Music Before the Money

Mike Smith, the voice and personality of the Dave Clark 5, died of pneumonia yesterday in a London hospital just 12 days before his band was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame.

As I’ve said in a previous posting the Dave Clark 5 was one of the most under-rated bands in the mid-’60’s rivaling with The Beatles in every way. Although far from being as artsy a band as the Liverpool 4 Dave Clark’s guys made up for this in loud, pounding rhythms and soulful ballads. One of the reasons they stood high on the podium was Mike Smith’s voice.

Smith was a Londoner, born on Dec. 12, 1943, at the height of World War II Britain. He began studying music at the age of 5 and entered the prestigious Trinity Music College at 13. He was the only member of the Dave Clark 5 to have had classical music training.

When Smith joined the DC5 in 1961 the band had been going for 3 years. His role as keyboardist became more notable with the emergence of the portable organ and Smith became the poster boy for the “combo organ player.” As well he was an ardent admirer of American soul and blues which showed up in his “whiskey voice.” His favorite performers were Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, The Isley Brothers and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Things weren’t great for Mike the last 10 years. In 2003 his son was killed in a car accident and later that year he suffered a spinal cord injury from a fall. Hearing of his unfortunate situation help and support came from Bruce Springsteen, Little Steven Van Zandt, and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits who helped with his medical costs by arranging fundraisers. David Letterman’s “Late Show” bandleader, Paul Shaffer, also helped out. In August 2005 Shaffer was instrumental in organizing a benefit concert in New York which featured many “British Invasion” groups like The Zombies and Peter & Gordon. Sources say that a DVD of the benefit, Paul Shaffer and his British Invasion: A Tribute to Mike Smith will be released in March by VDI Entertainment.

Although I was only 12 at the time, I will always remember the DC5 at the 1965 Calgary Stampede. For the time it was amazingly loud and all you could hear above the screaming of the girls was Dave Clark’s drums and Mike Smith’s voice. Tonight I think I’ll dig out my old vinyl and put on a side or three of the group, especially Come Home. hen I’ll have a cold beer and toast Mike.

Well, Hal Bruce has just announced that the 3rd Annual Maritime Beatle Event will be held on Saturday June 7, 2008 at the Olympic Gardens in Halifax. This year the world’s favorite “Other Ringo,” Jay Goeppner will be back as is Ticket 2 Ride along with Hal’s great show.

The first two events were runaway successes including the wonderful talk that Julia Baird gave us. Julia is John Lennon’s half-sister and told us what it was like to be the sister of “a Beatle.” And, if the truth be known, she was a closet Rolling Stones fan and told even John that Mick and the boys were her preference.

The Repeatles from Sweden will not be back this year because the timing was not right. As a European band they are in high demand all over the continent which hosts dozenz of Beatle events. However, they will be remembered. They build up a solid base of fans in Halifax and the people from all over who attended.

However, an exciting band from Hungary, The Blackbirds, will be on the main stage. If you can read Hungarian here’s their site: The Blackbirds

Joining Hal will be former Rankin Family-drummer, Scott Ferguson, who also co-produces Hal’s recordings and owns Ferguson Music Studios.

For info and tickets call (902) 435-7410 or halbruce@halbruce.com Early Bird tickets on sale now. $35.00 (HST included). Under 19 years $20.00 (HST included)

(age restriction after 9pm…19 years and older)

If the 50’s and ’60’s is exemplified by the 45RPM record then the ’60’s and ’70’s was the 12″ long play gramophone record or LP. In technical terms it is a analogue storage medium utilizing a spiral groove which ran from the outer edge to the center of the disk but we just called them “albums.” The disk itself was made from vinyl and replaced the 78 RPM disk which had, in turn, replaced the cylinder.

LP’s enabled stereophonic reproduction before the 45’s had them but it wasn’t popular. My first LP, Got Live If You Want It by the Rolling Stones, was monophonic because it was $1 cheaper at $4.29. But then I got a stereo record player for Christmas and I started buying stereo LP’s. (That was Come Home by The Dave Clark Five)

Without getting into too much technical detail (you can go to Wikipedia for that stuff) let’s just say that the LP went commercially into the ’90’s and now is still has a cult following. The purists claim that the analogue sound of the vinyl is “fatter” and warmer.

