MIKE WATT / TOYS THAT KILL @ PEDRO BALLET SCHOOL

As my regular readers know, I'm a big fan of bassist Mike Watt. I won't regurgitate his history yet again but check out my past blogs for more on that or better yet tune into THE WATT FROM PEDRO SHOW.

Before I sling some visuals at ya from the first fIREHOSE shows in 18 years got to give the END FREEWAY scene some props...I must like to mention another great WATT + THE MISSINGMEN show in his hometown of San Pedro this past April 26th. He headlined a gig featuring a handful of cool punk bands at the San Pedro School of Ballet. Not that I saw any ballet being done that evening but it is a nice space for a low-key, homegrown show with a nice large room for the music and a similar sized "lounge" for 21-and-over fans. We missed most of the first two bands due to taco wagon muzzle loading and long stumble for chugs down Pacific.

photos by Skipper Jeff

The show was put on under the auspices of being a release party for the new CD release by TOYS THAT KILL, Fambly 42. They hit just before Watt's set with great energy and ferocious spirit. The drummer was incendiary. Tunes were all high speed, buzz-saw rave-ups. Check these guys out on the road now.

Watt, Tom Kidd Watson and Raul Morales performed Watt's HYPHENATED-MAN, his 2011 punk opera (his 3rd) in it's entirety. The piece gets tighter and tighter due in part to their having played it over 51 times in 52 days back in late 2011. On this night, Watson in particular was on fire. His guitar work shredded the air around home even as one particualrly out-of-it fan took a long cat nap on the floor right in front of the monitors. Watt wasn't happy with the vocals feeding back which seemed due in part, unbeknownest to the bassist, of a fan leaning against the speaker and having it slip around a bit due to the fact that a fan was drunkenly leaning on it and pushing it off its axis and pointing in to the vocal mics. Oops.  Sounded great out front though.

Watt was heading out early in the morning to kayak around the bay with a reporter from the L.A. Times and would play Coachella Festival with fIREHOSE within the week.

Peeped: ed fROMOHIO bopping in the hat behind Watt's rig during the set. The fIREHOSE reunion gigs were big news in the crowd. Some various bits from the tour..

 
Watt sets the fashion pace at Coachella

Unfortunately, there seems to be no decent Coachella video but you can snag most of Harlow's and Belly Up on YouTube.


Watt's appearance at the Hollywood Palladium on December 1 as bassist in The Stooges was also very well received by Watt fans. Here's a taste from the crowd.

Don't know where this pic came from. Anyone have  credit please let me know. I will delete if necessary. What a great shot, though.

DOC WATSON (1923-2012)

Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson was born in Stoney Fork Township, near Deep Gap, North Carolina, on March 3, 1923 and when he passed away yesterday from complications from colon surgery the 89 year-old master guitarist had influenced generations of acoustic guitar players and folk music fans like.

Many folks of my generation first heard Doc Watson on the groundbreaking 1972 album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken which gathered together some of the early superstars of country, folk and bluegrass music along side the younger Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in a three-record set of essential songs from the pantheon of American Roots Music. Watson's signature performances of "Way Downtown" and "Tennessee Stud" sent pickers to their instruments to try and figure out his tasteful and lightning fast guitar lines.

 

Losing his sight to an eye infection before his first birthday, Watson was given a banjo by his father who insisted he learn to play an instrument. His father saw music as a way for him to make his way in life. Watson told NPR'S Terry Gross in 1988 what his father said as he put him on his path as a musician, "It might help you get through the world."

He started playing on street corners in North Carolina at a young age with his brother Linny. They loved the music and close harmonies of the Delmore Brothers, The Monroe Brothers, and the Louvin Brothers. Doc would soon be picking up the electric guitar as well to play in the Tennessee-based Jack Williams Swing Band where Watson picked up fiddle tunes on the electric from the influence of the seminal swinging country sounds of Hank Garland and Grady Martin. But by 1960 as the folk music revival took hold Watson switched permanently back to acoustic guitar, banjo and harmonica.

Soon his masterful flat picking style began to turn heads not only in Nashville but in the burgeoning urban folk communities of the mid-60s. His big break came in an acclaimed performance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. He toured nationwide on college campuses and in folk clubs of the day and in 1964 recorded his first solo album. By the time of the ...Circle sessions he had released numerous albums and was at the forefront of the bluegrass and folk festival circuits on a level with his occasional collaborators and friends, Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe.

