as August ends, a ROCKIN' potpourri of items discovered this summer

(above) friend and ROCKIN' TV supporter Darrel Burnett

with his sweetie Kelly and Darrel's black & white Thunderbird

(viz: The Delicates' song of the same name)

at the USAF Thunderbirds event in Rockford, IL

(above) finally, a great shot of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' bus,

FURTHUR (also known as FURTHER)

(above) Janette Beckman's shot of RUN DMC
in their hometown of Queens, NY (courtesy Morrison Hotel Gallery)
(above) Commander Cody in Modesto, in the '70s,
with opening act Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs
(handbill art by Chris Frayne--George's brother)
(above) outtake shot of Bob Dylan and then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo;
photo by Don Hunstein, who took the FREEWHEELIN' cover shot

(above) typically nervy handbill art for John Seabury's own band,

Psycotic Pineapple

(above) 2008's never-say-never renegade, Amy Winehouse,

signing autographs, in her car

(above) Green Day, in (their) car, in New Orleans, photo by Danny Clinch

(photo courtesy Danny Clinch)

(above) Muddy Waters, bluesman and bandleader,

on the bus in the mid-'60s, in Europe

(photo courtesy Reelin' in the Years Productions)

(above) Fats Domino's car's license plate, outside his

New Orleans home, photo courtesy Geary Chansley, photo researcher
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(left) found at Amoeba Records, in Berkeley, CA, but the cover art's something of a disappointment, considering the novelty of the song itself

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So here we are on the last day of August, before school officially begins for my wife Jane (she teaches special ed at the award-winning Lincoln Elementary School in Vallejo, CA, where the school topped the entire district with its test scores--hooray!!), and for our son Jordan, whom we just dropped off at Georgetown University to begin his freshman year. And what else did I do this summer, you may ask?

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Besides acquiring, from our daughter Jessica, a smart as all heck Yorkie-Poo (Yorkie Terrier / Poodle mix) named Charlie, we basically celebrated the end to high school (and volleyball and soccer and enormous cuts of red meat and huge washing machine loads) for both our kids, and got ready for the long-anticipated trip to Washington DC to install Jordan . . . and I kept searching for all things rock-and-cars.

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From the top:

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(1) Next month, many presentations begin taking place to develop ROCKIN' DOWN THE HIGHWAY into television. This is being headed up by Michael Rose Productions, out of Marina del Rey, in Southern California. Michael is a tremendous filmmaker, responsible for (among much else) the acclaimed television series GREAT CARS. He's a rocker, too.

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Among many rockers who've elected to join the cause as a support team member, is Darrel Burnett, who's based in Rockford, IL (along with radio program director John "Brizz" Brizzolara, whom you'll meet shortly in another blog). You see Darrel (and Kelly) above, with his black and white Thunderbird, at the Rockford airport where the USAF team of F-16 C/D Flying Thunderbirds gathered for an airshow. It was quite an achievement for Darrel to be able to wheel his 'Bird out onto the tarmac. All this is relevant to ROCKIN' because one of the episodes will be devoted to The Delicates, who wrote and performed "Black and White Thunderbird," of whom Denise Ferri and Bernadette Dente are also on the ROCKIN' team. More on them shortly, too (and refer back to the essay on The Delicates in ROCKIN', please).

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(2) If I didn't already tell you, it's been much harder than I'd ever thought finding THE picture of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' bus FURTHUR (or FURTHER). But here's one which arrived in my lap quite unexpectedly. DAY GLO!!!

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(3) Morrison Hotel Gallery has become of the top locations (in several cities, and on the Internet) for showcasing the work of the top rock photographers. Here we see RUN DMC outside their home, and by a car (of course), in Queens, NY, photographed by Janette Beckman.

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(4) One of my great joys in writing THE ART OF ROCK (Abbeville Press, 1987) was meeting George and Chris Frayne. George is Commander Cody, and Chris (now passed) was his artist brother. Chris created many of the Cody band's great posters and handbills. Here's an unusual one, for a Modesto, CA gig, with Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs (now there's a rock-and-cars band name) also on the bill.

