A collection of lost collaborations cult rocker GRAM PARSONS recorded with the GRATEFUL DEAD will launch a new label created by the man behind US music store chain Amoeba.Amoeba boss DAVE PRINZ reportedly uncovered the 15 unreleased Parsons tracks while sifting through the Grateful Dead's 'vault' earlier this year (06) and the recordings will launch his Amoeba Records label early next year (07).
Most of the tracks are taken from a previously unreleased 1969 concert recording.The release will mark a year of Parsons celebrations - he would have turned 60 in 2007.Prinz, a huge fan of Parsons' music, hopes to follow the CD with other archival material, only a fraction of which appeared before the country rocker's death in 1973.
Vintage Video Underground Long-lost footage from the Bay Area's legendary music scene pops up in YouTube.com windows. By Justin Farrar
If you were to barge into my unlit bedroom right this second then you'd swear I was some pud-whackin' online porn addict. I'm a 31-year-old man flying solo on a Friday night sporting nothing but a pair of plaid boxers as the irradiating glow of an iBook sears my poor retinas into crispy little fritters.
It's not cybersex that I'm strung out on, though — it's perusing this goddamn YouTube. For the uninitiated (whose numbers are rapidly dwindling), YouTube.com is a free and super-easy-to-operate video-sharing network, quite similar to MySpace. It was established in San Mateo back in February of 2005 by two hotshot e-dorks, Chad Hurley and Steven Chen, who apparently created their ever-growing monster in Hurley's garage. YouTube's senior director of marketing Julie Supan claims that people watch more than forty million videos a day on YouTube and upload more than 35,000 new video files to its servers. Most of them fall into a handful of categories: aspiring actors, directors, and musicians promoting their work; families' home movies; ephemera nicked from television and DVDs; unclassifiable oddities; video bloggers; and lonely souls desperately in need of friends (and maybe even sex partners).
But since I'm a hardcore record dork living in Frisco, I go YouTubing solely for rare footage of obscure and/or pre-MTV bands from the Bay Area. You see, before Hurley and Chen's invention, I wouldn't have had a chance in hell of viewing the hundreds upon hundreds of videos I'm now digging. Or if I did, it would have required a meticulously bargained trade with another collector for some crappy nth-generation VHS cassette. Of course, most of these clips are fairly lo-fi relics; that's the nature of underground music. But at least I now have easy access to an exhilarating clip from Crime's infamous late-'70s gig at San Quentin State Prison, wherein this confrontational outfit (who penned the asskickin' anthem "Hot Wire My Heart") dressed up as police officers and unleashed its gnarled, deconstructed riff-laden punk noise upon an amped-up assemblage of inmates.
The dude who posted this jammer, GoGoisolation (real name Paul Shirley), also uploaded videos of the Mutants live in 1978 at San Fran's legendary punk club Mabuhay Gardens and of Tuxedomoon, a band who released a smattering of new wave electronic freakery on the Residents' Ralph Records.
"I am trying to promote a screenplay I wrote called Go Go Isolation," replies Shirley, an Oakland writer, after I zap him a message via YouTube asking what the point is of posting all this boss footage. "It is about that time and those bands. It's nice to be able to refer people to a place where they can see how cool and visual the bands were in SF back then."
Shirley kept these groups notified of his intentions and received thanks from the Mutants and members of Tuxedomoon. However, "most of Crime may be dead," he says.
Not every YouTuber contacts the groups or the copyright holders of the content that he or she is uploading. Veg05053, who declined to reveal her actual name, and whose account was recently suspended, has posted 118 videos and counting, including '60s-era gems from such Bay Area one-hit wonders as the Vejtables and pioneering folk-rockers We Five, as well as unhinged psych-garage primitives the Chocolate Watch Band. These choice über-rare clips, which would not be readily available if it wasn't for VegO5053's handiwork, are either from long-forgotten television variety shows (American Bandstand, Hullabaloo, etc.) or hippie exploitation flicks, raising — as does all file- sharing technology — the issue of copyright.
