Phil Ochs

First of all I'd like to thank Rosa Mannen from Sweden, who ripped these clips, shared them on the web and allowed me to upload them here.
In the early sixties Phil Ochs was a very promising folk singer of the Greenwich Village scene, like his friend/enemy Bob Dylan. He probably hadn't got the same poetic talent as Dylan, just a beautiful voice, a guitar to accompany his biting or tender ballads, and a great urge to communicate. He never stopped being commited as a militant for peace, and this costed him the censorship of the medias and even some troubles with the FBI. He was present at the famous Democratic Convention of 1968 in Chicago, and he was arrested along with many other protesters.
When he started recording "pop" music, he did it with very original and refined arrangements, like in the album Pleasures Of The Harbor, on which the song Crucifixion is included. Unfortunately the clip of this tune is incomplete, but it is so good, and also quite difficult to find, that I decided to upload it just the same.
I Ain't Marching Anymore is his "almost famous" song, the anti-war hymn that the people always expected him to sing.
The videos are from an appearance at the Swedish TV in 1969.
Phil committed suicide in 1976. Thirty years after his death, his songs don't sound so dated to me...unfortunately.

Abot Crucifixion Phil said: "It's a song about Christ-killing, how all America and even, especially, New York loves to create heroes to moralize to them and then kill them violently, bloodily and dig the death so much, every detail of the death. It's a song about Jesus Christ. It's called The Crucifixion. It's a song about Kennedy. And maybe a song about Dylan."

In fact it was not about Dylan, it was about John Lennon, but Phil couldn't know it because, when he wrote the song, Lennon wasn't living in New York yet.

Phil Ochs - I Ain't Marching Anymore (1969)
Phil Ochs - Crucifixion (1969)

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See you soon

Mirco

The Captain's Blues

In these two videos Captain Beefheart defaces the blues in his own unique and ingenious way, in different periods of his musical journey, with different incarnations of the Magic Band, proving he never lost his inspiration.

The live version of Click Clack, a song included on The Spotlight Kid album, is from a 1972 concert in an historical Paris concert hall called Le Bataclan (in that same year Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico also performed a legendary concert there).

The second video is a promo clip for the title track of his last record Ice Cream For Crow. Some of his paintings and some evocative landscapes of the Mojave Desert in southern California are shown in the clip. When Captain Beefheart leaved the music business, Don Van Vliet went to live in that desert, as a painter.

I don't think his music was just several years ahead of its times, he sounded like he came from several light years away from our planet.

Captain Beefheart - Click Clack (1972)

Captain Beefheart - Ice Cream For Crow (1982)

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See you

Mirco

The Zakary Thaks

We remain in Texas and we move to a southern town called Corpus Christi, home of two great garage bands of the sixties: the Bad Seeds and the Zakary Thaks. The Thaks were a group of teen-agers (the average age was just 16 years) who released six singles between 1966 and '69. Their contribution to the Nuggets compilation is a song called Bad Girl, maybe the fastest and trashiest among the 118 tracks included on the 4 CDs box set.
At the beginning of their career they had been filmed while playing some songs, probably by their manager Mike Taylor, singer of the Bad Seeds, who used the footage to try to get them some gigs. The Zakary Thaks managed to play as an opening act for many popular bands who performed in Corpus Christi.
Luckily the film didn't get lost, so we can see this legendary band in action. Their version of My Little Red Book is certainly influenced by the Love's one, but they express their uncontrollable energy even better with Sock It To Me Baby. This clip really confirms us that punk music was born a decade before the Ramones or the Sex Pistols.

Zakary Thaks - Sock It To Me Baby (1966)
Zakary Thaks - My Little Red Book (1966)

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Bye

Mirco

Meeting With An Alien

We've already seen a couple of acoustic performances by Roky Erickson, now we are going to know the electric and wild side of his music. Like Demon Angel, Meeting With An Alien is a low budget movie about Roky, produced by the University Of Texas in Austin, Roky's hometown, and broadcasted by a local cable TV channel.

1980 is the year on which his first solo LP had finally been released. The seventies had been a very troubled period on which he had been even interned in a state mental hospital. A terrible experience, but also a very creative period during which he wrote a lot of songs, about the evil creatures that seem to obsess his mind: zombies, aliens, demons, vampires...

The fact that he has some mental health problems makes his music probably even more attractive to many of his fans, but the simple truth is that he has a very special talent as a songwriter and a magnetic charisma as a performer. Am I the only one who prefers his solo works to the 13th Floor Elevators' records?

On Meeting With An Alien Roky is interviewed and plays some acoustic stuff in a studio, but the movie also offers parts of a compelling concert with his band, the Explosives, in a club called The Lone Star. I've read somewhere on the web that this was a place in New York City...but isn't Texas the Lone Star state?

One years ago he re-appeared for a short but amazing concert in Austin, he looked in great shape. It seems that there is a group of fans/friends that takes care of him there and helps him to pay the bills. Now that Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee have just died, is somehow a comfort to know that Roky is still with us, and maybe his life is not so bad.

I wish the quality of these clips was a little better, but here they are anyway.

Roky Erickson & The Explosives - White Faces (1980)

Roky Erickson & The Explosives - Two Headed Dog (1980)

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Ciao

Mirco

Warren Zevon

This post is dedicated to Warren Zevon, who died exactly three years ago at the age of 56.

One year before his death a lung cancer had been diagnosed to him, so that he knew he had a short time left to live. As an official comment he said he was afraid to miss the next James Bond movie, confirming his typical sardonic humour. He didn't feel discouraged and went back into the studio with some distinguished friends to record The Wind, his last album, that gives us one more reason to miss him.

Though he never reached a big success he's been a great rock songwriter, who told stories about the losers of America with a solid musical style of his own, and in the lyrics he showed the same capacity of a film noir movies' script-writer.

In the clip we see him on Top Of The Pops in the year 2000, performing live his most famous song, originally included on Excitable Boy, maybe his best album. He is accompanied only on his piano, an instrument that, as you will see, he was able to play with an almost classic style.

Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London (2000)

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See you soon

Mirco

The Hawkwind At Stonehenge

Veterans of the free festivals scene, idols for different generations of freaks, the Hawkwind couldn't be missing from the Stonehenge festival of 1984, the same on which Roy Harper played too, to celebrate the summer solstice. They played on the night of June 20 and in the morning after, the second clip also shows an evocative footage of the crowd in the stone circle by the early light of the day.
In that period the former member Nik Turner, the guy with the weird costume and make-up who plays the saxophone, had rejoined the band for a while, and this make the concert even more interesting.
A part of the performance can be heard on a CD called This Is Hawkwind, Do Not Panic, and seen on a VHS. In 2004, for the 20th anniversary, a DVD with the whole concert has been released.
You know what to expect from the Hawkwind on stage, their space-rock may be predictable but they are always guaranteed to blow your mind.

Hawkwind - Social Alliance (1984)
Hawkwind - The Right Stuff (1984)

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See you next time

Mirco