I wanted to expound on the social aspects of the LP record, or album:

• When you got a new album it was cause enough for a party (The Cheech and Chong party was the one I remember best.)
• The LP led to mass, socially-acceptable theft of plastic milk crates because your albums fit exactly into them (Then metric came along and the milk companies never had to worry again).
• When you and your girl friend broke up it was called “splitting the record collection.” (This never happened to us. We never lent our records to anyone let alone women and never would have joined them with a woman’s collection. However, as the boys got married - and divorced - this may have happened. Mine are now mixed in with my wife’s. Hey, what’re you gonna do?).
• You were judged by the quantity of records you had.
• You were judged by the number of great titles and bands you had (Wishbone Ash, Fleetwood Mac - **way before the girls messed them up** - and early Pink Floyd Umma Gumma.).
• You were an immediate outcast if your girlfriend’s David Cassidy record ever touched your turntable.
• Your were judged by the brand of turntable. (Dual was good, Thorens was better and BSR was crap. I had a Kenwood “Rock” and still wish I had it. The marble base was not conducive wow-and-flutter)
• Your were also judged by your stereo: Sansui, Harman Kardon, Technics, Kenwood)
• And last: Your LP’s were a soundtrack of your life for the period of time that you collected them.

I still have my LP’s and I won’t sell them although I never get a chance to play them anymore. They are a soundtrack of my life from 1966 to 1981. That’s when I stopped buying them (I was more mobile and had tapes - waste! Then I got CD’s)

In 1986 I bought the Holy Grail of sequencers, the Roland MC-500 for $2195. I got the MKS-7 sound module to go with it (Half price $1200) and set down to learn how to program songs (I add a Yamaha drum module with Latin percussion sounds for $495). In a few days I had my first sequence down, a rough version of Stand By Me.

The MC-500 held the data for around 8 normal songs in its ram. The storage was on the fairly new 3.5″ floppy disk that MacIntosh computers used but, believe it or not, was 6 years old at the time.

In 1980, the 3.5 inch floppy drive and diskette was introduced by Sony which - while fighting its losing battle supporting the Betamax video format against the VHS - fought off challenges from 2.0, 2.5, 2.8, 3.0, 3.25, and 4.0 inch formats. Although a dying technology today’s standard 3.5″ diskette hold a formatted capacity of about 1.5 megabytes while still using the same basic technology of the old 8″ drives.

My producer friend Van Wilmot got me into the Roland system and I’m still there. (No kidding! I have floppies all over the place but I’m too old and cheap to move along to flashdrives) He sold me 2 Sony diskettes for the amazing price of $10 each from a stock that was sent to him from Toronto. In the stores they were selling for $12-$15.

It’s hard to believe that the double-sided (DD) 720 kb disks went for that much but that’s what they cost. But then an IBM XT with a 20 Meg hard drive cost almost $4000. In a year they came down to around $2.00 each and then lower. You can get them online for about 18 cents each.

In a previous blog I gave you a chilling account on how we used to learn songs before the advent of the tape machine. We would dump a couple of quarters in the jukebox and play the same song 6 times. Then, we would compare notes and fill in the blanks with whatever we thought would fit. To learn the solos took a lot more concentration. For this we really needed the record.

The key was to take a 45 and put the speed at 33rpm or an LP down to 16. Then you could hear the individual notes of a fast player like Alvin Lee or Johnny Winter. But it was not a perfect art and there were still gaps to fill.

Seen an artist in concert was a good way to see how the guitar player commanded certain licks. (Eddie Van Halen used to protect his unique style from other LA guitarists by turning his back on the audience) I saw Gordon Lightfoot in 1976 and sat up front so I could watch him play Don Quixote.

In Concert and Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert night on T.V. was another way to get the lowdown on licks. Because it was live sometimes the artists never played it like the record but you got to see how they held their guitar and even what pickup position they were using ontheir Strat ot Les Paul. However, there was really no way to see what the keyboardist was doing because he was always surrounded by banks of keyboards. For the most part each one only did one thing.

The came the videos and DVDs which are really great. If you live in a decent-sized town you can even borrow them from the library. I got an instructional video showing how to play Jerry Lee Lewis chops and it opened up my rock piano style immeasurably.

A few weeks ago my daughter showed me how she plays a Five for Fighting song. I was really impressed and asked her where she learned it and she pointed me to You-Tube. As it turned out there were 5 or 6 entries on the band and one lone guy from Sweden who was demonstrating how to play the step-by-step. This was the guy who taught her how to play the tune.

I wanted some more Jerry Lee and there are dozens of videos showing him performing in all stages of his career and other piano players demonstrating his style. Of course I watched a few of these and it perked up my playing again. Then I went on to Floyd Cramer and Chuck Berry. In all I blew 5 hours watching You-Tube and and running to the piano.

This is a great site for instruction. In fact there are a few teachers who give demo and then ask you to subscribe to their instructional videos. The prices are nominal, like a year’s worth of grabbing whatever you want for the price of a month’s lessons in a studio - and you get to learn what you want.

My next pedagogical endeavor will be the piano solo in The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby.