Deep Grooves: Carla Olson - Detroit ‘85 Live and Unreleased and Carla Olson and Mick Taylor - Too Hot For Snakes (Collector’s Choice)
August 13, 2008 by Scott · Leave a Comment
Roots rock fans rejoice! Another batch of Carla Olson albums have been re-released by the music fanatics at Collector’s Choice. For those who are unaware of Olson’s career and what her music is all about, think of her as a female Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen. Olson has a innate talent to writing songs based on the hopes, dreams, trials, travails, failures and successes of the everyday man and woman trying to survive in today’s world. Olson’s songs are not songs about limousine rides and the rich, these are songs about feelings and experiences everyone shares.That she manages to combine her proletariat poetry with fiery, Stones-like raunch and roll and create something completely her own despite her influences is a testament to her talent. What a shame it is Olson was never appreciated when she was at her recording peak. Thanks to Collector’s Choice reissuing most of Olson’s work (of which these two releases are some of her best) music fans once again get a chance to appreciate Olson’s talent and her knack for passionate rock and roll.
Deep Grooves CD Review: Wattstax!! - Various Artists (Stax Records)
August 12, 2008 by Scott · Leave a Comment
This 3 CD set (count ‘em) chronicles one of the most important concert events in the history of music and is a monster! But what a monster it is! Thanks to the people running the new, reinvigorated Stax label, music fans who weren’t able to attend or pick up the vinyl versions released on the original Stax label will finally be able to experience this great event in musical history. Stax truly was one of the most visionary labels in existence, and this expansive concert proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Cover Story Interview - “Stop And Think It Over” by Mary Weiss, with photography by Theresa Kereakes
July 18, 2008 by Michael Goldstein · Comments Off
Subject: “Stop And Think It Over” - a single from the record titled Dangerous Game by Mary Weiss, released in 2007 on Norton Records, with cover photo by photographer Theresa Kereakes.
Copyright ©2007 and 2008 by Theresa Kereakes and Norton Records - All rights reserved.
There were Girl Groups who “dressed to kill” and who used many of the same vocal stylings they learned in church (and that made little white guys like me watch “Jubilee Showcase” on Sunday mornings with such fascination), and then there were the Shangi-Las. I don’t think that it was a white/black thing – I mean, Leiber and Stoller and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich did all of the writing and production in New York for a huge chunk of the early/mid-60’s vocal groups, regardless of their race - I just tend to think that the streets in Queens that bred the Weiss sisters and the Ganser sisters were simply different than the streets in Tenafly, New Jersey, where Leslie Gore grew up, and so where Leslie was all about “Boys, Boys, Boys” and would cry if she broke a nail, the Shangri-Las (dressed in black and hanging out with bikers) really convinced you that they knew about heartbreak, death and never being able to go home anymore.
40 years later, and as independent a spirit as ever, singer Mary Weiss released a new record released on Norton Records called Dangerous Game. Working with Greg Cartwright and blues/punk/garage band-par-exellance The Reigning Sound, Weiss’s new record is most definitely NOT a Shangri-Las comeback album. She’s not a teen anymore, and the record was made with that understanding. Most of the songs on the LP are written by Cartwright and with one listen, it seems certain that he knew what sort of signer he was writing for – someone tender-but-tough, but someone who brings emotion and power to both “the rockers” and the ballads that make up the record.