"We haven't seen it [copyright infringement] become a major problem," YouTube's Supan says. "When we are contacted by copyright holders we cooperate with them to remove their content from the site. The Internet is moving in this direction, and it's up to the content owners to choose to harness the benefit of new media distribution channels or cling to traditional, shrinking business models."
Now, I don't run with Supan's e-biz jargon, but I wholeheartedly believe in the pro-user, freewheelin' spirit that it hints at, leading me to the original architects of free music file-sharing back in them analogue days: those tape-trading Deadheads.
As you could have guessed, Deadheads are going apeshit for YouTube. SaltLakeDude (full name withheld) from Salt Lake City believes it's "totally in keeping with the Dead's ethos about free music. And since these videos aren't available anywhere else, I wanted to share them with everyone."
To date, Dude has posted 38 Dead and Dead-related clips, and he isn't merely regurgitating that goofy "Touch of Grey" video from the '80s. Some of his stuff is downright astounding, especially a grainy color video from 1967 of the band kicking out a nine-minute "Viola Lee Blues" replete with a fantastical psychedelic soul freakout. It's some far-out experimental freakery that totally blows my mind.
Unfortunately, the hardened cynic inside me says, "Don't get too utopian about this whole YouTube phenomenon. At some point you will be filling out a credit card form for all these incredible cultural artifacts."
Until then, I'll consider myself lucky because I get to sit here almost stone cold nude watching Harryballs' 1985 video of Flipper slaying a San Francisco audience into submission with a snarling version of its punk-as-fuck juggernaut "Nothing," which is what it costs me to view it. Amazing.
He made quite a musical din By Jon Pareles , The New York Times
Hamza El Din, an oud player and composer who reinvented the musical culture of Nubia and carried it worldwide, died Monday in Berkeley. He was 76.
The cause was complications after surgery, said his wife, Nadra.
El Din's austere, hypnotic music was based on his research into the traditions of Nubia, an ancient North African kingdom on the upper Nile, which was a cradle of civilization.
Hamza El Din was born in 1929 in Egypt, in what had been the territory of ancient Nubia, a crossroads of trade that flourished as early as the fourth millennium B.C. Nubia's former territory is now part of Egypt and the Sudan, and El Din's hometown, Toshka, was flooded after the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. He studied electrical engineering and worked for the national railroad in Cairo, Egypt.
But he was drawn to music, first playing the round hand drum called the tar and then taking up the oud, a six-stringed lute. When he learned about the plans to build the Aswan Dam, which flooded much of ancient Nubia, he grew determined to preserve Nubian culture.
He studied Arabic music at Ibrahim Shafiq's Institute of Music and at the King Fouad Institute for Middle Eastern Music. He also traveled through villages in Egypt by donkey, collecting Nubian songs. With a grant from the Italian government, he studied Western music and classical guitar at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome.
He drew on his studies, and on surviving Nubian traditions, to create music that fused rhythms and inflections from Nubia with Arabic classical elements and a virtuosic approach to the oud, an instrument not traditionally played in Nubia. El Din performed in 1964 at the Newport Folk Festival and recorded two albums for the folk label Vanguard in 1964 and 1965. He moved to the United States, where he was a mentor to musicians, including the guitarist and oud player Sandy Bull. He settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1971 his album "Escalay (The Water Wheel)" was released on the Nonesuch Explorer label.
Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead produced El Din's album "Eclipse" (Rykodisc); El Din helped arrange for the Dead to perform at the Great Pyramids in Egypt in 1978.
El Din also made albums for Lotus Records and Sounds True. His music was used for movie soundtracks and for dance pieces by the Paris Opera Ballet, Maurice Bejart Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet; and he composed music for a version of the Aeschylus play "The Persians," directed by Peter Sellars at the Salzburg Festival.
He had stints teaching ethnomusicology at Ohio University, the University of Washington and the University of Texas. During the 1980s, with a grant from the Japan Foundation to work on a comparative study of the Arabic oud and the biwa, a Japanese plucked lute, he moved to Tokyo, where he lived until the mid-1990s.
El Din collaborated with ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, which recorded an arrangement of "Escalay" in 1992. When he returned to the United States, he resettled in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His most recent album, "A Wish" (Sounds True), was released in 1999, but his wife said that he had recently completed recording a new album.
