Hot. Bakersfield cooks like no other place during July and August. The heat and really bad air beat and shrivel people to dried pulp husks over the lengthy summer months. Only the desperate venture outdoors during August. My sweetie and I were desperate, and bought some expensive tickets to see Joe Cocker and The Steve Miller Band.
I love both of these guys for maintaining their signature sounds over the years, and never caving to the whims of what passes for pop music fashion. These guys both have pretty cool websites today that give a great look into what they are all about. Check on the links provided on this little blog outpost and take a tour if you are curious.
I bought my first Steve Miller album in 1968, Children of the Future. It was a cool trippy cover in psychedelic blue, red and yellow. My cousin set up a little projector with lights that switched from red to blue to yellow, and we would listen, smoke and watch the band fly on the album jacket. Cheap thrills. Old times, good times.
The album still sounds cool and very different from the mainstream of any era, beginning with the amazing harmonies on the opening Children Of The Future track, and winding through the two sides before closing with a cover of Key To The Highway. The album contains the roots of everything Steve Miller would do musically over his now forty plus years on the pop stage. You find melodic pop with Baby's Calling Me Home. Jimmy Reed and B.B. King inspired blues tunes interspersed with folk/country blends and mixed with lots of space headphone friendly sound-textures inside the pan knob of various effects. It blends straight ahead with humor, improvisation and vocal harmonies the Beatles could be proud of.
The Steve Miller Band on a hot August night in Bakersfield, before about five or six thousand other desperate souls seeking respite from summer, were awesome. Tight harmonies mixed with controlled energetic musicianship from every player brought out a good-time party atmosphere for the small throng assembled (if 5k is a small throng?). The band mixed in four new songs they have recorded and are working on getting ready for downloads with a lot of classic Steve Miller tunes. An extended version of Fly Like An Eagle and The Stake really stood out for me, but all songs from the sublime Wild Mountain Honey to Abracadabera put big smiles on the attendees.
The crowd was terribly thin when the night's opener, Joe Cocker, stepped up to the microphone to belt out Hitchcock Railway. He looked all of his 60 plus years, but his magic voice still sounds remarkable and unrelentingly strong. His band had some nice moments as Beatle covers like She Came In Through The Bathroom Window and A Little Help From My Friends got people on their feet singing right along. Come Together suffered from guitar wizardry that just fizzled and slowed down an otherwise good version.
I was an immediate fan of Joe Cocker after catching the film of Woodstock and seeing his outrageous persona dominate the screen and speakers with the Grease Band churning out A Little Help From My Friends. Joe Cocker created the air guitar craze and remains the world's greatest living air musician vocalist. He is still such an original.
I bought my first Joe Cocker record in 1969. It was the second Joe Cocker A&M album. It has great songs like Hitchcock Railway and Dylan's Dear Landlord, as well as terrific cover of Leonard Cohen's Bird On A Wire. It was released and gathered some steam while Joe assembled his Mad Dogs and Englishmen for their epic tour of America, which would be filmed for posterity. At the time, I could never figure out why so many critics referred to him in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a white Ray Charles. I guess anything can and will always be said to sell some shit, even good shit.
Great show in Bakersfield from these these two great artists. They both have money, which means they have truly been lucky, as well as good. Thanks for being here now, and thanks for being there way back when.
