O/T The Music Thread

I love house of the rising sun and I will check out those other songs by The Animals that you mentioned!

You know your Animals Chi. All great songs you named. Plus "Boom Boom" and "I'm Crying." But you named my favorites. I didn't like their later efforts as much -- "San Francisco Nights" or "Sky Pilot" or "Monterey." I believe keyboardist Alan Price, who was brilliant, left by then.

Their bassist Chas Chandler was Jimi Hendrix' manager and broke him into the UK music scene before he was known in the US.

Everyone who ever lived in Rising Sun, MD, including me became a fan of House of the Rising Sun. I would imagine the residents of Rising Sun, Indiana and Rising Sun, Delaware, too.

I saw this in You Tube the other day. Maybe you’ll enjoy this little 10 year girl singing it:

youtu.be/AH9dyGo-H84

Great catch! Absolutely, Billy Simas was either Joe's nephew or cousin - I don't recall which now.  Joe once told me that all the Simas' had really good arms.  He wasn't one to exaggerate - just a matter of fact.  You would have loved talking baseball with Joe, who was born in 1938.  He had a memory much like yours for baseball and music.  So many times, Joe and I talked until the wee hours of the morning...without alcohol.  And, Joe enjoyed baseball at every level, from Little League to MLB and The World Baseball Classic.  

Yes, I traveled several times from Hanford to New Orleans by car, and usually took a different route each time, but of course I spent more time on the west side.  Also, I worked for a few months doing educational consulting in Mojave, and I used to travel to Reno and Lake Tahoe for basketball coaching clinics.  Sarah and I were married in Lake Tahoe, and our hotel at Harvey's looked right out on the late.  Majestic!  Until I moved to California, I had no concept of being cold in a desert, let alone knowing that it snowed in both Mojave and Reno.  Desert people are rather odd, though.  Kind of insular and distrusting.  Foster's Freeze had the thickest and best milkshakes!  You'd have to eat most of it with a spoon!  

Just to support what you said, I’m a desert people now. Since 2017. But this valley has something else going on that you can’t quite put your finger on. Some of the whites feel like they’re treated like a minority. I think that can be true if you want it to be. For me, I love the people. They’ve been great. Also an interesting mix of religions here, much ov the Hispanic population with their usual Catholic influence, but LDS and Mormon have a large presence. The odd little town of Crestone features Hindu and Buddhist religious facilities, and a fair number of deists as well. So cool to be in a place that was inhabited long before Plymouth Rock, which we were taught in school was like the beginning of America…

That was complex stuff they were doing. It took me awhile to appreciate them. You grow up with Sloopy and Louie Louie, it takes time to catch up with "Hey Nineteen." Tremendous band, unquestionably.

Good article, Rizz and thank you for posting it.  Anyone who was a fan of The Beach Boys/Byrds/Righteous Brothers has long known about Carol Kaye.  She is always in the conversation for great bassists, just like any Wrecking Crew member always ranks among the top in their field -- Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Billy Strange, Earl Palmer, Larry Knechtel, and most famously Glen Campbell.  I learned something new in that article -- that she played rhythm guitar on "La Bamba."  Wow -- not that the part is so demanding, but that she was in the studio in 1958 with Ritchie Valens.

I was a little surprised that it didn't mention two of her iconic interventions -- the bass line in "These Boots Are Made For Walking" and even more so the indelible bass configuration in "The Beat Goes On,"  which had been a finished recording without that famous line.  Sonny Bono -- who himself performed percussion duties with The Wrecking Crew -- thought the song lacked energy, which is where Kaye come up with that introduction.

I asked two bass-playing friends of mine who they considered the greatest bass player.  They both said Jaco Pretorius, who was mainly a jazz/fusion guy who is not as well-known among the public at large.  He did play in Weather Report if that name means anything to you.  Like many insanely creative people he had no self-control, became a hopeless drug addict and died in his mid-30s.

I don't think I put much thought on bass lines until around 1964, maybe because superior recording technology brought it more to the forefront and I started hearing the great bass foundations of Motown -- especially James Jamerson, one of The Funk Brothers -- Motown's version of The Wrecking Crew -- who played on nearly every Motown recording of the 60s into the early 70s.  He made those songs jump and is held in very high regard by guys who actually play bass. 

And Paul McCartney was right in there -- the bass parts in songs like "Nowhere Man" and "And Your Bird Can Sing" and dozens of others grab the attention even of dilettantes like me.  Another favorite is Bootsy Collins, who backed James Brown and Parliament/Funkadelic before starting his own Bootsy's Rubber Band.  And Duck Dunn of Booker T and the MGs and all those Stax/Volt songs by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd and so on.  Just masterful.

John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, Chris Squire of Yes, Geddy Lee of Rush.  All in there.  I even like the guy from Cheap Trick,  Tom Petersson.  Another really good one is Larry Graham, who started with Sly and the Family Stone and then formed his own band Graham Central Station.  I saw them when they were just starting out, playing a small room at Santa Clara University.  The guy had talent out the wazoo, it almost seemed unfair.  BTW he is the uncle of Drake, whose mug recently graced this site hanging out with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.

I'm sure there are a thousand others who could be named.

I have long maintained that the supply of great musicians is actually greater than the demand for them.