointing for the fans of this once extraordinary group, but look at it the other way it's a minor miracle any of them have survived to even do this reunion gig. The young Roger Chapman seemed on the verge of exploding at most gigs as it was.
Except for their old fans, Family have been largely over looked on retrospectives of their work over the years (not here we might add, see post ) but with the release of a box set a new appreciation of just how unusual this band was and also how innovative they were is being realised.

Released on 4th February as a 2.000 copy 14CD box set including all 8 original albums in mini card sleeves, a 2 CD of unissued alternative takes, 3 CD singles, a live CD from 1971, a 72 page book and numbered certificate signed by Roger Chapman.
Available from FamilyOnceUponATime.com

It's fare to say not all of their music successfully translated to record but playing live they stood in class of their own. A band not afraid to improvise and develop a song live can thrill an audience far beyond the predictability of note for note copies of hit albums.
Of course no one should expect a performance like the halcyon days of that young band but if their fans are out in force, and it looks like they are with Friday night as a sell out, the 02 Arena will definitely be on full rock.
So until a video does appear of the latest concerts have a look at Family as they were. Could be the Isle Of Wight 1970 or that year.
The song is "Good News Bad News". Not great picture, sound a bit wooly at times.. but it's pretty clear what power this band had led by Chapman's presence.

wilko johnson - important notice

I am very sad to announce that Wilko has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas. He has chosen not to receive any chemotherapy.
He is currently in good spirits, is not yet suffering any physical effects and can expect to enjoy at least another few months of reasonable health and activity.
He has just set off on a trip to Japan; on his return we plan to complete a new CD, make a short tour of France, then give a series of farewell gigs in the UK. There is also a live DVD in the pipeline, filmed on the last UK tour.
Wilko wishes to offer his sincere thanks for all the support he has had over his long career, from those who have worked with him to, above all, those devoted fans and admirers who have attended his live gigs, bought his recordings and generally made his life such an extraordinarily full and eventful experience.
Thank you.
Robert Hoy (Manager)

the strypes - beat music returns

You're going to hear a lot more of these young beatsters in 2013. The Strypes have rewound the clock and are playing a raw mix of R&B and blues songs that has all the energy of a beat group coming straight out of a youth club in the early 1960's, and with an average age of 15 it'll make most bands out there feel like their parents generation.
The talent is also more than obvious when you hear them take on songs that were the staple diet of artists from the 60's, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Beatles (OMG, they even do George Harrison's 'Taxman') , Hooker blues, Slim Harpo etc,etc, the song list is precocious and daring given the heritage.

The bands homeland and the good people of Ireland are obviously glowing with pride, they haven't heard this stuff since the days of Them and Van Morrison's 'Gloria'.
With advice on how to handle themselves coming from all corners of the music business you just have to hope these young guns are going to be able to take what's around the corner for them.
2013 will be some year for the Strypes as they take this firebrand sound to the rest of the world.

Here they do Slim Harpo's Got Love If You Want It. And with some style. It's even filmed in black and white... (will someone pass the Black Bombers?)

the jacaranda club: lennon and sutcliffe's mural

Now here's a thing. A genuine piece of rock and roll archaeology.
Obviously one look at the photo above and you can see with the image of the Beatles painted on the sign board it has a link to the fab four, but more accurately it is a link with the pre-fab four and it's not the Sgt Pepper period which the frontage sign depicts.
The Jacaranda Club, a name by the way of an exotic fruit and sounds rather a little ironic with the actual street name and it's location of Slater St, Liverpool. In 1958 it was a meeting place for local musicians and a general hang out for art students and assorted bohemians and immigrants probably mostly West Indian who had frequented and lived in that area of Liverpool during the 1950's.
Upstairs the club served coffee and food, and downstairs in the basement it was the place to dance the night out to a local band. In the day it probably had all the atmosphere and aromas of the coffee bar culture of the late 1950's and at night the hot and smoke filled dance floor of any similar basement club.
One of the local groups who frequented the Jacaranda in 1958 were the Quarry Men. The pre-Beatle group with John, George, and Paul who were later joined by Lennon's friend and fellow art student Stuart Sutcliffe changing the name of the group to The Silver Beetles in 1960 before eventually changing it again to The Beatles before performing in Hamburg. The musical history of that little collective needs no telling here.
"The Silver Beetles performed around a dozen times at manager Allan William's cafe in Liverpool's city centre.
Alan Williams asked them to play (The Jacaranda) on Monday nights when the normal house band, The Royal Caribbean Steel Band, had a night off. The Silver Beetles were paid with beans on toast and Coca-Cola." Paul McCartney. Anthology.

