1971: Fillmores

Allman Brothers: Whipping Post
[purchase Don't Fight the Feeling - the Complete Aretha Franklin & King Curtis Live at Fillmore West ]
[purchase Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East Deluxe Edition]
[purchase Mothers Fillmore East-June 1971]
[purchase Humble Pike Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore] 

1971 saw the closing of both the Fillmore West and the Fillmore East, the legendary venues operated by the equally legendary rock impresario Bill Graham. The original Fillmore Auditorium was located in a San Francisco building originally built in 1912, and Graham began booking shows there in 1965. It eventually became the center of the San Francisco music scene, with incredible musical performances and famous light shows. But in 1968, because of the increasing deterioration of the neighborhood and the insufficient size of the space, Graham moved his focus to the newly christened “Fillmore West.” That venue, formerly the Carousel Ballroom, was briefly run in 1968 as a cooperative venture by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company, before Graham took ownership and began booking shows there. (The original Fillmore was, for a while, operated by a different company as the “New Old Fillmore.”) 

The name “Fillmore West” was chosen because earlier in 1968, Graham had taken over a derelict space in New York City originally built for the Yiddish theater in the mid-1920s, and opened it as the Fillmore East. That venue, like its West Coast sibling(s) became hugely popular and influential, with shows on multiple nights a week, typically triple bills at 8 and 11 pm. The Fillmore East also featured elaborate light shows. 

However, by1971, the economics of the music business was changing in favor of stadium and arena shows (boo!), and Graham decided to shutter both venues. The last concert at the Fillmore East was an invitation-only affair on June 27, 1971, featuring The Allman Brothers Band, The J. Geils Band, Albert King and special surprise guests (Edgar Winter's White Trash, Mountain, The Beach Boys, Country Joe McDonald). The Fillmore West closed on July 4, 1971, after five nights of concerts by 14 bands, mostly from the San Francisco area, including Santana, the Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. 

The Fillmore West eventually became a Honda dealership, before becoming a music and event venue called SVN West. The Fillmore East went through a few other iterations as a music venue before becoming The Saint, a gay nightclub in the 1980s. The former lobby of the venue is now a bank, and the auditorium was demolished to build an apartment building. 

The original Fillmore became a punk venue, The Elite Club, before reopening under Graham’s management. It was damaged in an earthquake, and after Graham died in 1991, it was repaired and reopened as The Fillmore. Live Nation operates the venue and has rebranded a number of theaters around the country with the Fillmore name, although in some cases, most notably at New York’s Irving Plaza, it didn’t take. 

Although 1971 was a bad year for the Fillmores West and East, it was a good year for albums recorded at the venues. On May19, 1971, Aretha Live at Fillmore West was released. It had been recorded there in March, and included a number of covers of current popular music. It’s pretty great, featuring, in addition to the amazing Franklin, King Curtis on sax, leading a band that included, among others, Billy Preston, Cornell Dupree, Bernard Purdie, and the Memphis Horns. And there’s a duet with Ray Charles. During the same shows, King Curtis’s band, which was also the opening act, recorded its performances (mostly covers), and they were released as Live at Fillmore West in August. Tragically, a week after its release, Curtis was stabbed to death in New York. 

If there’s one album that rock fans associate with the Fillmore East, it is the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, recorded there in March, 1971 and released on July 6, 1971. I’m not really sure what else to say about this album that hasn’t been said better by others. Suffice to say that it is one of the greatest live rock albums of all time, and probably just one of the best rock albums of all time (which is why when I picked one song to feature above, it was from that album). In 2004, the album was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress, deemed to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" by the National Recording Registry. 

In June, 1971, The Mothers (formerly known as The Mothers of Invention, led by Frank Zappa) recorded performances at the Fillmore East (and some additional performances in May in Michigan), for Fillmore East-June 1971, released in August. It is raunchy and juvenile, and while it has some good music, really hasn’t aged well. 

