Ricki C. Saw Bob Dylan & The Hawks Live 50 Years Ago Today. Seriously.

Again, furtherly apropos of the new Band documentary - Once Were Brothers - this story originally ran in 2015.

I saw Bob Dylan live exactly 50 years ago today, November 19th, 1965 (the first time, there have been subsequent viewings/concerts/shows).  That’s kind of mind-boggling to me, partly because in 1965 America was in the middle of Nuclear Apocalypse Fever, and I didn’t think MANKIND would exist in 50 years, let alone me.  (On quite the other hand, the science-fiction stories I read and loved by Ray Bradbury & Harlan Ellison promised me a future of personal jet-packs, bubble cities and human colonies on the moon & Mars in 50 years’ time.  Instead, in 2015 I find myself surrounded by children held in thrall by iPads, asshole hipsters and terrorists in Paris.  This was NOT The Future I was promised.)

But I digress…….

November was a pretty big month for me and rock & roll shows at the now sadly-demolished Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium.  I saw Dylan there on November 19th, 1965, The Doors there on November 2nd, 1968, and The Who (touring Tommy for the first time, and for those of you scoring at home, THE BEST rock & roll show I ever had the privilege to witness) on November 1st, 1969.  There are links about The Doors and The Who shows from my old blog – Growing Old With Rock & Roll – posted  below, but you might wanna check out the Dylan link before I amplify some points.    

Bob Dylan & the Hawks Live, November 19th, 1965 / Growing Old With Rock & Roll

Anyone who doesn’t own (or download or whatever kids do nowadays) the double-CD Bob Dylan Live 1966 (Dylan Bootleg Series vol. 4) should seek it out IMMEDIATELY if you count yourself as ANY kind of fan of rock & roll music.  The electric disc of the set is as riveting a set of music as I’ve ever heard.  This was not a polite back & forth push & shove between audience and performer, this was an all-out 47-minute musical/cultural WAR.  That show – taped in Manchester, England May 17th, 1966, (6 months after I saw virtually the same show) – is the one containing the (in)famous “Judas!” / “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.  PLAY FUCKING LOUD!” exchange between an irate audience member and Dylan.  Just as I detailed in my blog, the folkie fans of Dylan apparently sat smug & satisfied throughout the acoustic opening half of the show and then revved up the venom for the electric set with The Hawks.  (Or The Crackers,  in Levon Helm’s terminology, later to become the rather neutered entity reverently, politely referred to by adoring hippies as The Band.  My, how the times changed between 1966 and 1968 when Music From Big Pink became a touchstone/talisman for many of the the same people who slow-clapped, booed and otherwise vilified Robbie, Rick, Richard, Garth & various drummers throughout 1965 & 1966.)

Anyway, I allotted myself 500 words for this blog, and I’m getting close, so let me just say this: listen to the audience throwing Dylan & the guys off their game between the end of “I Don’t Believe You” and the beginning of “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” on the aforementioned Bob Dylan Live in 1966.  And then listen to the way Dylan & The Hawks ROAR/BLAST/PUMMEL their way into “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” and tell me that’s not where punk-rock got invented.  (p.s. Listen to that exchange at brain-numbing volume on headphones or don’t bother listening at all.)  - Ricki C.     

(bonus Growing Old With Rock & Roll, November Veteran's Memorial links:)

The Doors Live @ Vet's Memorial / November 2nd, 1968

The Who Live @ Vet's Memorial / November 1st, 1969

Tuesdays With Ricki - week two / Franklinton and The Bottoms

Tuesdays With Ricki (with apologies to Mitch Albom) will run most Tuesdays as space permits and Ricki gets pieces submitted on time.  If readers have any ideas on topics they would like to see Ricki weigh in on, post below in Comments.

