Squeeze The Grape

Anyone see the recent news about Detroit? Total deconstruction of roughly one quarter of the total city and a return to the agrarian roots that were lost to the automobile for a hundred years. Welcome to the 21st century where we all plant crops in cities to feed ourselves, and we try to remember things that were once an important part of our cultural make-up. The new plan beats the daylights out of our current factory farms and CAFOS and might spur a resurgence of community fresh healthy foods and the arts on local levels. Maybe Motown Records will resurrect itself as Gro-town Records. Go Detroit!   

In my world of reconnecting with the a lost past while looking at the future, I have been in touch over the last couple of weeks with David West of Play Ball! Musical Services. His name may not be familiar to many readers of this little blog of mine, but he is a wonderful multifaceted musician/producer. He co-founded the Cache Valley Drifters in the early 1970s, and the band did some marvelous work on Flying Fish Records during that crazy decade. He also contributed backing and songs for the late great Kate Wolf.

As a quick aside, many may not remember Kate Wolf. I had the great pleasure to meet and get to know her a little bit when I worked at KPFA in Berkeley, CA for about six years from 1977 to 1983. Everyone at the station loved her, but  her biggest booster was the warm and talented Robbie Osman. Robbie has a tremendous roots and folk program, Across the Great Divide, that has run for decades at 94.1. He has championed Kate's music passionately for all these years, and deserves special mention as a great human being keeping culture alive in America. We were all devastated when she succumbed to cancer at such a young age in 1986, and on the brink of national stardom. Derk Richardson did a fine article for the San Francisco Chronicle back in 1999 that lives on the Internet as a glowing tribute to Kate's legacy.

 I rediscovered David West through the Youtube clip when I ran across the terrific song by Peter Lewis, America, that I put up on my last blog post. I needed a copy of Peter's concert, Live in Bremen, and could find no one in the states who was selling it at any reasonable price. Anyway, after a few e-mails the good old US Postal Service delivered my new CD.

The record and liner notes are well worth the small green Andy Jackson photo I sent in exchange for the CD. The record contains some great stories surrounding two classic Moby Grape songs, Murder In My Heart For the Judge and Right Before My Eyes.  The story of Murder In My Heart involves Stephen Stills and Neil Young when they were still in Buffalo Springfield, and came to San Francisco to check out the fuss over Moby Grape. In Neil Young's book, Shakey, he talks of the meeting. Peter Lewis did an interview a few years back that also has the full details. When you hear the original concept that Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson put down for the tune played by Peter and David it becomes a wonderful historical musical artifact of pop conscience. His take on copyright is touched with humility and truth. Peter's story regarding the dinner setting at his mother's home with the assembled guests of Hollywood stars all dining at Loretta Young's table, which led to writing Right Before My Eyes, is quite remarkable in its honesty and detail.

The Live In Bremen record shines with an acoustic warmth that covers material from Moby Grape through Peter's first solo record, Peter Lewis. He also plays a great Gene Clark Byrds song, Set You Free This Time, as a wonderful tribute to an obvious key influence, which originally appeared on the Byrds second album. The album the band members all finally got to play on.

Peter Lewis remains one of popular music's most under appreciated talents. He has penned a wealth of great songs over the years with Moby Grape, and on his own very limited released two solo records through a German record company, Taxim Records. Peter Lewis, the first solo album, was produced by John McFee from the Doobie Brothers and got rave reviews from Rolling Stone when it appeared fifteen years ago. The highly positive reviews could not muster many sales. The album remains largely an undiscovered jewel in the cluttered mine of pop music.

The album boasts the aforementioned talents of David West, and host of California Sound veterans from Byrds, Doobies and Credence Clearwater Revival with Cornelius Bumpus, John York, McFee, Stu Cook and Keith Knudsen all lending their talents to the project. The sound is pristine and the songs are all very strong. Changing, gets two treatments on this record, and though I am a bit partial to the second helping I can see why this tune has two versions. The song is a personal microcosm of the Moby Grape story from Peter Lewis. Moby Grape's last full fledged album, Legendary Grape, which was first released on cassette-only in 1990 under the name The Melvilles, also has this song. It did not make the original cassette-only version, but appeared on the lovingly restored first CD edition that the fine folks at DIG Music put out in 2003 to tantalize all Grape fans with what could have been all over again. The original release in 1990 went to only about 600 folks on the Herman Records fan list due to the continued legal problems of copyright. 

Today, any rationale mind in the universe might have thought all the litigation was over, and the band could finally start receiving some of the proceeds from their artistry. Sundazed Records thinking there might be a real market for the original Columbia Records  releases licensed the first four Moby Grape albums from Sony/BMG. Not more than a month after their first reissue date in 2007 did the legal bullshit start up again from lawyers at Sony/BMG, Matthew Katz and the band causing a stop to a very promising re-release. The debut release and Wow were pulled and remain out of print.They join 20 Granite Creek and Fine Wine as lost raisins pruned from the vines of commerce. The excellent Jerry Miller albums, Life is Like That and Live at Cole's remain in obscurity struggling to find ears after fourteen years of availability.  

Hunter S Thompson once perfectly described the music business: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."  

The legal wrangling over the rights to both the name Moby Grape and for much of their catalog has now spanned the entire lifetime of the band and its four remaining founder members while outliving the remarkable Alexander Spence. It is not over to this day. There is a great, and fairly brief, detailed account of this ongoing battle that first appeared in Entertainment Law & Finance and was published by the author, Stan Soocher, on the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association website. This account is beyond anything fiction could imagine, and is the full truth and nothing but in the long litigious life cycle of malicious greed gone insane in today's world of corporatism.

Detroit has a good plan in bulldozing a corporate past that turned its back on the city when times got tough. Now the city turns the page and borrows from a more sustainable lesson with small farms and gardens to bring back culture and commerce. Music has been a huge casualty in the business world of merger consolidation and contracts, just ask the Moby Grape survivors. Bulldozing many of the older business models and laying waste to many of the parasites who sucked the sounds from the landscape over the past decades has been tough. It has forced me to piece together old puzzles and try to figure new meanings for lost art that big business in this country never cared for. If we are to "learn from our mistakes" we must have an honest history, and must find all the important cultural documents that made that history. If we embrace in our collective ignorance and pour down modified enhanced flavor substitutes we suffer from malnourishment as a consequence.    
  

 

Moby Grape Breaking In Again

My last blog post got me in big trouble with my computer. Doing the usual search for reference links it came across a very malicious site. I wish I could tell you the site name, but that history purged itself with a big electronic dump. For your protection stay away from all golf sites. I know I will from now on.

A lot changed over the years since my old Dell first came home. This new HP slim line model holds more than eight times the hard disc memory, and processes at a much higher rate than my old workmate. I won't bore you with all the useless tie-ins to sites that now get loaded instead of software, but  I will say it was nice to have a copy of Microsft Office in the house I could still load.  Software ain't cheap. So this week I'm breaking in my new office compadre. I surf on magical electronic waves carrying me to new places where I find familiar faces.

Speaking of breaking in, this month marks an anniversary of sorts for one of my all-time favorite bands, Moby Grape. March of 1967 found the five founding members (Peter Lewis, Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley Skip Spence and Don Stevenson) recording their brilliant first album for Columbia Records. The album is currently out of print. According to the excellent liner notes David Fricke supplied for the Legacy Records  Moby Grape-Vintage release in 1993, Fall On You, Come In The Morning and 8:05 all were finished between March 11 and March 14 of 1967. The remaining tracks were completed for the band's first album by the last week of April. The record cost $11,000 to make and endures as a classic album without a filler tune to be heard. I don't think the members of Moby Grape ever saw a nickel from their wonderful debut release.