Humble Pie, which featured Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton, recorded performances at the Fillmore East in May, 1971, and released Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore in November, 1971. I can’t say that I’m at all familiar with it, although I have a vague sense that I’ve heard the single from it, “I Don’t Need No Doctor.” Before the album was released, Frampton left the band for a few years of minimal success before he came alive, briefly.

It's Elemental: Earth Angel

The Penguins: Earth Angel
[purchase]

Change is one of the few things that we can count on. Marriage equality, which not so long ago seemed first impossible, then unlikely, is now the law of the land. Donald Trump has changed from a bufoonish businessman to a bufoonish politician. In my lifetime, we have gone from a world with a handful of TV stations, a music industry dominated by large companies issuing vinyl and computers that filled rooms to virtually unlimited access to all media, including on powerful computers we carry in our pockets.

When Plato and Aristotle passed for scientists, they understood that there were four elements—earth, air, fire and water, and maybe a fifth, “aether.” A similar five element system was posited in Hindu writings, and the Buddha taught about the first four. The Chinese philosophers had five—Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood, while Japanese tradition followed the Hindu system. Or at least, that’s what Wikipedia says. Modern science, however, considers elements to be substances defined by their atomic numbers, with 118 of them currently identified. If anything, the classical elements are now loosely identified with the states of matter—solid, gas, liquid and plasma.

The song, “Earth Angel,” refers to one of the classical elements directly, and even, to some degree, to the aether, because that’s where angels dwell. It was the one and only hit song by the Penguins (penguins, of course, live where Water is often a solid, although the group was from Los Angeles, where Water is now at a premium, the Earth quakes, Fire ravages the countryside and the Air is almost solid). The Penguins, a doo-wop group that morphed from an earlier group, the Hollywood Flames (Fire!!), literally recorded the demo version of the song in a garage in 1954, often having to stop recording when a neighbor’s dog barked.

The music business was so different in those days that the demo, physically carried to a record store as an acetate by producer/label owner Dootsie Williams (who also recorded comedy records by Redd Foxx and violinist Johnny Creach, who years later, as Papa John Creach, played with the Jefferson Airplane/Starship and Hot Tuna), was played on a radio show, requests came in, Williams decided to release it without dubbing any more instrumentation, and a hit was born (despite the fact that Williams insisted on releasing it as the b-side of the now forgotten "Hey Señorita"). The success of the song created a demand that apparently almost bankrupted Williams, who ran out of label paper. Its timelessness and beauty has resulted in sales of millions of copies over the years, numerous cover versions and soundtrack appearances. And not surprisingly, it resulted in years of litigation among Williams, members of the group, putative song writers and Mercury (an Element!) Records, which later signed the Penguins and released a more produced and less successful version of the song.  One of the songwriter claimants, Jesse Belvin, actually was required by the judge to stand up and sing his version, which led to his being awarded a portion of the credit.  The Penguins later released a nostalgia novelty song called "Memories of El Monte," based on the "Earth Angel" chord changes, and containing bits of other doo-wop songs, including "Earth Angel," which was written by Frank Zappa and Ray Collins, pre-Mothers of Invention.

I was introduced to this song years ago by my parents, who are high school sweethearts and remembered dancing to the song during their courtship during the 1954-55 era. My parents married in 1959 and are still together. And while that hasn’t changed, like all relationships, theirs has changed over the years, from being young marrieds with small kids, to successful adults who put those kids through college, to amazing grandparents. I’ve seen my parents dance over the years, usually at weddings and bar mitzvahs, and while I’m sure that they dance differently now than they did back when “Earth Angel” was a hit, I know that their love and respect for each other hasn’t changed, and, if anything, has grown stronger.

