DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS

Mr. Bukowski exhaled more conspiratorial humanity within three minutes then most alleged philosophers emanated in a life span.  Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany, on August 16, 1920, the only child of an American soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he came with his family to the United States and grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1939 to...

AUSTIN CONSIGLIERE OLD NO. 1 by Guy Clark (RCA, 1975) Guy Clark’s farmhouse was ground zero for a whole generation of America’s finest songwriters. Check out the scene in the “Outlaw Country” doc, Heartworn Highways , with the babyfaced Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, and Guy harmonizing and trading songs and stories at the kitchen table. This was a summit meeting of Towne Van Zandt’s Gospel spreader...

CHEERFULLY MORBID GILBERT O’SULLIVAN HIMSELF by Gilbert O’Sullivan (MAM/London, 1971) This unique artist scored a monster mega-hit with a song about suicide - “Alone Again (Naturally)” - How many times has that been done? The melody was so darn poppy and melodic that the tragic story outlines were impossible not to sing along with: “In a little while from now, If I'm not feeling any less sour...

"Palisades Park" (from Wikipedia) Chuck Barris wrote a song about an amusement park and it was suggested he use the name of an amusement park as the title. One night he was in Manhattan when he looked toward the New Jersey Palisades Cliffs, on which the amusement park sat. That was when inspiration hit and the title was added. Years later the Palisades Amusement Park closed, on September...

“MY BIGGEST CRUSH” EPISODE #2 -: BLUE by Joni Mitchell (1971, Reprise) From the first ringing chords of the dulcimer, and that quavering, pain-wracked voice swooning, “I am on a lonely road, and I am traveling, traveling, traveling…” I was in love – madly, permanently enamored of Joni Mitchell. Everything about her – her unmatchable talent, her neurotic self-dramatizing, her doomed romanticism… tu...

Mesmerized, O & E, episode 10 “To Be or Not To Be” As O approached the portal back to the world of the living, he suddenly sensed that E was not behind him. He turned around — to see her immediately whisked back into the darkness of the Netherworld. At that moment he realized that his faith had been tested, and he had failed the test. Now inconsolable, O realizes there will be no second chance...

MARRY ME, LAURA! GONNA TAKE A MIRACLE by Laura Nyro with Labelle  (1971, Columbia) When I was in high school, dating Cindy, every time The Fifth Dimension’s Wedding Bell Blues came on the radio, with it’s repeating plea - “MARRY ME, BILL!” -her family would tease us mercilessly. I couldn’t escape the power of that record. Later, I realized that that song was created by the ultimate singer-songwrit...

"He looked cool in the jungle"—Moulty on rock and roll hair Interviews in the essential Ugly Things   magazine rarely disappoint . In the latest issue, writer Greg Prevost and editor and publisher Mike Stax talk with the Barbarians' legendary, hook-handed drummer Victor "Moulty" Moulton (in a conversation edited from two sit-downs spanning twenty years). Apart from some ex...

Mesmerized, O & E, episode 7 “The Dream Continues On.” One night E comes to O in a dream: she tells him to meet her in the woods - he should follow the stream until he comes to a gate, the portal to another world.  There will be a 3 headed creature guarding the gate. O will have to convince the sentinel to let him pass, but he is susceptible to the charms of music. She will be waiting on the o...

John Coltrane departed this mortal plane more than fifty years ago; today he remains among us, more alive than ever. His sound continues to grab the ears of an ever-widening circle of fans. His legend is stone solid: planted firmly in our culture as that of any 20th century musical giant. His saxophone sound—brooding, searching, dark—is still one of the most recognizable in modern jazz. His influe...

Mesmerized, with Bill Mesnik O & E, episode 4 “I Can Breathe” After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, O decides to take a hike around the property. As he meanders through the surrounding woods and fields, he can feel his body start to unwind. He feels at one with his surroundings, and grateful to be alive.  Mesmerized, O & E, episode 5 “Too Late” O hasn’t been checking his socia...

WANNA KNOW WHAT IT WAS LIKE BACK IN THE DAY? LIVE AT LEEDS by The Who (Decca, 1970) The Who was one of the greatest live bands of all time, bar none, and this document proves it. In 1970 they were at the height of their powers, having just pulled off the coup of creating the first “Rock Opera” Tommy. They followed that miracle up with a massive US tour with the intention of recording the performan...

THE STORY OF O AND E Many writers and film makers have gone back to Virgil's classic for inspiration over the decades: Tennessee Williams with Orpheus Descending (1957); Marcel Camus' timeless film,  Black Orpheus (1959) is a Brazilian Carnavale take,  Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice is a theatrical staple, and more recently, the Broadway hit, Hadestown . My offering was composed in the early...

WHY DID BOBBY GENTRY STOP SINGING? https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/17/bobbie-gentry-trailblazing-queen-of-country The 60s star – who didn’t just write her own songs but had her own TV show, made her own clothes and painted her own album art – could count Elvis and, later, Taylor Swift as fans. So why did she retire from public view in 1981? The first time I heard Ode to Billie Joe was o...

CAN YOU DIG IT? SHAFT by Isaac Hayes (Enterprise, 1971) As a 19 year old, I didn’t realize that history was being made, but when I saw Isaac Hayes on the Oscars, bedecked in chain-mail, at the keyboard, being wheeled onstage in a cloud of dry ice to sing The Theme From Shaft, I knew something was up. The chicka-chicka of the wah-wah guitar riff had already surgically implanted in my head by AM rad...

10-4 GOOD BUDDY Say what you will about America, you cannot deny that, against all odds, fortunes can be made by good old American entrepreneurial invention. Submitted for your approval: advertising executive Billie Dale Fries, aka CW McCall, and his monster radio hit “Convoy”. If you were sentient during 1975 there was no escaping the ubiquitous Citizen’s Band modulated, clarion voice of the fict...

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/johnny-rivers-mn0000203639/biography Johnny Rivers Biography   by Bruce Eder Johnny Rivers is a unique figure in the history of rock music. On the most obvious level, he was a rock star of the 1960s and a true rarity as a white American singer/guitarist who made a name for himself as a straight-ahead rock & roller during the middle of that decade. Just as import...

ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA PAUL REVERE AND THE RAIDERS GREATEST HITS by Paul Revere and the Raiders (Columbia, 1967) This group, this record: they were fundamental elements in the experience of the 13 year old Captain Billy. My band, The Full House, played a smokin’ cover of “Steppin’ Out”; Dick Clark’s WHERE THE ACTION IS tv show was a can’t miss, daily after-middle school check in; I coveted...

We've got a cure for this winter's Seasonal Affective Disorder: the sunny Samba stylings of master Sax-smith Stan Getz along with the sensual murmurings of Astrud Gilberto - in one of the most "audio-erotic" recordings of all time: THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA. Jobim's masterpiece started  the Bossa Nova craze, and became on of the most covered songs in history, and your dogged m...

Margaret Wycherly (1881-1956) was an English stage actress who appeared in one silent film at the age of 38 ( The Thirteenth Chair , 1929, dir. Todd Browning). 12 years later she reemerged as Ma York in Sgt. York opposite Gary Cooper, and was nominated for an Oscar. But in White Heat , as the conniving and murderous Ma Jarrett, mother to psychopathic killer Cody Jarrett, played by James Cagney, sh...

WHAT THE F**K WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? HOW NOW DOW JONES by The Original Cast (RCA, 1967) This is the second Broadway soundtrack that Captain Billy has covered, the first being Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot, and even though as a small child I had memorized my parent’s Oliver, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady albums, after Rock, Folk and Soul music entered my life, I lost interest in the musicals of th...

As he walks on, the Man doesn’t feel happy or sad, but balanced. Who he is is still left to be determined, and that is fine with him.  “Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self...

Georgie Fame, born Clive Powell in Leigh, Lancashire, June 1943 is one of British R&B music’s founding fathers. Fame is the only British star to have scored three number one hits with his only Top 10 chart entries – ‘Yeh Yeh’ in 1964, ‘Get Away’ in 1966 and ‘Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde’ in 1967. But it’s more important to acknowledge his cultural influence. Fame popularized and educated in equa...

A singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter, award-winning children’s writer, and actor, Shel Silverstein grew up in Chicago. He started out as a cartoonist, publishing work in Playboy and the military publication Stars & Stripes , before turning to children’s books. Silverstein is the author and illustrator of numerous books, including The Giving Tree (1964), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974),...

WHEN GOOD THINGS HAPPEN FOR BAD PEOPLE METAMORPHOSIS by The Rolling Stones (ABKCO, 1975) Where to begin? Briefly, Allen Klein (1931-2009), the notorious wheeler-dealer who managed both the Beatles and the Stones, put out this collection in order to grab some shekels during a contentious negotiation with his disaffected cash cows. (Jagger studied at the London School of Economics, so he had gotten...