https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxT5sfhP_Y0
Showing posts with label surf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surf. Show all posts
Friday, March 15, 2013
Sunday, March 3, 2013
I Calls It "Hypno-Surf:" Michael Clark's intodown
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
I most likely met Michael Clark through his wife, artist Suzanne Kelley Clark, perhaps a decade ago.
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| Suzanne Kelley Clark figure drawing. |
Through Michael (and my other friend Larry King) I learned to love the surf guitar genre.
Michael also shared his other musical passions with me -- his appreciation for swing and blues guitarists like Bill Jennings and Tiny Grimes. He opened my ears with his gormet Mosaic Box Set collections of T-Bone Walker, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk, and hipped me to Texas rock legends, the 13th Floor Elevators.
Back in the day, we checked out a few Dallas Guitar shows, a ZZ Top concert, two Dick Dale performances, and even saw Los Straitjackets live -- I always had a great time whenever we linked up.
I saw Michael at the Lakewood Starbucks yesterday, two days after he played a recent live set at a Dallas club. Sadly, I missed that performance -- but I did manage to score his 2007 CD "Brave New World" from him at the Starbucks.
It's an ultra-fab CD -- and for me, fits nicely into the surf genre we love -- while some might characterize it as perhaps, "psychedelic" -- I prefer to dub it in my true Mango fashion as "Hypno-Surf." I consider Michael's CD as nothing less than a masterpiece, complete with hypnotic power chords, ambient soundscapes, blistering reverb and feedback guitar licks, trance-inducing psychedelic imagery, tasty and haunting horn playing, and those all-important driving surf drums.
What can I say? I'm blown away. Michael has melded his influences with consummate artistry.
Here is Michael's own writing from his old Myspace page:
"Hi. I'm Michael Clark. I am the guitarist and composer for my band, intodown. It is with the help of very talented musicians that I am able to record, produce and present live, the music of intodown.
The latest record is Brave New World. Brave New World can be heard on Facebook, Bandcamp, Myspace and the intodown website and purchased at CDBaby, Bandcamp, iTunes and most of the other legit download sites on the web.
A Big thank you to the 170+ college radio stations that played, and continue to play, Brave New World. And, a Very special thanks to all the reviewers who took the time to listen to the record and write intelligently about the music. Thank you for your time!
Reviews can be read on Facebook and the intodown website.
People ask about my influences. Well, most influencial would be the 13th Floor Elevators who I had the pleasure of sharing the stage in late '60's. Blues, psychedelic, surf, progressive, ambient, stoner, be-bop, classical guitar and some classic rock are influences. Cream, Jimi, Gilmour, Dick Dale, Hollywood Fats, Miles and Theolonious are important influences.
I also work with other artists and bands. Tracking my guitar, sound design, arrangements, ideas, what not. Feel free to contact.
What you hear on BandCamp are "idea jams." These improvisations are one of my compositional tools. It's usually 30+ minutes of raw emotion strapped to an out of control sonic rollercoaster spinning into oblivion. Just how I like it. And, I hope you do, too!
Free to download. Please share these tracks with the right friends. And please play it LOUD."
Genre: Progressive / Psychedelic / Rock
Don says, nah-- it's Hypno-Surf.
A YouTube video:
Nostradomas intodown live at Deep Elum Blues, 2010 ~ Michael Clark - Guitar, Smokin' Dave Vincent - Harp, Fred Harvey - Saxophone, Andy VanHousen -bass, and Carol Dierking - Drums
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeAXyO4z3ks
The intodown homepage:
http://www.intodown.com/
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Monday, December 10, 2012
Korla Pandit in 1951, Performing "Miserlou" for Snader Telescriptions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ytSC8rz84
Korla Pandit (1921-1998), born John Roland Redd, was a musician, composer, pianist, organist and television pioneer. He was known as the Godfather of Exotica.
Early career
In 1921, Pandit was born John Roland Redd in St. Louis, Missouri, to an African-American family. The next year, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri where they lived for nine years. In 1931 the family moved to Columbia, Missouri. Pandit's father was Ernest Redd, an African-American man, and his mother was Doshia O'Nina Redd, of French and African blood. Pandit had two brothers and four sisters, all light-skinned like himself. He attended a segregated school and learned to play piano. A contemporary of his, jazz pianist "Sir" Charles Thompson, knew him during that time; he said that John Roland Redd was the better piano player.
Pandit's first work for radio was in 1938 with the Central Broadcasting Company in Des Moines, Iowa. Arriving in Los Angeles, California by 1939, John Roland Redd donned a turban and performed under the name Juan Rolando. His sister, Frances Redd, was an actress in the film Midnight Shadow (1939), and his turban resembled the one worn by John Criner's character, Prince Alihabad, in Midnight Shadow.
During the mid-1940s, as Juan Rolando, he played the organ on the Los Angeles radio station KMPC, and he performed in various supper clubs and lounges. He also was heard on Jubilee, the program of black jazz and swing bands transcribed by the Special Services of the War Department for airing to WWII servicemen overseas.
