Bob Stark

The idea of getting a lot of great musicians together to work as a back-up band for a featured artist on rock recordings is almost as old as rock itself.

On most of these, the back-up people were lucky to get mentioned conspicuously on the album jacket. But somewhere along the line people began to really care about who played what.

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It was probably something I had coming for a long time, but it really caught me by surprise when it happened. After all I don’t write these pieces because I get paid for them. I do it because it gets me some free records, gets me into the clubs for free, and a few other fringe benefits. Or so I thought.

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The on again-off again break up of the Red, White and Blues Band is On-again-off again. After the original guitarist-harpist quit, he was replaced by two people, a singer-harpist and a lead player who never really worked out.

It was announced that the group was breaking up for good, then that they would just replace the singer and the guitarist with two new people. But bigger things were in the air, and now, it seems, piano player Skip has left the group to join the Wilson Mower Pursuit.

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While local music business people continue to hype the Detroit scene as a major center of the pop world the scene itself continues to deteriorate and no one seems to care enough about it to do anything constructive.

Quite the contrary, the trend seems to be toward copying all the mistakes that have been made in every other “major music center” in order to exploit every last nickel to be had from the people.

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The thought of hearing any music played in Olympia Stadium is distressing. There is no acoustical ceiling on the arena and the bare rafters not only echo much of the sound, but also distort it or often trap it. Also, setting up the stage at one end of the narrow stadium makes it difficult, if not impossible to clearly see what’s going on.

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The Detroit area is getting desperately short of places for rock bands to play. Three months ago things looked really good with the Grande, the Hideouts, and the Crow’s Nests all doing well; the Eastown getting ready to open, and at least eight smaller clubs rumored to be opening by early summer.

But in the last month the prevailing winds seem to have shifted in the other direction. The Clawson Hideout was forced to close down because the city fathers and the Knights of Columbus (who own the hall) limited the capacity to 350, hardly enough to break even. The Crow’s Nest West has closed to remodel right at the start of the Summer.

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“The problem with San Francisco groups is, I was expecting wonders and miracles and what I heard was a bunch of white blues bands that didn’t sound as funky as my little band in high school.”

—Frank Zappa

“Big Brother is a joke.”

—Mike Bloomfield

“That’s Jim Gurley. He’s the SADDEST guitar player in the whole world.”

—Hippie

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a review of

The Stooges (Elektra EKS-74051)

The Stooges’ earliest live appearances consisted of the band playing 25 minutes or so of uninterrupted music while Iggy danced, contorted and otherwise acted strange in front of them. They never did the same thing twice. The music was always different. Iggy once covered his body with raw hamburger before he went on stage.

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Have you who are reading this article expecting to be told how good or how bad whatever record I have chosen to review really is, ever stopped to analyze what you personally think is good music? Have you ever tried to think of music (Rock music) outside of the context of an immediately occurring pleasure-displeasure-boredom reaction?

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