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This blogger, Richard Gehr, is not an employee of AARP. The opinions expressed in the blog are not necessarily the opinions of AARP and AARP assumes no liability for the content posted by Mr. Gehr or any other participant

October 12, 2007

Richard Gehr | October 12, 2007

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My current Wolfgang's Concert Vault playlist consists of a 1966 Jefferson Airplane jam at San Francisco's Fillmore Ballroom, blues guitarist Rory Gallagher performing "Do You Read Me" at New York's Bottom Line in 1978, the Kinks' celebration of "Alcohol" at Waterbury, Conn.'s Palace Theater in 1972, and the Allman Brothers Band—joined by guests Jerry Garcia and Boz Scaggs—unwinding a long, languid "Mountain Jam" at San Francisco's Cow Palace in 1973. I fashioned the playlist from four concerts added this week to the Vault, a.k.a. the Bill Graham Presents archive, which was purchased by Minnesota businessman William E. Sagan in 2003 for $6 million. Sagan is currently streaming 665 concerts produced by legendary promoter Bill Graham (born Wolfgang Grajonca) between 1965 and 2002 via the Vault, with more being added on a regular basis. Many of these concerts can also be purchased as downloads.

This could all be a temporary arrangement, however. Several of the musicians whose performances and images are on sale at the Vault—including Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, and the Doors—filed a federal lawsuit in December accusing Sagan of copyright infringement and bootlegging, among other charges. As the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We have never given permission for our images and material to be used in this way." Sagan's attorney, however, insists that the rights "were acquired in a series of transactions and can't be challenged." Graham's employees, who purchased his company following Graham's death in a 1991 helicopter accident, sold it to SFX Entertainment in 1998. In 2000, SFX was acquired by Clear Channel Communications. Clear Channel subsequently sold Graham's archive to Sagan with the caveat, according to former Bill Graham Presents president Greg Perloff, that much of the licensing was incomplete. Just how incomplete will eventually be determined in court. Until then...

August 09, 2007

Richard Gehr | August 09, 2007

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Ever wonder what became of groups like the Weads, the Vi Dels, Lonnie and the Legends, the Tasmanians, Cryan Shames, Chaos Incorporated, and the Beavers? Me neither. But I've been obsessing over the extremely under-the-radar careers of these and a few hundred other 1960s garage bands thanks to Garage Hangover, an amazing collection of data, images, and mp3s, I discovered via Portland, Oregon, nostalgia trove Stumptown Confidential.

Categorized conveniently by both state and country (don't miss the Confusion and the Dinosaurs, paired on a single released by an India cigarette company), Garage Hangover is a wiki-like cooperative affair. Today the site features the Vistells, the Cobras, and other bands from the late-sixties Santa Cruz scene, copiously illustrated with photos, business cards, posters, and the precious vinyl itself. The music, reflecting an era, is a naïve and often-charming blend of surf rock, English pop, and psychedelia.

At a time when releasing a 45 was somewhat more complicated than producing an mp3 track on your iMac with aptly named Garageband, many of these recordings involved the assistance of radio DJs, parents, and other sponsors for labels no one has heard of before or since. They weren't always purely commercial, either. A single released by Montreal's bilingual Les Harmonicos was given away as a souvenir at "Canada Family Day," with the same song sung in French on one side and in English on the other.

Garage Hangover's collection represents merely the tip of its stylistic iceberg, of course. But I imagine it becoming the center of a scene that has to date been documented mainly in the pages of equally obscure low-budget, long-out-of-print, barely circulated books and zines. This is posterity.

April 19, 2007

Richard Gehr | April 19, 2007

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Reading about music, believe it or not, used to be almost as much fun as listening to it. And when I want to read about music, my favorite recent source has been Rock's Backpages, an online library containing several thousand interviews, reviews, and features, from hundreds of magazines both current and defunct, published in rock's Paleolithic era through today.

Our thirteen-year-old daughter is studying Janis Joplin for a school project, so I pointed her to this unique British archive. There we found a remarkable 1972 David Dalton interview with the female James Brown: "I always did have a very heavy attachment for the whole Fitzgerald thing," she tells him as they discuss Zelda Fitzgerald in a hotel bar. "That all-out, Full Tilt, Hell Bent Way of Living, and she and F. Scott Fitzgerald were the epitome of that whole trip, right?"

The week's top ten searches on the site include Mick Farren's extensive 1975 New Musical Express feature on Buddy Holly, Don Snowden's 1986 interview with "Gimme Shelter" screamer Merry Clayton, MP3 audio of Barney Hoskyn's extensive 1993 interview with Van Dyke Parks, and a snarky 1974 review of Bob Dylan's Planet Waves. "'Forever Young' is a terrible song (particularly for Dylan who convinced a whole generation that nothing was forever)," wrote Mick Gold.

Many an entertaining hour could be spent in the Backpages library. Not to mention that it also gives me the opportunity to wax nostalgic, and often cringe, over my own greatest hits and misses. Not that I was so much older then.