The West Side Is The Best Side

The Independents’ Day Festival will be held in Franklinton this Saturday & Sunday, September 17th & 18th.  (Click here for more info.)  It will be the second year the music & arts fest will take place in its West Side locale.  I grew up on the West Side, at the corner of Sullivant & Midland Avenues, just a couple of miles from Franklinton, right at the beginning of The Hilltop.  The Hilltop was the slightly classier part of the West Side.  (Although everything truly is relative: compared to Colin’s upbringing in Worthington, the Hilltop was definitely déclassé.)

What is now referred to as Franklinton was then called The Bottoms.  (As late as the 1950’s, the entire area between downtown and the beginning of the hill just west of Central Avenue that gives The Hilltop its name would wind up underwater due to periodic floods; thus the name, The Bottoms.)  The first band I was ever in – circa 1968, when I was 16 years old – rehearsed in a house in The Bottoms.  That house was on McDowell Avenue, catty-corner from where Veteran’s Memorial stood before its demolition last year.  Dennis, the bass player of the band, lived in that house with his family.  Actually, we didn’t exactly rehearse IN Dennis’ house, we rehearsed in the unoccupied other half of the double after his father kicked a teenager-sized hole in the dining room wall connecting the two sides of the house and ran extension cords over for us to power the amps and mics with.    

The first time I went there for rehearsal, as I stood surveying the “alterations” Dennis’ father had made to the dining room I said, “Your dad didn’t have a problem tearing up your house like this?”  “Oh, it’s not our house,” Dennis replied matter-of-factly, ”we’re just renting.”  I couldn’t even think of a reply.  I just stood there looking at Dennis, thinking, “This kind of vandalism wouldn’t fly at my house in a thousand million years.”  My dad might re-wire the World War II-vintage radio we had in our basement into an amplifier for my first electric guitar – one of the nicest things ANYBODY in my life has ever done for me – but he was not about to intentionally damage the drywall for the sake of rock & roll.  We lived on The Hilltop.

Anyway, I hope The Franklinton Hustle goes great.  I’d love to see The Bottoms area of my beloved West Side revitalized (I can’t bring myself to go as far as “gentrified”) into a nice area to live in.  I was one of the original doubters about The Short North project, back when I worked at a parking lot at Doctor’s North Hospital from 1970-1973 while I attended Ohio State University.  That entire stretch of High Street was a war zone of storefront churches, bars & derelict buildings, teeming with the homeless street-people masses, and look how nice it turned out.  

Kudos to the Independents’ Days organizers for utilizing the Franklinton space again, may all the angels bless the rebuilders.  – Ricki C. / September 10th, 2016    

Reflections on The Who Turning 50 by Pete Vogel

Listening to you / I get the music

Gazing at you / I get the heat

Following You / I climb the mountain

I get excitement at your feet

- Tommy (1969)

These four lines pretty much sum up my feelings about The Who as they celebrate their fifth decade in the music industry. From the first time I heard them back in 1978, to the 50th anniversary concert that took place 5/15/15 in Columbus, I am continually reminded of their genius, their passion and their relevance.

As a middle-aged musician—I’m as old as the band—who still struggles in the “minor leagues” (to borrow a phrase from Joe Oestreich) these four lines are passages that I revert to whenever I’ve “lost my way” in this ever-changing, ever-frustrating music biz. These lines are a reminder of why I still do what I do, even though sometimes it feels like it’s in vain.

Pete Townshend was very different than most songwriters coming out of UK in the mid-60s. While his peers were penning songs about teenage love and girls named Angie, Townshend was writing tunes like “The Seeker.” While his contemporaries were writing political and folksy songs about Vietnam, he was penning operas about pinball wizards. Townshend was—and still is—in a class by himself. He took a look at the state of the world in his era and got “in tune with the straight and narrow.” As he penned in his song “Pure and Easy”: “There once was a note / Pure and easy / Playing so free / Like a breath, rippling by.”

For those who craved more meaning to life than suburban sporting events, pop music and movies approved by The Catholic Times, The Who represented a shift from this stifling worldview and expanded hearts and minds to embrace a faith in something bigger. That’s what drew me to them in the first place—they re-examined spirituality in general and how it related to manhood in particular. For males reared in the 60s and 70s, with the specter of Vietnam ever present in their psyche, The Who paved the way for a new vision of what it meant to be a man: “Imagine a man / Not a child of any revolt / But a plain man tied up in life.”

Having grown up in a patriarchal family—with a father who was influenced by no-nonsense role models like Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight—The Who taught me about the softer, gentler side of manhood, what Rabbi Michael Lerner calls “The Left Hand of God.” The Who showed me that you don’t have to be a bully, brute or jerk to get your way in the world, perhaps love can truly reign over everything.

While it’s true that The Who is considered a “masculine” group—and have always appealed to men more than women—the Daltrey/Townshend duo are, to me, the Yin/Yang balance of masculine and feminine energies. Daltrey’s rugged voice and hardscrabble working class persona, coupled with Townshend’s meek tenor and art-school upbringing, address the duality between testosterone-laced impulsivity and feminine reflection. We see this played out so brilliantly in Quadrophenia, the rock opera about the conflicting desires within its main character, Jimmy, who wanted to be both a lover AND fighter for the Mod cause. He realized, at the end of his journey, he had to decide between the two—he couldn’t be both. Would love reign, or would he seek to be the Ace Face?

The Who has always struck a beautiful balance with its frontmen, and it’s a marriage that hasn’t been lost on its fans. Whether it’s expressed in the raw emotion of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or the melancholic sensibilities of “I’m One” we’ve come to realize that we’re all Jimmy: straddling the fence between selfish, violent whims and the desire to transcend it all.

As for the show last Friday (sadly, they didn’t pay homage to 5/15 by playing that song) it was thrilling to see the band—or at least half of them—perform in front of 20,000 screaming fans at their respective ages of 69 (Townshend) and 70 (Daltrey). Sure, there was a stoop in their walk, and they both wore sunglasses that looked more like bifocals than hipster specs, but their passion was still intact. They started off the show with their seminal, 50-year-old classic “I Can’t Explain” and didn’t let the foot off the gas until the final crescendo of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” two hours later. Most of us walked away with a feeling of awe and respect—they obviously still “got it.” Even those who didn’t enjoy the show (my friend’s son said: “It would’ve been cool to see them in the 70s”) they still left the venue with an understanding of what made The Who special for so many years. Fifty years, in fact. Half a century. Playing music to millions of fans. Still. To me, for The Who to generate that level of enthusiasm—as they approached their seventh decade on the planet—is nothing short of miraculous.

The music business has changed dramatically since The Who first stepped onstage in 1965; Townshend professed this inevitability in his ditty “Music Must Change.” But I wonder if he foresaw the events that are taking place today? The industry has become—more or less—a diaspora of the talent pool and a dumbing down of the medium. Steady radio play featuring new talent has all but disappeared—Clear Channel saw to that. The Internet has generated tens of thousands of new bands, yet it’s impossible to keep track of them. Youtube, Facebook and Soundcloud have created a mass market for songwriting but it’s now a free indulgence—royalties have all but disappeared. Ironically, it’s harder to make money in this ubiquitous industry because competition is stiff, the market is endless and opportunities are widespread. There are too many venues, too many bands, and not enough paying audiences. In fact, nobody wants to pay for music anymore—it’s expected to be free. Artists hand out their CDs like business cards.

It’s nearly impossible for an original, modern act in the spirit of The Who to come close to selling out a Nationwide Arena at $100 a pop—unless your name is Swift, Timberlake or Spears. And you won’t hear songs like “Join Together” or “A Quick One” at these shows either—one can’t afford to take those kinds of risks in the digital age.

