RAINY DAY DREAM AWAY: last photos of 2012

 A misty, rainy morn under our wisteria arbor in Southern California after Xmas. Or is it?

Rainy it may have been, but all mists were courtesy of our laundry, click 6 second film...

Stop the presses! Below, a Deerhound slinks back inside to avoid the rain and a Golden Retriever wags her tail!

 

Below, a Golden Retriever still awaits Santa and a Deerhound camouflages herself in the oriental carpet.

Why are all these photos confined to my home environment? It's because the week before Xmas, I broke my elbow and knee in a bad fall, and these snapshots (and self-portrait) were all taken with my left (wrong) hand post surgery.

HERE'S TO A BETTER 2013 FOR EVERYONE,  self inclusive!

 NOTE: link directly back to http://fastfilm1.blogspot.com if all elements such as photo layouts or videos aren't here.

THE BLUE-EYED DEVILS, LITTLE CAESAR, and some soul-crazed teenagers

 

In a teenaged 1966, my guy friends had the best high school band ever. Really. For in a young America bestrewn with surf, post-British Invasion, Top 40, blooze, dance, folkrock or even nascient psychedelia-flavored bands, my chums, belying their rarified prep school status, just leapfrogged imitative dross and aimed straight for the top. They wanted to perform like the Funk Brothers session players, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Booker T. Jones, Eddie Floyd, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Edwin Starr, Ray Charles, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett, James Jamerson, Smokey Robinson, Rufus Thomas, Jr. Walker and the whole pantheon of Stax/Motown legends they heard on the galaxy-spanning airwaves of Wolfman Jack's pirate radio-esque XERB. 

And so they did, for they were preppies not only imbued with great musical taste, the pedigrees to appreciate same (sons of famous musicians, actors and radio stars that they were,) plus the financial means to acquire the best pro equipment, but also most importantly of all, off the charts genuine devotion to the soul and rhythm and blues music of their heroes. Their love translated to drive, to mastery and then to genuine soul for covers of the material.*

John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd's Blues Brothers Revue with its actual Stax personnel reintroduced this concept of celebrating legendary music by doing, same, caucasian epidermis notwithstanding a few decades ago.  Now we can welcome The Blue-Eyed Devils to this stratum in the present tense. 

Pictured above are the Blue-Eyed Devils in their second gig ever at Molly Malone's, 12.10.12. Comprised of rock stars, studio/music label owners and session player/producers, they are Rob Klonel, Kevin Laurence, Joey Malone, Bruce Witkin and Ron Young, the astonishing voiced singer of Little Caesar (who now no doubt empathizes more with Caesar guitarist Loren Molinare who does double duty in the latter's other great band, The Dogs.) See LINK for history of Little Caesar.

The Blue-Eyed Devils are starting to make the club rounds, and the secret word is FUN. Go dance up a storm to music that does all the work for you, regardless of whether these cover songs are old favorites or new discoveries to you.

Then make sure you catch Little Caesar itself (or The Dogs for that matter, due to tour Japan and play Los Angeles shortly) as Caesar embarks on assorted European or domestic tours in 2013.  Below are my photos from the most recent Caesar gig I caught, 9.21.12 at Brixtons, Redondo Beach, California.

 

Little Caesar -- Ron Young vocals; Fidel Paniaqua bass; Loren Molinare and Joey Brasler guitars; Tom Morris drums -- take flight and soar through hardest rock and soul/glam/blues/metal/R&B favorites from their newest release "American Dream."

 

 

 

Directly above, Ron struts his Jagger moves for their atypical cover of the Rolling Stones' "Happy."

below, set list of Little Caesar and Soul favorites

*and for the record, the name of my teenaged chums' band was 

  the Otis Redding Memorial Rock And Soul Band.

FOUR FABULOUS FEMALE SINGER/SONGWRITERS

Go to LINK   pp. 252 through 264 of the latest issue of Paraphilia or paraphiliamagazine.com for my photofeature on Leslie Knauer, Jonneine Zapata, Ruby Friedman and Kizzy Kirk, Los Angeles' current greatest singer/songwriters who just happen to be of the XX chromosome persuasion. They all amaze in their respective, separate ways.

ALICE COOPER meets CHRISTINA APPLEGATE

Christina Applegate and Alice Cooper at some awards show in 1989, probably the MTV ones. What impressed me about Christina: eschewing her Hair Metal slutty "Married With Children" look of this era, she embraced the polar extreme with a classy Grace Kelly spaghetti strap chiffon number, an instant standout in a sea of Kelly Bundys. Of course Alice looked lovely as well. 

A far less savory story would be how my negatives to this 1971 interview session with Alice were destroyed, see LINK

PATTI DAHLSTROM redux

                                 

All fair usage

photographs
herein

(except the

calendar one)

 by Ed Caraeff

  appeared on

PATTI DAHLSTROM

(Uni 73127)

the artist's debut record LP

 As a very hip MOR singer/songwriter in the Glam 1970s, Patti Dahlstrom probably flew below the radar of most of my rocker contemporaries. I took notice initially because she had great sartorial taste! Her biggest hit "Emotion" was written with Veronique Sanson, talented French popstar mother of Chris Stills (see LINK) and ex- of Stephen Stills. 

 Patti has a sultry Stevie Nicks-esque contralto, and it's nicely edgy, original singer/songwriter MOR, sort of like Martha Davis later perfected without the hard rock undertone. I have her recent compilation cd (although I have the 4 LPs somewhere) wherein I prefer the material of her earliest LP pictured above. Although it's a tad overproduced, it carries subliminal references of its own 1972 era such as piano stylings like those on David Bowie's Hunky Dory. 

Her later tunes fall more in the styles of songstresses like Melissa Manchester etc., good because each writer believes her own material, but a trifle tame pour moi with the exception of "Emotion" from her second release. She took a Veronique Sanson hit "Amoreuse" and wrote her own English translation version, which became a hit for... Helen Reddy. Go figure! Great song though.

Patti took an unusual vocational detour after her four LPs and became acclaimed film director Robert Altman's production still photographer for years. She then relocated from Los Angeles back to her native Texas where she alternated studying and teaching in the halls of higher education, eventually becoming a university department director at the Art Institute of Houston. 

She now might want to downplay a brief tenure in "Babes For Bush" in the George W. 2000s, but reason prevailed and she resumed her assorted creative arts and music endeavors alongside global wanderlust. She quit Texas for St. Johns Wood, London, England, rode a horse across Hastings battlefield, finally settling in sunny coastal Mexico at San Jose del Cabo where she remains productive, religious, witty and happy. Indicative of same, her online writing quotes colleague Paul Williams, "When God closes a door, He opens another, but the time in the hallway's a bitch!"

 

Internet interest revived her singer/songwriter cred, and you can find her work here: LINK where I obtained Patti Dahlstrom, Emotion, a distillation of the best work of this worthy singer/songwriter.

CHUCK BOYD photography show at Mr. Musichead Gallery

 Chuck Boyd most regrettably could not stick around, but his rock and roll photos from the 1960s and '70s live on thanks to the efforts of his family and archive executor Jeffrey Schwartz. The latter produced "Forever Young," a compilation book of Boyd's classic rock shots while celebrating same with an opening at the Mr. Musichead gallery of music photography in Hollywood 1.1.12.

 Amongst those seen at the gala event were, from top, renowned local music writer Harvey Kubernik, singer/bon vivant Krista Wood and DJ extraordinaire/lifetime promoter of great music Rodney Bingenheimer. Rodney is seen twice in the next pic (also in Boyd's 1966 photo with Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane) alongside Jeffrey Schwartz; Krista and Harvey pictured with Mr. Musichead Gallery owner Sam Milgram; Boyd's photos of Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, Little Richard; and The Book.

 For more info on this photographer's work, see LINK

MIKE WATT: They Don't Come Any More Impassioned...

                      
 
 













"Be brave, Watt..."  















Brave, without question. Impassioned..."They don't come any more impassioned than Mike Watt, a top chap," wrote Carlton Sandercock, head of EasyAction Records, and the world concurs. One of his estimated dozens of bands, this presentation of Watt's theme piece/scat jazz/rock opera "Hyphenated Man" by Mike Watt and the Missingmen marked its final public performance. It's just as we want him to be, heartfelt, wailing, grinding out his multi-personae response to a combatitive world at 1,000 mph, occasionally slowing to whisper/heartbeat for reflection on love and overall endurance through life.

 

Drummer Raul Morales and guitarist Tom Watson aided Watt working his bass to a packed Liquid Kitty Punk Rock Barbeque audience this last weekend in November. (Earlier, grilled comestibles duly had been served gratis at the West L.A. club.)

Who was that bonus guy onstage laden with art implements? Norton Wisdom provided ever-changing performance painting tied to each band's style and content throughout the evening. I loved this extra, as it reminded me of liquid light shows and projected movies behind bands at "dance concerts" (Fillmore/Avalon/Shrine Auditorium ballrooms) during the 1960s.

Above, "And the mouse sings...like a mouse" ("Mouse-Headed Man", Mike Watt and The Missingmen.)

At left, earlier act Lawndale, venerable SST Records OGs, playing surf music instrumentals a la Dave Brubeck versus Jimmy Page slugging it out at the Olympic Auditorium Battle Royale. 

Post-gig Photo Ops with Mike Watt, his chic photographer friend Eiko Kobayashi, Eric Rasmussen all the way from Michigan, and self. 

 ...while Eric's daughter Katie

uses palm tree pedestal

to become extremely limber

statuary in front of Mike's

  white van, beloved of his

always entertaining,

stream-of-consciousness Hoot page

diary in the unique Wattage lexicon,
see LINK.