Category: Music

The grooviest girl in the world


© Henry Diltz/CORBIS

I’m in the middle of reading a Vanity Fair article from a few years ago about Michelle Phillips, whose look and style set the pace in 60’s youth fashion in America, the way Pattie Boyd did in England, before Twiggy came along.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/12/phillips200712

I knew Michelle lived some wild times, but … whoo! She wasn’t much into drugs, which is why she’s alive today, but she sure pursued the free love part of the 60’s. Anyway, while reading the article I had one of those coincidences that everybody experiences once in a while. I was on this passage…

Michelle sat up and summoned a recent visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral (her years in Mexico had given her an affection for Catholic churches) and came up with: “Stopped into a church I passed along the way / Well, I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray.” John, who’d loathed parochial school, “hated the line,” Michelle says, but kept it in for lack of anything better. Lucky he did; the line gave the song its arc of desperation to epiphany. Thus was born one of the first clarion calls of a changing culture, “California Dreamin’.”

…when this started playing as a random track on the Slacker music service.

Beatles in colour

When Denro and I were at the Boston Super Megafest concert, we were given our choice of two photo prints, and these were my picks. The microphone in this one is from channel 7 in New York, and it looks like it was taken in ’65. I’ll see if I can get a fix on the exact date.

And this is a somewhat curious pic of Paul, maybe also from ’65, with his left eye looking like mine did after surgery.

Margo Guryan, pretty in pink

Margo Guryan’s highly prized and praised 1968 album, “Take a Picture”, is pretty in pink! Sundazed Music has issued a limited, 100-disc, pressing of the original LP on gorgeous, translucent pink vinyl.

http://www.sundazed.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=1838

Here’s a video of me putting needle to groove on virgin vinyl, side 1, track 1, playing the first minute of Margo’s “Sunday Morning”. The disc was taken from the original analog 2-track master tape, and the sound quality is, like Margo herself, stunning.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2010/NOV/MargoVinyl.flv 320 240]

Margo spent the summer of ’59 at the Lenox School of Jazz, here in good, ol’ Massachusetts, with an illustrious group of instructors, including Bill Evans, John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Jim Hall, Max Roach, and Gunther Schuller. Here are a few photos from that magical summer. Click to enlarge, as usual.

(Note to Morris: Recognize some of the people with Margo?)

I cut off the video above at exactly the point where the song really kicks in for me. I love the way Margo sings, “Come hold me in your arms…” Here’s the whole track.

Many cover versions of “Sunday Morning” have been recorded. Margo has no particular favorite, but one that I know she likes is by Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry.