By way of celebrating the man’s 85th (!) Birthday this month, not to mention picking straight up where we left off last time after breakfast…
The following Christmas a strange package arrived in the mail from a hitherto unknown address in Burbank, California. “Boone Productions, Inc.,” read the label. “Printed Matter Only,” said the customs sticker.
If I can just get my mind together, the first “real” concert I ever attended as a wee young Canucklehead was The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, May 3, 1969.
I’d already been a fervent fan for a couple of years, having spent most of my Grade 8 art class making swirly sketches of Jimi in charcoal. Plus the Are You Experienced album was right up there – almost – with Monkees Headquarters on my 1967 Most-Played List.
On an even damper than usual Spring afternoon in 1969, three guitar-and-drum-beating sisters from tiny Fremont, New Hampshire entered an even tinier recording studio and emerged, just a few hours later, with a dozen original rock ‘n’ roll songs on some quarter-inch tape. These twelve songs were then pressed onto one thousand vinyl records, nine hundred copies of which immediately vanished forever off the face of the Earth. Within a year however, no less an authority than Frank Zappa declared that this album, prophetically entitled Philosophy Of The World, was “better than the Beatles,” and a decade after that the similarly inclined visionaries in NRBQ re-pressed Philosophy briefly on their own Red Rooster label.
I was going to write about the psychological impact of current pop music on housecats compared to the physical impact of dropping an armful of classic rock vinyl on them, when The Universe (in its mysterious and drug-addled randomness) conspired to intercede because (apparently) it was bored and felt like fucking with me.
Got this in my email yesterday and thought I’d share it with you. Exciting news about the new Elmo and what we can expect and when.
Barry writes for the new online magazine, Canadian Life. He covers the Canadian Entertainment Industry and has sent this pre-release to a few of us bloggers in advance of the Magazine’s launch next Friday. I’ve added some pictures to this.
Enjoy. – Bob
Don’t Believe a Word I Say has existed as first a column at FYIMusic.com, then in its own self-titled blog for going on 11 years now.
Before this, I dabbled in music, radio, and television for 50 years or so, and feel I have experienced enough to have a fairly informed opinion of my related careers, and the love/hate relationship that comes with a passion and lust for life and its challenging hurdles.
The following has been culled from the first 6 months of this entities existence, which has been updated but not changed in any way, so when I said something stupid then, it remains stupid now. New pictures have been added, and some comments, which will be in italics.
Enjoy the sunshine and the first sign of Spring …mud. Read this when it rains again …or snows …or the cat won’t get off your lap. – Bob
Musicians acting up is old news if you know your history. The entire concept of excess and above-the-law behavior started long before some high school dropout teased his hair or refused to get some much-needed dental work.
If you want to go to the Grandaddy of excessive, over-the top, entitlement, look no further than Johann Strauss Jr. ….
Bullseye Records of Canada
