Shindig stuart whyte

Promotional photo of Richard Park kindly provided by Bob Stevenson. For more of his photos, see here. Three DJ publicity photos, supplied by George Morris. Click on the headline above to read how the closedown was reported. Photo of Ben Healy from Bob Stevenson. Photo by Bob Donnelly, reproduced by kind permission of Alan Beech. There are more of Bob's photos of Radio Scotland on www. The bottom one shows local pop star Chris McLure on stage.

Both pictures by Donald Milne. The Comet being towed in after the closedown. Whitby [in the English country of North Yorkshire] had a fishing fleet. The sailors echoed the rhythms that came in the wild rising and falling of wind and sea, in their shanties.

Those sounds together with the cry of birds and other country sounds still echo through my bones. I also had a year in i London when my father was a special m constable and the explosions and tense silences fed into my DNA and later my Q music. AB; In Montmartre in I was playing at a club which became the epicentre of the Paris music scene for that year.

But I began to wear costumes, to dance wildly, and to incorporate theatrical ideas. The audience was composed of beatniks, jazz greats like Roland Kirk, Salvador Dali, mafia dons, police chiefs, fashion models and budding Buddhists. One night I found in my rather sleazy hotel a crown with candles in it, left by someone from a wild party down the corridor. I wore it at the gig that night and people loved it.

Having formed The Crazy World, I decided to embrace a more pagan image and reactivate the flaming head, but the crown had disintegrated. We tried a vegetable colander with candles on it, but when I pulled it off some of my hair would go with it as the wax from the candles had solidified. So we tried a pie dish with a screw through it in the centre, going also into a strap which went under my chin. Of course it was difficult to sing with it on, because the strap choked my throat.

But the petrol would burst into huge flame, often setting fire to my hair and clothes and the audience loved it. In came horns and wings over the ears to stop the helmet wobbling. In the end we had something that looked like a descendent of the Viking battle helmet. Again, we used petrol in the bowl of the helmet. This moved to lighter fluid, and cow gum mixed with other ingredients was applied to wick wound round the horns.

This kept the flame going longer. Is that down to venue health and safety stipulations or concern for your wellbeing?

AB; Well in the end the flames got to about three to four feet wide and four to five feet high. However, the accidents that have caused me most damage - broken bones and stitches - were not in fact caused by the fire helmet but other onstage pranks and mis-haps. In fact I am currently developing a new helmet with Mike and Paul Harrison, technicians and artists in residence with the current Crazy World.

It will be a little more contained, with a somewhat smaller flame. He says, it allows him to play instruments with just his thoughts. I announced I would form a new outrageous band. Mainstream people saw us as being crazy. We saw the way they lived as being crazy. All the major record companies came down to see the acts, and to wine and dine them. I went to dinner with at least 10 of the top people in the music recording industry over a period of three weeks.

Vincent Crane keys , Drachen Theaker drums and I all discussed it, and felt that Track were at least in a frame of mind that might understand what we were aiming at. AB; Kit was outrageous, neurotic, quite caring, and brilliant. Chris was Mister Cool - a good looking guy who made a great impression on young ladies.

Kit took care of older ladies, and young men. Kit was openly gay though he once did confess to me that he found gay sex too clinical, and hoped one day to get married.

They ran their record label with flair and rebellion, being intelligent enough negotiators to force Polydor into allowing them to do things which in terms of business at that time should not have been done. Kit and Chris worked together well by ducking and diving, boxing without obeying the rules. They were a great promotion team though, really fearless and imaginative in their tactics. As managers they set about from the very beginning splitting up the band.

They wanted me as a solo performer, not noticing that I worked better in a team that I know. They became erratic and unable to help us at several times of crisis and both ended up in need of management themselves. I saw Kit once near to the time of his death and he looked a haunted man, rather paranoid.

He was a man who inspired love in people. I would say that my feelings for him now are still loving, though he travelled down many roads I could not understand. I found him a tragic figure.

Chris I ended up losing my respect for. Do you think the music you made was revolutionary? AB; What did make the band revolutionary was its whole concept, and the performance itself.