In 1944, he married Disney artist Beryl June DeBeeson, and the two reinvented his image, eventually replacing "Juan Rolando" with "Korla Pandit" and fabricating a romantic history for him as a baby born in New Delhi, India to a Brahmin priest and a French opera singer, who traveled from India via England, finally arriving in the United States.
Chandu the Magician
In 1948 he created eerie background music for the revival of radio's occult adventure series, Chandu the Magician, achieving atmospheric effects on the Novachord and the Hammond C-3 Electronic Organ. In 1949, he was heard on Hollywood Holiday, broadcast from a Los Angeles restaurant.
Television
Korla Pandit performed at Tom Breneman's Restaurant, seen here as it looked in 1947, Breneman broadcast his Breakfast in Hollywood radio program from here in the late 1940s.In 1948, while performing in Hollywood at a furrier's fashion show in Tom Breneman's Restaurant, Korla and Beryl met television pioneer Klaus Landsberg who offered Korla his own 15-minute daily television show with the stipulation that he would also provide musical accompaniment for Time for Beany, Bob Clampett's popular puppet show which featured Stan Freberg and Daws Butler as puppeteers and voices. Korla and Beryl's son, Shari Pandit, was born August 5, 1948.
Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music was first telecast on Los Angeles station KTLA in February 1949, and viewers soon became familiar with the musical opening, "The Magnetic Theme." Landsberg insisted that Korla not speak but instead simply gaze dreamily into the camera as he played the Hammond organ and Steinway grand piano, often simultaneously. Following Klaus's directorial and contractual stipulations, Pandit became an overnight star and one of early television's pioneering musical artists.
In 1951, Pandit left KTLA in a deal with Louis D. Snader of Snader Telescriptions, resulting in short films which gave Pandit a national TV audience. However, problems with contract negotiations prompted Snader to replace Pandit with Liberace by 1953, which launched the pianist to fame. Pandit then did a show on KGO in San Francisco.
In the 1970s, when his television popularity waned, Pandit supplemented his income with increased personal appearances at supper clubs, supermarket openings, car agencies, music and department stores, pizza restaurants, lectures, music seminars, private lessons and the theater organ circuit. He made a cameo appearance in Tim Burton's biographical film, Ed Wood (1994), playing himself.
Recordings
Pandit's audio works number over two dozen albums on 78 and 45rpm records, LP vinyl albums and CD labels. The back of his LP Hypnotique (Fantasy 8075) lists eight other Fantasy Records LPs by Pandit, and he eventually recorded 13 albums for Fantasy. His Christmas album, Merry Xmas (CD reissue 2007, Deja Vu), has been highlighted by Nick DiFonzo in The WORST Album Covers in the World... EVER! (New Holland Publishers, 2004). The album cover may be viewed at All Music.
Pandit died in Petaluma, California of a myocardial infarction. Two years following his death, it was revealed in an article by Los Angeles magazine editor R J Smith that Pandit was actually an African-American who had been born in the United States.
Filmography
Chiu Chiu
Song Of India
Tango In D
Moon Love
Underwater Worshippers
Miserlou
The Swan
Stormy Weather
Monday, November 12, 2012
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Drum Great Mel Taylor: The Ventures Japan 1966
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| Mel Taylor (1933-1996) (is best remembered as the second drummer of surf instrumental pioneers, the Ventures. Influenced by Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa and Louis Bellson, Taylor’s early career consisted of playing with Boris Pickett and Herb Alpert before replacing Howie Johnson in the Ventures. The year was 1962 and Taylor would stay with the Ventures on and off for the next thirty years. He passed away as a result of cancer on August 11, 1996. |
Surf drumming has always been incredibly vigorous. Keith Moon or The Who started out as a surf drummer. Check out the phenomenal Mel Taylor, aka as "Mr. Dynamic" in Japan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZngDBlHjb0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7ZOf-tD3rw&feature=related
Friday, June 15, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Surf Legends: The Chantays
The Chantays, the legendary surf band from the early sixties, were made world-famous by their hit instrumental, Pipeline (1963). They formed in 1961 when five high-school friends decided to form a rock band. Bob Spickard, Brian Carman (co-writers of Pipeline), Bob Welch, Warren Waters and Rob Marshall were all students at Santa Ana High School in California, when a local group called The Rhythm Rockers inspired the five to form The Chantays. In December 1962 the group recorded and released Pipeline, which eventually peaked at #4 on the Hot 100 in May 1963.
The Chantays recorded their first album in 1963, also titled Pipeline, which included the songs Blunderbus and El Conquistador. Their follow-up album was Two Sides of The Chantays in 1964. Their music combined electronic keyboards and surf guitar, creating a unique ghostly sound. Their songs have climbed music charts all over the world and they helped make surf music an international success.
The Chantays toured Japan and the US, joining the Righteous Brothers and Roy Orbison on a few occasions, and they had the dubious honor of being the only rock and roll band to perform on the Lawrence Welk Show.
The Chantays have also been included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. Pipeline is listed as one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. "Along with Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers and Oscar winner Diane Keaton, The Chantays were honored by the City of Santa Ana, California and Santa Ana High School when they had a street named after them -- Chantays Way. OC Weekly Magazine also named The Chantays as one of the Best Orange County Bands Ever.
Let's go surfin'. Pipeline.
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