There are some records around that are worth taking a look at…The Sunshine Superman album by Donovan is one of the best records of its kind ever done. On this record, we hear great writing, good tunes, excellent musicianship, and the main ingredient, imagination. Goodies are borrowed from almost every musical idiom imaginable and put together in totally new ways. The sitar is put to particularly good use. Donovan has overcome any labels that might have been attached in the beginning, and has become a singer-songwriter as good as or better than any we’ve heard.
On the other hand, we have a new record by David Blue that probably is the worst record I have ever heard. For what is supposed to be the best thing happening in folk-rock, the things we’ve been getting from New York have not been making it.
We are led to believe that the Verve-Folkways-Elektra folk-rock records are where it is at, but I’m afraid we’ll have to look elsewhere for the kind of music we have been expecting. David Blue is supposed to be one of the better song writers going, but I can’t find it… He can’t seem to get past the point of making sure that we all know how hip he is… He also seems to be very hung up with a Dylan image, but one Dylan is enough…It strains one to get past Dylan’s lousy voice and poor sense of musical invention and sometimes incomprehensible lyrics, but it can be done. Now we’re asked to go through the same thing with this Blue Character and it just isn’t worth it. Not to mention the fact that his voice work is offensively bad. The accompanying musicians are supposed to be the best in the business, but they sound like they met for the first time in the studio…Individually they have sounded good on other records, but they don’t seem to be able to get into much on this record. The songs themselves are really pretty bad, although several of them have been successfully recorded by other artists and sound a little better, particularly Jim Glover’s version of Grand Hotel, which is so much better than Blue’s recording that one can barely recognize it as the same song… Perhaps Blue should stay behind the scenes and write songs for others, like Jim and Jean…
Eric Anderson is back at the Chessmate through the 18th… Glad to see Eric back again… He is probably the only person from the folk field who really has the voice, writing ability, the musicianship and personality to make it big as a true rock singer. Besides Dylan, the only other people to really make the transition from folk to rock and make it big are the Lovin Spoonful, primarily because they got outside of the usual New York folk hippie scene and right into the business of playing rock and roll… If Eric and a few others can make that kind of transition, watch out.
For those who can make it, Jim Gurley and Co., known as Big Brother and the Holding Company, are at Ma Blues in Chicago… They are reported to be the best of the many new bands coming out of the San Francisco scene…
Alas, the Spikedrivers are apparently in the process of abandoning Detroit… Off to New York to work on the Record, then it’s out west…. The next time they play here, it will probably be in one of the big name clubs, or in concert. They are definitely on their way to the top… Larry Cruse has been happily married, completing the domesticated structure of the group…Lucas played upon the sitar, Brown upon the guitar, and Keelan on the huge fantastic Pipe Organ… you could hear the minds popping for miles…It was a lovely wedding…
It once occurred to me that if some of the better saloon singers around Detroit got together and formed a group the combination of talents could conceivably be almost unbeatable…rumor has it that Bill Kahler, Phil Esser, Jerry Lewis and several others are singing together…Those should be very interesting…If they don’t all kill each other for the obvious reasons of artistic temperament, they should be able to come up with a pretty strong sound. For a city the size of Detroit, especially with all the alleged folksingers running loose around here, there would be a lot more action than just the two coffeehouses that are making it and the few groups…Wake up folks, electrify, amplify, make it…There’s a lot of money changing hands and there are quite a few pretty untalented people currently raking it in….There are some very talented people around this city who should be able to get a piece of the action, especially in view of the fact that a major depression seems to be looming… Strike while the iron is hot… Of course, the true nature of Detroit becomes apparent when it becomes obvious that in order to make it, our musicians have to get out of the city and get to New York or the West coast…
About this hair thing…the recent newspaper pictures revealed a very interesting thing … John Lennon, sans hair, is really ugly as hell… And a further message to the Outlaws: get crewcuts, ivy league clothes, trade in your bikes for the latest model plastic cars, and call yourself a fraternity and you can throw all the wild parties you want… Could probably go on here at great length on the subject of hair, also of great length, but let it suffice to say that the message in the famous tale of Samson speaks for itself, not to mention the Armed Forces view on the emasculation process as a part of “basic training”…The crewcut is obviously a form of castration…