For the next 40 years Doc Watson would continue to regale audiences world-wide with his homespun stories, open-minded appreciation of contemporary roots music as well as the music that he grew up on and made his own. His clear voice, earthy and neighborly demeanor, consummate flat-picking and fingerstyle guitar and banjo playing made him a consistent draw on the folk music circuit and a huge influence on guitarists and performers for generations. He recorded throughout his career and often would appear on record and stage with the cream of the acoustic music crop such as Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, David Grisman, Tony Rice, Earl Scruggs, Alison Krauss and so many more.

 above Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Alison Krauss...

By 1985 when his immensely talented son Merle Watson passed away in a tragic farming accident, the father-son team had been touring touring since 1964 when the younger guitarist joined Doc onstage in front of 12,000 people in the Bay Area and recorded their first album together in November of that year. For the next 21 years they thrilled audiences with their exciting guitar duos,  accompanied by long-time bassist T. Michael Coleman. In later years, Doc was often accompanied by David Holt or Jack Lawrence.

above with Jack Lawrence on 2nd guitar.

Doc honored the legacy of his son with MerleFest, one of the events of the festival season beginning in 1988. The festival has become on of the most popular roots music festivals drawing upwards of 70,000 visitors every year. Watson's final appearances at MerleFest occurred the last weekend of April 2012.

After Merle's death Doc decided to call it quits but the night before the funeral his son came to him in a dark and intense dream and told him to carry on.Among the many honors he would subsequently receive were seven Grammy Awards, a National Medal of Arts from President Clinton in 1997 and in 2004, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

When I first experienced Doc and Merle Watson, we had booked them into San Diego State University's Montezuma Hall and they raised the rafters with their exhilarating showmanship. A couple of semesters later we brought them to the much larger outdoor amphitheater on campus in a double bill with the legendary Pete Seeger which resulted in a long and inspired evening of a treasure trove of some of the greatest indigenous music this country has produced.

Having been blessed to have experienced Mr. Watson many times before and after Merle's death, I can tell you personally that the music world has lost one of it's great showmen and musical masters. Here's to you, Doc.

 

  

 

Here are two appreciations of Doc Watson from CNN yesterday.
Guitar Legend Doc Watson Dies
Watson Leaves Notes Strung Through Musical History

Here is a selected Doc Watson discography. The live albums with Merle are highly recommended as is his debut self-titled album from 1964.

ROBIN GIBB (1949-2012)

Robin Gibb, one of Gibb brothers from the popular Bee Gees musical group passed away on May 20 after a long battle with cancer at age 62 . Brother Barry Gibb is the last surviving brother of the hit musical family. Fellow band member and brother Maurice passed in 2003. Younger brother and pop star Andy Gibb died in 1988 of a heart condition. Andy was never an official member of the Bee Gees but collaborated with his songwriting brothers on his biggest hits.

I was never a HUGE Bee Gees fan though from the mid-60s until the '80s their songs were pretty hard to avoid. In the early days, Robin was always the one we’d make fun of as kids with his weird finger-in-the-ear stage stance. Little did I know that in those days before decent monitors and the present day in-ear monitors, he was just trying to hear himself and when you’re singing close harmonies like the Gibb Brothers were known for the importance of hearing yourself was more important than looking silly to unknowing fans. While Barry got the lion share of the lead vocals and Maurice was the major multi-instrumentalist of the band, Robin was always the oddball in the big sweater with the swoop of shoulder-length hair and his finger in his ear. But boy, could he sing. The strange timber of their individual voices always made it a bit of a stretch for me to really embrace them until I really noticed just how well-written the songs were and how great they sounded when the three of them sang together.

Some of the biggest early hits featured Robin’s voice including “Massachusetts” from their 2^nd album Horizontal released in 1968.  Though Barry’s was the most heard lead voice on hits such as their breakout tune “To Love Somebody”, and later when he patented the helium disco tweet of the Saturday Night Fever-period songs like  “You Should Be Dancing”, the harmonies of Robin and Maurice were essential to the band's sound.  Like most brotherly singing groups, The Everly Brothers, The Beach Boys and many great bluegrass bands like Jim & Jesse, The Monroe Brothers, there is something about the blend of the voices is impossible to approximate with bands of unrelated singers.

