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I have no intellect about music and art. I like what I like. I don't care much for reading about music and art and movies and such. Nowadays that amounts to just work!.
I'm a geezer. Much has transpired in the lively arts, and quite a large bit of it just doesn't reach me . . . probably because I don't access much. I used to spend over half my leisure time engaged in the arts -- music, film and theater. But I have come to develop and cherish the most valuable time that I have - the do-nothing time, when I allow nothing to get in the way of doing nothing. Even going to a movie is mostly out of the question. My pursuit of peace is all-consuming, and yet unforced. Just come over and drag me out. I'll go wherever you want me to!
I used to read a book a month. Now it takes me a month to get to page 17 even if I might find the topic amazing.
I cannot pin it down - the day when I stopped doing that. Oh, it was a gradual process, like so many things. I've no doubt that it had something to do with depression and loss. Like, wow, all you chickens out there. I didn't realize until the start of '09 that I'd been sick in the head and lived pretty much like a wounded animal must, for at least 50 years, maybe more.
It is a wonderful thing to be recovering form that. But I'm still a big fan of Sue Thompson's "Norman" so I'm probably still pretty far gone.
Nevertheless, I more or less enjoy my time on earth. But when it comes to going out and about, joining the crowds and the bustling stuff. I'd rather stay home and do this.
Love Without Boners: Teen Idols, Teen Angels and Me
We love our teen idols, just as the kids who came before us loved theirs, and just as our own children have gone nuts over theirs.
In 1982 I was lucky enough to be hanging out at Woodshock over on Hulbert's land west of the city.
The previous year, it was through great fun and great effort of myself and my bandmates to fashion from scratch the first Woodshock party - right in the middle of town. Indeed, Woodshock was the first "plugged in" event to be held at Woolridge Park which runs along River Street for a few blocks from 12th to 15th streets before being engulfed and devoured by The University Of Texas..
Now someone else had the baton and here they were romping and stomping out in the woods. The dry crusty Texas type woods.
I was sitting in a lawn chair watching the small group of young people who either were hugging the stage and looking up at the bands, or slamming the hell out of each other.
I felt totally peaceful and quiet, as if I was somehow watching the scene from afar, and in those quiet and far away moments I realized something that I wish all generations could share: the amount of fun these kids were having, was no greater or lesser than the fun that is had by all youth.
And the drunk who would break up a saloon in Dodge City, or the caveman who dragged his woman around by the hair - they'd still be here and always will be, if only to make any dance party fall dead.
I was once in love with Ricky Nelson, such that whenever the Ozzie and Harriet Show lit our tube, I'd drop everything and sit on the floor being ga-ga over his looks and his song. Yes, Ricky Nelson was my first love affair.
None of my other teen idols could do what he did to my little gay heart which, by the way, I had no real grasp of yet..
As you can tell by the photos that come up from the thumbnails to your right, I had a thing for pretty men and down to earth, fairly asexual women, like mother/sister types. Totally non threatening..
I didn't know good music from bad - I still don't - I just knew what I liked. The worst thing anyone can say to me is "why do you like" this or that, or worse, "you're gonna love this!"
<2010-01-23>
You can pull out any Billboard or Cashbox top 100s from, say, 1955-1970 and chances are pretty good that I'll like at least half of them enough that I wouldn't turn them off the radio. Another 15% I would not be able to tolerate. And the rest of the tunes, be they hits or misses, I'd memorize every line and take each rhythm to heart. It wouldn't matter if I was singing along using phrases like, "He's sure the boy I love" or "Don't Break The Heart That Loves You." Lyrics, like a lot of this crud that I'm writing out now, can be the most inane things. But it is the thing inside that takes hold of one's soul. An arrangement, a melody, the phrasing, a voice. It can all gang up on you and take you away. I might be embarrassed if someone caught me enjoying myself at the exclusion of everything around me while singing "dum-diddly-dum-diddley-dum-diddly-dum," but what's a little embarrassment when your having the time of your life?
It Was All About Fun
I was 35 years old when I first heard Randy "Biscuit" Turner and his Big Boys do Fun Fun Fun - the classic first-wave anthem out of Austin - I knew somehow I might fit in with this new kids music, because for me it was almost always only all about fun. Even the sad songs were fun. Even the death songs were fun. And dancing, no matter how it is done, is nothing but fun. Romance and fun. Movement and fun. Chaos and fun.
When I first heard Let Me In by The Sensations, I knew instinctively that this song would always be typical of how much fun a simple record can be. Although wanting in production values, it was totally expressive of happy desire. It wasn't rain that pitter-pattered, it was feet. A technical flaw in the recording made it all the more endearing.
By far my favorite "Teen Idol" song is the happy and romantic Venus by Frankie Avalon, which I love much more today than when it was first released in 1959. Its sparkling production values were lost to the primitive technology with which most of us listen to music - virtually all of it on monaural 45 rpm singles. RCA Victor made a for-45-singles only record player. There was no "rock and roll" music on FM radio which was in its commercial infancy during the 1950s. It was a revelation when we got to listen to our favorite music in stereophonic sound. 1959 saw the release of a great many stereo singles. "Our" kind of music didn't warrant albums. The LP, like FM radio, was pretty much reserved for classical music, then jazz and, and then kids music. Even easy listening stars who our parents loved so much would have to wait for a hit single to justify recording a whole album.
One of my favorite singalong-withs is Bobby Rydell. Nice voice, easy and distinctive; supported by cheerful arrangements and enthusiastic back-up singers. The tunes were tight and none of the writers had to fake it just for a rhyme. Fabian was a pretty awful singer but he was sexy and made the girls scream. He's the dude who's pictured at the top of this page. In 1973, this yummy Philadelphian posed nude for Playgirl Magazine.
About Brian Hyland - what can you say after cute? His cute little white boy cover of The Impressions' Gypsy Woman always reminded me of Peggy Noden during her Chatasma Cactus day. Brian's good friend Del Shannon produced a few of his ABC Paramount records and, returning the favor, Brian participated in the Del's work.
I am often taken by the sweet and simple, like Home Economics for instance, and things like cute little white boy ditties..
Dion and the Belmonts started out in doo-wop - with 1958's I Wonder Why standing out from that crowd. With or without the Belmonts, Dion DiMucci has one of those clean, pure voices, naturally assertive. He split with the Belmonts in 1960 and recorded many good little songs, like Donna The Prima Donna, Love Came to Me and Little Diane (complete with Kazoo break),
Bobby Vee - It was love at first sight. The slightest of songs, but the sweetest of faces. Snuff Garrett, the Johnny Mann Singers, and manageable songs, like Sharing You and The Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Marsh-mallow fluff. Yum. Barry Kazmer, who I found while sifting the web for images from Costa Mesa during the 50s & 60s, shares a personal Bobby Vee story. Seems Barry was cruising my postcard page and spotted the Bobby Vee publicity card. Kazmer's personal note is here.
Even while ditties filled the airwaves, pop music was not without conscience. Sam Cooke released a solid pop repertoire - 18 hits from 1957 through 1963. Some are included in the little jukebox below. You'll have to pause or close the Yahoo Music Player first. Here's the list: Cupid, (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons, Having a Party, Sad Mood, Twistin' the Night Away and Win Your Love for Me.
He wrote most of his songs, and threw in some standards, too, like Summertime and Sentimental Reasons. Sam Cooke was murdered in 1964. His civil rights anthem, A Change Is Gonna Come, was released after his death.
Connie Francis, aside from having put some truly dreadful records, and aside from approaching some songs as if setting out to torture them. In spite of all that, there are enough gems to have made me a loyal fan since 1958. A lot of her stuff makes me gag, but it's the stuff that does not that made her my first favorite girl singer. Most of my friends - back and forth in time - simply loathed the woman. But recently one of her songs was on the radio and I asked a companion, oh, do you like Connie Francis? "Oh yeah, I've always wanted to fuck her." Go figure. Here she is, doing Lullaby of Broadway - pulling out all the stops, from cutesy to flat out awesome. Her first record Eighteen was more in keeping with the teenage angst of the time. With Frankie Avalon being all the rage, and gossip mills grinding out love stories by the roll, a team of Brill Building tunesmiths went for the "topical" and gave Connie and the rumoroids plenty to chew on with Neil Sedaka & Howie Greenfield's Frankie which joined its a-side (Lipstick on your Collaro) for a long spell on the charts. With the help of Winfield Scott (Tweedle Dee, Return to Sender) Connie - who ranks third in all-time sales by female singers - brought in Many Tears Ago under two minutes. Decent. Efficient. Can anyone tell how big a fan I am/was/are of the era and its olio of blessings? Talk to me!
So many guilty pleasures. Pleasure and simplicity. Nature in the ah.
Del Shannon was my hero. He was so raw. So loud. I loved singing along with his records, and I played most of them on the piano in our living room on Center Street. I wrote my own song called "Stranger's In Town" as an homage to him. Almost everything he did on the Big Top/Amy label hit me somewhere between my head and my gut:Handy Man-- Stranger In Town -- Little Town Flirt. Hindsight being what it is, you (or at least I) can see in his face, no matter how old the photo, that something brewed within him that was safely released only through song. His 1990 suicide (shotgun) led to vigorous discussions about one of the dangerous side effects of Prozac. I discovered his version of The Big Hurt (Liberty Records) in the early 2000s.
Dee Clark always gave me great sing-along material, and I managed to collect all of his Abner stereo 45s.
I unexpectedly came to like Leslie Gore during the 1990s - infectious, well crafted stuff produced by Quincy Jones, with many arrangements by the great Claus Ogerman, like Maybe I Know which captured the Motown sound to perfection, e.g., In My Lonely Room by the Marvelettes.
Gene Pitney had the strongest pipes on record. He died in 2006,
I have over 5,000 digital tracks from my day in the sun. I had a 45 rpm single fetish starting at the age of about 10. I'm over it now. Um, er, not really.
<2010-01-31>
The Skyliners featured the sweet, romantic and remarkable voice of Jimmy Beaumont. I loved singing along with Jimmy Beaumont. Their biggest hit was Since I Don't Have You but my personal favorite is This I Swear. I happened across a movie playing on one of the Encore channels, in which a young man, wooing the girl of his dreams, presented her with This I Swear, a capella. It was such a sweet and sincere moment, but I don't know for the life of me the actor's name or the title of the movie.
Dexter Holland of Offspring. I was so taken by his singing and looks, especially during his dreadlock days. I caught sight of him in the Gotta Get Away video on MTV. I fell in love again, for the hundred-thousandth time in my own rock and roll heaven.
Joanie Sommers had a unique, bright voice that lent itself well in pop, top forty and jazz. The only stuff I can't imagine her doing is Country & Western and Opera. She was never "marketed." Had her handlers been more interested in her talent than in her commercial success, she might have found a niche in jazz. Her debut single was Hal David's Johnny Get Angry in 1962, with top-notch production from Warner Brothers. The song was from a sweet little album that produced her next big record, One Boy from Bye Bye Birdie, which contains the lyric, "one boy to laugh with, to joke with, have coke with," even as Joanie Sommers was appearing in a series of ads for Pepsi Cola and was known as "the Pepsi girl." The ads ran in two formats. A "long" version was a complete song in-a-teacup about dating and fun and chasing it all down with a Pepsi. Several different songs were written for these. The short version simply had her singing the tag line, "and now it's Pepsi for those who think young."
I never liked 1963's I Will Follow Him by Little Peggy March. I didn't even buy the record. Wikipedia informs that '[the] song is a translation of the French language tune "Chariot" recorded a year earlier by Petula Clark, which hit #1 in France and #8 in Belgium and earned Clark a gold record. (Clark's Italian and German recordings of the song were also major hits.)" Yes, it was a huge hit, but I'm fairly certain that Little Peggy, et al, were none too pleased when Kenneth Anger* incorporated the song in his hugely irreverent film Scorpio Rising, in which the song is played while bikers and stock-footage worshippers hasten in pursuit of a stock-footage Jesus Christ. I just about fell out of my chair when I saw the scene.
Dance with You? To the Devil you say!
Let's do the twist - or maybe not. I didn't like doing the twist, but I did it for a time before cutting from my dance catalogue. Dance or no, there were some nifty twist records. Chubby Checker covered of the original Twist by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters became a gigantic hit and gave rise to a sensation. His sharp vocals and the always-outstanding Cameo-Parkway musicians made him the King of the Twist. So huge was the record that it topped the charts in 1960 and again in 1962. As soon as Jacqueline Kennedy was seen doing the twist, you knew the end was near but not in a "too late for the trend" kind of way. Celebs did the twist. It was the thing to do. It was not in any way risque or provocative or controversial (except to Baptists, maybe). Jackie did the twist at White House parties and even showed up at New York's Peppermint Lounge, where Joey Dee and the Starlighters became the most famous house band in the country. Peppermint Twist Part One didn't need a Part Two, but nobody was counting, least of all me. Dee & Company had a little string of hits, including I Who Have Nothing which is my favorite ode to desperation. Search the web for Joey Dee and the Starlighters stuff. More than interesting for its time. The twist pretty much committed suicide after One Thousand And One Strings came out with a twist album.
My sister Alaine and I were members of The Velveteens, a dance club/class that met at some hazy memory on a regular basis. We learned the ballroom dances and were able to keep up with the less-than-free-form dance crazes that peppered our happy little pop-music loving hearts. We may have done an abridged version of The Madison Time, but Ray Bryant's clever little song has never been more defly performed - demonstrated - than by Ricki Lake and company in John Waters' Hairspray. The Madison Time is equal to Shirley Ellis' The Name Game in cleverosity.
We were lucky to have experienced so many fun fads. From Cha Cha to Frug to The Stroll, the (pathetic) Freddy to Pogo, Surfer Stomp and beyond. Hula Hoops. Drugs. Sit-ins, be-ins, Mobilization Against the War in Viet Nam, atmospheric testing of nuclear devices. Post-McCarthyism. The Red Scare. Blah blah blah and away we go.
<2010-01-23>
It would be an exercise in terror if I sat here now and tried to type out every song and every singer for which I have a great love. But I've rarely been a fan of one band or another, and only a few singers can get away with almost everything to me. I go from song to song. The beat, the sound, the "something" that makes something special to you.
My Ding-a-Ling
It generally annoys me when I occasionally take the time to read articles about music. When writers about pop music write of tastes and the legitimacy of one thing versus another, they invariably insult large groups of listeners who have enjoyed certain types of music over others for their entire listening lives. Just like I'm doing now. I resented the British Invasion at first, even while eating the stuff up. But it was no great leap for me to include as equals everything new and everything old. I thought it was cruel and short-sighted that the movers and shakers in the music world ( writers, magazines, radio shows, etc.) tossed aside almost everything that helped bring in the new. After all, there would be no Madonna without Connie Francis, and no Beatles without Chuck Berry and no Chuck Berry without Louis Armstrong. Do you get my meaning?
Chuck Berry! An institution of rock and roll music. Some say he invented it. But there were many cooks in that kitchen. He had slews of hits. Many number ones. But the only Chuck Berry record that sold a million copies was "My Ding-a-Ling"
That's all I need to say about tastes in music.
Except maybe this.1960. I'm listening to Tom Clay on KRLA and he says, "This is one of loudest records I've ever heard. Hope you like it." The record was Dancing on the Ceiling, Dodie Stevens' follow up to "Tan Shoes and Pink Shoelaces." It is one of my favorites, like everything else I take time to listen to more than once.
Many conservative commentators of a certain age are fond of saying, "I wish we could go back to the America I knew while I was growing up." They assert that after the 1950s America started going down hill, losing its spirituality, its innocence, its quality of life, its real values. One can pick and choose what one would like to reclaim from any given time in our lives. Impossible, true - and even with time machines one would face the likely prospect that, if you're gonna take something into the future with you from that time, you have to take everything that went along with whatever thing that was.
I wouldn't mind if radio and gathering places would return to what they were as I recall from when I was growing up; in a word, inclusive. But if I got that wish, I'd have to put up with race relations that were considerably worse than now. That would be the worst of many worsts, which I can't be bothered with itemizing right now.
The reason I bring this up at the bottom of this so-called "Teen Idol" page is because all of the artists and music on this page would have shared the same playlist. Even the grunge and the Austin first wave would fit into that list! Amazing.
With the aof the iPod and the computerized personal playlist, it has become the habit of I think most music fans today include a refreshingly eclectic iPod playlist. Broadcasters and the commercial music industry insist on separating everything into neat little categories, mostly for the sake of marketing. Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. This little piggie had none.
The Pandora music service is an awful example of forcing the pigeon hole on whoever tunes in. There isn't a "play anything" button.
One of the worst questions that cropped up when it came time to expose my own music to the CD Baby and other mass outlets was this: "Who do you most sound like?"
<2010-25-01>
My teen idol years continued well beyond the Fifties and Sixties. In fact, I'll admit it right now, I've had the hots for just about every hot act from Ricky Nelson to Neil Young, The Beatles, Mick Jagger, The Ramones, almost everyone involved in the First Wave of the Austin "punk" era. I hate that term, "punk" - I prefer "hard pop" instead.
So - the Music Plays On And On. I'll pick up where I left off at some future date. Like you care! "Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name."
Barry Kazmer's Personal Note about The Rubber Ball Kid
Hey Chris, you have a photo of him on your pages: You may enjoy this!
Robert Thomas Velline
"Bobby Vee"
I recently was reminded about my past and the dances I went to in eighth grade. We all were big Bobby Vee fans and danced to all his music then. The party I recall the best was at Betty Ritchie’s home and while I know there had to be more guys I only recall Bob Laurie being there.
The girls were Betty, Gaye Starnes, Lana Been, Lorelee Midthun, and Ginger Elmgren among others. I recall distinctly the song “Rubber Ball” being played quite often as it was a huge hit at that time. It wasn’t long after we had all learned to dance in PE class and we all thought it was a lot of fun. Then later on that same year my grandfather died and we all went to Hot Springs, South Dakota to the funeral. It was in January and so there was snow here and there in patches on the hillsides all the way from Nevada to South Dakota. I always remember the old iron bridge over the Cheyenne rive rand it is still one of my favorite places to sit and watch the world hustle by. It is just a few hundred feet away that the major highway that bypasses that old road now runs full of travelers going to Rapid City or to the Black Hills. When we saw this bridge we knew that we were very close to town and we had just a few more minutes of driving to go. We stayed with my dad’s younger brother Kenny and his family.
That was fine with me since he had a daughter a few months older than I whom I had a crush on for as many years as I knew her. We took a lot of hikes all around the hills and I rekindled the flames of my crush even more. She was really nice and very pretty girl and I was anxious to go and dance someplace with her if the opportunity ever came up. As we were going to town to have a meal in one of the small cafes along the Fall River I saw him! Yes, it was Bobby Vee leaning on the railings overlooking the river. He had one foot up on the lower rail and was looking his James Dean-iest with his hair windblown and a lit cigarette in his hand, his jacket open but with the collar up. We parked nearby to go in to eat and I forced my dad to take his photo. Bobby posed for my dad along that fence and kept that same pose.
That rail was part of a fence across the street overlooking the Fall River. I was just star struck and I found out later that he was appearing at the civic center around 7 O’clockthat night. I got Susie (my cousin) all excited about it and we begged and begged to go but being a school night and that we both had Nazi like parents we were not allowed to go. (They were only Nazi’s when we didn’t get our way… the rest of the time they were great) So Bobby appeared in that little town of 3500 people without us. I have always had that in my mind since then as one of life’s great disappointments.
Many, Many years later living here in Saint Cloud, Minnesota my daughter Jennifer is on the Cathedral High school gymnastics team as an 8th grader. She loved it and I went to every meet that I could. I took photographs fairly often for her. One senior girl was named Jennifer Velline and her family shows up at various times with a video camera and then one time Bobby Vee is there… sheesh!… after all those years there he is a few feet from me and it turns out his daughter is Jennifer Velline and my daughter knows her very well from school. I had never, of course made the connection Velline shortened down to Vee! Bobby Vee lives in Saint Cloud and he is really Robert Velline.
Iget to sit with him and talk gymnastics while our daughters are competing and now we become acquaintances. Now I feel foolish about the past and I have never told him of the Hot Springs story and my idolization of him when he was better known way back in the 60’s and 70’s. I met him a few times when his sons play at a local bar. They are now the Vee’s again after a turn or two under different names. They are also the band that plays for their dad at oldies concerts all over the world. Bob is now a friend and we do the Christmas Card thing each year. Small world!