As a musician I sometimes despair over the state of our medium. It seems like the least original, least inspiring and least talented acts have risen to the top while the rest of us struggle in the minors. It saddens me that some of the most talented, original, and inspiring acts in this town are playing to fifteen people at a local bar for five bucks a head. It saddens me that a whole generation of folks will grow up in a world where Nicki Minaj is regarded a “viral success.”

That’s when I crank up Tommy as loud as I can and chant those four lines, over and over and over again. Rock is dead. Long live rock.  Pete Vogel 5/16/15

Pete Vogel is an accomplished artist, educator, and musician. He also wrote and directed the documentary "Indie". Learn more by clicking here,

They've Torn Down Vet's Memorial, part three - by Ricki C.

The heading of my year-long Pencilstorm series has changed this month, as I read in my daily newspaper (a newspaper, how quaint) that the demolition of Vet’s Memorial is complete.  

JUDY COLLINS / March 20th, 1970

I would guess the first question longtime readers of Pencilstorm would have about this month’s entry is: “What the hell was Ricki C. doing at a Judy Collins concert?”  There are a variety of answers to that question: I’ve always had a soft spot (no pun intended) for acoustic music, even in my most rockin’ times.  In 1969 I loved The MC5 and Joni Mitchell with equal and opposing fervor.  The Mekons and Shawn Colvin probably shared roughly equal time on my cassette deck back in 1989, and right now Jack White and Dar Williams CD’s are both stacked next to my player.

Also, I probably wanted to see Judy Collins in early 1970 because I still LOVED Crosby, Stills & Nash in those days, and Stephen Stills had penned all those tunes about Collins: “Suite: Judy Blues Eyes” and the like.  (By 1973, only three years later, when the New York Dolls released their first record, I was ready to ship CS&N and all of their hippie brethren ilk out on the Japanese current.)  

Probably the biggest reason I attended Judy Collins, though, was that I was dating a girl named Linda Finneran at the time and Linda liked Judy Collins.  (There’s an entire blog about Linda and my schizoid senior year of high school – Linda Finneran & Scoring Heroin – in my former blog, Growing Old With Rock & Roll.  Check it out if you get twenty free minutes.) 

I don’t really remember a whole lot about the show: I can’t even recall who the opening act was, and that’s very unusual for me, they must have been a genuine folkie snooze.  I do remember that Collins opened the show with a song called “Hello Hooray” by Canadian singer/songwriter Rolf Kempf, which, roughly three months later - June 13th, 1970 - Alice Cooper opened THEIR set with at the Cincinnati Pop Festival.  That has to be the ONLY song ever shared by  Judy Collins AND Alice Cooper.

I further remember that Ms. Collins displayed an absolute MANIA for being in tune.  She spent literally minutes at a time between songs tuning the six-string she started with and what seemed like HOURS fooling with the tuning pegs of her twelve-string acoustic.  Collins sang great, but the bouts of tuning REALLY began taking a toll on the show; people started yelling for her to just sing, to just get on with it.  (And those were the days before guitar tuners were invented: Collins just muddled along, tuning & re-tuning every string interminably.  It was maddening.)

Finally, after about 40 minutes in which I think Collins had managed to perform only five songs between tuning, she put down her 12-string and walked over to the Vet’s Memorial grand piano positioned stage right.  She sat down, played a couple of notes, put on a sour face and stood up to actually LOOK INSIDE THE PIANO.  At that point a hippie guy seated right behind Linda and I said – in a voice loud enough to carry to the stage – “Oh man, if she starts tuning that goddamn piano I’m LEAVING.”

The entire audience cracked up laughing at that, Collins looked pissed, and was perfunctory the rest of the show.  It was the best, and most memorable moment of the concert.  Nameless hippie heckler, I salute you.  – Ricki C. / March 17th, 2015.

SHOWS I SAW AT VET’S MEMORIAL MARCH HONORABLE MENTIONS

March 3rd, 1968 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience (full account at Growing Old With Rock & Roll, 11/13/13)

March 26th, 1969 – Steppenwolf