Category: Music

The Death of Ron Decline

Do I have anything good to say about the late Allen Klein? No, I don’t. He was an opportunistic, dishonest, unscrupulous scumbag. Eric Idle and John Belushi were dead-on with their Ron Decline parody in “The Rutles”. Hey look, there’s Al Franken, the new senator from Minnesota, with his old comedy partner Tom Davis.

The first LP I ever bought with my own money was “Let It Be” the day it was released, and I immediately noticed that Apple Records had become “an abkco managed company”. Even as a kid of fourteen I was suspicious of what that meant.

In this picture the second scan is from an 80’s British LP copy of “Let It Be”, and you’ll notice that the name Harold Seider is missing. Seider was Klein’s attorney, and later he was John Lennon’s lawyer.

An ABKCO managed company

Since “Let It Be” I have tried to avoid Allen B. Klein Company products, with the only exceptions being on vinyl. As a consequence, my Rolling Stones collection is minimal. One of the exceptions is the Stones outtakes LP, “Metamorphosis”. I bought it for a couple of bucks in college as a cut-out, only a year after its release in 1975.

“Metamorphosis” has a some tracks worth noting, including the Dylan-influenced “Memo From Turner” and a good alternate version of “Out Of Time”. The best song, I think, is “Each and Every Day of the Year”. Unfortunately, it’s in fake stereo that includes phase shifting as well as frequency separation, so it sounds lousy if forced into mono.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUL/EachAndEveryDay.mp3]

Lía Pamina

Lovely Lía Pamina

Now that I’m in contact with Prudence Bury, I’d like to take a moment to once again say thanks to 60’s retro comment writer Janis, otherwise known as Lía Pamina. Months ago, Lía, who lives in Spain, provided Prue’s maiden name and its correct spelling, and that made all the difference in my search for one of the quintessential women of the Sixties.

Lía is a big fan of singer-songwriter Margo Guryan, who wrote the song “Sunday Morning” by Spanky and Our Gang (not to be confused with “Sunday Will Never Be the Same”).

Lía has made a couple of videos featuring Guryan songs. She’s cleverly animated “Love Songs”, with some illustrations by Roy Lichtenstein, and she performs “Timothy’s Gone”. Great job on both, Lía! You can hear Guryan’s original recording of “Timothy’s Gone” on her MySpace page at the link above.

Petula Knows Where She’s Going!

Petula Clark is going to Canada in September. She’s going to talk about the film “I Know Where I’m Going!” in which she appeared as a girl of twelve, as seen in this video clip that I first featured over two years ago.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/JAN07/IKnowWhereImGoing.flv 400 300]

In case the article at the link above loads too slowly, or if it disappears, you’ll find the text below. The website for the event is at this link. What fun!

Here’s something else that’s fun. Petula singing “Downtown” in German. I admit to having swiped this from the Keep the Coffee Coming blog.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUN/DowntownGerman.mp3]
Continue reading Petula Knows Where She’s Going!

K3 Kaput

And so it’s farewell. Sunday in Rotterdam, Holland, Kathleen Aerts appeared with Karen Damen and Kristel Verbeke for the last time. K3 — in my opinion one of the very best Pop music girl groups ever assembled — is no more.

Watching the video, to me it appears the farewell performance had little energy and excitement. A replacement for Kathleen will soon be selected, but K3 won’t be the same. I had the same feeling when David Duchovney left “The X-Files.”

More videos from last weekend’s Summer Festival have appeared.