This new photo and never before published shows The Jacaranda or 'The Jac' in the early 1980's and as can be seen it's in a pretty poor state of repair. The clubs original owner had pulled out of the business around 1970 and the club was then said to have then been taken over by a succession of owners until it was left closed and empty in the dilapidated state pictured. Windows now collapsing, empty inside rooms with what looks like shelving stacked against them, the outside wall half painted in an obvious attempt to improve the appearance but then abandoned.
You can still see the Membership boards in the window, on the left one declaring the admission prices to the club
Monday - Wednesday 50p
Thursday - Saturday £1
A hand written Members notice on the white board on the right now faded and illegible.
The building's appearance declined even further in the following years with graffitti appearing on the outside walls, the inside in a poor condition with the basement in possibly the worst condition with damage to something that really should amount to a cultural treasure of Liverpool and those early rock and roll days at the Jacaranda. There on the plaster walls were hand painted murals created by the 18 year old John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe.
They depict taut mask like faces painted in a limited palette of colours reminiscent of Paul Gaugin paintings and Polynesian art with the sculptural shapes and style of African tribal masks. Although the main face portraits are not African in appearance but look like young white people.
Could the main mural painted as a backdrop for the stage been the imagined faces of the audience?
Or could they even be the stylised self portraits of Lennon and Sutcliffe themselves?
It makes for irresistible conjecture.
The painting style itself is not immediately reflective of either Lennon's later published fine lined pen and ink cartoon drawings or the later fine art painting style we see of Stuart Sutcliffe's.
At the time these young men were painting the walls of the Jacaranda basement they were at or had just left the Liverpool College of Art and the murals have a distinctive experimental feel that is often encouraged in such colleges.
Certainly in 1950's art education they were quite likely to have been aware of both Gaugin and African art. Whatever, they are a fascinating and thought provoking insight of their artistic ideas at the time.
One thing can be certain though, Sutcliffe himself was a serious artist and Lennon would always be attracted to the people who were similarly artistic, inevitably it would be an artist who would become the perfect partner for him.
You can just imagine Sutcliffe and Lennon talking the idea over of the murals in the basement and one of them making some bold sketches on the plaster wall and the other making alterations, reshaping or filling in the colour of the faces with paint quite likely bought from a local shop.
It's a scenario that's been enacted by many an art student with a desire to produce a show of some nature.

Fortunately in 1995 the Jacaranda and the murals were saved from complete devastation when the club was taken over once more, this time with a new building facade and interior renovated it did lose the look of it's original appearance, but part of that renovation was the Sutcliffe and Lennon murals that were carefully repainted by local art students bringing there badly faded colours to life once more.
The Jacaranda's more recent years saw it become more of a tourist attraction and they held what seems like 'open mike nights' where a few young musicians made a sort of personal pilgrimage to the club from overseas. Their own particular tentative moments were filmed at the club by their friends and posted on YouTube where you can see and hear they battled to be heard against the background of a constantly chattering audience.
It's rather poignant that no matter how simple these videos are they now represent the last views of the inside of The Jacaranda Club. The club was to close again in 2011, and there must be some doubt as to whether it will ever be in business in the future.
So now John Lennon's and Stuart Sutcliffe's 55 year old (in 2013) mural paintings are once more in the dark and may fade from view for good this time.
Here is the large mural created in the stage area followed by one of The Quarry Men's very first recordings in 1958 and a song they would no doubt have played in the Jacaranda basement with it's hand painted mural as the backdrop.

leave my kitten alone

August 5th 1964 and the Beatles recorded a song that was intended but never released on their upcoming album Beatles For Sale.
"Leave My Kitten Alone" was first recorded by Little Willie John in 1959 and Lennon with his instinct for good rock and roll sang the lead on the song that eventually came to light in 1985 when it was remixed for the Anthology 1 compilation.
Why it was never included on the 'For Sale' album is a bit of a mystery, maybe it threw the balance out with who took the lead. 'For Sale' had 4 to Lennon, 3 McCartney, 1 each for George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the other songs had the group backing or sharing vocals. One more lead by Lennon meant someone would not be included.
Maybe it was decided not to include another song written by someone other than Lennon and McCartney. There were already 5 by other writers on 'For Sale' including Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry.
Whatever the reason it's a shame more fans never got to hear this version at the time with Lennon producing a full throat rock and roll vocal at his best. This is the unreleased original rough mix from 1964.

The same day just two years later life was to change for Lennon. And big. He was quoted as saying "The Beatles are more popular than Jesus" in a newspaper article some months earlier and had gone completely unnoticed in England. But in the USA it was dragged out as front page news to Lennon's and the groups dismay as they toured the country. Wrong time, wrong place.
Thousands if not millions in the States burnt the records and Lennon spent the rest of the tour apologising and for years ahead looking over his shoulder.
Now if only he'd said "In Britain, The Beatles were more popular with teenagers than the church" which is what he meant in the first place and was probably true anyway, things would have been very different for him then and in the future.
Sometimes you just need to Leave That Kitten Alone.

come together

Which is what happened on Friday night when the world gathered at the opening of the Olympic Games in London. Film maker Danny Boyle's production was as crazy as it was spectacular included the unlikely appearance of UK's Arctic Monkeys in the middle of it all with a gutsy performance raising the spectre of John Lennon with a convincing work out of his Abbey Road album classic "Come Together".
The band's lead singer and guitarist Alex Turner nicely judged the moment and turned out in leather jacket, jeans and DA haircut as if the clock had stood still in rock and roll circa 1960 and ripped through their own "You Look Good On The Dance Floor" followed by a convincing and close cover of "Come Together" that Lennon would surely have approved.
Later comments from global twitter commentators like "Who the fuck are the Arctic Monkeys?" only went to prove it was well worth while having them turn up.
So "stick it in your ear" to the clueless, this is just the sort of thing that happens in Danny Boyle's vision of the UK and more than likely quite a few others, us included.
And as there's copyright restrictions on most 'Anything Olympic' which includes their performance here's the original and a clever bit of virtual Beatles live.

1956 - a year to burn rock and roll

It was a year like no other. It could be said it was the year rock and roll was born and it's future seen.
We've all heard stories about Elvis Presley and maybe seen the footage from any one of the decades that were to follow up to his sudden death in 1977, but since rock and roll has a nasty habit of disposing of some of its stars in similar fashion how is the Elvis story any different ?
The very beginning and projected end of the "King" of rock and roll's story seems to point to just one year, 1956. The following is not an analysis of fine details that built up or followed, just a series of events, an outline of the year in that 21 year olds life.
It begins..
January : Young man with a love for r&b, blues and gospel music makes his first record. for RCA. His stage shows are energetic, abandoned and fun. Really fun. The guy expounds enthusiasm and humour with the music and the audience. Energy to burn.

April : He's quickly re-signed to another manager. 6 television shows are planned and he performs the first in April.
The single recorded in January is a number one hit.
For the first television show his mates and original group are replaced. After the first television show with all the usual effort put in to the performance and as a result the adulation received by a young audience he is described by the authorities as "a definite danger to the security of the United States."

June : During a hectic touring schedule he appears on television for the second show. This time due to the controversy of the first he is made to dress in top hat and tails and sings to a dog similarly attired (guess the song) looking increasingly uncomfortable throughout, exiting swiftly.
Next day records the song.

July - October : TV ratings are soaring every time he appears. Advance record sales are enormous. Responses at subsequent live shows are "increasingly fevered".
Following months, more songs released, more huge hits, more fevered audiences.

October : More live shows. After one performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy.

November : Debuts in his first movie. Panned by the critics. Massive success with audience.
Billboard's declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted.

December : With audiences so large and unmanageable he is no longer able to perform live. He is now completely in the hands of Hollywood.
The public never come as close to Elvis Presley again.

This then is the blueprint for what was to follow in rock/pop music. Just change the name and make the time scale longer. Coincidentally this year also saw the film opening of "Giant" starring another young teen idol, James Dean. He was already in the grave one year earlier.

Here is a short interview with Elvis from November 1956. It says it all. Exhausted. Confused. Energy burnt.

lennon's last tv appearance

Recorded at the Hilton Hotel in New York on April 18th 1975 it wasn't broadcast until 13th June for the 'Sir Lew Grade's 70th Birthday Celebrations'.
Grade had secretly sold his music publishing catalogue after promising to sell the Beatles catalogue back to the group. As a tribute to this double talking betrayal Lennon instructed the band to wear 'two face' masks, the band suitably renamed to BOMF (Band Of Mother Fuckers). Performing "Slippin And Slidin", (plus "Stand By Me" and "Imagine") the band mimed to a prerecording with Lennon's vocals live. This last live performance was a return to his Rock And Roll roots with two of the songs performed by The Beatles in the very early days. The titles of these two songs also made it quite clear what Lennon thought of Lou Grade and his business conduct. You can imagine Lennon seizing the opportunity to express his opinion at Grade's very own "celebrations"
Punk attitude a year before punk came along.