Speaker 1: Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Yum yo, how does Sasa Jonnifer Leasberry Jukes.
Speaker 3: Hey, this is Tom Chapin.
Speaker 4: Hello, just preaching in Rock and Roll History Show.
Speaker 5: You're listening right now.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the latest installment of the Rock and Roll
Speaker 6: History Show. And no, I did not kidnap Brian and
Speaker 6: lock him in a closet. He's here, but they're going
Speaker 6: to torture me today, so I get to leave the show. Fun, fun, fun.
Speaker 6: Every so often we do an episode where it's all
Speaker 6: about songs with an instrument that one of us hates,
Speaker 6: and we've already done Barbara with the ukulele and Mercedes
Speaker 6: with the harp. So now it's my turn. And what
Speaker 6: instrument do I usually hate to hear? Harmonic? Before we
Speaker 6: get started, let me introduce the Corimbos. Let's start with
Speaker 6: our usual host Ryan. Ryan used to play bass by ear,
Speaker 6: but he's doing much better now because he's switched to
Speaker 6: using his hands. Go. Neil heard a rumor about butter,
Speaker 6: but he decided not to spread it.
Speaker 7: People lies or lies, and you do everybody.
Speaker 6: Mercedes from Silver Screen saw a skeleton walk into a
Speaker 6: bar and she wanted to see what happened. The skeleton
Speaker 6: said to the bartender, a bartender, I'll have one beer
Speaker 6: and a mop.
Speaker 3: Yes, hey, everybody.
Speaker 6: Barbara feel from shaving cream. She saw a snowman throwing
Speaker 6: a tantrum. It was a real meltdown.
Speaker 1: Oh good one.
Speaker 8: Gil and.
Speaker 6: A retired teacher John got carded at a liquor store
Speaker 6: and he went to take out his license from his
Speaker 6: wallet and his Blockbuster card fell out by mistake. The
Speaker 6: cashier said, never mind.
Speaker 9: You know, Blockbuster brings brings up a lot of good.
Speaker 10: Running to Blockbuster to get that, uh, you know, the
Speaker 10: latest release before the you know, thirty other people went
Speaker 10: clamber to get it as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 4: It was you know, adjacent to go into the record store.
Speaker 9: Yeah, all the time. Yeah, you go to block.
Speaker 10: At a Blockbuster, go to the record store, grab a slice,
Speaker 10: grab some pizza.
Speaker 9: Bring it home.
Speaker 6: Yeah, popcorn.
Speaker 9: Yeah, good times.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now you scroll endless screens on Netflix going nah yeah doom.
Speaker 10: Scroll for like three hours trying to find something.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't I don't have any of the streaming channels,
Speaker 6: so I don't even know like how that is. But anyway,
Speaker 6: so before we get started with the songs, one of
Speaker 6: which I actually really love, so it's not going to
Speaker 6: be torturing me at all in spite of the harmonica. Uh,
Speaker 6: let's talk a little bit about harmonic, because it's considered
Speaker 6: a loose reed instrument, and these poor people. Loose read
Speaker 6: instruments not to be confused with lou reed instruments, date
Speaker 6: back to China around eleven hundred BC. Oh my god,
Speaker 6: they tortured people even back then. What we would recognize
Speaker 6: as a mouth organ. I'd rather have a kidney or liver,
Speaker 6: thank you. Dates to around eighteen twenty when it spread
Speaker 6: around Europe, Oh God help them, and into the US.
Speaker 6: Oh no, And that's when the evil began. It was fun, huh.
Speaker 6: That's subjective, portable, and relatively inexpensive. A German clock maker
Speaker 6: named Matthias Hohner started the Honer Company in eighteen fifty
Speaker 6: seven when he realized that custom clocks were fading in popularity. Personally,
Speaker 6: I think a custom clock would be really cool, much
Speaker 6: less annoying, sound wise.
Speaker 9: Way more expensive.
Speaker 6: Yeah. He started selling harmonicas in Germany, those poor people,
Speaker 6: and it found out.
Speaker 9: From there they.
Speaker 6: Are still by far the biggest selling brand. It's popularity.
Speaker 6: Soword after World War One and lasted through World War Two,
Speaker 6: and a lot of these old World War One movies
Speaker 6: you see these guys, one guy is sitting around mournfully
Speaker 6: playing the harmonica.
Speaker 2: A lot of Western a lot of Western movies have that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: you guys.
Speaker 1: Sitting cowboy by the fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 6: So the popularity lasted through World War II, when it
Speaker 6: faded a bit, thanks be to God, but came back
Speaker 6: in the folk music revival of the nineteen sixties, which
Speaker 6: is why I am mostly not a folk music.
Speaker 4: You might want to be kind of grateful because it
Speaker 4: got Bob Billin to stop singing for a minute.
Speaker 6: Oh goodness. So I believe that. First to start out
Speaker 6: is Neil.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I will ask a rhetorical question before
Speaker 2: we start into Gail. Is that I mean, you've professed
Speaker 2: here on the Rock and Roll History Show your love
Speaker 2: of the blues and the harmonica is like, it's like
Speaker 2: the number one instrument in blues and and and you
Speaker 2: don't you don't have to answer.
Speaker 6: I'm just like, it's no, I can explain it totally.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 6: It depends on the type of harmonica playing. If it's
Speaker 6: the high pitched shrieky like some of Stevie Wonders music
Speaker 6: has that type the high pitched, shrieky, kind of gritty
Speaker 6: sounding harmonica. Hate it, absolutely hate it. It literally is
Speaker 6: physically disturbing to me.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, let just you know we.
Speaker 4: Should want you to pick Stevie wonder Then.
Speaker 2: I want you to make sure I want you to
Speaker 2: that you don't have ear plugs inside your headphones. That's cheating.
Speaker 2: You have to listen. You have to listen.
Speaker 6: Rats. I thought I had the situation solved.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you because when the topic of torture
Speaker 2: or the torture topic of the harmonica came up, when
Speaker 2: it was first mentioned, I immediately thought of the Jay
Speaker 2: Giles band. Now, not the Jay Giles band that dominated
Speaker 2: the early nineteen eighties MTV charts with a mainstream, semi
Speaker 2: new wave commercial sound. Oh no, no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the Jay Giles band that I saw
Speaker 2: back in the early nineteen seventies as a young high
Speaker 2: school teenager at places like the Fillmore East and the
Speaker 2: Academy of Music down in Manhattan in New York City.
Speaker 2: A simple R and B influenced blues rock group that
Speaker 2: just happened to kick major ass. Okay, let's talk about them.
Speaker 2: The Jay Giles Band were formed in Boston or the
Speaker 2: Boston area in nineteen sixty seven. Original members included the
Speaker 2: band's namesake, John Giles but you can call him Jay
Speaker 2: On guitar, singer and frontman extraordinaire Peter Wolfe, keyboardist Seth Justman,
Speaker 2: bassist Danny Klein, drummer Stephen Joe Blad and the man
Speaker 2: at the center of our topic today, mister Richard Solwitz,
Speaker 2: but you can call him Magic Dick or as Peter
Speaker 2: wolf would call him magic Dick on the licking stick.