This band epitomized the old blues tune Born Under a Bad Sign. On the night of their first album's listening party Peter Lewis, Jerry Miller and Skip Spence were arrested for contributing to the delinquency of three young girls and for pot possession. The charges were dropped, but the die had been cast. The album contained sure hits, but the record label in one of the most bizarre marketing and sales approaches in music business history released five singles (ten songs) at once from the record. Disc jockeys in most of the country disregarded them out of hand, partly due to the arrogance of the five simultaneous singles releases, and partly because they had no idea which of them they should play. And partly because Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band had been released just two weeks prior.

The band played at the Monterey Pop Festival on the second night, Saturday night, where they opened the evening's show. No one who was not at the show has seen the band's performance. There might be footage somewhere in D.A. Pennebaker's estate, but as Pennebaker remarked in his notes on the Criterion DVD release of the historic festival, "It'll never be complete." There are stories out in the universe that Mathew Katz (that rhymes with ingrates) demanded a million dollars to film the band's performance. The end result?  No filmed Moby Grape. Here is the audio clip just recently posted on youtube. Tommy Smothers does the introduction.



There are so many stories surrounding Moby Grape and the ordeals the band mates faced with managers, record companies, lawyers, drugs and mental illness. Most of these recounts are simply not complete, because the story of Moby Grape does not end in 1967, 1969, 1971, 1978, 1984, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1996, 1999 or 2007.  When all has been said and done the band has put down tracks under various signatures  for five decades and has played to hosts of crowds thoroughout that span of time. This band was not a flash in the pan, but an odd mix of young people thrown together who ultimately stuck by one another for life.  The band is American grit and determination personified, with talent to boot.

The story of this band and its members goes on. The Grape musical legacy grows through, of all things, the Internet and the personal computer. The two very things that demolished the music business as most of us knew it in our lifetimes and punished Moby Grape so severely in the process. I close with a song I just found last week on Youtube. The song comes from Peter Lewis. It's called America. It's a beautiful song and I think a lot of people will be touched by it when they hear it. Just spreading words and tunes while breaking in a new computer.

Tiger whipped by the tail

Chinese New Year's Day and Valentines Day this year happened on the same day. We find ourselves almost two week into the year of the Tiger, and sure enough the world's Tiger popped out from his sex rehab stint and onto his little television stage to apologize for his infidelities just five days into his year. Judging by all the pundit action, this sighting of yet another really rich guy getting caught with his balls landing in all those wrong fairways and apologizing for it made for epic news worthiness.

Having a one-sport-skill corporate-shill apologize for not being the person we have been sold to for years is not news. It is not news finding out about a high profile celebrity having his wood waxed by someone other than himself or his marital companion. I don't care about the domestic lies of other people. They can deal with their own hazards by themselves. But when you sell yourself to millions and then turn into a fraud, well, that's showbiz for you. 

For me, the news about Tiger's "press conference" is how small he turned out to be. Here is a guy we learned a few months back was all about chasing the skirts, and reveling in everything Tiger while putting out one very controlled press release after another for all these years about his foundation, and his other worldly goodness, while selling turds shined up to look like diamond studs. But when it came to really stepping up after a dose of adversity hit his world, and being a man about it, he whiffed the ball. Tiger Woods hid for three months from the same public he sold his snake oil persona to for these past two decades, because he is a frightened version of James M. Barrie's Peter Pan with a freakish talent that enabled him to sail over and above real life while never having to deal with all those messy and unpleasant parts reserved for the common people.  

Tiger Woods is one more 14 year old hormonal mind trapped in a man's body, just like so many overpaid and pampered athletes corporate America pays big dollars to sell what they want sold. The modern athlete today is a sellout pure and simple, just an advertising whore in a world where sports is another game of simple niche marketing to a broad male dominated audience.