Hamza El Din, musician and composer, dies at age 76 dgnytfon Associated Press
BERKELEY, Calif. - Hamza El Din, a musician and composer who helped popularize ancient traditional songs from North Africa, has died. He was 76.
El Din died Monday at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, said hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Kemp. His wife, Nadra, told The New York Times the cause of death was complications after surgery.
El Din played a six-string lute known as an oud, which he accompanied by his reedy voice. A cosmopolitan musician who taught ethnomusicology, his songs reflected extensive research into the traditions of Nubia, an ancient North African kingdom on the upper Nile River. He was born in 1929 in Egypt, in what had been the territory of ancient Nubia. After El Din's hometown of Toshka was flooded following the building of a dam in the 1960s, he became determined to preserve the culture of that region.
El Din studied music at Ibrahim Shafiq's Institute of Music and at the King Fouad Institute for Middle Eastern Music. He also traveled by donkey through villages in Egypt, where he collected Nubian songs.
El Din performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 and recorded two albums for the folk label Vanguard in 1964 and 1965. Mickey Hart, a drummer with the rock band the Grateful Dead, helped produce another album, "Eclipse." El Din helped arrange a now historic Grateful Dead performance at the Great Pyramids in Egypt in 1978.
He toured regularly, performing quietly intense solo concerts, and appeared at major festivals throughout the world. He performed dressed in white and wore a white turban. He taught at Ohio University, the University of Washington and the University of Texas. He played with ensembles including the Kronos Quartet. He lived on and off in the San Francisco Bay area.
ItsOnlyRockNRoll.com, Rolling Stone Magazine & Lucky Brand Jeans Team for Charity Auction featuring rare authentic rock memorabilia, currently on display at Bloomingdales 3rd Ave store in New York.
The Full Story: Rolling Stone magazine in conjunction with the folks at Lucky Brand Jeans are sponsoring a charity auction with all authentic memorabilia donated by www.ItsOnlyRocknRoll.com auctions.
See all the items on display at Bloomingdales flagship store on Third Ave in Manhattan in their windows. Check it out. The auction includes autographed guitars, microphones and pictures, musical instruments, gold record awards, and clothing
JUNE AUCTION Our upcoming Rock n Roll, Music & Entertainment Auction will be a very exciting event. Previews are going up on our website with more added daily. We will go live in June and close on Saturday, June 24th. Get ready for the amazing stuff we have secured for your bidding and collecting pleasure.
Beginning with a John Lennon "Hard Days Night" outfit, his Ivor Novello award for "She's Leaving Home," and his Vox Python guitar strap. Over 50 Beatles autographs including a receipt signed by the five original Beatles, a fantastic Brian Epstein business card signed by all, and a Beatles Royal Command Performance backstage pass signed by the boys. There are rare posters and displays including a 1964 Philadelphia concert poster, the very rare promotional poster for The Beatles Second Album, and a stunning "Help!" motorized Motion display in the original box.
We'll showcase an amazing Elvis Presley toy collection with the rare doll, very scarce board game, and two very early hand painted concert posters / signs.
An important collection of Jimi Hendrix lyrics, documents and contracts, posters, autographs and programs that include his original writings for "Black Gold," his last ever project!
Rare Rolling Stones films and audio and Jerry Garcia's earliest soundtrack recording from 1964 are also up for grabs. Even an incredible handwritten letter from Bob Dylan to Jerry Garcia.
The original art for Trip Or Freak by Mouse, Kelley and Griffin. How about a 37-page, 15 song Bruce Springsteen handwritten lyric notebook from 1968. This will be some event. We have Beatles toys, autographs, records, awards, celebrity owned wardrobe and personal items. The auction also includes Famous Guitars including Ace Freheley's KISS guitar, Steve Jones Sex Pistols guitar, Lesley West's childhood and other guitars, Molly Hatchet Dave Hlubek's Explorer, Larry Hoppen's 1957 Stratocaster, Nils Lofgren's Takamine from the Bruce Springsteen E Street Reunion tour. Dave Mason's guitar, John Sebastian's guitar and lots more. We also have Mountain drummer Corky Laing's original working lyrics for "Mississippi Queen" and many other songs.
Nobody finds posters like we do. Nobody! Highlights include Rolling Stones 1965 Montreal, Motortown Revue Cardboard poster, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson, the earliest Muddy Waters poster, a cardboard windowcard poster for the Singer Owl with Hendrix, The Who and The Doors, and stunners from Cream, Janis, Dylan, Grateful Dead, Velvet Underground, Alan Freed, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa and too many more to list. Plus the David Gest Collection part 2, with many significant concert posters Our newest catalog addition is "Rock The House," where you can bid on private concerts at your location or corporate event, guitar or drum lessons from stars, and studio recording experiences with the artists participating. Stars include Jack Bruce, Mountain, Nils Lofgren, Rick Derringer, Felix Cavalieri, Dave Mason, Edgar Winter and many others. Watch the site for previews.
PETALUMA (AP) - Lawrence ''Ramrod'' Shurtliff, a longtime crew member for the Grateful Dead, died Wednesday of lung cancer. He was 61.
Shurtliff died at Petaluma Valley Hospital, hospital officials said. A lifelong cigarette smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer only a few weeks ago.
He got his nickname from Ken Kesey while he was traveling through Mexico with the author. ''I am Ramon Rodriguez Rodriguez, the famous Mexican guide,'' he boasted -- and he was known from then on as Ramrod.
Shurtliff joined the Dead in 1967 as a truck driver and was named president of the Grateful Dead board of directors in the '70s. It was a position he held until the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995.
Like the rest of the band's few remaining staff members, he was laid off last year. Shurtliff puzzled his way through elaborate situations, from the numerous psychedelic concerts the band played during the 1960s to a concert at the base of the Great Pyramids in Egypt in 1977.
RAMROD: 1945-2006 Lawrence 'Ramrod' Shurtliff: 1945-2006
Larry 'Ramrod' Shurtliff, one of the Grateful Dead's most celebrated crew members died of lung cancer in Petaluma, California on May 16. He was 61 years old. Ramrod linked up with the Dead in 1967 as a truck driver and would eventually go on to become the crew chief. Shurtliff garnered his nickname "Ramrod" while traveling through Mexico with LSD-hero Ken Kesey. Yet another lifelong cigarette smoker, Ramrod was diagnosed with lung cancer a few weeks ago. In his final days he didn't want anybody to know he was dying, but band and crew members from the Grateful Dead family would visit him frequently.
Robert Hunter presented the following eulogy: "Most never knew his given name/they called him Ramrod/Lawrence didn't fit him. He came down from Oregon/Prankster sidekick of Cassady/Kesey and the merry crew, a silent stoic in a vocable milieu/his heart was stolen by the Grateful Dead."
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, United States (UPI) -- Grateful Dead crew member, Lawrence 'Ramrod' Shurtliff, described by Bob Weir as 'our rock,' has died in Petaluma, Calif., at age 61.
Shurtliff, known simply as 'Ramrod,' died Wednesday at Petaluma Valley Hospital only weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer, The San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday. Author Ken Kesey gave 'Ramrod' his nickname, which stuck with him through his life, the Chronicle said.
'I remember when he first showed up at 710 Ashbury,' Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart told the newspaper. 'He pulled up on a Harley. He was wearing a chain with a lock around his waist. He said `Name`s Ramrod -- Kesey sent me -- I hear you need a good man.` I remember it like it was yesterday.'
Ramrod started as a truck driver for the band in 1967 and was laid off with the remainder of the Dead`s staff last year. He served as president of the Grateful Dead board of directors when it incorporated in the `70s until guitarist Jerry Garcia`s death in 1995.
Hart and Weir recalled a vast number of instances where Ramrod proved invaluable to the jam band -- like the time Hart as so stoned, Ramrod fastened him to his drum stool with gaffer`s tape so he would not fall off.
He had a son, Strider Shurtliff, with his first wife, Patricia 'Patticake' Luft, and a son, Rudson Shurtliff, with his wife of 38 years, Francis Whalen. Copyright 2006 by United Press International
He was a psychedelic cowboy who rode the bus with Ken Kesey and took virtually every step of the long, strange trip with the Grateful Dead. Known to one and all solely as Ramrod, he died yesterday of lung cancer at Petaluma Valley Hospital. He was 61. "He was our rock," said guitarist Bob Weir.