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(5) Earlier this year, Suze Rotolo released her book of reminiscence, A FREEWHEELIN' TIME: A MEMOIR OF GREENWICH VILLAGE IN THE SIXTIES. Rotolo was Dylan's girlfriend during the time he wrote songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," and "Masters of War," and Dylan penned other songs about their love affair, including "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Boots of Spanish Leather," "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," and "One Too Many Mornings."

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Rotolo was photographed with Dylan for the cover of FREEWHEELIN' WITH BOB DYLAN, strolling down a street in Greenwich Village in New York City, about which I blogged some time back. The photo above, by Don Hunstein, is an outtake from that legendary session. Check out Anthony DeCurtis' visit with Rotolo in the NY Times' "Memoirs of a Girl from the East Country (O.K., Queens)") which appeared on 5-11-08.

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(6) The original artwork for a Psycotic Pineapple handbill-to-be, is by John Seabury, also a bandmember in Pyno, and is typical of John's brilliant outrageousness. His flyers are among the all-time-most-amusing-ever, in Berkeley, CA--where millions of flyers have been created and posted since the middle '60s. John's a good friend who you can meet at many NorCal poster events, and even, every so often, at national poster events such as Flatstock, now being held for the 18th time, this time again at at Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle this weekend. You can read more about John at http://runawaydinosaur.com/2008/01/29/rock-art-wednesday-john-seabury/ and see more Pyno art by searching the archive of his art at http://www.gigposters.com/.

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(7) Amy Winehouse, autographing for fans, in her car, somewhere in the UK. Great singer, but "nuff said.

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(8) Green Day, in the truck of their car, in New Orleans, shot by Danny Clinch. I cannot say enough about Danny's talent. It was an absolute joy to have his work included in ROCKIN'. And I hope that everyone survives Hurricane Gustaf, another humdinger of a storm, which seems to have come just minutes after Katrina in the scheme of things.

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(9) Muddy Waters, in his tourbus, somewhere in Germany, in the mid '60s. I thank the greatly respected photo researcher (and my pal) Geary Chansley for turning me on to the resource known as http://www.reelinintheyears.com/. Check it out, you'll see why. At some point I intend to blog about Chansley, because it's people like him who help authors like me discover spectacular and previously unknown material. Among much, much else in his career, Geary was the Package Coordinator for CELEBRATE: THE THREE DOG NIGHT STORY, 1965-1975.

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(10) It was Geary who turned me on to this shot of Fats Domino's car, parked in front of his 9th Ward home in New Orleans, years before Katrina. The photo is by Paul Harris, in Geary's words "a cool cat from England who's come to the American South many times to photograph guys like Fats . . . plus other great stuff." FYI you can see more of Paul's work at http://www.paulharrisphotography.blogspot.com/.

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Fats' home has now been rebuilt, but will it withstand Hurricane Gustav? I hope and pray it will. Fats is a national treasure.

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(11) And finally, trippin' around Amoeba Records in Berkeley (one of the last great independent record stores in America, with two other locations, in S.F. and L.A.) I stumbled across this '45 single for the Chordette's "No Wheels." That novelty song is well known among aficionados, but the cover art is, shall we say, lacking. But it is history. And the history of the rock-and-cars interface is a lot of what I'm all about these days.

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Hope to hip you to what's happening with ROCKIN' television shortly. Hope everyone had a relaxing and rewarding summer.

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a tale of two ROCKIN' musicians and their GM commercials: Steve Earle's "Revolution"

(above) LIVE FROM AUSTIN TX, recorded at "Austin City Limits" 9-12-86,

the same summer GUITAR TOWN, Earle's first LP, shook up Nashville

(above) a few years later, circa COPPERHEAD ROAD,

but Earle was headed for a difficult time

(above) older, still basically uncompromising,

but the years, the road, and some time in lockup have taken their toll

(above) the justly celebrated 1986 GUITAR TOWN that, for some,

suggested Earle was "the next Springsteen"

(above) imperfectly assembled, but nevertheless the "Guitar Town" video
(above) the reward--and chore--of a hit album, even for a radical:

autographing an LP on the bus for fans (also from the "Guitar Town" video)

(above) "There's a speed trap up ahead in Selma Town,

But no local yokel gonna shut me down."