Now every time Tiger Woods appears on my media dial I will always think of John Daly. Daly, like Woods, squandered a lot of public good will with his inability to grow up. Daly, however, owns his misfortunes and retains some respect by many for being brutally honest and open  in a world where image is valued much more than truth.

Tiger had an opportunity to become a human being with his first public appearance, but chose to sell a marketing plan dressed up as a public apology instead. Do we care at this point if one more celebrity says I'm sorry? What is sorry is that we live in an age where only celebrity garners major eyeball traction. Tiger Woods still has Nike and EA to hawk and John Daly now performs in his own reality television show.

Well, that's showbiz for you.         

     

 

Stuck on Telegraph Road

Midweek. Wednesday's child is filled with woe, and Thursday's child has far to go. Sums up the mood of the country for far too many.
I want to smile every day, and at some points when my goofy dog does something.... well, goofy, I can let out a chuckle and crack a grin. Too bad for me his goofiness is not perpetual. When I read the news, or hear the news talk on the radio, or watch a talking head describe any current event, all that dog comedy recedes like a tsunami wave heading to the epicenter. Blues with a 24/7 feeling permeates the atmosphere.

Good jobs are so scarce you might think they never existed in the first place. We had a small episode in Kern County on a Sunday morning to start this week with more employment despair. Rio Tinto, an Australian-British mining and mineral processing giant, locked out over 500 hundred union miners over a contract dispute and started busing scab workers onto their U.S. Borax facility in Boron , CA.  What troubled me the most, apart from the general apathy and resignation of the workers fate, was the use of the Kern County Sheriffs Department to provide security for the Rio Tinto management at the U.S. Borax site. Yep, public tax dollars going to suppress union actions over the lockout.

The response county wide has been very quiet over the loss of approximately 560 union wage jobs, which are now being filled by workers earning much less. In Kern County it now appears to be a way of life to champion those who fall to the bottom and join the vast pile of the displaced and broke working class. The motto for America seems to be if I cannot have it neither should you. We have replaced the concepts of raising the general population to higher standards with mantras of no taxes and no entitlements.
And what have you got at the end of the day?
What have you got to take away?
a bottle of whiskey and a new set of lies
blinds on the window and a pain behind the eyes

No entitlements means no retirement for most Americans. No entitlements mean substandard health care if any health care can be had. No entitlements mean diminishing to substandard our public education system. The concept of no entitlements mean you have no right to go to work. You have no right to housing. You have no rights.

I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I've got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
we're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed

During economic downturns of the not too distant past, powerful voices in the arts spoke to broad audiences and helped tweak public opinion on big social issues. Powerful writers of popular music were the conscience of the world, and spoke to wide audiences on concerns of social injustices. Where did those voices go, and why do we not hear them today? Many of these voices are still among us,  but have been drowned out by American Idols selling cosmetics and jewelry for WalMart and Target.

One of the most powerful songwiters, and one of my all-time favorite people in music is Mark Knopfler. Had he been a young man during this decade we would never have heard from him. He might have tried to play music, but the chances of guy looking like Mark Knopfler with Mark Knopfler's voice would never get airplay today. Can you see him doing an American Idol contest?

and he takes you out in Vaudeville Valley
with his hand up smothering your screams
and he screws you down in Tin Pan Alley
in the city of a billion dreams 

Does anyone sell music today that is not sponsored by a multinational conglomerate today? And the conglomerates are doing the best possible job of ensuring the death of the world's music culture. Here is the latest chart from a CNN story on the decline of the music business over this decade. Now that is a big fall from market grace.

It takes love over gold
and mind over matter
to do what you do that you must
when the things that you hold
can fall and be shattered
or run through your fingers like dust

1982 saw Dire Straits release Love Over Gold. The bold quotes are from this epic release that resonates more today than it did when America was tuned to Hill Street Blues and our country was involved with Afghanistan the first time. As too many corporations rape and plunder workers and the land while undermining the governments who subsidize and protect them I feel that I'm traveling down Telegraph Road all over again.