Born Lawrence Shurtliff, he was raised a country boy in eastern Oregon and once won a county fair blue ribbon in cattle judging. He got the name Ramrod from Kesey while he was traveling through Mexico with the author and LSD evangelist, at the time a fugitive from justice. "I am Ramon Rodriguez Rodriguez, the famous Mexican guide," he boasted, and he was known ever after as Ramrod.
"It fit him," said Steve Parish, his longtime associate on the Dead crew. "He used to keep us in line."
"I remember when he first showed up at 710 Ashbury," said Dead drummer Mickey Hart. "He pulled up on a Harley. He was wearing a chain with a lock around his waist. He said 'Name's Ramrod -- Kesey sent me -- I hear you need a good man.' I remember it like it was yesterday." Ramrod joined the Dead in 1967 as truck driver and was held in such high regard by the members of that sprawling, brawling organization that he was named president of the Grateful Dead board of directors when the rock group actually incorporated in the '70s. It was a position he held until the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995. Like the rest of the band's few remaining staff, he was laid off last year.
He traveled the full length of the Dead's tangled odyssey, joining up with the band when the it first began playing out of town, about a year after the Dead got is start playing gin mills on the Peninsula.
Ramrod went to work setting up and tearing down the band's equipment for every show the Dead played. He puzzled his way through elaborate situations and circumstances: from the myriad psychedelic dungeons the band played through the '60s, to a concert at the base of the Great Pyramids in Egypt in 1977 to the baseball parks the Dead filled on the endless tours of the '80s and '90s up until Garcia's death.
"He was always there," said Hart, "making sure everybody was taken care of."
Hart said that it was Ramrod's practice to say "all right" at the conclusion of every performance as the band filed off the stage. "I looked forward to those 'all rights,' '' said Hart. "It was the way he said it. It was the tone that said it all -- 'it was all right ... not great.' You couldn't fool old Ramrod. I was playing for him."
Hart also remembered one New Year's Eve when he thought he might be too high to play. Ramrod solved the problem by strapping Hart to his drum stool with gaffer's tape. Hart recalled another show in San Jose with Big Brother and the Holding Company, where the starter's cannon the band used to punctuate the drum solo of "St. Stephen's" went off early.
"I looked back," Hart said. "His face was on fire. He'd lost his eyebrows. You could smell his flesh. And he was hurrying to reload the cannon in time. That was the end of the cannons." A protege of Neal Cassady of the Merry Pranksters, the intrepid band of inner-space explorers who gathered around Kesey, Ramrod absorbed lessons from Cassady, a Beat era legend and model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's landmark novel "On the Road." "He knew Neal better than anyone in our scene," said Weir.
He was a quiet, unflappable road warrior. Hart and fellow crew member Rex Jackson once decided to see how long it would take Ramrod to say something on a truck trip across the Midwest. He said nothing through three states before speaking. "Hungry?" he finally said. "He was never a loudmouth," said Parish. "He was never anything but an honest, hard-working guy with a grip of steel and a hand that felt like leather."
He was first married to Patricia "Patticake" Luft -- their son is Strider Shurtliff, 38, of Los Angeles. His wife of the past 38 years, Francis Whalen, is recovering from an anoxic brain injury. Their son is Rudson Shurtliff, 34, of Novato.
A lifelong cigarette smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer only a few weeks ago. Typically, he didn't want anybody to know he was dying, although band and crew members visited him daily.
Guitarist Weir said he could barely remember the Dead before Ramrod. "When he did join up, it was like he had always been there. I won't say he was the missing piece, because I don't think he was missing. He just wasn't there. But then he was there. And he always will be. He was a huge part of what the Grateful Dead was about."
Parish said he and Weir left a recent visit from Ramrod's hospital bed. "Weir said 'They say blood is thicker than water, but what we've got is thicker than blood,' " said Parish. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Lawrence Shurtliff, aka "Ram Rod," the trusted crew chief of the Grateful Dead for three decades, died of lung cancer Wednesday at Petaluma Valley Hospital. He was 61.