Speaker 2: And I knew you'd like that, and we'll have more
Speaker 2: about him later. But The Jay Giles Band released their
Speaker 2: eponymously titled debut album in late nineteen seventy and although
Speaker 2: the song We're about to hear called Whammer Jammer didn't
Speaker 2: appear until their second album, called The Morning After, which
Speaker 2: was released in late nineteen seventy one, it was already
Speaker 2: a staple of their live shows, and it would later
Speaker 2: appear on a live LP called Full House in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two. Now generally the main focus of the band
Speaker 2: was there, flamboyant frontman Peter Wolf with his rapid fire
Speaker 2: between song banter and his swagger like Mick Jagger. But
Speaker 2: on this song an instrumental, no words, it's whammer jammer,
Speaker 2: where Magic Dick took center stage.
Speaker 11: Sometimes drinking hand comes shrinking hand time, baking, Baking had
Speaker 11: story entire tab.
Speaker 12: The root sign, the rock.
Speaker 11: Your cap, your cap saying since thank you?
Speaker 7: Seconds All right, Gail, let's hear it.
Speaker 2: What is your reaction to wamma jammer?
Speaker 6: I'd rather not ever hear it again?
Speaker 2: If people at home listening at home, If if you
Speaker 2: could see her, it looked like she was We were
Speaker 2: watching her, Yes, a big bite out of a lemon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're watching her face contort all through that.
Speaker 10: It was Yes, that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: It is it rocks? Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 6: It was a little easier to handle when the other
Speaker 6: instruments came in too, so I wasn't just listening to
Speaker 6: shrieking air.
Speaker 4: If we had turned down the volume on our headphones,
Speaker 4: we could tell the pitch of the harmonica by the
Speaker 4: scrunch on Gail's face.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, yeah, I don't even have to say anything,
Speaker 6: Mike gooms my face has subtitles.
Speaker 4: If we ever played poker, Invite Gael.
Speaker 6: At this point in my life, I wouldn't even be
Speaker 6: able to remember the rules of this state.
Speaker 2: So let's get back to Magic Dick, like I said before. Okay.
Speaker 2: He was born in New London, Connecticut, in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2: In addition to the harmonica, he also plays the trumpet
Speaker 2: and the saxophone, and in nineteen seventy nine, music critic
Speaker 2: Dave Marsh described Magic Dick as quote possibly the best
Speaker 2: white musician to ever play blues harmonica. Now I take
Speaker 2: a little lumberge, I would say simply he was the
Speaker 2: best musician period to play blues harmonica, or at least
Speaker 2: one of them. But I'll get off my soapbox. Magic
Speaker 2: Dick also co created a harmonica design called appropriately the
Speaker 2: Magic Harmonica, and he's still based in the Boston area
Speaker 2: and he is a member of the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra. Gail,
Speaker 2: you want to get tickets? Oh god, I'll take that
Speaker 2: as a yes.
Speaker 6: Okay, What an abomination road trip?
Speaker 4: How I really feel?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 2: The Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra front row, all right, the Jay
Speaker 2: Giles band did have several top forty singles in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen seventies, but as I mentioned earlier, the majority
Speaker 2: of their success came in the nineteen eighties, with hits
Speaker 2: like Freeze, Frames, Centerfold and of Course Loves Things So hey,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'll say I like those records too,
Speaker 2: but I was always partial to the earlier stuff because
Speaker 2: that's what I heard first. So just to say, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody knows my eighties bias somewhat, but no, I'd like
Speaker 2: those songs too, so don't worry. So but what does
Speaker 2: a band do after striving for years to reach the
Speaker 2: top and they finally make it in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: what do they do?
Speaker 6: Stop making shrieking sounds?
Speaker 2: No? They break up? Of course? What do you think?
Speaker 2: Peter Wolf left the band in nineteen eighty three to
Speaker 2: pursue a solo career. The band did release one more
Speaker 2: album without Wolf in nineteen eighty four, before breaking up
Speaker 2: for good in nineteen eighty five, But beginning in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, the band did get back together for several
Speaker 2: reunion tours with and without Jay Giles, the latter resulting
Speaker 2: in a bitter lawsuit over the use of the guitarist name,
Speaker 2: as you might think, being that the Jay Giles Band
Speaker 2: did not have a Jay Giles in them at that point. Anyway, Sadly,
Speaker 2: J Giles himself passed away in twenty seventeen. Now, the
Speaker 2: Jay Giles Band, they were nominated for induction into the
Speaker 2: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, not once, not twice,
Speaker 2: five different times, but were not voted in on any
Speaker 2: of those attempts. So that I find that criminal. I
Speaker 2: find that felonious. I find that is why I don't
Speaker 2: really take much stock in the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame, because that's crazy that they and the people
Speaker 2: that they do induct. No, no, this is there is
Speaker 2: no justice. But as I also mentioned, I did get
Speaker 2: to see the band live a number of times throughout
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, and they always were incredible. Peter Wolf
Speaker 2: is out there too. I've seen him solo and he's incredible.
Speaker 2: And I also got to see Magic Dick perform along
Speaker 2: with a guitarist named Seun Eng as an acoustic duo
Speaker 2: and they were great. That was up at Daryl's house
Speaker 2: in paul in, New York, and that was back in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. So he's still out there playing too, So
Speaker 2: get out there and catch these people. That's all I
Speaker 2: can say.
Speaker 6: And Gail, I hope you liked it well, Neil, that
Speaker 6: was interesting.
Speaker 2: Nice. I can see how happy you are.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm surprised you don't have alcohol in front.
Speaker 12: Of you right now.
Speaker 6: I do have a bottle of wine in the other room.
Speaker 6: I should go get it. So John, what do you have?
Speaker 8: Okay?
Speaker 9: I don't know you.
Speaker 10: You might like this, you might not because there's a
Speaker 10: lot of harmonica in it, but there's also a lot
Speaker 10: of guitar in it as well, so the selection is
Speaker 10: a little long tonight.
Speaker 8: It's the work song.
Speaker 10: By the late great Paul Butterfield and the Paul Butterfield
Speaker 10: Blues Band from nineteen sixty six. It was from their
Speaker 10: East West, their second album, East West, released in August
Speaker 10: of that year. And Paul Butterfield does the harmonica and
Speaker 10: Mike Bloomfield does the guitar, and I think this is
Speaker 10: a classic. It's a bit of a long one. So
Speaker 10: I think we're gonna do about three three and a
Speaker 10: half minutes and then we're gonna kind of fade out
Speaker 10: from there, and then I'll just say tell you a
Speaker 10: little bit, a little bit of a teaser after that
Speaker 10: as well.
Speaker 8: So, Gail, I.
Speaker 10: Hope you enjoy this little this little blues selection Butterfield
Speaker 10: blues band.
Speaker 8: So enjoys.
Speaker 12: Sn the style montas.
Speaker 10: Sometimes okay, And that was the work song by Paul
Speaker 10: Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield.
Speaker 9: Great song.
Speaker 8: Uh, it's got a great beat.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 10: It goes on for about seven and a half minutes scales,
Speaker 10: so there's a lot more after that. So uh, we
Speaker 10: were kind enough to only give you about three and
Speaker 10: a half minutes.