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Singer/songwriter/bandleader Steve Earle, just like Brandi Carlile more recently (see previous blog), made a decision to associate his recorded product with that of General Motors, back in 2005. But even just three years ago, GM was not touting its hybrids and its bio-fueled cars of the future: it was pickups and doolies, dude, and what amazed some is that one of the songs chosen was Earle's "The Revolution Starts Now" (which, I guess, by name alone, or also by a shallow reading of the lyrics) actually became a sales tool. But, for many amongst Earle's legion of fans, that decision to "sell out" (if that's what a radical musician does when he finally cashes in) was a slap in their faces.

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But who's to say, right? "Revolution" can mean any number of things . . . possibly including a campaign to sell vehicles. Back then, Chevy was emphatic about promoting on TV and radio the concept "American revolution," as it tied into their products through an appeal to elemental patriotism and the promotion of Americana. . . but using Earle's song was a risk because the suits also left the door open to Earle's own wider, darker (certainly left-leaning) interpretation of the term . . . revolution.
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"I was walkin' down the street

In the town where I was born

I was movin' to a beat

That I'd never felt before

So I opened up my eyes

And I took a look around

I saw it written 'cross the sky

The revolution starts now

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"The revolution starts here

Where you work and where you play

Where you lay your money down

What you do and what you say

The revolution starts now

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"Last night I had a dream

That the world had turned around

And all our hopes had come to be

And the people gathered 'round

They all brought what they could bring

And nobody went without

And I learned a song to sing

The revolution starts now"

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As the revolution Earle was positing was not written, per se, about developments in American automotive product, but rather about the desire for social and political change, one has to ask . . . did the suits mis-read his intentions? Did they assume his songwriting was simply in the same vein as Seger's "Like a Rock," which carried no political baggage?

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Carlile clearly stated on her website she wouldn't have done an ad for pickups, but saw the advantages of helping promote GM's (avowed) new change in direction. For his part, Earle just needed the money, and if the song was in the same anthemic vein (as Chevy's ad agency believed it was), as John Mellencamp's "This Is Our Country" and Bob Seger's "Like a Rock," then what the heck, right?

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Well, yes . . . and no.

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According to Wikipedia, "Since early on, Earle was involved with political causes. [Going back to his first public performances], Earle was unable to play in bars due to his age [he ran away from home at age 16], and took to playing in coffeehouses alongside anti-Vietnam War campaigners. These experiences had a strong effect on him, later on prompting his strong opposition to the war in Iraq."

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For instance, years after GUITAR TOWN brought to the forefront Earle's exceptional songwriting talent, he recorded "John Walker's Blues" on his 2002 album, JERUSALEM. Although Earle said he was just emphathizing with John Walker Lindh, (the American Taliban recruit) and not glorifying terrorism, anyone would have to say Earle was putting forth a controversial message. Two years later, he issued the album THE REVOLUTION STARTS NOW which coincided with the 2004 US presidential election (for which he backed John Kerry), and the title song of the same name was chosen to promote Michael Moore's anti-war documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11.

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My point is, Earle came to the table with heartfelt antiwar bona-fides, and briefly got away with something that neither he or his fans--or Chevy and GM, for that matter--really could justify. It's just not possible to imagine Chevy and GM then having any intention to lean in a particularly unusual direction, although I'm guessing they don't consider the green revolution as politically left--it's beyond Al Gore, it's actually a mainstream sentiment now--making it so that Brandi Carlile's concerns more naturally square with those of the carmaker.

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Earle's manager at the time was quoted as saying, "It was just a business decision we decided to make and we went with it." On the website http://www,nucountry.com.au, it's noted: "In 2005, "The Revolution Starts Now" was inked for a TV ad for Chevy pickups. But as karma collided with the singer, Chevy inexplicably killed the ad days after it began airing. Earle hadn't actually signed his contract, and he only got a fraction of the money he'd been promised. "It just goes to show you," Earle said, "when you finally get ready to sell out, nobody's buying.""

