Music Before the Money

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Last night at the Dartmouth Sportsplex hundreds of excited people enjoyed an All-City Music Program that packed the house. And hundreds of performers popuplated its many orchestras and choirs.

This event is only put on once a decade,. This is why so much attention was paid to the program,  from the large concert-style venue to having Symphony Nova Scotia conductor, Scott MacMillan, direct the last song – Farewell to Nova Scotia,  a song he arranged.

The combined choirs numbered in the hundreds and filled the place up with amazing vocal arrangements. In addition the orchestras were polished. In fact to show that no one in the audience was left out a collection of Star Wars pieces thrilled even the youngest children. Another conductor then put the orchestra through its paces with the Indiana Jones fanfare. J

A fun frolic by the Hip Hop Angels form the Northside Community Centre. changed the mode to one of great fun and laughter. Dressed in pink and yellow these little gals did not need instruction from their leader as they leaped and moved to a great hop hop beat.

The Shannon Park African Percussion Ensemble provided a show-stopping moment. Toria Adioo, their flamboyant and very-skilled leader,  was jpoined on African drums by a group of girls who follwed her evey move with some great ones of their own. Meanwhile  their companions danced and frolicked in African tribal moves.

The finale, MacMillan’s arrangement of Farewell to Nova Scotia, came through clearly and with great thunder – even though hockey arenas aren’t meant for great sound.

The All-City Jazz Band provided the entertainment while the people were taking their seats and,came back serenade them while they left.

And almost 70 of these kids are at this writing, traveling on buses to New York City to show their talents

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Almost every “baby booming musician” you talk to has the same story. “I was watching the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964 . . .” This happened to Roger (Jim) McGuinn of the Byrds, John Phillips of The Mamas and Papas and Billy Joel, to name a few. As well, I must not forget, it happened to me.

Even though I knew I would have been shot on site with a Beatle haircut I could always sing along with the music and pretend I had hair. They came out with Beatle wigs but they resembled dark Russian babushkas and lasted about as long on the scene as the K-Tel 8-Track Stacker. You have to realize that growing up in a small, mountain town in the early ’60’s wasn’t the bomb it is now.

My hometown of Kimberley, B.C., although now a premier all-season recreational area, was an isolated mining town back in those days which cut the winter doldrums with a Snow Fiesta in February and a senior men’s hockey team called “The Dynamiters.” I happened to have been very fond of “The Nitros,” as they were nicknamed, and played a very bush-league variety of the sport, myself. Skiing was becoming popular in that era but not the juggernaut industry it is now. But I digress.

Okay, we had one radio station, CKEK, in Cranbrook, which was about 15 miles away. They mostly played The Moms and Dads (not to be confused with Phillips, Doherty and Cass), Acker Bilk ( Although I do like Stranger on the Shore) and various versions of Mitch Miller singing Yellow Rose of Texas,I’m Looking over a Four Leaf Clover and I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair. Summer favorites included Nat King Cole singing Roll Out Those Lazy, Hazy Crazy Days of Summer and, if they really wanted to let their hair touch their ears, Perry Como singing Papa Loves Mambo. Not that there was anything wrong with this music but it was on from 6:00am until the national anthem at midnight . . or maybe that was 11:00pm.

However, from 4:00pm until 4:30 was an amazing time when there was time for four (4) tunes (count ‘em. . .four) for the Pepsi Generation-types and our older brothers and sisters. This is where we heard Herman’s Hermits and Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs amid the long commercials for Tak’s Furniture, Cranbrook Dodge and Lion’s Bingo. This is where we could hear the new tunes from those fabled places like London, New York and Los Angeles.

Our first band was called The Apaches and our drummer played on cardboard ice cream containers for the snare and toms. He had one real cymbal and his “kick,” or base drum, was just that. . .a four-foot high base drum from the defunct air cadet band with an old Slingerland beater that was held together with pieces of coathanger. On the front skin his sister had painted a character of some aboriginal figure that could have easily represented any of a thousand tribes.

I played bass (because I couldn’t play anything else) on a Kent bass guitar, a Japanese model that, forty years later, would be the only instrument from that era to have absolutely no antique value. Yes, in those days “Made In Japan” was not a very good thing.

For amplifiers I dragged along an RCA Victor phonograph in a heavy oak cabinet that took three minutes to heat up and always had the turntable running. Our guitar player used his mom’s reel-to-reel tape recorder and switched it to “Public Address.. His guitar consisted of a Harmony arch-top with a clamp-on pick-up.

The Mike? Yes we had a microphone that emitted blue sparks if your lips got too close and gave you a wallop after that. It sat on a broom stick which, in turn, was bolted to a piece of one-foot-by-one-foot plywood. It also plugged into the tape recorder.

Our signature songs were: I’m A Fool by Dino, Desi and Billy; Ticonderoga by the Ventures and Everybody Loves a Clown by Gary Lewis and the Playboys. . . .and three other songs of varying degrees of difficulty and dubious tonal quality.

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While down at the local juke joint plugging in dimes to hear Herman’s Hermit’s version of Sea Cruise our guitar player, George Plant, brought in a magazine called Hit Parader which had pictures of our idols – Paul Revere, Mark Lindsay (Raider’s singer), Herman’s Hermits and The Dave Clark 5 – and stories of their exploits and rise to fame. The Beatles were in a different genre. You see, at 12 years-old we couldn’t play any of their hit songs because there were more than 4 chords. (George knew 5 or 6 and later went off to join a better band.) They played chords with names like Em7+5  and BbM9 (and words like “diminished” and “augmented”) that we couldn’t follow even with the chord charts.