Speaker 6: There, but thank you. Actually I liked the guitars and
Speaker 6: the percussion and the keyboard.
Speaker 9: Yes, it's it's it's got a lot of bass.
Speaker 4: Hello, sorry the bass, yes, the back all right, then,
Speaker 4: whether you meant it or not, you have to say it.
Speaker 4: It's got a lot to it.
Speaker 2: Well, that was They were a good band.
Speaker 10: That a really great I mean, and to think what
Speaker 10: they could have achieved had both Bloomfield and Butterfield not
Speaker 10: engaged in a lot of recreational pharmacology, which led to
Speaker 10: their demise. Mister Butterfield nineteen eighty seven in Bloomfield in
Speaker 10: eighty one, I believe. So again, it's a great piece
Speaker 10: of music, but gone too soon.
Speaker 2: So but hope you know, I know this will shock you,
Speaker 2: But I did get to see a later version of
Speaker 2: the Butterfly Field Blues Band, not the one we just
Speaker 2: heard right, probably just a couple of years later. It
Speaker 2: was probably around nineteen seventy one. Yeah, but they were
Speaker 2: still great. Yeah, it was still the same groove going there.
Speaker 10: That kind of music is a kind of music I
Speaker 10: would love to just listen to in like a smoky
Speaker 10: bar somewhere, you know, and just.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 6: You obviously don't have asthma like I do, well.
Speaker 10: I could do that pretty bad lung problems, but still
Speaker 10: would have been a fun thing to just kind of
Speaker 10: just kick back and hill with a drink in hand
Speaker 10: and a low key kind of.
Speaker 4: Smoky bar and just kind of take in that harmonica.
Speaker 4: It's the kind of thing I think, even if you
Speaker 4: don't necessarily like it, when it's live.
Speaker 9: For some reason, it just hits better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly play it, you know.
Speaker 8: No, you're right, You're you're right, Brian.
Speaker 10: It's just I could see enjoying that down in Pyramont
Speaker 10: at what's the club down in Pyramount? We go to
Speaker 10: uh point yes, I would love I would love to
Speaker 10: hear somebody do that kind of a do a remake
Speaker 10: of it at the turning point. That'd be a lot
Speaker 10: of fun, I really would So anyway.
Speaker 9: I hope you all enjoyed it.
Speaker 8: Gail, it was a pleasure to uh.
Speaker 6: All right, well I survived that one. But we need
Speaker 6: to take a very quick break.
Speaker 9: What's the the River Radio?
Speaker 8: Your dog likes us.
Speaker 6: This concludes the first part of this cassette.
Speaker 3: Please turn the cassette over and begin again on side too.
Speaker 3: This is Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 11: A y.
Speaker 6: All right, so we're back at the middle section of
Speaker 6: today's Rock and Roll History Show episode where my fellow
Speaker 6: crambones are torturing me with songs of my least favorite instrument,
Speaker 6: the harmonica. Up next is Barbara. What do you have
Speaker 6: to drive me nuts? Barbara?
Speaker 1: First, I want to say when you were telling us
Speaker 1: the story of the Harmonica, I loved your little commentary.
Speaker 1: That is excellent.
Speaker 9: The poor Chinese.
Speaker 6: Oh my gods, wait wait till you see Sunday at church,
Speaker 6: I have to give a talk on St. Teresa of Avola,
Speaker 6: and I put little things like that in there. When
Speaker 6: I'm giving my talks about saints, and I think that's
Speaker 6: why everybody shows up when we only have morning prayer
Speaker 6: and I'm the one doing it.
Speaker 4: Gone, Jesus may have suffered, but I had to listen
Speaker 4: to the harmonica.
Speaker 13: No.
Speaker 6: No, I usually start out saints, Who are they, what
Speaker 6: do they do? And why do we like them?
Speaker 1: Excellent? Excellent. So besides saying that praise on your commentary,
Speaker 1: the second thing I wanted.
Speaker 4: To say is more.
Speaker 1: And the song I chose to torture Gale for today's
Speaker 1: theme is called I Want My Mama and it's by
Speaker 1: Salty Holmes. Born Floyd Holmes on March sixth, nineteen ten
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. He played jug and guitar, but was famous
Speaker 1: for his harmonica playing. He specialized in the style called
Speaker 1: talking harp, in which the harmonica sounds like a human voice.
Speaker 1: Oh joy, I'm twirling my imaginary mustache right now. Holmes
Speaker 1: formed the group the Kentucky Ramblers in nineteen thirty, but
Speaker 1: they changed their name to the Prairie Ramblers three years
Speaker 1: later and began broadcasting on WLSAM in Chicago. I Want
Speaker 1: My Mama was recorded during the nineteen forties, but I
Speaker 1: could not find an exact date, despite searching multiple sites.
Speaker 1: The recording we Will Hear was included on the two
Speaker 1: thousand and five compilation album Harmonica Masters, which I'll be
Speaker 1: gifting to Gail next Christmas.
Speaker 4: She needs another coaster, don't waste the money.
Speaker 1: Out of all harmonica songs, I chose this one especially
Speaker 1: for Gail because not only does it feature the dreaded harmonica,
Speaker 1: but Holmes makes it sound like a child crying.
Speaker 6: I want my.
Speaker 1: Let the torture begin.
Speaker 6: Harmonica and crying children, do I know?
Speaker 7: Gil? And no Gail.
Speaker 6: Lame from.
Speaker 11: No No no no.
Speaker 8: M m m.
Speaker 12: M la La La from no no no no no
Speaker 12: no no no no.
Speaker 11: L l la la la.
Speaker 13: La la la la la la la la la la
Speaker 13: la la.
Speaker 6: La la l l l l l l l l
Speaker 6: l l l l la l.
Speaker 11: L l l l l l l l l l
Speaker 11: l l.
Speaker 6: L l l l la la la la la.
Speaker 12: La la la la la la la la.
Speaker 13: La la la la.
Speaker 11: La la lo lo lo.
Speaker 1: Okay, before I proceed, Gail, what say you?
Speaker 6: That was interesting?
Speaker 1: I cringe.
Speaker 6: I like the old timy sounds. I do too. I
Speaker 6: swear they don't have talent like that nowadays. That could
Speaker 6: do the same thing. It was fascinating to me to
Speaker 6: figure out or try to figure out how the performer
Speaker 6: was making those sounds, the quick inhale exhale things. I
Speaker 6: could maybe do that twice and then I would need
Speaker 6: my asthma inhaler. So I'm surprised. You know, maybe he
Speaker 6: had an oxygen tank waiting for when he was done.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: My tombstone would actually say died by playing harmonica too fast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's like a ditchery too, isn't it
Speaker 3: Like you breathe in and out at the same time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you get you get different sounds.
Speaker 3: Breath.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's what you do when your coffee is
Speaker 4: too high, pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the harmonica is actually it's not an
Speaker 2: at least to me, not an easy instrument to play.
Speaker 6: It's easy to start, it's very difficult, not if you
Speaker 6: want to get specific sounds out of it, and you.
Speaker 2: Have to like like block certain you know, it's like
Speaker 2: a little series of holes. Everybody knows what they look like,
Speaker 2: believe it or not.
Speaker 6: I had one as a child.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you had idea too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to block the ones you don't want
Speaker 2: to blow through. Most of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, most of them exhale. When you inhale, it's a
Speaker 4: half step off. Yeah, that's it's in out and out now.
Speaker 9: But you have to like you're looking for you.
Speaker 2: Got to get to the right one and block out
Speaker 2: the other ones with your tongue. And I ended up
Speaker 2: having like you know, you know, blostlelia, a petite mall seizure,
Speaker 2: you know, like, yeah, I had epilepsy. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: I you know, I've tried. I said, nope, I'm not.
Speaker 2: That's one instrument I can check off the list that Nope,
Speaker 2: I am not.
Speaker 4: I did figure out how to bend a note. You know, wow,
Speaker 4: I figured out how to do that. Okay, okay, now
Speaker 4: to do it on the right pitch.
Speaker 9: At the right time.
Speaker 2: You no. Oh. Then then there's the chromatic ones that
Speaker 2: have another little thing on the side that changes everything again.
Speaker 2: So it's like it's not yeah.
Speaker 9: Most of the time.
Speaker 4: You'll see something we haven't talked about is most of
Speaker 4: them are keyed, so you're, you know, whatever key the
Speaker 4: song is in. Usually take a harmonica that's a fourth hire,
Speaker 4: which is a whole music theory thing, but it's for
Speaker 4: that key for that song, which is why you know,
Speaker 4: like John Popper from Blues Traveler as a.
Speaker 6: Whole, like ten different harmonica usually.
Speaker 4: Twelve yeah, depending on what you would play Yeah, drive
Speaker 4: me crazy, yeah, depending and then one yeah, one.
Speaker 1: One giant harmonica and just put all the crambones at
Speaker 1: different stations along the giant harmonica and we all play
Speaker 1: our own were.
Speaker 3: Blow breath there into each other's spells.
Speaker 6: No, not a good idea.
Speaker 9: You know what, we'll call the song COVID two.
Speaker 6: Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So the Prairie Ramblers produced over one hundred recordings between
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three and nineteen forty. They continued performing until
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, playing country hillbilly, which you probably figured
Speaker 1: out when I mentioned that Holmes played the jug and
Speaker 1: pop music while performing with the Prairie Ramblers. Homes before
Speaker 1: did Geene Autry, who invited him to go to Hollywood
Speaker 1: and star in westerns, which he did, And we talked
Speaker 1: about Cowboy by the Fire before, so there you go.
Speaker 1: In one of his films called Arizona Days, he played
Speaker 1: two harmonicas at once, using both his mouth and nose.
Speaker 6: It could be worse. It could be worse.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it could have been mouthed something else. Oh no,
Speaker 4: the vertical harmonica.
Speaker 1: Man, Oh my.
Speaker 8: God, nasty guys.
Speaker 1: So the Prairie Ramblers also backed Autrey in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties on some of his recordings. Now that's all I
Speaker 1: have about Salty Homes. But I did want to mention
Speaker 1: that I was driving home, not Holmes home, the other
Speaker 1: night and I had serious ExM on in the car
Speaker 1: and I heard this song that was all harmonica, and
Speaker 1: the they announced that the artist was called Little Walter
Speaker 1: and he was the only artist inducted into the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame specifically as a harmonica player.
Speaker 1: So of course by the time I got home, I
Speaker 1: forgot his name.
Speaker 14: So I had a Google only artists inducted into the
Speaker 14: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a harmonica So
Speaker 14: then this came up with a little bio and I
Speaker 14: found out he was actually born May first, nineteen thirty
Speaker 14: and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 14: of Fame in two thousand and eight, and that that
Speaker 14: was irrelevant.
Speaker 2: That answered they only have room for one harmonica player,
Speaker 2: and he took it. That's why Jay Giles never got in.
Speaker 3: That's the reason be it.
Speaker 9: They did take up a lot of space.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, you know you have to have like
Speaker 2: twelve or you know whatever.
Speaker 6: I want the rock and Roll Hall of Fame to
Speaker 6: be full of harmonica players for God's sake.
Speaker 1: Well you need to vote. Remember when the rock and
Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame was good and there were no
Speaker 1: harmonica players.
Speaker 2: Remember when it was when it was rock and roll?
Speaker 2: But yeah, exactly, And just a side note here too. Now,
Speaker 2: maybe I met misread this, but did MTV like go
Speaker 2: off the air entirely?
Speaker 4: And I heard, yeah, the music channel, not the main MTV. Okay,
Speaker 4: I believe it was called v H one Classics for
Speaker 4: a while and then it became m t V two
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 6: I know they still had anyone with Well that's the problem.
Speaker 4: That's why it went off the airs, because nobody did.
Speaker 4: So the one channel they had that still played music videos,
Speaker 4: they shut that one down.
Speaker 2: And at least they played the Buggles as they.
Speaker 1: Signed circle at least.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that that, Yeah, that clears that up. Because
Speaker 2: I didn't quite I have to.
Speaker 9: Admit I didn't watch it either.
Speaker 3: Now I feel guilty, but I have such good memories.
Speaker 3: Tommy had it, my husband had it, and I didn't
Speaker 3: have it yet, And I would go to his apartment
Speaker 3: when we first met, and like, I would just sit
Speaker 3: there glued to the.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, high school boyfriend, same thing he had it,
Speaker 1: and my father would never let us get cable, so
Speaker 1: I would go to my boyfriend's house and watch it
Speaker 1: and yeah, same thing, be glued to the TV.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, totally totally.
Speaker 6: So that was that was a gone memory now so
Speaker 6: that I've got. So that's all I got, Mercedes, what
Speaker 6: song do you have? Thank you? Barbara welcome. Okay.
Speaker 3: Oh, so, as a feminist, I need to preface my
Speaker 3: song with some thoughts. The song is good girls don't
Speaker 3: by the neck. And while I love the song, it
Speaker 3: does make me super uncomfortable, and it's not because of
Speaker 3: the harmonica. You can tell me how you feel about
Speaker 3: that later, Gail. The song was released in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: nine by Doug Fieger as a follow up to the
Speaker 3: band's hit single My Sharona, which was about his girlfriend
Speaker 3: Sharona Alperin, who was seventeen while he was twenty five.
Speaker 3: Obviously obviously not the largest age gap we know about
Speaker 3: in the rock and roll world, but lyrics in My
Speaker 3: Sharona like such a dirty mind. I always get it
Speaker 3: up for the touch of the younger kind might be
Speaker 3: an issue if it was released today.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And teen Sharona herself appears on the singles picture sleeve
Speaker 3: looking like the winner of a quote unquote wet t
Speaker 3: shirt contest. According to Rock and Roll Globe dot Com,
Speaker 3: this would have been a good addition to our song
Speaker 3: our show on songs that could not have been released today,
Speaker 3: which we did quite a long time.
Speaker 9: That was a while ago.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Robert Christau Chris Gow, a critic for The Village Voice,
Speaker 3: wrote in his review of the record, if they felt
Speaker 3: this way about girls when they were unknowns, I shuddered
Speaker 3: to think how they're reacting to groupies. Yikes.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: A quote from Rock and Roll Globe dot Com says,
Speaker 3: if you google get the nec and misogyny, you will
Speaker 3: not be lacking in search results. And by the way,
Speaker 3: that's exactly what I had done. It's been observed many
Speaker 3: times over the years from nineteen seventy nine to the
Speaker 3: present that fig Figer, I keep wanting to put an
Speaker 3: l in there, doesn't exactly come across as a champion
Speaker 3: of women in some of these songs that in itself
Speaker 3: would unfortunately not be newsworthy for a rock record in
Speaker 3: the seventies, but even for the time, these tunes took
Speaker 3: sexism to another level. The article goes on to say,
Speaker 3: without getting into quotations, that it simply be said that
Speaker 3: at least half the album songs feature either women hating, horny, creepiness, emotional, stunted,
Speaker 3: pre prurious, pre pruians, purians, or some combination of all
Speaker 3: the above. You can just guess what that word was.
Speaker 3: Some other critics said this. Critic Grile Marcus described the
Speaker 3: song as a smutty like Beatles imitation. Author John Borak
Speaker 3: described the song as a mean pop tune, noting two
Speaker 3: that in the song lead singer and songwriter figure comes
Speaker 3: off like a leering, sexist twit with hormones raging. So
Speaker 3: something I learned while researching this is that there are
Speaker 3: two versions of this song, a clean and an explicit version.
Speaker 3: My roommate and I used to sing this at all
Speaker 3: the time in college at the top of our lungs,
Speaker 3: and when I was getting ready for the show, I
Speaker 3: kept thinking, wheet what I didn't have any memory of
Speaker 3: it being that suggestive and valerie. I hope you're listening tonight.
Speaker 3: I actually don't know which one we're hearing today, so
Speaker 3: we're just gonna.
Speaker 11: Have to pray and see what happens.
Speaker 15: Cringe, the Girls Do, the Girls doxis one stop today,
Speaker 15: the Girl's Dolls.
Speaker 12: The Girl's Doves, the Girls Dog Sad that's one of
Speaker 12: the stops to taste.
Speaker 13: The Girl's Dove, the Girls Dogs, the Girls Dog, Girl's Dove,
Speaker 13: the Girl's Dogs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the clean version. I'm serious. I had
Speaker 3: never heard the explicit version, and I was listening to it.
Speaker 3: I guess it was today or maybe yesterday, and I
Speaker 3: was like, wow, oh my god. And then when I
Speaker 3: went back to the clean version, I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is how I remember.
Speaker 2: I think that, Yeah, this is the only one that
Speaker 2: I remember hearing. I mean, yeah, well it's it's like,
Speaker 2: it's it's naughty, it's unclean. I won't say it's obscene.
Speaker 6: Correct, it's yeah.
Speaker 3: But go to YouTube and check out the explicit version,
Speaker 3: which is not it's not disgusting.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty six, explicit.
Speaker 2: It's well let's let's let's let's go back. You know,
Speaker 2: in the in the eight seventies there it was not
Speaker 2: exactly the most politically correct time. I mean, listen to
Speaker 2: some girls by the Rolling Stones and go no further,
Speaker 2: you know. So now was it right or wrong? I'll
Speaker 2: let you decide, But it was not. How should I say?
Speaker 2: It wasn't out of character for the time, And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it was right. And I always thought that song.
Speaker 2: In fact, let me say, I like that song much
Speaker 2: better than my Sharona a million miles. But aside from that,
Speaker 2: if you take it at face value, yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 2: pretty male Chauvens pig, you know. But if you take
Speaker 2: it from the other perspective as like a parody or statire,
Speaker 2: that they're trying to sound like that but making fun
Speaker 2: of that sort of mentality.
Speaker 3: But they're not.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not excuse. I'm not apologizing for them. I'm
Speaker 2: just saying that that could also be that the the
Speaker 2: irony and the humor that and that was also prevalent
Speaker 2: back in that that time too, that it was not
Speaker 2: They weren't really saying it was a good thing. They
Speaker 2: were making fun of it by you know, making it
Speaker 2: sound like they liked it, but they're saying, see how
Speaker 2: stupid it sounds. If that makes any sense, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I one of those it's open to interpretation, which I
Speaker 4: think makes for a good song.
Speaker 2: He never returned my calls to find you know, I asked,
Speaker 2: never got back to me.
Speaker 3: Well do yourself have a favor and do check out
Speaker 3: the explicit version.
Speaker 6: That we're all going to be googling it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now now that I'm.
Speaker 4: Going to have this huge spike, they're like, what is
Speaker 4: going on here? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So meanwhile I'm trying to google the explicit version lyrics
Speaker 3: and they're like blocking me.
Speaker 6: So I don't know, maybe you're not old enough.
Speaker 2: So uh.
Speaker 3: So Dutge Viger Doug Viger wrote this song with Johnny
Speaker 3: Cash's voice in mind. All right, I know no, Like,
Speaker 3: how does that make sense?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So incidentally, the b side of Good Girls Don't was
Speaker 3: a song titled Frustrated and was again about Sharona albren.
Speaker 3: It describes how he had a crush on her but
Speaker 3: she was keeping him at arm's length, although they did
Speaker 3: go on to have a relationship later, so it seems
Speaker 3: like he really had it bad for her. I mean
Speaker 3: three songs that and who knows how many more, but
Speaker 3: at least three songs that he wrote about her. The
Speaker 3: Necker an American power pop band formed in la in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight and members were Doug Fieger, Burton, a
Speaker 3: Avier Prescott Niles, and Bruce gary My. Sharona reached number
Speaker 3: one in several countries as it as as did its
Speaker 3: album Get the Neck. Their next two albums were less successful,
Speaker 3: and they broke up in nineteen eighty two. They did
Speaker 3: reunite in nineteen eighty six, nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four, and nineteen ninety six. They permanently disbanded
Speaker 3: in twenty ten after the passing of Doug Figer. So
Speaker 3: why wasn't the band more popular? There was definitely a
Speaker 3: few problems. Somebody on Reddit posted a pretty good explanation.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 3: They were hyped by Capitol Records as the next beatles No, No,
Speaker 3: Too High, That's the Kiss of Death exactly, Like who
Speaker 3: thought that was a good idea their songs? Number two,
Speaker 3: their songs were sleazy sex songs, and number three they
Speaker 3: were misogynous. I'm not sure that the second two thoughts
Speaker 3: were valid, considering it was the seventies and all the
Speaker 3: bands had sleazy sex songs and were misogynous.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's kind of what I was saying. Yeah, not
Speaker 2: condoning it, just that's just the way it was.
Speaker 3: A demo was recorded at one of the reunions and
Speaker 3: released in twenty twelve, which was their last album. The
Speaker 3: reviews that I read were good, and maybe they grew
Speaker 3: up and left their twelve year old boy selves behind.
Speaker 3: I don't know. That's all I got. I do like
Speaker 3: the harmonica in there by the.
Speaker 6: Way, there's not much so really I like the rest
Speaker 6: of the instruments, so it was not traumatizing for me,
Speaker 6: So thank you for that.
Speaker 3: You're very welcome. It was fun for me too. And
Speaker 3: Doug Figer did play the harmonica on that by the way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was really shocking to me. I had no idea
Speaker 3: there was two versions of that.
Speaker 6: Wow, yeah, neither did I. Well, thank you, Mercedes. We're
Speaker 6: almost to the end. We just have one more little
Speaker 6: break and then we'll be back with the last song.
Speaker 9: Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 6: Hudson Riverradio dot com, and we're back. We're almost at
Speaker 6: the end of the torture session where the rock and
Speaker 6: Roll History show Crombones are torturing me with harmonica songs.
Speaker 6: Except I know the one that we're up to that
Speaker 6: is Brian's choice, And I actually really really love this song, so.
Speaker 9: I thought you would.
Speaker 4: I kind of had a feeling you would, so I
Speaker 4: picked one that has one of my trademark bummers at
Speaker 4: the end.
Speaker 9: So okay, yeah, we can bring everybody down and exit
Speaker 9: on a low No.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I like the song anyway, So all right, take
Speaker 6: it away, Brian, No thanks.
Speaker 4: Do you mind if I nerd out just a little
Speaker 4: bit before we hop into the song?
Speaker 7: Go for it.
Speaker 4: So we've all seen harmonica players on stage, I think,
Speaker 4: whether you love them or not, the common technique you'll
Speaker 4: see them use two hands and cup the harmonica and
Speaker 4: they're holding a microphone in between their two hands, and
Speaker 4: they're actually using their hands, and the microphone is part
Speaker 4: of the instrument, like an extension to the harmonica to
Speaker 4: get different sounds and all that.
Speaker 6: Well, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: The nerd in me is like, well, years ago, it's like,
Speaker 4: all right, how do they do that?
Speaker 9: What are they using?
Speaker 4: Well, the microphone that most of the time you'll see
Speaker 4: them using got nicknamed the bullet because of the shape.
Speaker 4: It's kind of curved like a cone shape, like a
Speaker 4: rounded curve, you know, like the nose of a bullet.
Speaker 4: That microphone was first made in nineteen forty nine. It
Speaker 4: was by the Shore Company s h U R E.
Speaker 4: They're still around, they're still making most of the microphones
Speaker 4: that you see when people do podcasts and all that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff.
Speaker 9: It was the Model five twenty.
Speaker 4: It was originally designed for radio use like ham radio,
Speaker 4: police radios, the military public address systems. It was built
Speaker 4: specifically to be very durable. You could bash it around,
Speaker 4: you could expose it to the elements, you could leave
Speaker 4: it outside, all that kind of stuff, and it just
Speaker 4: could take that kind of abuse. And it was geared
Speaker 4: towards the human voice, the frequency range of the human voice,
Speaker 4: and musicians just wound up loving it. They would use
Speaker 4: it on drums, they would specifically use it on harmonicas
Speaker 4: because it fit into your hands so well, you know,
Speaker 4: that that cup kind of shape. They still make it.
Speaker 4: They still make it in green. It's now the Shore
Speaker 4: five twenty DX. The newer models they make one that
Speaker 4: instead of a stand hook up, it's got a volume
Speaker 4: knob on it, so you can actually adjust the sound
Speaker 4: while you're playing it. All that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 4: if you are a nerd like me, go ahead and
Speaker 4: look up the shore X.
Speaker 9: But the other one that.
Speaker 4: Harmonica players would use when they couldn't afford or get
Speaker 4: their hands on a shore five point twenty, they would
Speaker 4: take the microphone out of an old telephone headset and
Speaker 4: use the mouthpiece microphone because that was a cheap carbon
Speaker 4: microphone that had a very gritty sound.
Speaker 9: Again, it was geared towards your voice and low volume,
Speaker 9: so it was easy to distort.
Speaker 4: It was gritty again, it was very durable, it was cheap,
Speaker 4: especially if you walk by a payphone with a pair
Speaker 4: of plyers and help yourself to one and kept walking.
Speaker 3: Su I have seen so many of them back in
Speaker 3: the day, like open, it.
Speaker 4: Would not surprise me. Wow yeah, yeah, So the old
Speaker 4: telephone headset. You'll actually see some old bluesper players actually
Speaker 4: holding that headset upside down with the mouthpiece cupping it
Speaker 4: like they would the bullet microphone with the earpiece just
Speaker 4: hanging down.
Speaker 9: So keep your eyes open. That kind of thing.
Speaker 4: You'll see that in pictures every once in a while.
Speaker 4: But again it was about that gritty kind of distorted,
Speaker 4: very distinctive sound and using your hands to shape the sound.
Speaker 4: You could shape, you know, proximity effect the bass, the trouble,
Speaker 4: get that really high.
Speaker 9: Whiny pitch that Gail absolutely loves. There you go.
Speaker 4: You know what, when in need, you make deal with
Speaker 4: what you can get your hands on.
Speaker 9: And it worked.
Speaker 4: So for my pick for a song tonight, we are
Speaker 4: going to take a trip down Under and I cannot
Speaker 4: do Australian accents, so I expect the emails to come.
Speaker 4: We start off with three brothers and some friends who
Speaker 4: formed a band. Andrew Farris played keyboards, John Farris played drums,
Speaker 4: Tim Farriss played lead guitar, their friend Gary Beers played bass,
Speaker 4: Kirk Pengilly played rhythm guitar and saxophone, and their friend
Speaker 4: Michael Hutchins was on lead vocals. And the band If
Speaker 4: Anybody Wants to Guess was named in excellent excess. It
Speaker 4: was called the Farris Brothers because they was three Faris brothers.
Speaker 6: I'm still mad at Michael Hutchins, for all.
Speaker 1: He had the sexiest voice.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, don't worry, we'll bring everybody down. We'll make
Speaker 4: everybody said later, no where he's there. So they had
Speaker 4: their high school band and a couple of them were
Speaker 4: a little older than high school, and the paris Is
Speaker 4: wound up moving to Perth in Western Australia.
Speaker 9: The band followed. They played out there, and.
Speaker 4: Then they wound up moving back to Sydney and recording
Speaker 4: some demo tapes and played out wherever they could. They
Speaker 4: were outside a pub called the Royal Antler when they
Speaker 4: were approached by a guy named Gary Morris, who happened
Speaker 4: to be the manager of another Australian band called Midnight Oil.
Speaker 4: You may have heard of them, yeah, yep, so I
Speaker 4: talked about them. It's got to be years ago at
Speaker 4: this point, it's been ages. So the Faris Brothers began
Speaker 4: opening for them, as well as other groups around Sydney.
Speaker 4: It was Midnight Oil who came up with the much
Speaker 4: improved name for the band In Excess spelled iXS for
Speaker 4: those who may not know. The idea came from a
Speaker 4: mashup of the British band XTC and the Australian jam
Speaker 4: band called IXL and I say okay.
Speaker 6: Mus exactly EI EIO.
Speaker 9: Anymore. That's it, okay.
Speaker 4: Their first performance as in Excess was in September of
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy nine. They toured the Australian pub circuit, and
Speaker 4: they wound up making a good move. They hired a
Speaker 4: really good manager who actually got them a five record
Speaker 4: deal right off the bat with an Australian label, Deluxe Records,
Speaker 4: a five record deal you would never get nowadays, not
Speaker 4: gonna happen. The company gave them a budget of ten
Speaker 4: thousand dollar redues for their first album, and so to
Speaker 4: stay under budget, they would perform a scheduled gig at
Speaker 4: night and then go to the studio where they booked
Speaker 4: overnight time, which was cheaper than booking during the day,
Speaker 4: so they did that musician's time, the musicians hours, play
Speaker 4: at night, work all night, and then go sleep.
Speaker 9: During the day.
Speaker 4: They worked on a bunch of material which was mostly
Speaker 4: released only in Australia, just way too much to cover here.
Speaker 4: They worked hard, so I'll give.
Speaker 9: Them credit for that.
Speaker 4: But in Access made their way to the United States
Speaker 4: in March of nineteen eighty three. They played their first
Speaker 4: performance in the US in San Diego to an audience
Speaker 4: of twenty four people, not twenty four thousand, not twenty
Speaker 4: four hundred.
Speaker 1: It's like a classroom.
Speaker 9: Twenty four people, yup, yup.
Speaker 4: But they brought with them a solid reputation and a
Speaker 4: good performance, which got them gigs opening for The Kinks,
Speaker 4: they opened for the Stray Cats, for Holan Oates, for
Speaker 4: Adam and the An for Men at Work. So they
Speaker 4: brought their reputation with them and it served them well.
Speaker 4: By the end of nineteen eighty three, they were headlining
Speaker 4: their own shows in New York City. Their big breakthrough
Speaker 4: single was what You Need in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 9: I remember that one quite well.
Speaker 4: The nineteen eighty seven album Kick is by far their bestseller.
Speaker 4: That has a number of hits on it as well,
Speaker 4: and in nineteen ninety they had another successful album titled X.
Speaker 4: The album has the track that We're going to torture
Speaker 4: Gale with today. It's called Suicide Blonde. Hutchins and Andrew
Speaker 4: Farriss wrote the song, and it was Hutchinson's then girlfriend
Speaker 4: Kylie Minogue who did the locomotion right. She did mean,
Speaker 4: She's got a lot of her own stuff, but she
Speaker 4: made it big in the US with I think it
Speaker 4: was the locomotion, wasn't it like in the late eighties.
Speaker 9: I don't remember, but.
Speaker 4: They were going to a debut of a movie that
Speaker 4: Kylie was in and for the event. She wore a
Speaker 4: wig and she called the Suicide Blonde, which is apparently
Speaker 4: a joke about dyeing your own hair like dying suicide.
Speaker 9: I guess you die the wig blonde.
Speaker 4: So there is a blues harp intro in the song
Speaker 4: and parts of it that were played by Charlie Musselwhite,
Speaker 4: who is a very known Chicago blues player, and he
Speaker 4: was also the inspiration for Elwood Blues played by dan
Speaker 4: Aykroyd in the Blues Brothers movie and that whole act,
Speaker 4: so that was kind of based on him. He happened
Speaker 4: to be on tour in Sydney and the band asked
Speaker 4: him to come to their recording session and he did
Speaker 4: so to set you up with that trademark downer, which
Speaker 4: you guys also mentioned. Suicide Blonde was the last song
Speaker 4: that Michael Hutchins performed live in concert. That was on
Speaker 4: September twenty seventh, nineteen eighty seven, in Pittsburgh. So let's
Speaker 4: partially torture Gale even though she likes the song.
Speaker 6: I love this song, So the joke's on you guys.
Speaker 9: Well, there we go.
Speaker 4: So suicide I've blong by an excess.
Speaker 7: S S S.
Speaker 16: SID this is color of hair like she lashes finish
Speaker 16: far again, the last of the mass sung not the
Speaker 16: shows so wrong you want.
Speaker 12: To rencos so.
Speaker 11: You too?
Speaker 5: Shirts st strip.
Speaker 16: To me, the cir stand all, why the will you
Speaker 16: get see her shirts squeeze.
Speaker 5: Ma sad moment, glor to you, Glory to you. Ta
Speaker 5: guys are mother shirt went into your hair?
Speaker 16: Sam, You're from on me to read that right across them,
Speaker 16: but go to see.
Speaker 5: Come out said shot.
Speaker 4: Tell your world.
Speaker 16: You wanta makers?
Speaker 5: The Simon.
Speaker 16: Love, the Sessions, the Sunba you want to makea s.
Speaker 5: Salamon love, the fencils, the sum.
Speaker 6: You want to macas the sun.
Speaker 12: You want to make.
Speaker 5: Let's everything you want me.
Speaker 11: Love all.
Speaker 9: That's a catchy one.
Speaker 4: And yeah, the harmonica is kind of buried in there.
Speaker 6: So I can see good thank you for the palette
Speaker 6: cleanser at the end of the show.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so they have a pretty long history.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: They crossed paths with Nile Rogers, who's known for his
Speaker 4: chunk of chunk and guitar sounds. So they picked up
Speaker 4: on that and they did stuff together. So there's a
Speaker 4: lot more to the story, but we just don't have
Speaker 4: time for everything. But I thought that was a cool song.
Speaker 4: I had trouble narrowing it down how much I wanted
Speaker 4: to torture you tonight. So I'll save the other ones
Speaker 4: for another time.
Speaker 6: I love that song.
Speaker 9: I just love it all right.
Speaker 4: So here's the downer. In August of nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 4: Michael Hutchins and his then girlfriend who was not Kylie,
Speaker 4: We're riding bikes in Copenhagen, in Denmark, and a taxi
Speaker 4: was trying to get around them on a narrow street
Speaker 4: because lots of streets in Europe are super narrow, and
Speaker 4: apparently Hutchins didn't know that the taxi was behind him,
Speaker 4: and the driver got out and assaulted him to the
Speaker 4: point where Hutchins wound up falling backwards and hitting his
Speaker 4: head on the pavement. He got a skull fracture from
Speaker 4: that and some brain damage, and like many stupid rock stars,
Speaker 4: he refused medical care for several days. He wouldn't go
Speaker 4: to the hospital for a couple of days. By the
Speaker 4: time he did, he had lost his sense of smell,
Speaker 4: He lost most of the sense of taste, and that's
Speaker 4: when he really started to have trouble with depression and aggression.
Speaker 4: He had some personality changes, and it got to the
Speaker 4: point where he was fighting with people. He fought with
Speaker 4: every single member of the band, guys who had been
Speaker 4: his best friends for twenty something years at this point,
Speaker 4: and he wound up like getting into physical altercations with
Speaker 4: him from changes which were likely attributed to that head
Speaker 4: injury that he had. But they kept working up until
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety three when they decided to take some well
Speaker 4: earned time off. Michael Hutchins would continue to work as
Speaker 4: an actor and a model, but he was still battling
Speaker 4: depression and he had issues with drugs and alcohol. He
Speaker 4: wound up having a daughter with Bob Geldoff's estranged wife,
Speaker 4: Paulie Yates in nineteen ninety six, and unfortunately, Hutchins was
Speaker 4: found dead on November twenty second, nineteen ninety seven, in
Speaker 4: his Rich Carlton Hotel room in Sydney. He was only
Speaker 4: thirty seven and Excess was back on the road to
Speaker 4: support an album that.