It was multimedia, with cutting-edge costumes, masks, make-up, voodoo and shamanic dancing. The topics were not ones people were used to find in pop music of the time. We also did comic skits and little dramas about police planting hippies with drugs. I would improvise poetry in the middle of what was a psychedelic soul song.

Vincent took that clue and soon we would be in a totally different musical genre. This of course was not what came out on the Crazy World album, but it was somewhat represented on the Strangelands album. It is true that at that time I was referred to in the music press as The Wild Man Of English Rock, but what happened was that Chris Stamp told Jimi Hendrix that they were proposing a tour and that we should open for him.

They had worked out how to use that to promote both of us. On this occasion, though, my part in the tour was nixed. AB; It was a totally improvised album. They had to listen to each other and to the lyrics and respond. He offered to put it out on Marmalade Records. Now it seems foolish to have withheld it.

What do you regard as their crowning achievement? AB: The greatest achievement was to be able to remain together through total changes in style, and produce two what are now considered classic albums in totally different fields.

On the Galactic Zoo tour, the band all wore different costumes, and the lights moved rhythmically to create light worlds and shadow worlds. It was a climactic act quite demanding musically. By the time we had performed it for a year, it was quite amazing. However for the Journey tom, the whole show had changed.

We were projecting mandala, classical master paintings, we were the first band to use a gauze screen that allowed us, if we wanted to appear in the middle of a projected forest. We also were the first band to do away with the drummer and base the band sound round the percussive properties of a drum machine.

I sang in a giant transparent syringe that filled with white powder as I performed. It took the mainstream of rock about seven years to catch on to this sound. Then Gary Numan came along. He took it his own way - I thought he was fantastic. AB: I was interested in being a catalyst, both in performance and in recording. Rather than being a leader in the normal sense I tried to be with the other musicians in such a way as their creativity was drawn out of them, rather than that they were just a framework for my creativity.

Vincent Crane was a monster keyboard musician, Carl Palmer a drum giant of his time. Drachen Theaker, the original drummer with The Crazy World, became occasional percussionist with The Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the tabla player of choice for visiting Indian musicians.

At that time, of course, we did not have a guitarist but in Kingdom Come we had Andy Dalby, a brilliant musician, while Victor Peraino was unequalled in his ability to create sonic landscapes with the synthesiser.

How challenging and rewarding was it to work with them? AB: I had encounters regularly with both of them. In the case of Viv, the Bonzos and The Crazy World did quite a few gigs together, and Viv and I enjoyed sharing perspectives on life in general.

We started to work together on two items: The Brain Opera and another piece about a giant iridescent green slug that landed on earth after a journey across universes. Our imaginations were hard to rein in. In fact we nudged each other further out. He was as powerful in his individuality as Frank Zappa. They both had the same intensity but Viv had a capacity for riling people up, as did Bob Calvert.

Working with Bob was for me a pleasure and I still see Captain Lockheed being way ahead of the field at the time it was made. Viv made me laugh and surprised me. He would look at me quizzically waiting to see if I had got the dumbfounding thing he had just said to me. His partner told me he considered we were both alike in our deepest natures. Bob also made me laugh as he poked fun at yet another sacred cow, or rubbed on my corns. AB: The style of music over here had changed.

We decided to have a child, and then got married. I could have had a good crack at a recording career in LA or New York but decided on Austin, Texas as a better place to bring up a family.

Pretty soon, I was a trainee carpenter. I got Jimmy Carl Black involved and he brought in some of the other ex-Mothers and a whole load of great blues players from the area. The album, featuring many old classics, was called Brown, Black And Blue and received many positive reviews. During this time I was invited to be on a panel judging the bands at a concert called The White Nights festival in St Petersburg, Russia.

When I got there I was recognised so often that it was decided I should sing instead, which I ended up doing to 20, people and it was beamed live into nine million homes on the only TV channel. This was the time of glasnost and I was treated as a kind of cultural hero. It demanded a different approach and made me focus very carefully on all the fiow of words and the intention of the writer.

In much the same way as an actor will approach a role. The fact that it was the first live internet broadcast of that nature was also challenging.

We did many shows together - both where I supported them and where I sang with them. Dave Gilmour, a fan of the Pretties, played lead guitar on the SF shows.