Thank goodness for a goofy dog, and a decent record collection.  


  

Favre Factor Sells Soap on Big-Time Football

The Sky is Crying, and my yard is very soggy this week. Great song, crummy weather. Takes me back to many of those soggy days in Sacramento when the whole county thought the levees would break and flood a good many areas of the city. I can't complain we need the rain. This week with the bad weather and January in full swing I had NFL football and the WWE on my mind. I remembered my old buddy "Hillbilly Jim" Morris who used to call on me in bygone video days from Coliseum Video selling all those highlight packages of WrestleMania and the like. He always had great stories to tell. "Yep, one big soap opera for big guys and little guys with moms even hanging out. Let me tell you, a lot of those blows were very real. I didn't fake a broken leg and bad back from square dancin' in those arenas."  I miss Jim, and hope he's doing well.

As I watched the Dallas Cowboys getting Napoleoned Blown Apart by the Minnesota Vikings, I was really shocked. I thought for sure the Cowboys were a lock to play in the Super Bowl. I thought the Jerry Jones tribute to the NFL in the form of a giant stadium would be the ticket. Well, the game will not be played at the new Palace de Pigskin in Texas, but with all that money invested in an NFL crown jewel I thought all that tribute investment would be worth something, but I underestimated all that advertising revenue from all those Brett Favre lovers and haters out in television land. The Cowboys were the hot team driving the Eagles out of Texas, and out of the playoffs with more authority than a Roger Goodell suspension on players for bad behavior, but they played like the St. Louis Lambs on the Metrodome turf this past weekend.

Brett Favre sure looked good! 

In the NFL there are so few positive compelling human stories to punctuate the games, only the constant parade of embarrassing indiscretions and violent acts for weekly human interest grist. The exception to this police line-up parade is the soap opera called Brett Favre, which shines so bright as to dim all other stories. Brett has been the golden boy of the game for the past two decades. He has virtually every career passing record the NFL keeps track of. He has been the kid with all that exuberance, determination and flair who gained a championship in the mid 1990s. He has been the middle aged warrior who fought through pain (and pain killers) on less than great teams to soldier on  for that one last championship. He was the son who valiantly played the game of his life two days after his father had suddenly died, and on the national stage for Monday Night Football to boot. He is now the grizzled veteran who still has game, and ponders retirement every off-season for the past six years only to suit up for one last quest. He is Galahad, or Ivanhoe, or Lancelot. He is big money for the NFL.

How 'bout them Cowboys? Brett Favre sure looked good!

Now I'm not saying the games are fixed in the NFL, but most of the big ones sure seem to work out in an unusually preordained fashion. I have been suspicious of big game arrangements since Gary Anderson of the Minnesota Vikings missed a 38 yard field goal in the Championship game in 1999 when the Minnesota Vikings ultimately lost to the Atlanta Falcons.

Consider, Gary Anderson was a veteran kicker, and for the whole season indoors as well as outdoors had not missed a field goal or extra point try up to his kick attempt to win the NFC Championship game. He was indoors at the comfy confines of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. A good kick with 5 minutes remaining seals the deal. It is not as though this kick saves the Vikings from the grasp of defeat with no time remaining, or other imagined big pressure situations that might cause a nerve or two to pinch at an inopportune nanosecond. Well, the story is ancient history, and only comes up in a strange bit of memory haze when you ponder the end of the San Diego Chargers season.

Nate Kaeding definitely moved Gary Anderson off the the old how-in-the-fuck-could-he-miss-that-kick perch football geeks have been pondering for more than a decade now. Nate (the not so great in the playoffs) Kaeding has personally removed the Chagers from the playoffs twice, and both times against the New York Jets.  Could that really be a coincidence?

I also have a hard time believing that either of these two placekickers choked. When you kick at the highest level of the sport, and are considered "money" by everyone in the stadium, choking just does not come into the equation. Nor does money for the player, when you get right down to it. These NFL players are currently paid in the top one percent of all earners in America. Even kickers.