Probably Robin’s most popular showcase number was “I Started A Joke” from their 3^rd album, Idea.  Reached No. 6 in the US. Robin quit the band for about a year and a half beginning in early 1969. Once he was back in the fold, the Bee Gees scored their first US #1, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” which followed the No. 3 hit “Lonely Days’. The latter has always reminded me at the outset of a CSN-type harmony tune before tearing into the Beatle-y production elements. Love the later, more up tempo live versions of it better the the original in fact. The videos below are for the latter two songs and are gems of early promo music video. Very basic and static in today's post-MTV age.

After a lull in the mid-70s the band took Eric Clapton’s suggestion (they shared Robert Stigwood as a manager) to record in Miami with the recording team and studio that Clapton used on his comeback album, 461 Ocean Blvd. The result was a more R&B and dance influenced record ripe with Barry’s falsetto vocals and tastes of the disco groove that was beginning to be heard in clubs around the country. Main Course, is quite possibly the Bee Gees crowning achievement melding the ballads of their early records with the danceable sounds that would launch their chart-topping rejuvenation. “Jive Talking” and “Nights On Broadway” (#1 & #7 on the charts respectively) got things rolling. I remember hearing this album in my first semester in college and being bowled over by the crisp production and the freshness of the sound. In a few short years, the bane of the unavoidable disco tidal wave that this album helped spawn would practically kill my enthusiasm for this band. Barry has noted that the huge success of SNF was both a blessing and a curse. While the world went nuts for Saturday Night Fever (granted the album is still quite listenable especially the gorgeous melody of “How Deep Is Your Love”), I was attending my first batch of Grateful Dead shows, discovering the initial wave of American punk bands out of CBGBs while still under the thrall of the fusion jazz movement and prog rock like Yes, King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Weather Report. I was getting my jazz ears in shape listening to Miles and Trane and Mingus daily as I roamed the used record bins around San Diego State University. But what do I know, even at this late date Saturday Night Fever is the 4^th largest selling album worldwide.
 

One forgets that this band has had so many big hits in their long and storied career, quite monumental by any definition. A self-contained group for the most part, like The Beatles, who wrote all of their own hits, much less producing and writing huge hits for so many others.

Just a few of the Gibb written hits they were a part of: “I've Got To Get A Message To You”, “Words”, "One", "Staying Alive", "Heartbreaker" (Dionne Warwick), "Grease" (Frankie Valli), "Guilty" and "Woman In Love" (Barbra Streisand), "Chain Reaction" (Diana Ross). "Night Fever", "More Than A Woman", "Tragedy", "If I Can't Have You" (#1 for Yvonne Elliman), "Islands In The Stream" (Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton). With over 2,500 covers of their tunes (400 alone for "How Deep Is Your Love") they've been interpreted by artists as diverse as Eric Clapton, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Elton John, Flaming Lips, Tom Jones, Destiny's Child, Faith No More, Conway Twitty, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Percy Sledge, Joss Stone and many others. The Bee Gees were inducted in to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

ONE NIGHT ONLY, the full length version recently removed from YouTube is a worthwhile, a nearly two-hour concert which can be purchased on DVD.

This is a rare full-length concert video recorded in late 1997. Maurice died in 2003 and Barry and Robin retired the name of the band until 2008. This DVD is a wonderful career spanning collection. Especially cool are the early tunes “Morning of My Life”,“New York Mining Disaster 1941” and “Too Much Heaven” sung primarily band less around one microphone with Barry’s acoustic guitar as the main accompaniment. Great harmony singing. Also in this little break from the huge sound is the Robin feature “I Can See Nobody”. The signature sound of the Bee Gee’s early ballad sound was Robin’s crystal clear vibrato. Barry’s great vocal on “Run To Me” is next with Robin hitting the chorus before the signature 3 part hook, unfortunately, they only do one verse of the tune here. Robin’s vibrato reigns in “And The Sun Will Shine” and is followed by a killer stripped down roar through just one verse of “Nights On Broadway” possibly my favorite from Main Course. Makes me want to go back and revisit that album again after 40+ years.

Robin’s signature verse which opens “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” was nabbed by Al Green and turned into one of the great soul covers of all-time. Green had a real thing for the Gibb Brothers tunes as evidenced by his original version of this tune from my Al Green blog posted here on Sept. 8, 2011 and a more recent take below. Here are some more interesting covers of signature Robin Gibb tunes.