Photographer Theresa Kereakes was first introduced to Billy Miller, Miriam Linna and the rest of the Norton Records crew when she was working for Little Steven’s Underground Garage and, knowing of their commitment to the best of roots rock, when they asked her to photograph Mary Weiss and The Reigning Sound for an upcoming album, she was more than up to the task. With the goal being to catch “Mary being Mary”, they knew that this was Theresa’s specialty, and I think that you’ll agree that the pictures used to illustrate this article and the single titled “Stop and Think It Over” (as well as Roberta Bayley’s cover photo for the album) show Mary as we like to see her – unposed, working hard, and happy to be making music for her fans again (and, by the way, still looking cool in leather!). How this all took place is the subject of today’s Cover Story…
In the words of the photographer – Theresa Kereakes (interviewed June, 2008) -
I have known and worked with Billy Miller and Miriam Linna of Norton Records for many years and so, when they were putting together the album for Mary, they contacted me and asked me if I was interested in shooting photos for the project. “Of course I am!”, I told them, and so I sent them some links to my record cover work for them to forward to Mary. She looked at my portfolio and agreed to let me be a “fly on the wall” and take some candid shots during a couple days of recording sessions. I’d worked with Norton before in various ways, and during my tenure at Little Steven’s Underground Garage, both Miriam and Billy were invaluable resources of music and information for the show. Plus, as The A Bones, they’ve entertained me and countless other garage rock fans for years.
Working with Norton is always a pleasure and straight forward. They tell you what they want and they give you the parameters. They are simply the best people to work with. They are more than fair with money, time, schedule, etc. That they are able to sign an artist like Mary Weiss is an indication of and a tribute to their honesty as business people and their integrity.
Mary and Billy and Miriam worked together as “co-art directors” and had a clear and specific idea of what they wanted as album cover and CD booklet art, which made it easy and efficient to do the work and make the best use of Mary’s time and their time together in the studio. I like it when people who want album art know what they want - rather than asking you to shoot “whatever you feel”.
By the time we were all in the studio together, everyone knew what kind of photos we would be taking. It was probably the most professional and smooth experience of taking casual documentary pictures I ever had. Miriam, in particular was instrumental in getting the large group to lighten up and enjoy themselves in the hot 100+ degree heat when we were taking the promo and publicity pictures on the rooftop of the studio in blazing sunlight at high noon. That’s not a good time of day to shoot - but it’s all we had, and it worked out.
Copyright ©2007 and 2008 by Theresa Kereakes and Norton Records - All rights reserved.
Usually when anyone asks for me to shoot, it is because they want the images to feel “natural” and “unguarded” (I’m a great “fly on the wall”). The cover for the single, “Stop and Think It Over” is a shot of Mary doing her vocals, unaware that I was there or shooting. I was in the studio with Mary, Billy and the band, The Reigning Sound, whose front man, Greg Cartwright, co-produced the album with Billy, and so I heard the music being recorded as I was working. To me, Mary’s voice has always been the perfect vehicle for whatever she chose to sing at the time. When she was a teen, it was urgent and full of teen angst, but now, as a grown woman, it was wine-dark and knowing, mellifluous and sexy.
Mary sang some songs I already knew, as she was doing several songs written by Greg Cartwright. I’m a big fan of Greg’s work, going back to the Compulsive Gamblers and Oblivians. I believe that having Greg vouch for me also helped me in securing this gig and Mary, as it turns out, became a fan of Greg’s music as well!
Copyright ©2007 and 2008 by Theresa Kereakes and Norton Records - All rights reserved.
Because this was carefully planned and scheduled, we got everything we needed from me in the two days I spent in the studio with Mary and the band. The only thing we used aside from one camera, two lenses – a 50mm and a 28 mm wide angle - was a single additional light source - a 3K lamp to give us even lighting in a room that’s normally illuminated by a single skylight. We shot seven rolls of film, with a couple of those rolls being multiple frames of the same shot, because whenever there’s more than one person in a shot, you are guaranteed that someone or another will have their eyes closed!
Copyright ©2007 and 2008 by Theresa Kereakes and Norton Records - All rights reserved.
If you look at the shots in the CD booklet and on the LP where Mary and the band are sitting in a straight line on a couch, I think that you can see that everybody in the band, as well as Billy and Miriam, were pretty relaxed and looked comfortable. It’s obvious they were having a good time and they all looked good. Out of those 7 rolls (168 images), 9 images were used in the album/CD material and about 5-6 different shots were used for publicity, promotion and MySpace images.
I do want to go on record, however, with the fact that drummer Lance Wille looked absolutely PERFECT in each and every frame I shot those days. He was flawless – he never had an eye closed in a shot, or a weird facial expression. That man was camera-ready!
About the photographer – Theresa Kereakes (in her own words) -
Copyright ©2007 and 2008 by Theresa Kereakes and Norton Records - All rights reserved.
I started taking pictures with a Leica Rangefinder when I about 5 years old - I just hijacked my parents’ camera. After I broke that, it was all about Instamatics and Polaroids until I was 15 and I got a Pentax SLR because I asked for “a real camera.” For Christmas, I got a Nikon FM, which was the latest thing at that time and the camera I still use all these years later.
I started taking rock & roll photos for reasons that are two-fold… first, of course, for the memories, and second, because none of my friends believed that I’d been at whatever concert I said I was at. Only one way to prove it - show them the photos I took.
First concert I photographed was ELO at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1973. It was pouring rain and I’d just gotten my drivers license, so my father INSISTED that he drive me instead of me driving myself. San Luis Obispo is about 100 miles away from where I grew up. My folks were not going to let a kid with a new driver’s license drive that in the rain. The camera I had was an Instamatic with a built in flash. I took a roll of crappy pictures - it’s on 110 film… very narrow, and there is never a photo in focus with that camera anyway, so even though I was in the front row, those are probably the worst photos anyone anywhere has ever taken. I do still have them, though…
From that unfortunate experience, I attended my next big rock show with a real camera - the Pentax - and also a Super 8 movie camera. It was the Faces, with UFO and Rory Gallagher opening up. I wasn’t very good at budgeting my film stock and blew all my still camera film on UFO, and have only moving pictures of the Faces and Gallagher. Somehow, my learning curve was fast though, thanks to my friend Bill Heiden, who worked in the record store I shopped at. He was at the same Faces concert, and I coveted his talent and photos. He taught me everything I needed to know about concert photography in a couple of paragraphs worth of explanation and pointing out his shots. The next concert we both saw (although in separate cities) and photographed was Bruce Springsteen. I had it figured out by then, thanks to Bill, and have some good shots of 1973-era Bruce.
In 1976, I was going to UCLA and punk rock was happening. I always took my camera along, and most of my friends were in punk bands, so my archive of hundreds of thousands of punk rock images was really just a natural, organic thing that happened. Nobody knew back then that the people I was hanging out with would amount to anything.
Belinda Carlisle (who was Kurczeski at the time) went to a neighboring high school and we knew each other through extra curricular activities. I was the first one of our circle of friends to leave suburbia and have their own apartment in Los Angeles. Belinda and her best friend Teri Ryan (the future Lorna Doom of the Germs) moved in with me for a few months after there was some crime in the apartment building complex they lived in. I saw the Germs get born in my living room in Hollywood, and also saw Belinda getting the inspiration to try her hand at fronting a band, which ultimately became The Go-Go’s.
It was a small social circle back then and we couldn’t predict what was going to happen. I believe it was just a “right place-right time” thing. All the punk rock people hung out together and the friendships spawned business relationships very organically and naturally. There was no campaigning to be anyone’s “favorite” or “official” photographer. There were only a small handful of us shooting that scene anyway, and each of us has enjoyed our fair share of delayed gratification from being there… 30 years later of course!
I met and became fast friends with Stiv Bators in 1977 and worked with him and the Dead Boys. I worked with Stiv through every phase of his career, and on his solo album, Disconnected (Bomp), I was in the studio with them every day for weeks, hanging out and photographing everything they did. We came up with some concepts for the album cover art, but one night, Stiv was playing with a gun and there was this great moment that David Arnoff captured (which became the cover). All the rest of the photos on the album’s back cover and inner sleeve are mine - from the band portraits to the live shots and the candid goofy ones from the studio.
I never knew it until 25 years later that the portrait of Stiv on the back cover of Disconnected had become this legendary image in the cult of Stiv fans. Gregg Kostelich - who owns Get Hip Recordings and is a member of the garage band The Cynics – clued me into this at the Dead Boys 2004 reunion. Stiv was represented on stage by three photos from that album – and they were all mine.
Copyright ©2007 and 2008 by Theresa Kereakes and Norton Records - All rights reserved.
I have to say, I was totally blown away when I walked into the Beachland Ballroom and saw that. When you’re an artist, you like to think you made something that speaks to someone – anyone - but you rarely find out, and I found out 25 years after the fact (and I am still amazed).
I was once in a record store in the Midwest and asked the clerk if he could hold something for me while I shopped around the complex. I didn’t want to carry an LP around with me, so I told him that I would come back to the record store before leaving. I gave him my name and he said, “are you the same Theresa Kereakes who shot the Pandoras’ Hot Generation picture sleeve?” Apparently men of a certain age appreciated that sleeve a lot - enough to look at the photo credit, it seems. It’s of the band on a beach, wearing bikinis and standing with surfboards - hearkening back to Gidget and beach blanket movies. Those poses were all Paula Pierce’s idea - she was another band leader who knew exactly what she wanted. She knew her sex appeal and she let me maximize it.
To see more of Theresa’s work, please visit her photo blog - www.punkturns30.com, and to see more of her record cover work, check out - http://my-record-covers.blogspot.com
Theresa’s touring photo exhibit titled “Unguarded Moments” hits New York City on July 18, 2008 (please note that this will coincide with Mary Weiss’s appearance at the South Street Seaport Music Festival that same day). For more information on this exhibition, please visit - http://unguardedmoments.info
Theresa’s next exhibition will take to the road beginning in Los Angeles in early September. Please visit http://available-light-show.blogspot.com/ for more info and a tour schedule.
To read more about singer Mary Weiss, you can visit her personal site at http://www.maryweiss.com or see the latest at the Norton Records site at http://www.nortonrecords.com/index2.html
To visit the RockPoP Gallery collection online, please visit http://www.rockpopgallery.com
About Cover Stories -
Our series of interviews will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.
In each Cover Story, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.
We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.
All images featured in this Cover Story are Copyright 2007 and 2008, Theresa Kereakes and Norton Records - All rights reserved. Except as noted, all other text Copyright 2008 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery (www.rockpopgallery.com) - All rights reserved.
Cover Story Interview - Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”, with photography by Paul Till
June 12, 2008 by Mark · Leave a Comment
Copyright ©1975 and 2008 by Paul Till - All rights reserved
Subject: Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, released in 1975 on Columbia Records, with cover photo by photographer Paul Till.
Back in April, I wrote about the making of the cover image for Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming. Shortly afterwards, I received a nice letter from Kevin Odegard, a writer-musician who had written a book titled A Simple Twist of Fate that provided the complete story of the making of another classic Dylan album – 1975’s Blood on the Tracks. It seems that there were a number of stories floating about concerning this recording, and Kevin’s book, which features interviews with many of the people who worked on the production (including Kevin), served to provide the details (and dispel the rumors) that had kept fans of this album guessing for years.
While I won’t spend a lot of time talking about the recording – I’d suggest that you track down Kevin’s book for an in-depth account – I can tell you that it seems that this album was the one where we “got to know” more – as best as we could determine from his songs’ lyrics, which can be a bit allegorical - about Dylan and his state of mind following the breakup of his marriage to his wife Sara.
A Look Back At Some Banned Cover Art
June 10, 2008 by Mark · Leave a Comment
Gibson has a great piece on eleven examples where the original cover art submitted to a record label by a band were banned at some point in their existence (and no, “Smell the Glove” was not included). Some of the examples I am familiar with but some of them border on the ridiculous, I mean banning a Mamas and Papas record because of a toilet? I admit though that the Lynyrd Skynard cover is just eerie…
Never the less, this is an interesting trip down rock history’s back lane. You can get the full article at A Rough Guide to Banned Cover Art.
Later.
Mark
Deep Grooves - King Curtis and His Orchestra - Azure
May 20, 2008 by Mark · Leave a Comment
King Curtis and His Orchestra - Azure
Essential Music
The fine folks at reissue label Essential Music have unearther this long-lost goodie from saxophone player extraordinaire King Curtis. For those sad folks who have no idea who King Curtis is and have never run across his name or solo music let me say this: just about everytime you turn on the radio you hear some of King Curtis’ music. It may not have been released under his name, but as the mighty Curtis played sax on hundreds of sessions for Atlantic Records during the ’60’s and was also a saxophonist-for-hire to many other labels and artists, the man was ubiquitous.
King Curtis, born Curtis Ousley, may have been the last of the great R&B tenor sax giants. He first hit the music businesws radar in the mid-’50’s as he became one of the first-call saxophone players for many record labels based on the East Coast. Curtis’ long association with Atlantic Records began in 1958 when he began to be used for saxophone parts on all of the Coasters hits from that time onwards. Though busy as a session musician, Curtis nonetheless found the time to record his own music, first as singles for small labels, and thenn albums for Atlantic and the label’s subsidiary Atco as well as for jazz label Prestige. He was signed by Capitol for a very brief period and then returned to Atlantic, where he stayed for the rest of his life. All through his solo career he had a modicum of success with singles here and there but once he returned to Atlantic, solo hits started coming at a steady pace. He was also given more responsibility within the label itself, as he began to lead, contract and eventually produce sessions for other artists as well as becoming the bandleader for Aretha Franklin’s backing band. Truly, Curtis’ career was going full bore and no doubt he would have been a famous artist in his own right as well as a label executive at one point, if he had wanted that role. Unfortunately, it was not to be, which is sad considering Curtis’ career was showing so much promise. In 1971 Curtis was murdered during an altercation with a drug dealer in front of his apartment complex, Curtis telling the dealer to get away from his building and the dealer feeling threatened and shooting Curtis at close range.
Cover Story Interview - David Bowie’s “Reality”, with artwork by Rex Ray
May 19, 2008 by Mark · Leave a Comment
Copyright ©2003 and 2008 by Rex Ray - All rights reserved.
Subject: Reality – released September 2003 on ISO/Columbia/Sony records, with cover artwork & design by Rex Ray
One of the most-interesting (and ironic) songs found on Mr. Bowie’s 2003 release titled Reality is a track called “Never Get Old”. As someone who’s been a long-time fan, it takes on a double-meaning as it may be taken that not only does David not want to admit to aging, but neither do we as fans. I personally take it to mean that, while I may be getting old, I don’t have to either live (and relive) the past but, instead, I can use the experiences learned over time to live smarter, do better work, and improve on things as time moves forward.
I remember at one point when Bowie announced that he’d never play any of his old tunes again in public. Ziggy S. had told us once before that he’d played the last concert he’d ever play, so while I wasn’t totally convinced that he’d keep to his word, he did have me worried a bit (“what, I’ll never hear ‘Heroes’ or ‘Space Oddity’ live ever again? How can this be?”). Instead, it became clear that he simply wanted to try out new things, gain some more experiences and influences, and then come back with something that fans would find new, exciting and yet, somewhat familiar.
Cover Story - The Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street”, with artwork by John Van Hamersveld
April 28, 2008 by Mark · Leave a Comment
Copyright ©1972 and 2008 by John Van Hamersveld - All rights reserved.Subject: Exile on Main Street, a 1972 release (on Atlantic Records) by The Rolling Stones, with cover artwork & design by John Van Hamersveld
When the Rolling Stones released Exile on Main Street in 1972 - a double album of songs representing the many different genres of music that shaped Stones music at the time - fans and critics found themselves having to spend a lot of time trying to “get it”. It required a number of listens to gain an appreciation of what, on the surface, often seemed to be a collection of studio out-takes and Richards/Taylor/Watts jams than a freshly-recorded musical offering.
Many critics of the era failed to appreciate the Stones’ explorations of R&B, Soul, Country and roots Rock that were spread over the 4 album sides. In fact, the record was comprised of a series of recordings done during the previous four years and, as such, they featured a variety of mixes (some better than others) and showed the band building on top of these influences in their own inimitable style to the point that, now over 35 years later, the package is considered by many to be the band’s most-authentic offering. It is always listed near the top of most of the “Best Of” and “Greatest” lists (#7 on the Rolling Stone Magazine 2003 list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, #22 on VH-1’s survey, and even impressed the younger generation enough to be ranked #11 on Pitchfork’s 2003 list of Best Albums of the 1970s).
In a similar fashion, when the buying public took their first look at the design and imagery of the sprawling record cover, most people admitted that they didn’t “get it”. Having just soaked in Warhol’s ultimately-iconic banana cover for Sticky Fingers, fans should have been ready for anything, but John Van Hamersveld’s designs seemed to confound them, asking them to digest a rough, anti-establishment, punk-before-there-was-punk collage of images that may have, initially, combined with the unfamiliar musical stylings to impact sales (don’t worry, as the record was supported by the now-famous 1972 American concert tour and songs such as “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice” got some significant radio play, the record went on to top the charts in the U.S. and the U.K.).
Rock and Roll report TV: The Small Faces - “What’cha Gonna Do About It”
April 25, 2008 by Mark · Leave a Comment
Just like how I enjoy discovering all kinds of amazing bands that seem to be releatively unknown to most, it is fun to comb through rock and roll history and re-discover those acts who never seemed to get their due. One such act was the Small Faces and I have only really just started to delve into their amazing catalog of rock and roll fun. Aversion has discovered a great vintage clip of the Small Faces performing What’cha Gonna Do About It in black and white which I think is rock and roll and its most basic, and most fun. You decide.
Later.
Mark
Deep Grooves: A former Byrd flies high on this reissue.
April 22, 2008 by Scott · Leave a Comment
Gene Clark w/ Carla Olsen - In Concert
Collector’s Choice
Roots rock fans should bow down and give thanks to Collector’s Choice for this recent release. Not only will fans of the genre be absolutely thrilled with some previous unreleased live work from former Byrd Gene Clark but having ex-Textone Carla Olsen along for the ride is a double treat. Not only is Olsen a great singer/songwriter in her own right, but her work with Clark in the ’80’s was Clark’s most fruitful partnership since he left the Byrds. Clark seemed to shine whenever Olsen was nearby and both artists always brought their A-games whenever they decided to work together. Thanks to these newly discovered live recordings, we can once again marvel at Clark’s gifts and the fabulous interplay he had with Olsen, and though Clark always faired better as a team player than he did on his own as his history tends to bear out, he was a marvelous artist and one of rock’s best songwriters.
If nothing else, his brief sojourns with The Byrds will bear this out.
While he was only with the band for two brief stretches, Gene Clark will always be best known for being a part of the earliest incarnation of the Byrds (1964-1966) for which he wrote and sang lead on some of the band’s best known songs (”Eight Miles High”, “Feel A Whole Better,” and “Here Without You”). But before his stint with the Byrds, he was a part of folk-pop group The New Christy Minstrels, who scored a few hits on the pop charts in the early ’60’s. Thankfully for fans of country-rock, he eventually became tired of the Minstrels constant touring and quit the band. He met Jim McGuinn (who later changed his name to Roger) and together they formed the Byrds, becoming forerunners of the influential country-rock sound which would eventually influence artists like Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles, among many others. As previously mentioned, Clark’s time in the Byrds was brief with contributing factors such as a fear of flying and growing resentment from the others for his dominant songwriting skills leading to his exit. Clark was immediately signed by Columbia as a solo act but his debut solo album did very little business, due to his teaming with the Gosdin Brothers for an interesting record. Seems the world wasn’t ready for a total rock/country hybrid at that point in time, though the album was brilliant in execution.