The soft-spoken Mr. Shurtliff began working for the Grateful Dead as a truck driver in 1967. He would go on to become an invaluable member of the band's organization, both as head roadie and as president of the Grateful Dead Corp.
"He was the most honest and balanced man," said Grateful Dead publicist and historian Dennis McNally. "When things were crazy, Ram Rod kept everybody grounded. He was the trusted soul of the Grateful Dead."
Born in Montana, Mr. Shurtliff grew up in the ranch country of eastern Oregon and was once a practicing Mormon. With a friend, he went to Mexico in the summer of 1966 to hang out with the fugitive Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.
On one occasion, Kesey asked for someone to ramrod the process of cramming seven Pranksters into a Volkswagen bug. When Mr. Shurtliff, calling himself Ramon Rodriguez, volunteered for the job, Prankster Neal Cassady dubbed him "Ram Rod," a nickname that stuck.
Grateful Dead singer/guitarist Bob Weir recalled Mr. Shurtliff as a quiet, but steadying, influence on a band that was at the center of the psychedelic maelstrom of the '60s and '70s. "He was home base for us," Weir said. "He brought a cowboy/simple aesthetic to the band scene, to the Grateful Dead family. When things got weird, we'd go back to that cowboy/simple aesthetic, and he always helped us do it."
As a Grateful Dead roadie, Mr. Shurtliff's job description often veered out of the ordinary. Weir recalled that drummer Mickey Hart once planned to fire a cannon on stage during a concert in San Jose.
Mr. Shurtliff was the only one who had any idea how to load it with gunpowder from shotgun shells.
When the cannon went off on cue and no one was hurt, Mr. Shurtliff's only comment was, "It's working."
Within the Grateful Dead family, Mr. Shurtliff was universally respected for his gentle nature and unwavering service to the band and its members for nearly 40 years.
"We were brothers," Weir said. "They say that blood is thicker than water, but what we had is way thicker than blood."
Mr. Shurtliff, who was a resident of Petaluma, is survived by his wife, Frances; two sons, Rudson and Strider, and his mother, Patty. Memorial services are pending.
Bill Kreutzmann From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bill Kreutzmann (born May 7, 1946 in Palo Alto, California) was the drummer for legendary rock band The Grateful Dead for their entire 30-year career. He is currently the drummer for SerialPod, which also includes Phish members Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon. Kreutzmann started playing drums at the age of 13, despite having been told by his sixth grade music teacher that he couldn't keep a beat. As a teenager, he met Aldous Huxley at his high school, who encouraged him in his drumming. At the end of 1964 he co-founded the band The Warlocks, along with Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. Their first real gig was May 5, 1965, two days before Kreutzmann's 19th birthday. In November of 1965, the Warlocks became The Grateful Dead. Meeting fellow percussionist Mickey Hart in the fall of 1967 would have a big impact on Kreutzmann's career. Hart soon joined the Dead, making it one of the first (and few) rock bands to feature two drummers. The two percussionists' remarkable cohesion, synchronicity, and driving power would a be a hallmark of the Grateful Dead sound for the next thirty years, earning them the nickname the Rhythm Devils. Their ten-minute drums solos, a feature of every show from 1978-1995 became legendary in the rock world. Kreutzmann remained with The Grateful Dead until its dissolution following the passing of Garcia in 1995, making him one of the four members to play at every single one of the band's 3,500 shows. Following the end of The Grateful Dead, Kreutzmann returned to his home in Hawaii but, by 2000 was back on the road with The Other Ones (Weir, Hart, Bruce Hornsby, Steve Kimock, Mark Karan, and Alphonso Johnson). The Other Ones were so successful that, in 2003 the band began touring as The Dead (keeping Grateful retired out of respect for Garcia). At 59 years old, he has lost none of his expertise and stamina, routinely playing three hours showing of non-stop drumming with only one 45-minute break. Kreutzmann also does work as a visual artist and, in 2001, began releasing limited edition reproductions of his digital artwork.He also has a son,Justin Kreutzmann ,who is a film and video director.