But the best thing about Hit Parader was that it had the words to the big songs that we so desperately needed. We could now match the words with the droning, distortion of the Wurlitzer speaker, amid the pops and cracks of the worn 45′s, and come up with a bare semblance of the song. I could even sit up in a my bedroom and croon Him or Me by Paul Revere and the Raiders and know the words.

This was when I first realized that these guys never wrote their own songs. Below the titles on the page were names like C. King, N. Diamond, T. Boyce, R. Hart and, believe it or not, Leon Russell. In the first Beatle and Rolling stone albums there was a C. Berry. At first I thought he must have been a member of both bands but a girl in my Grade 6 class who bought Tiger Beat (a girly mag) informed me that the Beatles and Stones hated each other and their fan clubs often fought en mass. Even then I didn’t completely trust information from a girl but in 1965 the Stones weren’t on my wavelength outside of Satisfaction. Much later I saw Chuck Berry on T.V. and it all came together.

I still have Hit Paraders from back then. The covers are missing because I got the copies that were unsold. The covers were ripped off so that my mother, who operated my grandfather’s store, could get credit for the returns.

George Plant taught us how to learn songs . . . and he made it easier with Hit Parader.

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In the 1970′s a book came out on the shelves that took the past thirty years of music and put it into one concise, easy-to-read thesis. It was called “This Business of Music” and I studied it cover to cover because music had become a business for me and a very complicated business at that.

At that time the mega-stars were Fleetwood Mac (Version 2 with the girls) The Eagles, BeeGees and others who had every record pressing company ib the world working three shifts. It was also the time of excess: limousines, outlandish contract riders, hefty advances, designer drugs, etc. And it was the era of the music business lawyers and accountants, like the ones that almost drove Willy Nelson to the poor house and many other into bankruptcy.

The radio stations revamped their FM stations – the ones that played early Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd – into AM formats and refused to play anything but ‘the playlist.” So, unlike the 1960′s bands who took their records to the local radio station for a spin, it was now “formula.” Many great songwiters-in-waiting were told by record and radio people to “write something that sounds like . . . .”

Music went through the lean years when record companies had to cut back. However they still controlled things. The companies just kept getting bigger and buying out all the competition.  Their enemy, however, waited just around the corner in a little box called a MacIntosh.

Apple Computers not only came out with a great user-friendly computer for musicians they had cutting-edge people like Mar-of-the-Unicorn to write the software. A crack was finally made in the wall of the record companies. First, the company-owned recording studio, that charged young bands $150 an hour + tape, faded from existence as bands could record into this little box. Next came the bands’ ability to master their own recordings and market their CD’s.

The final nail in the coffin of the music business is digital music. Apple again started this craze with the iPod and now downloading music is killing off the music business. But not the musicians, just the people who had control. because they are the only ones complaining.

The future of music is through social media where a band or singer/songwriter builds up a following. YouTube is the perfect example. If “video killed the radio star” then inexpensive digital cameras are chipping away at the mastery of MTV.

So how do you make it in the music business today. I would think it would be the same way you made it 50 years ago: you promote yourself through all available social means. Back then you played every bowling alley, state fair, Legion and high school. This still holds but now you have Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to spread the word faster. And there’s not big retainer fees to music lawyers!

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“I have been going to “Vintage” guitar shows for about 21 years. It seems to me that there are many more guitars available today to buy than there were 16 years ago. How can that be? I mean how is it possible for dealers to have 15 to 20 vintage Strats in 1999, when in 1991 there were only a few to be found. What’s up with that!!!”

- Ed Roman of Ed Romand Guitars, Las Vegas, 10 years ago

If you’ve been a guitar player for any length of time you will no doubt be aware of the Holy Grail of guitars, the Pre-CBS Fender Stratocaster. This guitar has the honor of being the most sought-after electric guitar in the world.

Almost anyone who has a band play knows that the the spacey guitar with the three pick-ups is Stratocaster model made by the Fender company. However, these guitars were hand-made under the supervision of the founder, Leo Fender, until 1964 when he sold the company to CBS. This meg-company then turned to making profits with the name and turned a fine instrument into a broomstick with strings.

For example, the headstock went from sleek to a large, clunky chunk of maple with the name “Stratocaster” in large capital letters. It was typical of a corporation that invested in mainstream television and road signs. The large neck was then relieved of one bolt and went to three to hold it on the body. There were other small changes that wouldn’t really bother you if you liked Fenders but loyal fans stuck with the oldies and this drove the price of these instruments up. And rarely do post-Leo Fender Strats carry the “vintage” persona.

Ed Roman also said this about “vintage”:

“It has come to my attention that there is a large cottage industry in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and even the Philippines that re-manufacture Gibson parts, Fender parts and even completely counterfeit 50′s & 60′s complete Fender Guitars.  I remember 25 years ago a company in the Philippines was producing a guitar that was almost exactly like a Stratocaster. It had Fenders Logo and patent numbers on the tremolo plate and it even had the big reverse “F” logo on the Tremolo cover plate (I have never seen a stock Fender look like this).”

Here’s another thing to remember about paying thousands for a so-called Vintage guitar. In may many years of playing I saw guys cut the front pickup out of a Telecaster and replace it with a Gibson humbucker,r change the Fender tuning pegs for Schallers and even replace the neck with Schecter. Now, the add-ons can be put back but the big hole in the Telecaster would be evident if the pickguard was removed.

In other cases the tuning head holes in a ’59 Les Paul were drilled out to accommodate better tuning pegs and this would devaluate the instrument.

As for me, I have bought and sold some amazing electrics that would be worth a lot of money today. However, I do have “vintage” instruments and everyone of them has been refinished and new parts added. So my 1957 Gretsch 6120 has a new pickguard, new pickup surrounds and truss rod cover. And the guy that had it before me might have changed out a pickup. Who knows?

And the key of the post: Who cares? It still sounds like a ’67 Gretsch.