Post will be coming more regularly now that I am almost done with this semester. As I come within spitting range of 50 (I'm 47) I find it more difficult to maintain full time work, grad school, the occasional Myler and Starr gig and post with any sort of regularity. Anyhow, tonight in the aftermath of a Cold War apocalyptic blowout (my last paper for the semester) I am chilling with the album Johnny Winter And. Probably his least straight-bluesy album. It's good, even though Winter himself pretty much dismisses it now. He is backed up by Rick Derringer and the (former) McCoys of "Hang on Sloopy" (not Snoopy, Sloopy!) fame. Anyway, there are just some good almost psychedelic songs by Johnny, Derringer (the first appearance of Rock 'n Roll Hoochie Koo) and others such as the late, great Mark/Moogy Klingman.
This was the first Johnny Winter album I ever bought. Rob and I went to the Tower Records on Beach Blvd and he bought Edgar Winter's Entrance and White Trash while I bought Johnny's Johnny WInter And and Johnny Winter And/Live. Each of our purchases were double album reissues. Additionally, since we were also in our proggy phase Rob bought a Steve Howe solo album and I bought Renaissance's Novella album. What was cool was there was (nice, using was three times in one sentence...now four) this really hot twenty-something brunette chick (we were 16) that worked in the Tower Records who was totally into prog. So she - along with this dude with a beard - helped us pick the Howe/Renaissance albums. Really I would have bought Journey if she recommended it (ok, probably not Journey, I really don't like Journey) but you get the idea. Anyway, I think Steve Howe turned out to be a bit of a dud. I remember Rob playing the song "Australia" and Howe sang really bad on it. But I liked and still like Renaissance. I am just a sucker for a great female voice so I also love the Carpenters because Karen could sing even a totally banal song like it represented the collective sadness of all humanity. Annie Halsam of Renaissance isn't quite to that level, but close.
Anyhow, we got back to my house with our albums and put on the live Johnny Winter and were totally blown away. We were also really sunburned because we had been boogie boarding and I still associate that with this album. We became fans of Johnny and Edgar, although Edgar pretty much lost it after They Only Come Out at Night, oh there are some good songs on Shock Treatment but thereafter, not much. We ended up seeing Johnny play at the Country Club in Reseda several times with Jim N. and Russ R. and just the two of us. It was always a good show. I haven't seen him since the Sacramento Blues Festival in 1988. As it turns out until 2003 or so Winter had been pretty much kept drugged by his former manager Teddy Slatus who was also embezzling from him. Not long after Winter fired him Slatus got drunk, fell down a flight of stairs and died (karma?). Johnny is now touring in support of a new album. Here's a good clip of him recently on Letterman. At 68 his voice isn't what it was but he still plays a mean slide.http://youtu.be/IDijzVJkK-M?hd=1
Crap, just copy and paste. I don't know how to make it a direct link.
I remember parts of this-but unfortunately not the hot girl. I'm beginning to think that though my memory isn't great, it's being made too look worse than it is because you have your memory is unusually good, especially in regards to the little things (not that hot girls are "little things")
ReplyDeleteWell the recollections of such minutiae are often strengthened by a hot girl having been in the vicinity at the time...or by remembering what food I was eating. Sensory triggers both.
ReplyDelete