Speaker 9: Was going to be coming out soon.
Speaker 4: The coroner ruled his death a suicide by hanging, but
Speaker 4: there was and still is some speculations as to whether
Speaker 4: his death was accidental, whether he was partaking in other
Speaker 4: activities That one may do we can put that to
Speaker 4: bed now, Pauli Yates, the estrange Missus Geldoff was supposed
Speaker 4: to bring their daughter, along with the three daughters she
Speaker 4: had with Bob to Australia to visit Hutchins, but Bob
Speaker 4: Geldoff had taken legal action to prevent that from happening,
Speaker 4: from preventing the girls from leaving the UK. Hutchins was
Speaker 4: just absolutely heartbroken when he got that phone call telling
Speaker 4: him the news at about five am in the morning
Speaker 4: because of the time difference, and he was furious and
Speaker 4: he was absolutely heartbroken. He wound up calling Bob Geldoff
Speaker 4: himself and just had a loud argument, screaming, crying, all
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff on the phone, so loud that
Speaker 4: the neighbors in the hotel could hear what was going
Speaker 4: on through the walls. Hutchins then called an ex girlfriend distraught,
Speaker 4: asked her to come over, a different ext girlfriend, not Kylie,
Speaker 4: not the one from the bike riding, and she did.
Speaker 4: She got there at about ten thirty in the morning,
Speaker 4: but he didn't answer the door, so she assumed he
Speaker 4: had finally fallen asleep.
Speaker 9: She left a note for him and then left shortly
Speaker 9: before noon.
Speaker 4: It was housekeeping that went into his room to clean
Speaker 4: up and do the room, and the housekeeper is the
Speaker 4: one who found him dead. He had tied a belt
Speaker 4: around his neck and then he tied the other end
Speaker 4: of the belt to the door closer, the automatic door
Speaker 4: closer at the top of the door, and he was
Speaker 4: on his knees facing the door. So given all the
Speaker 4: circumstances of everything going on, it was not the happy
Speaker 4: time that he was trying to have.
Speaker 9: It was suicide. So we can kind of put that
Speaker 9: to bed. I say it as it is.
Speaker 4: The now former Missus Geldoff herself died of a heroin
Speaker 4: overdose in two thousand and To his credit, Bob Geldoff
Speaker 4: took in the now four year old daughter that Hutchinson
Speaker 4: Yates had had together, and he would later adopt her
Speaker 4: so she could continue living with the three half sisters
Speaker 4: that she grew up living.
Speaker 9: With, So I give him credit for that.
Speaker 4: The band continued to work without Michael. They worked with
Speaker 4: a series of different singers. They even had a TV
Speaker 4: show for a period of time where they were auditioning
Speaker 4: singers to try to make a reality show to find
Speaker 4: a permanent replacement front man. As of now, they have
Speaker 4: nothing on their calendar as a band, but each member
Speaker 4: is keeping busy.
Speaker 9: They each have their own projects.
Speaker 4: Gary Beers, the bass player, actually makes guitars and basses
Speaker 4: on his own. He does electronics and all that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff. And most of them are doing independent music projects,
Speaker 4: so they're not bored, but they don't seem to be
Speaker 4: on the calendar for going out as in excess anytime soon.
Speaker 4: So we got what we got and there you go.
Speaker 4: There's the Downer And now I give it back to.
Speaker 6: Gail as I said, Brian, thank you for the Palette
Speaker 6: Cleanser song, because I really you really liked that song, Mercedes.
Speaker 6: Didn't you have something you wanted to note?
Speaker 3: Yes, I have a little addition to my song. I
Speaker 3: finally did get find the lyrics and it was, in
Speaker 3: fact the explicit version that.
Speaker 6: We heard, so very explicit.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3: It wasn't that bad. But the clean version the radio
Speaker 3: editors is the one that my roommate and I used
Speaker 3: to sing at the top of our lung. So we
Speaker 3: were not sitting We were not sitting Writian slip. We
Speaker 3: were not saying some of the lyrics that were in
Speaker 3: what we just hurt, so I apologize for that, but
Speaker 3: I'm glad I could figure that out and clear it
Speaker 3: up for everybody.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, everybody's songs were interesting. I seem to have
Speaker 6: survived in about the same mental sanity I was when
Speaker 6: I started, which isn't saying much.
Speaker 2: We should have tried harder. What you said, We're.
Speaker 9: Gonna have to do this again next week?
Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely, no, no, no, no, once once is enough.
Speaker 4: I think we should each get a harmonica and all
Speaker 4: pick a different song, but we should all play our
Speaker 4: song at the same time.
Speaker 6: Great love, but you'd all be in a different key
Speaker 6: exactly exactly.
Speaker 4: That doesn't push you over the edge.
Speaker 9: And nothing.
Speaker 2: Well, we could join the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra, no charter members.
Speaker 6: It's so funny because Neil's wife, who is also a
Speaker 6: friend of mine, the look she would when a few
Speaker 6: of us would go out sometimes, and this one lead
Speaker 6: vocalist had this habit of going off key once in
Speaker 6: a while, and it was fairly predictable as to when
Speaker 6: he would go off key, and when that time was approaching.
Speaker 6: Neil's lovely life would be watching my face because she
Speaker 6: would first into laughter when she saw the look on
Speaker 6: my face when this guy would hit a wrong note.
Speaker 2: This is the caliber of people I used to play with.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is why I wore ear plug.
Speaker 3: We're talking about a band that you might have been in, yeah.
Speaker 17: Possibly allegedly, yes, yes, And it was just so great
Speaker 17: that I was so amusing for Dawn.
Speaker 6: I good memories, guys, and.
Speaker 2: All the dogs in the neighborhood would start howling.
Speaker 9: That's yeah, that's how.
Speaker 7: You know you made it.
Speaker 6: Or something. Well, I will give it back to you, Brian,
Speaker 6: to take us out.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, good job, thank you for It's nice
Speaker 4: to sit back and watch every once in a while.
Speaker 4: I do appreciate it. And those were good selections. They
Speaker 4: were really interesting across the board.
Speaker 9: And there's so much more you can do on the
Speaker 9: topic and the Blues and all that.
Speaker 4: It's so many rabbit holes we can go down, and
Speaker 4: we will at some point there and we'll find new
Speaker 4: ways to torture Gale.
Speaker 9: A lot of.
Speaker 6: You guys need you guys need better hobbies.
Speaker 9: I think we can enjoy this for a little while.
Speaker 4: All right, thank you cram Bones, and thank you all
Speaker 4: for joining.
Speaker 9: Us for the Rock and Roll History Show.
Speaker 4: Don't forget to check out all the other shows we
Speaker 4: do here at Hudson River Radio, because there is something
Speaker 4: for everybody. We'll be back next week with another brand
Speaker 4: new episode. Until then, blow until your heart's content and
Speaker 4: peace out, everybody.
Speaker 12: Rock cop Bottom and Rum.
Speaker 7: Okay, Bye bye.
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