PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 596

Our first film was the 1959 musical Li'l Abner. It was a free selection on Amazon Prime. It was a nice colorful noisy film that was pretty much fun. It's based on the comic strip by Al Capp. The director is Melvin Frank and he wrote the script with Norman Panama. It's got an interesting cast including Stubby Kaye, Leslie Parrish, Julie Newmar, Stella Stevens and Robert Strauss. That's Julie as Stupifyin' Jones above. Here's another shot of her.

That picture is very much like the movie. There's more leaping and movement in this picture than you'd see is any 2 or 3 martial arts movies. Sadly the movie is out of print and costly. I wouldn't pay the over 23 bucks on Amazon. Not that I need to really have a copy. There are a lot of clips on YouTube but not the whole movie.

Deathstalker II: Duel Of The Titans is a 1987 film from producer Roger Corman. It was one of the 9 films that he made in Argentina. Jim Wynorski is the director. He wrote the story that scriptwriter Neil Ruttenberg adapted. RJ Robertson is credited for additional dialog. It's sad to see 3 grown men fail at writing a good movie. The movie is even dumber than the first Deathstalker. And that's quite a feat. There's a new guy playing Deathstalker and he doesn't quite match up to Rick Hill's performance in the first movie. Deathstalker meets up with Monique Gabrielle, she's a seer and a princess, and he helps her get back her castle from an evil wizard played by John Lazar. There's some poor fighting, a few gags that work, and a bit of nudity. Not much good but short, only 77 minutes. Short is good. The original release was 85 minutes and it was cut with footage from the first movie. This version is touted as a director's cut.

Doctor Who - 500 Miles

 

I really enjoyed the song, from The Proclaimers, and the images from the Doctor Who cast and crew from the days when David Tennant was the Doctor.

The Stranglers - Rattus At The Roundhouse 4-11-07

 

I found this concert by The Strangers. It's a 2007 show at the Roundhouse in London. According to the YouTube page they play the same songs they played in 1977. The show is also on the same day as it was on 30 years ago. They sound pretty good and I liked a lot of those songs a lot. I used to play those albums and CDs a lot. Not so much nowadays. You might enjoy it. It'll give you a good idea on what the band is like.

Hot Rod Gang 1958

Hot Rod Gang is another American International Pictures teens in trouble picture. They made a bunch of hot rod films in the 50s that were very similar. There's teens and their angst, drag racing, trouble, rock 'n roll, fights, dancing and a happy ending. It's directed by Lew Landers and written by Lou Rusoff. Lew directed over 100 films for all sorts of studios and 75 episodes of TV on top of that. He started in 1934 and most of his work I'm not familiar with. I have seen The Raven from 1935 with Boris and Bela, some of the Boston Blackie film series, and the 1943 film The Return Of The Vampire. I might have seen a few of his TV episodes. Lou was a most prolific writer at AIP, you might have seen a few of his films, It Conquered The World, The She-Creature, Shake, Rattle & Rock!, Ghost Of Dragstrip Hollow or Beach Party.

  

John Ashley is a hot rodder and a rock 'n roll singer. Gene Vincent makes an appearance, he gives John a break on his TV show. The hot rod gang has a club house but they need money to pay the back rent. John uses his singing money to help them out. There's a bit of trouble with the law over some stolen hub caps but John gets out of that ok. There's more singing and dancing, then a fight, followed by that happy ending. It's pretty average but I was entertained more by it than by some of the films I've watched recently. There's a link in the title. If you watch The Ghost Of Dragstrip Hollow right after it you can see how similar they are.

Rockin1000 - Learn to Fly

 

I saw this mentioned on Facebook and watched it. I really liked it and I'm not a fan of the Foo Fighters. I wasn't familiar with the song but I see it's not from the first album. I seem to remember hearing some of the songs off that album, made mostly single handedly by Dave Grohl himself. I might have even had the album but I don't have it now. It was at a time when I was losing interest in bands and buying albums with one or two good songs and a lot of dross on the other tracks. I'm looking at you Shawn Mullins.  

That's Fabio Zaffagnini who is the creator of Rockin1000 and he worked for over a year on this project. He got 1000 musicians to come together, from all over Italy, to play the Foo Fighter song Learn to Fly. The goal was to attract the attention of Dave and his band and invite them to come play their town Cesena. Dave has since announced, in Italian, he would be dropping by.

There's the band at play with the conductor's tower by the yellow tent. The band is made up of men and women and even a few children. From the event diary there seems to be little time for the big band to play together which makes the whole thing even more amazing that it works so well.

  

  

That's a few of my favorite images from the video. I really like when people do things like this, makes me glad to be a human, it's nice seeing people create good things. So much of the stuff you see on the internet isn't so nice.

  

Take a listen. I think the song is more enjoyable than the Foo Fighters versions I heard over the weekend. I'll still not bother with the band but I'm betting when they show up in Cesena that someone will have a good time at their show. I'd rather see this video again.

The Guess Who - Wheatfield Soul 1969

I have been scanning my old fanzines and dredging up old memories. Most of the ones I read tonight were created when I lived in Winnipeg in the 1970's. Something in one of my fanzines got me thinking about The Guess Who. I was a fan back in the 1969 after I first heard Wheatfield Soul. Here's the playlist of the album. The songs were written by Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings except as noted.

1. "These Eyes" - 3:45
2. "Pink Wine Sparkles in the Glass" - 2:13
3. "I Found Her in a Star" (Cummings) - 2:36
4. "Friends of Mine" - 10:04
5. "When You Touch Me" (Bachman, Cummings, Rob Matheson) - 3:38
6. "A Wednesday in Your Garden" (Bachman) - 3:20
7. "Lightfoot" (Bachman, Cummings, Matheson) - 3:07
8. "Love and a Yellow Rose" - 5:05
9. "Maple Fudge" - 1:49
10. "We're Coming to Dinner" - 2:43

I really enjoyed hearing it again, so I put a link to it on YouTube in the title above. It was the bands fourth studio album but the first to really get some national attention. It was also the first album to have Burton Cummings on lead vocals. Chad Allen had started a band back in 1958 and after several changes in personal and name they became The Guess Who? (the ? was dropped in 1968). When Allan left keyboardist Burton took over lead vocals. He was a talented songwriter as well as a singer and musician.

I'd heard Wheatfield Soul a lot when it was new but it got traded in for cash or more music. I had purges and got rid of albums when I had no room or I hadn't listened to them in a few years. I hadn't heard the album in decades, probably since the 1980's. I sold most of my records by 1995 as I switched to CD. Many bands never got replaced and The Guess Who was one of those bands that got left behind. Mind you, by the time I had gotten rid of my records I was winding down buying music on CD. I had been burned too often with a good song on the radio and nothing much I liked on the CD. I listened to soundtracks and scores more and more before TV took over. You get sight and sound with that. So nowadays I listen to the odd album on YouTube and since I got a newer car the Harry Potter soundtracks get played on that stereo.

Autumn Stone

 

That's the illustration on the record bag at the Autumn Stone. It's a record and head shop that I used to frequent back in the 1970s. I bought a lot of records there, both new and used, and it was the first place that I saw underground comix. I have had this bag for ages. I liked the illustration enough to keep it. Now that I'm scanning everything I can toss it out. I don't remember much about the store but I did find an article from the Winnipeg Free Press by John Einarson. He remembers more than me.

Your one-stop hippie shop

Autumn Stone was the coolest place in the city -- until disco came along

Unquestionably one of the hippest shops in Winnipeg in the 1970s was Autumn Stone. Named for a Small Faces album and located at 304 Kennedy Street, north of Portage Avenue, the Autumn Stone was your all-purpose one-stop hippie shopping experience. "We were one of the first places in the city to sell used records along with new records," notes co-owner Andy Mellen. "Plus we weren't just a record store. We had all the head-shop stuff, hip comics and a leather shop. All these things added to the attraction. You could come down and get your smoking needs, hear some great music, check out the comics and get a leather vest made."

What made the shop so cool? "The people who ran it," Andy insists. "We were a good reflection of the times. And the store didn't look like your typical record store; the funky atmosphere, the tapestries, the old wood."

Andy Mellen working in the shop. Just listen to the tributes:

"I loved going to the Stone. I always discovered something new and interesting. It was the coolest record shop I've ever been in. I bought my first Thin Lizzy album Jailbreak because it was playing in the store. Opus 69 [located down the street at 294 Kennedy] felt like a library to me. The Stone felt like Heaven." -- Rick Carpick

"I loved the vibe and I loved the cool music they played. It was a musical education for me." -- Craig Hobson 

"Autumn Stone was the coolest record store I'd ever been to. I was mesmerized by all the promotional photos on the wall and the four-foot-tall speaker cabinets. Worlds away from Eaton's record department." -- Gary Gurniak 

"I bought all my Fabulous Freak Brothers comics there." -- Dave Perich

Initially opened on Graham Avenue in 1971, partners James Speiss, Eric Green and Bill Kelly modelled the shop on Minneapolis's hip Electric Fetus. By the time it moved to Kennedy Street the following year Winnipeg Free Press music columnist Andy Mellen had come onboard. For most regulars, Andy would become the face of Autumn Stone. As John Tataryn recalls, "My friend Craig and I would spend hours there absorbing musical knowledge from Andy. It was a real education. It's because of Andy that I came to know and love Rory Gallagher, Robin Trower, and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis." Adds Darren Duke, "Andy Mellen was the bottom line attraction for me. He picked the music and turned us all on to it. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Budgie, old Pink Floyd... I could list a hundred albums I bought from Autumn Stone."

"I never tried to steer people toward music I didn't believe in and they trusted us," confirms Andy. "Plus we had a killer stereo system with these giant Tannoy speakers because not only did we want to listen to good music all day but we also wanted people who came in to hear it too. I'd put a Groundhogs album on and people would be asking, 'Who is this?!'"

The shop's ability to stock its shelves to suit its tastes was a further bonus. "We were too small for the individual record labels to bother with," Andy explains. "Instead we got stock from local rack-jobber MCTR. I would go there with a list of what we wanted and bring it back that day."

There are plenty of stories of hijinx and celebrity spottings. Members of Cheap Trick, Nazareth, even Lenny Breau dropped by as did Handsome Dick Manitoba of The Dictators. "Burke Shelley from Budgie came in to do an interview with me and ended up bagging records for customers," Andy recalls. The police would also drop by. "I got really good at spotting the narcs in their fake hippie clothes," he chuckles.

"There was always a hint of pot smoke as staff and visitors often slipped out a side door to a hidden smoking spot between buildings," says Mike Furnish. "Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick snuck out there with the boys while [guitarist] Rick Nielsen searched through the used records."

Eric Green managed Harlequin from a second-floor office while the basement served as a leather shop where a lovely woman known only as Juicer, along with Frank McNichol and Stuart Munn, crafted beautiful leather products. I still have an ornate guitar strap made for me by them. A character known to all as Fly ran the head shop department. For a time Winnipeg rock guru Howard Mandshein worked the front counter of the record shop.

"I was a huge Howard fan from the CJUM afternoon shift," recalls Kevin Ducheminsky, "and I used to hang out at Autumn Stone just to get an 'H' sighting." Local punk-rock pioneer Mitch Funk also worked the counter as did Wendy Perry among others.

By the latter '70s, the Stone's allure was fading. "Times changed, we didn't," states Andy. Disco came in, the world was changing, and cassettes started outselling vinyl. The shop closed its doors in January 1980.

"If it could be said that a business had a personality, then Autumn Stone had a personality," Andy surmises. "It was a friendly place with a funky atmosphere. We were guys who were honest and upfront about music and wanted to sell you good music. It wasn't about the profits. It was a great time in my life and a great time in music. I miss those times dearly."

I didn't realize that the store had closed so soon after I left. I used to like hanging out there. I'd talk to the clerks and once in a while someone I knew would showup. I didn't know at the time that they had based their store on the Electric Fetus here in Minneapolis. I used to hang out there some but not as much as some of the other record stores in South Minneapolis. The Fetus is still there, where they've been for decades, but I hardly ever visit anymore. I don't buy much music anymore so there's not much need.

Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth 1967

 

I had been thinking about Neil Young earlier and that lead me to the Buffalo Springfield. I really liked For What It's Worth when I was a young lad listening to their first album Buffalo Springfield. It was a 1967 release but I would have listened to the re-issue which came out a year later. For What It's Worth didn't appear on the first version of the album, it first appeared as a single. I would have probably not listened to this album until the early 1970's. After I started working was when I had the money to buy more albums. The song has an interesting origin that you can read about on the Wikipedia.

The Boxtops - The Letter

 

The Replacements seem to be popping up in my observational sphere of late. It's not a big one, I lack the drive to dig a big hole and jump in. The Replacements appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon a few days ago. I don't watch the show but there's a link to the song Alex Chilton on YouTube. I was sort of curious, I liked the band's song Bastards Of Young a good bit when it was new and Alex Chilton was a close second fav. I have to admit I'm not a fan of the band for the most part. I liked those two songs and didn't much care for a lot of their other material. I heard most of their albums but never bought them. The music budget went to other things. For those that don't know Alex Chilton was the singer in a 60's band called The Boxtops. Their big hit was The Letter. I liked that song a lot when I heard it and it still has a lot going on.

 

The Allman Brothers Band - Midnight Rider

 

This song popped into my head this evening and I had to go out and find it on YouTube because I don't have it on a CD. I don't have any of their songs on cd at all. If you like that Southern Rock song you probably would like this version of Whipping Post, live at the legendary Fillmore East, September 23 1970. I used to listen to the band's At Fillmore East double album all the time when it was newer. That has a 23 minute version of Whipping Post on it. Not for the weak hearted. I see from the Wikipedia that it has been released several times over the years and continues to sell well.