Happy Bidding!

Come to the Lager House Saturday, and see if a local bidder wins it.

You’ve probably seen this on other blogs, but I figured it was worth noting here too.

The Pop Project is one of 16 Detroit acts featured on Ear to the Ground: Detroit, which is a 100% free compilation distributed on the now-legal Limewire site. The artists for the compilation were selected by the Metro Times, and each artist picked their own song to contribute. The compilation is actually a surprisingly quality and diverse sampling of music. Usually these sort of things are pretty lame.

Here’s the link. www.store.limewire.com/detroit

So, Ellie Greenwich died today of a heart attack. Wasn’t expecting that one. Only this past weekend I was admiring her personal website, noting how endearingly homemade and homely it was.

If you’re not familiar with Ellie Greenwich, here’s a sampling of songs she wrote:
Be My Baby (The Ronettes), Then He Kissed Me (The Crystals), He’s Got the Power (The Exciters), Hanky Panky (Tommy James and the Shandells), Do Wah Diddy Diddy (Manfred Mann), Chapel of Love (The Dixie Cups), Da Doo Run Run (The Crystals), I Can Hear Music (Ronnettes/Beach Boys), Leader of the Pack (Shangri-Las), Maybe I Know (Lesley Gore), River Deep, Mountain High (Ike & Tina, Harry Nilsson) and many more.

She also had hits as an artist, even if it initially came about somewhat accidentally. Similar to the stories of Carole King’s early singles or Little Eva’s ”The Locomotion,” Ellie’s first hit was just a demo that a label decided to press: “What a Guy.” Since Ellie did so many harmonies on the recordings, the single was marketed as a doowop group, the Raindrops. Subsequent releases featured then-husband Jeff Barry laying down a bass vocal. The Raindrops released a few additional hits, including one of my favorite silly doowop tunes: “The Kind of Boy You Can’t Forget.”

She also discovered Neil Diamond and produced the original versions of songs like “Solitary Man,” “Kentucky Woman,” and “Cherry Cherry.”  If that’s not enough for you, she also arranged the vocals and sang for Aretha’s “Chain of Fools,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” in addition to countless other recordings from the 60s and 70s.

I first got an idea of Ellie’s greatness after watching this documentary about the Brill Building songwriters - all of which were amazing talents in their own right. The sad fact that struck me from watching the documentary is that it seemed like Ellie had been somewhat lost after the Brill Building heyday, alluding to serious depression.  So it was somewhat of a consolation to stumble on her website recently and learn that the Broadway musical based on her music and life (Leader of the Pack) had been providing her vicarious joy through communication with a younger generation of high school drama students who wanted to know about her. While it looks like they’ve already taken the link down, as recently as this weekend, her website listed her personal email address and invited high school students who had performed the play to write her.

Here’s a quote from an essay Ellie wrote on her website:

Now, thirty years older, I believe that many of my generation have reached a new plateau and it’s an interesting place. You can realize the fruits of years of hard work and you can watch your grown children slipping into the roles you are now leaving, but you also are painfully aware that you don’t quite fit into society any longer. It’s not the same world you knew. You are facing old age (oops!…I mean the “Golden Years”), and you really don’t want to. It’s a frightening time for many people. We feel somewhat scattered and directionless and we wish we were back in the 60’s. We need to grab that anchor of stability once again, but can’t find it…until we hear a familiar tune on the radio

Hopefully oldies radio does play tribute to this behind-the-scenes superstar. For a while, I’ve been meaning to download all the Ellie Greenwich songs I hadn’t heard before and make my own complete Greenwich-Barry collection (I did the same thing for early Carole King and Randy Newman songs a few years ago, and both were great). Now seems like a great time to follow through with that idea.

Here’s one of Ellie’s first solo singles, “Baby.”

Ryan Allen posted this to Facebook. It’s no secret that I have deep-seeded Livonian pride. Obviously, this video does nothing to diminish that pride.

Kevin has tackled some random projects, and whether its auditioning to be the new INXS singer, writing a 15-second acoustic story song for a noise compilation about popes, recording a live album in my basement, or his many entries to the Suburban Sprawl Holiday comps, he consistently stands out as the unique character he is.

About a month ago, Kevin sent me a link to his entry for an A-1 video contest. His song is called “If the Steak Is Sizzlin, the A-1 Is Drizzlin.”  Here’s the video:

Since it’s been a month with no news, I’m guessing he didn’t win a swimming pool full of A1 or whatever the grand prize was. It’s hard to believe someone beat him, considering the competition:

Aaaaaaand, we have this:

No one has done a show recap in quite a while. Here goes a Fucking Awesome Fest report. Be forewarned, this post will not be good.

Day 2 (Friday, August 14th):

I went!

- Not surprisingly, I watched bits of Office and Javelins. Both were good. Javelins did not have two lesbian drummers, so points to Office. The lane stage in the Garden Bowl sounded god awful.

- I also saw most of Thunderbirds Are Now’s set, but missed “Pink Motorcyle Helmet.” Crap.

- People were dressed up mad Amish at this show. Mad Amish. That’s the trend now? Oh, good.

Day 3 (Saturday, August 15th):

I went to Dexter Daze.

Pictures below:

You probably haven’t heard, but Ted Weber passed away last Friday. 

He was a speaker builder, the founder of Weber Speakers, and quite an innovator when it came to guitar tone. I’ve got 3 of his California Series speakers in various speaker cabs. They sound great.

Here’s a link to is obituary. 

The best part is that he was a hobbyist. Unlike Seymour Duncan or Bill Lawrence who were better known for their playing, before they started designing gear, Ted Weber worked at GM most of his life. He built a few guitar speakers for friends, and then things took off.

Coincidentally, Weber Speakers is in the midst of a 10% off sale.

You may have heard, but Les Paul died today. The guy was really old, so it’s probably not a huge shock. It was more shocking to me that until recently he was still performing on a regular basis.

I saw the movie Les Paul Chasing Sound recently, though, and his accomplishments and story are truly mindblowing. Most people know that he invented multi-tracking and the solid body guitar. You might even know that when he lost mobility in his right arm, he had it permanently placed in an L-shape so he could continue playing guitar.

Here’s one thing that people often overlook: He recorded most of material with his wife, Mary Ford, when his homemade multitrack technology was still very primitive. While he could overdub on top of a recording, he recorded over everything as we went. Which meant that everything had to be done perfectly on the FIRST TAKE or else he lost everything. Think about that when you hear this song, which spent 25 weeks at the #1 position.

Another fact: Les and Mary would travel and use various houses for sale as temporary recording studios, using hallways and bathrooms for natural reverb, similar to what Will told MotorCityRocks today when talking about the Zoos of Berlin album. Les Paul’s subtle influence strikes again.