Last summer, Prudence Bury-Fuchs got together with her old friends and classmates at the Royal Ballet School in London, for a reunion celebration she called “Now We Are 70!” Here’s a clipping from the school’s newsletter.
And now Prue is 70 plus a tiny bit more. Happy birthday, Prue!
Friday on WBUR in Boston, Robin Young talked with legendary session drummer Hal Blaine, who is himself from Massachusetts.
[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2012/04/hereandnow_0420_musicians-wrecking-crew.mp3|titles=WBUR – Robin Young on Here and Now]There’s a new book about the Hollywood studio musicians of the 60’s and 70’s who were collectively and informally called The Wrecking Crew.
http://youtu.be/jvXvTySfWMU
Elsewhere, at the same time that Blaine & Co. were plying their trade, in another recording studio there was a totally different but equally good sound being created. Having been a kid in the Sixties I’m prejudiced, but no other period of time has ever approached, let alone equaled, its variety and quality of music.
http://youtu.be/cu023iV_atg
I’ve been very busy and distracted lately, so a tip of the ol’ Dograt toupee to Samjay, for spotting this item about an upcoming special event at movie theaters. It’s the complete video of the Beatles’ first live concert after their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The concert was at a rather shabby venue, the Coliseum in Washington, D.C. on February 11, 1964. It was taped by CBS and shown in movie theaters over closed circuit TV the following weekend.
As I wrote in late 2010, iTunes had the complete concert video available for viewing, and this new presentation is a return to the original intended format. Regarding the concert video having been lost, there is more background at this link. I don’t know if this alleged master tape was the source used for this latest presentation, but it seems possible.
http://youtu.be/t-pBqLGhMU0
tastewar has a couple of offerings to help nudge me out of idleness. First, there’s the news that Englishman Jim Marshall, inventor of Marshall amplified guitar speakers, the industry-standard for loudness, has died. Note: The Beatles used guitar amps from another British company, Vox.
And there’s this bit of fun, with the Hubos robots as the Robotles.
Richard Lester, who directed the two truly great Beatle films, A Hard Day’s Night and HELP!, has received a Fellowship from the British Film Institute. With the recent death of Davy Jones, I’ve been hearing the old assertion that the Monkees TV show was based on AHDN, but I just don’t see it. HELP! was clearly the model for the series, with producers Raphelson and Schneider drawing inspiration from the fantasy of the boys living together in a quirky, colorful pad, full of groovy stuff.
I have high praise and thanks for author Ray Morton, and his book about the making of A Hard Day’s Night. Besides being a solid and thorough telling of the background and production of the movie, in A Hard Days Night: Music on Film Series, Morton did something no other writer on the subject has done — he gets the facts right about Prue Bury, and for that I am sincerely grateful. Ray Morton can be heard on Reject Radio talking about the movie and his book at this link. He comes in at 40:30 into the podcast.
Back in 2002, Rolling Stone had a piece about the Miramax DVD release of A Hard Day’s Night, and it has one of the classic promotional photos of the Beatles with (l-r) Pattie Boyd, Tina Williams, Prue Bury, and Sue Whitman.
By coincidence, and to my great amusement, that issue also had this item:
So the first time that Doug Pratt had a connection to Prue Bury, it was a different Doug Pratt!
Today on Barnes Newberry’s online radio show, My Back Pages, he played the band Love doing AndMoreAgain, a song I hadn’t heard in, I think, 40 years…
… and he played a song I couldn’t recall ever hearing before — Fleetwood Mac with its founder, Peter Green, shortly before he left the band, doing The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown). What a great track! To me it sort of sounds like Alice Cooper with Elvis Costello style vocals.