He was really easy to work with and Phil May was happy that the music would at last get seen in the context of the story he originally had in mind when he wrote the lyrics for the tunes. How did that come about and how did it work out? We included some Kingdom Come material in the set and Dave Brock was good at keeping me musically comfortable and challenged.

I thought it worked quite well although I had to sing on the side of the stage, as the bass was so loud. Assuming you have a mantelpiece, do you keep this one on display? AB: It is still awaiting the unpacking of a couple of boxes of stuff in my yurt. It was one of the last big shows at The Astoria. The gig itself was chaos, in fact it was all so very nearly cancelled when the original agent walked out but thankfully others took over the reins.

In the end it was a successfully orchestrated evening. Was there any sense at the time that you were involved in what is now regarded as such an iconic event? You were back there again in How strange was it to return to the scene of past glories and was it a better or worse experience this time around? AB: The Glastonbury festival of was a free festival inspired by stoned-out visions of a new society based on spiritual principles, and built in accordance with ancient sacred sciences.

As such, it perhaps reflected a movement that became more widespread, before being smothered by Thatcherism and materialistic greed. There was a sense of trust and openness.

This is why my avant-garde band Kingdom Come was well received. The Glastonbury festivals of the later period came after the commercial success of many of the original underground bands, and the music produced in the wake of Thatcher. They were no longer spiritual events.

They drew enormous crowds but they were, as commercial festivals go, among the best. While it is good to play to a large crowd to me they are now too huge although there is still a small core of people who operate the Green Fields area, and it is here that children and adults alike can get a taste of the original ethos.

But beyond the statement by artists is the network that governs awards, press etc. That said, I have had rather a lot of recognition, and consider myself to have had a successful career based not on financial wealth, but a life that was meaningful to me. To what do you owe your age-defying vigour and vitality? AB: I keep my body supple, my mind open and flexible, and listen to my heart. I spend time with people of all ages and backgrounds and I eat what my body knows is good for it.

AB: We have, with the current line-up, over a period of four years built up from playing small gigs to playing the main stage at festivals. This year, for instance we play the main stage on Saturday night at Bestival.

We are all eagerly looking forward to pushing our musical and performance boundaries so that we will constantly travel with our audiences into new territory and serve you tasty treats.

Harmeyer DeanH HA. Minshull As it is, their recorded legacy remains small but perfectly formed. There was a good number of bands, and each filled a special niche. There were, of course. And then there were The Optic Nerve. Eventually guitarist and singer Tony Matura joined what became an ever revolving line-up, as Ira and Elan were busy with The Fuzztones. No guarantee anyone would remember anything from one rehearsal to the next as a result, shows were often hit and miss But beyond having a mix of respected area scene musicians, they had songs.

It was always the songwriting that set The Optic Nerve apart. A casual air pervades each lyric, a loosely woven poetry which always seems somewhat biographically observant, sometimes even poignant.

Get Hip re-released their two EPs on an album with seven more unreleased cuts. Mike Linn and Dennis Diken played drums while Dave played organ and a small orchestra was added to a few songs. Finally, by , when releasing the album became an option, record sales were waning so much that any return in financial investment seemed stark. So it sat. For those eager to hear this new album, time kept passing, and it seemed like it was never going to see the light of day It is perhaps the best 20 minutes that Bobby Belfiore ever spent.

Graveyard in In a template that still holds true today they quickly drew in many influences, often with the help of kindred spirits.

After six years of this enjoyable, but rather self- indulgent music making, Nilsson and Edlund, along with their drummer, Sjoberg, and the guitarist, Truls Morck, decided time was running out for them to do what they really wanted to do. We said to ourselves that we were going to be a straightforward rock band again. Beginning what would be a three album collaboration with the producer Don Ahlsterberg, a man who Nilsson describes as being like a fifth member of the band, they hit the studio to record their self-titled debut album.

Their first time in the States, the experience was to prove more than a little terrifying. The band continued the hard work of building a career and in January of their reward came when they signed with Nuclear Blast Records.

Their second album, Hisingen Blues, had been slowly taking shape over the previous two years, amidst the conflicting responsibilities of song writing, touring and working at their day jobs. As Nilsson explains, the process was difficult. Speaking to Shindig! Not do anything special. I try but I will never get used to that. But we are doing alright and getting better at that. When they announced it we were already really drunk. After a period of relentless touring Graveyard took time off in to write and record their third album.

We call that album our hate album. We were just thinking about things and working a lot with Rick, trying to help him get better. In a band whose ethos is a collective one, particularly when it comes to song writing, such tensions can prove to be counter productive.

Someone comes up with an idea and jam it, trying different ideas. Their fourth and latest album Innocence And Decadence will finally be released in late September. Morck originally left the group around the time of the first album, replaced by Jonathan Ramm on guitar.

Everything is new, with a new bass player and producer and recorded in a different studio. We wanted to experiment a little bit with things. Graveyard will then be on tour throughout October and November. First Take, which simultaneously topped the album charts, were in fact three years old. Flack had released her third album.

It hit the charts as a result and off I went. Raised in Arlington, Virginia, Flack was turned on to music by her parents at any early age. She excelled at piano, being awarded a scholarship by Howard University in Washington, DC before switching her major from piano to voice after having fallen under the spell of gospel singers Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke in the Baptist church.

The sudden death of her father when she was 19 necessitated a move into teaching music, which she did in Junior High schools and from her home in Washington. I sang show tunes, songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen. Ones that told stories that moved me; anything that spoke to my heart. Many talent agents and producers saw me before he did. People make lots of promises, but he followed through.

So who chose the eventual contents of First Take? She plumped for a wildly eclectic selection; songs of many styles and from disparate sources, all connected by their emotional heft and spiritual heart. What you hear is as close to a live performance as I would have done at that time. Flack imbues both songs with a humanity and humility that might be inaccessible to many in their original incarnations.

In her hands, these poetic odes to all-consuming love take on universal depth and intensity. Sometimes the meaning of a song is lost in the arrangement and the production. I Shindig! To celebrate this monumental coming of age, we asked our trusted team of contributors to submit their favourite albums released during those almost eight years, whether new work or fresh compilations of old gear.

Every CO album has bettered the last, but it was this, their fourth, that made us realise we were dealing with a genius songwriter. The Soundcarriers Harmonium Melodic, Evokes timeless summers spent cruising around with the top down. Warp factor 10, Mr Sulu! Major label US sunshine pop and psych- lite obscurities never sounded or looked so good. Sandy Denny Sandy Denny Universal, Nineteen CDs, 21 hours of music, previously unreleased recordings, a page hardback book, oodles of memorabilia: the last word in definitive collections.

Ignore the freak-folk tag; these are timeless epics. Irish- American acid-rock of la Belle Epoque. Serge Gainsbourg Intoxicated Man el, His remarkably inventive first four albums, originally released under the radar, now hugely influential and always entertaining.

Fain is the Magna Carta of re- nationalised retro-rock. This one is stuffed with exceptions. Belter, The ultimate soundtrack to a sleazy head-banging grease brawl or merely glam-friendly, sexist piffle for mullet-skulled thugs? Thanks for the memories.

See also Darkscorch Canticles comp. Baroque-pop perfection. Jonathan Wiison Fanfare Bella Uuiou, Epics are a rare thing """ these days but studio boffin, singer, songwriter and guitarist Wilson achieved just that with this sprawling West Coast outing. Nv II I- mii-. A bona fide classic is born. An assured debut that trumps the competition with both melodies and panache.

Reribourn never stopped exploring this diverse musical landscape during his long career. They looked up at me with considerable kindness at the foolishness of a star truck fan.

In my eyes, though, Bert and John meant just as much as John and Paul. He had a delightfully dry sense of humour and was a joy to work with. He was always enormously helpful, particularly when I was researching my book on Sandy Denny and he generously tolerated me picking his brains about other friends and contemporaries such as Jackson C Frank, Alex Campbell, Davy Graham and Bert, of course.

Wherever I have played, the blues are all the same He directly influenced a lot more home grown players, including Bert who saw him in Edinburgh. She went there for the same reasons as me, not to study art but to be in the swing of things. Plenty of music was being made there at the time. I mostly remember her sitting in the canteen beaming out pleasantries. She was taken under the wing of Gina Glaser, who was one of the models. Dave Van Ronk talks about her in his book.

Gina was a key figure for me too because she played banjo and American style finger picking so it was a real thrill to watch her play close up. I learnt a lot. She had a beautiful clear voice and played an immaculate clawhammer style. Much repaired over the years, using layers of ice lolly sticks pushed under the overhanging high fret board, he continued to use it up until his second album. Take two girls Beverley Martyn [nee Kutner sings a couple of blues songs with Renbourn on the forthcoming retrospective.

The Attic Japes. At the time she was a member of a jug band. She found her way first to The Troubadour before taking a regular spot at The Roundhouse off Wardour Street, where she invited John Renbourn to accompany her.

I played there with Gerry Lochran, who was another great blues player. She thought what we were all doing was so old-fashioned; she was more like Nina Simone in her attitude and her style was more like Roberta Flack.

She used to play the autoharp which was as eye-catching as Dorris herself; nobody had seen one before. Dorris was a real force of nature on stage. The Red Lion in Sutton, and we began singing together there and occasionally at Cousins. That was the start of it for me. Coffee house scene. When I started singing with him it was because he wanted to discover more traditional songs. They were very anti-guitar because it was considered to be American. There was all that nonsense going on.

Peggy Seeger could play just about the best guitar and banjo you could hear. She was great; more influential than I can tell you. People would do anything to hear her playing if they could avoid hearing Ewan MacColl singing.

She and Davy were opposites as people so it was pretty remarkable that they ever recorded together. Folk Roots, New Routes, changed everything. I first heard it with Dorris. Along with Bert and Martin Carthy they were the ones everybody looked to. Folk Roots, New Routes had a huge impact on us all. It showed that nothing was sacrosanct. He was later jailed for stealing from investors in his company. I was sorry to see him go. He and I had been one of the best rhythm sections in the land. Our ex-bandmate, Dolphin Bernie Calvert, was the obvious choice.

He was still working at Burco in Burnley and playing piano in a blues band by night. Maureen rang his workplace, and he was brought to the factory phone. Tony says would you like to join The Hollies? The Stones saw their first three UK albums become five Stateside.

First, the Imperial Records album Hear! The four Would You Believe? Spoiler alert! What convinced you that throwing a guitar around, spending your evenings in pubs and clubs, and driving around Europe in an old van was the better option? Graham Day: My dad was a sports fanatic, and I was very influenced by him growing up. I was never much of an athlete; not particularly quick or skilful at anything but I made up for that in effort and enthusiasm. I grew a lot in my early teens and rugby seemed the ideal sport, I loved it, until the other lads grew bigger and bigger around me and I no longer had a size advantage or the ability to hold my own any more.

I was supposed to trial for the Kent team but got an injury. Hearing The Stranglers, Jam, Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols changed everything and I never really had the enthusiasm to play rugby again after that.

Do you remember the year-old you that idolised The Jam, Vapors and Revillos? GD: I was a bit too young to go to any real punk gigs, but I listened eagerly to whatever I could find on the radio and was captivated by the energy of it. I found myself standing next to a boy I recognised from school, Allan Crockford, and we got chatting and decided that very moment we would be in a band.

It blew me away, Weller had such style and energy. Me and Allan started going to loads of gigs after that, jumping over the barriers at the train station and skipping the fares by flashing an old ticket at the guard at Victoria Station. Those were great times, although pretty dangerous for young lads dressed in charity shop mod clothes; I was always getting chased or attacked by gangs of punks, skinheads and mods.

I think kids loved to fight in those days. So yes, we would have carried on, definitely. At this point you had a heavy mod following, and were on a label marketed as mod, yet the mod audience The Prisoners, Rochester, Did the mod tag frustrate you? GD: When we were on Big Beat we played with a lot of psychobilly bands; we never had quiffs or enough tattoos to fit into that scene, but musically we had a shared sense of rawness and excitement which worked well.

When we signed to Countdown all that changed. A lot of our old crowd felt out of place and stopped coming. So ultimately it was the kiss of death for us. GD: Ha ha! I always saw the band as mainly a social thing. Rather than going to work every day and spending all your money at the local pub, why not travel and play really cool places across Europe, have a great time and get paid a bit for it?

It may not have been totally original, but no-one was playing our kind of music at the time. When we signed to a label they started putting money into us and, understandably, wanted to make it back. They knew the market better than us and wanted us to be more like the other bands who were making money. I remember one gig in Rimini on the east coast of Italy, and having to drive straight after the gig to get to the next one in London the following night, blowing the van up en route.

Add to that a record label which went bust just as our new album came out and the fact that we were now playing in front of people who just wanted us to get off stage so they could dance to the disco. And I suppose, in The Prime Movers, Time to give up. Or speak to the audience! They told me I was wasted playing drums and some people got pretty aggressive about it when The Prisoners split up. Pardon me for enjoying myself. GD: A strange one this.

I think they carried on for a while with another guitarist but then Jon and Martin formed The Charlatans and that was the end of it. Did performing become a release from the day job? I never saw music as a release from the job, but the job kept me very grounded. I had just enough time off to enjoy it as a hobby, whilst preventing me from overdoing it to the point that I got bored or felt enslaved by it again.

What was it that made you decide you wanted to write and perform again after that post-Prisoners sabbatical?

It was only when Allan and Wolf got kicked out of The JTQ that Allan came over to my flat and said we should get another band together. Who am I to argue with The Crockers? What is it with you and organs?

An organ tends to smother the whole thing in a blanket, and whilst it adds a lot, it also takes something away. But my favourite sounding instrument is the Hammond. It gives a band so much more scope, and seems a natural progression to me. What can you do? I think I just fancied a change. GD: Strange times.

The first gig we did, at The Subterranea, was an incredible mix of euphoria, trepidation and nostalgia. It sort of went by in a flash and a blur, and we had absolutely no idea it was going to be that popular.

The other problem was we were playing bigger venues. I hate big venues. I hated it. Did you find it frustrating that The Prisoners cast such a long shadow as to obscure the bands that came after and were their equal? It made me angry. I resented the thought that people would always think the stuff I did aged was the best and everything that came after was somehow rubbish. I thought it was disrespectful, and I would mostly refuse to play any Prisoners songs at a gig.

One gets the impression you enjoyed being the sideman for a while. What do you remember about this experience and how did it differ to being in the Caesars 20 years earlier? GD: Another fun chapter! Great to play with Billy again, this time on bass where I was a little more comfortable than on the drums.

It was hilarious to be on stage and see every person in the audience transfixed by Billy. I think I was only there to tune his guitar up for him… But again, more opportunities to play in the USA, where incidentally I have still never been with a band playing my own songs.

What was it about it that clicked so perfectly for you? They were so explosive on stage I refused to go on after them the second night so we supported them, and stayed great friends ever since. Drummer Dan was over in London around so we met up for a few beers. How could I refuse? It was too much of a commitment for Buzz so he made way for Jon [Barker]. That second album really feels like a band at its peak. What really makes it click? Having a musical drummer of course! How did that combo come about and will we be hearing from you again?

GD: The Senior Service came about because Jon [Barker] suddenly decided he was going to buy a Hammond, and asked if we wanted to just muck about playing Booker T covers for a laugh. We soon realised that with three songwriters in the band we were capable of much more. There was never any intention to play live or record an album, but the songs were so good, and recording was easy.

This will have singing on it though! Do you ever see that changing? The hardest thing is what to write about. In retrospect, and with respect, you still appear to be spellbound by those very same records 35 years later.

Do you think we ever shake off or grow out of those formative, teenage touchstones? GD: Er, no. What else could be better than that? Triple Distilled and King Cobra. If shaking sticks is your bag. Production duties were given to John Anthony, fresh from his work with Genesis and Queen. The first two Bonzos singles both cover versions flopped, but they attracted the attention of label-mate Paul McCartney, who later invited them to appear in Magical Mystery Tour. The move saw the Bonzos move from straight vaudeville and begin to write their own material.

Their sole sevencartoonist Bill Tidy. None of these records charted. In reality it got a little lost amongst a flurry of other Innes activity.

The album was promoted by a few low-key ads, but the music press by and large ignored it. A staple of many a sixth form common room, the album spent six weeks in the Top 40 album chart — peaking at Innes would be heavily involved — performing and occasionally acting in all 14 episodes.

It was re-titled Neil Innes A-Go-Go, and given a new cover with a shot of Neil in green dungarees, a tartan scarf around his wrist and Roy Wood-style face paint. Hearing the broadcast, Mike McGear rang Neil. There were no hard feelings with the Gallagher brothers. Not everything he recorded is indispensable Shindig! He sold over million records, won a Grammy and was nominated for two Oscars. By some estimates, he was the best-selling published poet in history. Though a self-proclaimed loner and born misfit, singer-songwriter-poet Rod McKuen was embraced by fans around the world and became one of the most recognised celebrities of his time.

His raspy, scarred-yet-sexy voice and penchant for self-revealing expression as a writer bridged the generation gap in appeal. To his legion of fans, though, Rod was a voice of compassion and healing, as much a prophet as an entertainer. Try to imagine a fusion of Sinatra, Fred Rogers and Oprah Winfrey and you have some idea of what he meant to his millions of devotees.

Like Walt Whitman, Rod McKuen contained multitudes — and many of the people inside him were downright weird. Rod McKuen was born in an Oakland, California charity hospital for unwed mothers in Raised in a series of Western towns during The Great Depression, he became a pre-teen runaway to escape physical and sexual abuse from various family members. As the teenaged host of Rendezvous With Rod, McKuen played records and whispered seductively into the ears of listeners, creating a template for his phenomenal success 20 years later.

Meanwhile, he was developing his craft as a songwriter and poet and launching himself as a live performer. McKuen managed to wrangle a contract with Universal Pictures and made a series of B-movies before becoming disillusioned with the Hollywood grind. Around this time, he made his debut as a recording artist, releasing albums both as a singer and spoken word artist.

Rod and his group were experimenting with rocked-up versions of folk songs even as they were chasing the teenybopper market. He took the band on the road for a grueling cross-country tour that landed him in LA with shredded vocal cords and a stalled career.

It took him months to regain his voice. For some artists, that might have been the end of the road. In contrast with the burly sounds of Barry McGuire, Hoyt Axton and the like, Rod developed a softer approach as a singer and poet that won him a loyal following. The women came to weep and moan over his poems. That same year, he put out The Love Movement, an odd mish-mash of thoughtful ballads, hippie-themed ditties and off-kilter instrumental pieces.

Rod built a personal brand decades before it was acceptable for a creative artist to do so. Especially notable was his series of thematic albums created with arranger Anita Kerr and credited to the San Sebastian Strings.

His gentle charisma as a live performer was captured on Sold Out At Carnegie Hall, a set that included tunes from nearly every phase of his musical career. The content of his songs and poems were in step with the selfliberating values of the emerging New Age movement. He compared his goals to those of Brel and other French chansonniers, who spoke for the common man and women in 52 A hustler of words.

Whether he is satirising or commiserating with his fellow outsiders, the album is an engaging listen. The Sea and The Sky are more lulling and sensuous, while The Earth narrated by Rod himself features wry commentaries on hippies and other then-trendy topics.

The fact that a mere entertainer dared to invade the sacred realm of poetry was particularly offensive to the highbrow class. Their collective works were too easy to grasp and enjoy to be worthy of serious attention. Recorded on his 36th birthday, Rod touches upon nearly every aspect of his career in this set, including his folk phase, soundtrack tunes and his collaborations with Jacques Brel.

Rod spins a tale of witches, scary clowns and persecuted peasants with sadomasochistic undertones on this double set. A strange ride beyond The Warm Zone. Casual hookups and overnight affairs rather than marital bliss were the norm in his lyrics and poems.

As an occasional sex worker and early advocate of gay rights, McKuen was hardly a spokesman for old-fashioned monogamy. Over time, he acknowledged his sexually fluid identity, though he never chose to label himself gay or straight. Seeking new outlets, he branched out by releasing a series of classically slanted instrumental albums and launched his own McKuen Casuals clothing line.

It took the advent of the internet to bring him out of the shadows and reconnect with his fans online. As he approached 80, McKuen looked back on his career with a sense of wonderment. What is the legacy of this elusive figure who was both a marketing genius and a stubborn eccentric?

By turns comforting, surprising, soul-bearing and calculating, McKuen was a shapeshifter who ultimately remained a mystery even to himself. The vast and wildly eclectic depths of his catalog deserve a wider discovery. Beatsville is out now on Modern Harmonic 55 Nancy regrets asking for a present.

Supersister in MARCO ROSSI talks to Robert Jan Stips — keyboardist, vocalist and chief composer — about provocation, anti-war demonstrations and deliberately dropping award statuettes 58 When the first issue of Provo magazine hit the streets of Amsterdam in July , it became a galvanic touchstone for various subsets of eagerly seditious Netherlands youth.

An unusually gifted collective based in The Hague, Supersister were fearless, restless and heady players — aptly, for those insurrectionary times — but also harboured a telling streak of radiant mirthfulness. Their playful, cartwheeling melodies and lightness of touch reflected a collective spirit that naturally gravitated towards skewed humour and a delight in wrong-footing the unenlightened and unwary.

For all their counter-culture cool, Supersister were sweethearts; bringers of light, an exhilarating antidote to the suffocating strictures of straight society. Robert Jan Stips, Supersister keyboardist, vocalist, chief composer and latter-day flame-keeper, has just turned Impressed, Vrolijk asked Stips to join The Blubs. So we had a choice, like, shall we cancel the gigs or… shall I just take a tambourine and a mouth organ? Out went The Blubs and in came their modish new band moniker — Provocation.

They momentarily considered calling themselves Q-Provocation. When the dust eventually settled, these two new conscripts, alongside Stips and drummer Marco Vrolijk, would comprise the fourman line-up that became the Supersister all sentient beings should know and love: but in the meantime, another new arrival bowled along whose influence would directly inform the stylistic trajectory of the evolving unit.

If I say, for example, play some underwater-ground music, what will you do? The psychedelic thing went fast, inspired by American underground groups like The Fugs, Vanilla Fudge… and of course Zappa. He was a very clear point in my life. Somehow, these wilfully idiosyncratic blasts from the underground surprisingly climbed to 11 in the Dutch singles charts. They always used the same reason, that the tapes were so expensive! There are almost no moving pictures of Supersister.

Stupidly enough, we never thought that it could be important. We were already so glad that we could just record our music. Urged to produce a follow-up hit, the band did what they did so well whenever big business intruded, which was to take the piss. That was what we were really into, of course. Only a quirk of geography prevents it from being bracketed as a stone-cold Canterbury classic. Stips acknowledges the influence of Soft Machine on compositions such as the two-part title track, but only up to a point.

I was standing still, listening, and I heard within about 10 minutes the sort of keys you could use to make music like that, with the strange bar lengths and the organ with the fuzz, 59 Phonogram Studio, And then the vocal being like a fifth instrument… I loved it right away, but I found it too dangerous to take it home. I only bought my first Soft Machine record about five years ago!

The pithy music on Present From Nancy was matched with an equally memorable cover, as Stips explains. We had the black trees, and we were also dressed in black, and made our faces a bit white, and we thanked the Dutch Army on the sleeve for burning down this place for us.

The statement we were making was also about the humour in it, but there was always a message in the things we did. Like, there were more and more anti-Vietnam festivals, at which we were expected to play for free! And then, suddenly, the invitations became fewer!

Music from this concert can be found on the Long Live Supersister! Its a bit personal. And its about Time Travel. Featuring reconstructed poems by Sylvia Plath, Arthur Rimbaud. Presenting philosophies of Deleuze and Henri Bergson. Scuzz gourmet. Matt Kennedy kitchen's floor front guy performing solo. Eighth aberrant shindig of the disembraining series set in freshly gentrifying logan road, brisbane's latest cultural hotspot Organic and synthetic meditations on meditation.

Sound to challenge and distort your perception of time, space and corporeality. Debut performance. Experimental 80's ambience does soundological fantasmitecture - a Casinivale popology. Seventh aberrant shindig of the disembraining series set in freshly gentrifying logan road, brisbane's latest cultural hotspot Per Purpose Brisbane www.