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Another blogger put it very simply, "Don't ever fault a man for making money."

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But let me give you several other sentiments expressed at the time:

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Jim DeRogatis, the distinguished rock critic and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times interviewed Earle at length, and published excerpts from the interview on March 4, 2008. Earle noted, amongst much else, "I've never written a record that had no chick songs, and I've never written a record that had no political songs!"

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One of DeRogatis' readers, Scott Tipping, responded: "But how could you not take the opportunity of doing the interview to ask him about selling "The Revolution Starts Now" to Chevy trucks? Knowing your thoughts on corporate shilling and the destruction of rock & roll through advertising, I thought you'd be the one guy to take him to task and ask, "WHY??" Why would you take a political piece that was intended to inspire people, and reduce it to a car commercial?"

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Austin Mayor, another reader, responded to Tipping's point: "What Scott said. Hearing "Revolution" promote Chevy's fossil-burners really turned me off to that whole album. I don't really believe it's about "selling out"--we've all gotta eat--but putting that particular song in a truck commercial really underminded the legitimacy of its political content. Steve Earle broke my heart selling that song to Chevy."

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DeRogatis, to his credit, responded to both men the following week, by saying: "You guys are right. I dropped the ball on not asking Steve about that commercial. I guess I blocked out the painful memory of it!" (And, apparently Earle did have some further reponse, elicited by DeRogatis, but I was unable to find it while preparing this blog).

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For those interested, there are excellent discussions of this painful topic at:

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http://www.houstonpress.com/2005-07-28/music/breakdown-lane/ -- by John Nova Lomax, in which he concludes, "As for Earle, it must be remembered this is a man with no fewer than six ex-wives and close to an equal number of ex-managers, some of whom he still owes money. In his 2003 biography, Earle told author Lauren St. John that, all told, his overhead was then $35,000 a month. Kinda reminds me of a quote from bluesman R.L. Burnside, a musician with similar family obligations, if on a smaller scale: "Man," he once told a reporter, "I got to put 12 biscuits on the table 'fore I get to eat even one." Chevy ad deals buy a lot of biscuits, people. What's more, Chevy is an American company that provides a lot of increasingly rare, blue-collar living-wage jobs. Sure, selling "Revolution" will rob one of Earle's songs of some of its pure radical power. Get over it--he'll write more--and as it happens, Earle was wrong. Dubya won. The revolution didn't start then, anyway."

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Mark Caro's 2007 blogs in the Chicago Tribune under the title "Pop Machine," including "Finally, some sell-outs we can enjoy!" and "Wilco loves certain German Cars," and "Mellencamp's sell-out backfires," and best of all, his 10-4-06 column (with huge readership response) is this one: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_popmachine/2006/10/because_they_di.html

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There's also great stuff at http://www.cheezeball.net/Features/SteveEarleAndChevrolet.htm

including this comment: "Apparently the same commercial that left us scratching our heads angered a bunch of wingnuts on the opposite end of the political spectrum. While we couldn't figure out why Earle had gone corporate, they couldn't figure out why Chevrolet had hired a "radical musician." Sort of mollified our outrage. If Earle pissed off a bunch of wackjobs by "selling out," maybe that makes the whole thing some sort of subversive act. (Or maybe not). In any event, the thought of the commercial angering its target audience is rather amusing."

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Also, check out http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-shaw/dylan-havens-and-earle-_b_6113.html

and watch the fur fly. Similarly, the exchange at http://portland.metblogs.com/2005/08/22/the-revolution-startshow/

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So, three final thoughts.

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(1) From "Pete" at http://ickmusic.com/category/steve-earle/page/2/, "It IS possible to discover cool music through commercials." Yes, true, because that's how I encountered Brandi Carlile.

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(2) Tom Waits, quoted in the L.A. Times, "By turning a great song into a jingle, advertisers have achieved the ultimate: a meaningless product has now been injected with your meaningful memory of a song. The songs and the artists who have created tthe songs have power and cultural value, that's why advertisers pay out millions for them. But, once you (the musician) have taken the cash, you, your song, and your audience are forever married to the product."