AND BANDS : FRANK ZAPPA AND THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION

Ruben and the Jets: Cheap Thrills

Purchase Link

OK, guys, I'm playing with you today, but you probably knew that. I felt the opportunity for a double "and band" too tempting to pass, hence the apparent contradiction between the title and the subsequent link. For those who don't know, "Cruisin' with Ruben and the Jets" was the 4th LP by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, or, strictly speaking, the Mothers of Invention, but, hey, it's my column, and it's what we all called 'em. This record, a pastiche of and paean to Zappas love of doo-wop, deliberately played the Mothers entirely in role, as a  mythical band, Ruben and the Jets, with  Zappa being their leader, Ruben Sano. Arriving on top of his earlier and decidedly uncommercial product, perhaps as the original singles made no mention of Zappa or the Mothers name, the songs received considerably more airplay and exposure, ironically, than when it became re-released with the "real" name of the band. Indeed, jocks felt they had unearthed some old original songs from the 50s. This is an old trick, not forgotten by many a band and canny producer to this day.
My exposure to this, over the other side of the atlantic, and barely into double figures of age in 1968, its year of release, was somewhat arduous. Indeed, it was, I am shamed to admit, only as I researched this piece that I ever got round to listening to any of the tracks.(Please don't tell anyone I know.) Because Zappa was always to me a far better idea than a reality. I'll explain. During my early teens many, many afternoons were spent in one particular record shop, which had a very liberal approach to letting local schoolboys while away their days, headphones on, going thru' the racks. As well as filling my ears with what I wanted to listen to, generally standard UK rock, I could fill my eyes with all the weird and wonderful names and album covers of innumerable west coast bands, as they were then called. So, as Deep Purple choogled in my ear, I was leafing through Stoneground, It's a Beautiful Day, Captain Beefheart, Moby Grape etc etc. And Frank Zappa, with and without the Mothers of Invention, clearly the ugliest group of reprobates ever. Which was high praise. My guess now is that the owner of the shop was a fan, but, given their duration of stay in the racks, I sometimes wonder how many ever got sold. Believe me, there is somewhat of a difference between L.A. and Eastbourne, Sussex. I did eventually buy "Hot Rats", loving it to this day, but other and earlier Zappa was, shall we say, rather too difficult an appreciation to aquire, so I had to remain with just liking the image and dropping the name.
So, fast forward forty plus years and what do I think? Hmmm, Ok, I suppose. I guess you had to be there....... But I defend my right to upholding this self-deception for much of my life. I dare say I am not alone, especially when I note Beefheart is also in the list mentioned above.
When and if, having been blown away by my enthusiasm, you get to listen to the link, you will discover this a bit different from the one currently available for purchase, the originals having fallen victim to a later re-mix, by Zappa, with some change of musicians, causing uproar within hardcore afficianados. The youtube link is a vinyl rip from the original version.
Should you be looking for any other product by the "Ruben" band, you will probably find another LP, confusingly also by Ruben and the Jets. Just to be awkward, this is a conceptual tribute band, formed to emulate and take forward the success of the brand. Their producer, awkward as ever? Frank Zappa!

Trouble: Trouble Every Day / More Trouble Every Day

The Mothers of Invention: Trouble Every Day

[purchase]

Frank Zappa: More Trouble Every Day (Swaggert Version)

[purchase]

Here we have two versions of the same song--though with different titles and very different arrangements--from opposite ends of Frank Zappa's career. The first track, "Trouble Every Day", comes from the first Mothers of Invention album, 1965's Freak Out. Infused with themes of race, violence, social injustice, and sensationalist journalism, the lyrics are, sadly, timeless.

In later years, Zappa revisited the song, speeding it up, addressing current events, and retitling it "More Trouble Every Day". The version here comes from his last tour in 1988, and was released on the album The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life. Like several songs on the album, Jimmy Swaggert is the main target of Zappa's ire. The '80s were a kind of golden age for hypocritical television evangelists. And for Zappa, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Sadly, Zappa passed away in 1993. One wonders what he would have produced were he still with us today.