So if these guys make so much money why throw games?

The first thing that might pop into the brain upon reflecting over the above question might be gamblers. If a person got into a very bad situation and owed big bucks to people who really value seeing their money come in on schedule this could be a possibility. But you never see this with players today in the big leagues. Whether it is the MLB players, the NBA players, the NHL players or the NFL players you just don't see them in those circumstances while they are playing. They make too much money to be bought off.

We have read about the NBA referee, Tim Donaghy, being tied  to the mob over his betting on NBA games that he officiated. And there is plenty of outrage from fans around the country about the obvious favoritism shown to certain teams and stars by the officials in the NBA. Sports Illustrated ran a column by Phil Taylor that makes a good case that the NBA has a very big credibility problem on its hands, but nobody seems to care. Of course, (and I could be wrong) I am not even sure if anyone outside of Los Angeles, Cleveland and Boston even bothers to watch NBA games anymore.

College football and college basketball have been rocked by betting scandals every decade going back to the 1940s. Always with players who earn nothing while packed stadiums, and big money media contracts heap dough on the NCAA and the few select top team schools.

Baseball has had its share of gambling problems in the past with Pete Rose, and a long time ago with the Chicago White Sox- Black Sox fix of the 1919 World Series. But Pete Rose was a manager who gambled on games not fixed them, and players back in the World War I era earned no money to speak of, thus becoming easy targets for the gambling interests to persuade.

Most of the focus over the 2009 MLB playoffs were over a very high number of really bad calls umpires made at critical junctures during several games. Once again, the lowest paid people on the field making their presence known in determining the outcome of big games. In the baseball playoffs and World Series those bad calls might have been simple bargaining leverage tactics in the ongoing contract negotiations between their Union members and the MLB power brokers. 

Refereeing is a huge issue in all sports today because the dollars involved are so great, and the people making the calls earn very little in comparison to the athletes they judge on the respective fields of play. But, looking  back at the NFL playoffs this past weekend the refereeing was really a non-factor in all the games. Yes, the Chargers were penalized twice as often, and for far more yardage than the Jets, but the calls for bonehead Charger player actions were certainly all merited.

Officials could have been in on securing the deal in San Diego, and did just enough to make sure the fair-weather team did not get too far out ahead. It's not as though officials have not recently played a huge role in all but ensuring a victory for the chosen team in the NFL. Two words are all I need to type to bring back the faded memory of one franchise getting the friendly push to the top while the other franchise was getting the not so friendly nudge off the cliff. Tuck Rule. Even with the Tuck Rule fiasco, the officials ruled one way on field before being overturned from the booth.  

When humongous amounts of dollars are at stake it gets harder and harder to believe that many games are on the level these days. When you have a business monopoly the only real goal is to make money for the business. Fairness, ethics, morals and all that other stuff are for people, not corporate monopolies. How do you make more money  when you have the same number of seats to be sold at the same number of stadiums the same number of weeks every year? You need higher television and other media ratings to go after broadcast rights and advertisers for more dollars. You have to make your product compelling and appeal to the markets with the highest density of people with the highest average incomes to match your investment partners targeted audiences.

Which game offers the most must see potential? Colts-Saints? Colts-Vikings? Jets-Saints? No real drama in any of those match-ups. In two out of the three the quarterback match-ups would be fun to watch, but not compelling. From my point of view it has had to be the Jets against the Vikings all along. Did I mention the Jets got into the postseason by winning the regular season final two games when their opponents (Bengals and Colts) didn't bother to play at full strength, and then got to meet them both again to convince everybody those games were legitimate?  

I am not placing any bets this weekend, but as time goes on Roger Goodell and Vince McMahon begin to have more similarities than differences when it comes to managing their entertainment empires of big bodied people.

Have a good time watch Big-Time Football this weekend.