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and (3) the first song on Earle's LIVE FROM AUSTIN TX, which is his "Sweet Little '66." Because, just as we'll forever stand in awe of GUITAR TOWN as a fully realized, impeccably crafted set-piece of great, inter-related songs with great highway settings, we all should remember that Earle comes from the right rock-and-cars place too:

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"Now I'm a pretty big man around this town

I got me the hottest little Chevy around

My sweet little '66

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"She got a yellow front fender and a gray one on the back

But my income tax is comin' and I'm gonna paint her black

Sweet little '66

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"She got the 396, she got the four on the floor

And those stickers in the window ain't just for show

My sweet little '66

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"Now old Bubba and me built her back in '79

Then he went into the army so now she's all mine

Sweet little '66

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"I used to run her down on River Road and make a little dough

But can't afford another ticket so I'm layin' kinda low

Me and my '66

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"Now she ain't too good on gasoline, she burns a little oil

But she was built by union labor on American soil

Sweet little '66

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"So when your Subaru is over and your Honda's history

I'll be blastin' down some back road with my baby next to me

In my sweet little '66."

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Maybe that's the song Steve Earle should have sold to Chevy. All the right sentiments from an ol' leftie. Just sayin'. Peace out.

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a tale of two ROCKIN' musicians and their GM commercials: Brandi Carlile's "The Story"

(above) from GM's ad presaging the future . . . plugging in

at your local alt fuel cell depot

(above) a page from Brandi Carlile's most excellent website

(above) from the video for "The Story" - worth checking out
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As with probably hundreds of thousands of other seriously-hooked Olympic television-watching fans (go Nastia Liukin!!!), I wouldn't have learned about singer-songwriter-bandleader Brandi Carlile had it not been for an intriguing commercial created for General Motors, promoting their newly fuel-efficient and technologically-forward vehicles, an ad which has been given considerable airing in prime time.

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Carlile has a mesmerizing voice. That's what just chased me to buy her CD (her second major-label release) and download the GM video again. Her voice has a really haunting sound, in a timbre that's always grabbed me. And GM's message at least comes off like they're changing direction . . . and for the better . . . and what's not to like about that.

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THE STORY (the name of the album as well as the song) was released on April 3, 2007. Initially, the album peaked on May 5, 2007 at #58 on the Billboard 200 chart. But due to the GM ad airing heavily during the first half of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the song has increased in downloads and is currently sitting at #36 on Billboard's Top 100 "most downloaded songs" chart, and #5 on the "most downloaded rock songs" on iTunes. Also currently, THE STORY album is #9 on Billboard'sTop 100 "most downloaded albums" and #1 on the Top 100 "most downloaded rock albums" in iTunes. Pretty fine accomplishments, no question.

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So who is Brandi Carlile?

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She's 27 years old, born and reared in Ravensdale, WA, a very rural town north of Seattle. Columbia Records discovered her in late 2004 on the strength of her home recordings made during her early scufflin' days, and reports from musicians like Dave Matthews that she was the real deal.

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In 2005 she was featured on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "10 Artists to Watch in 2005." By the end of 2006, she had toured and supported other musicians including the Indigo Girls, Chris Isaak, Tori Amos, and Shawn Colvin. The development of her music also was greatly influenced by her songwriting and musicwriting partnership with bandmembers Tim and Phil Hanseroth, as well as the esteemed T-Bone Burnett who was brought in to produce THE STORY.

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Then in 2007, the popular television drama "Grey's Anatomy" began featuring some of her tunes. Likely it was the association with "Grey's" which hipped GM's advertising execs to a fresh talent with a compelling song.

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Many people now have commented, both reviewers and bloggers, that Brandi Carlile evokes comparison with Elton John (and his partner songwriter Bernie Taupin), Bette Midler, Leonard Cohen, the Indigo Girls, Rufus Wainwright, Ani Defranco, and Jeff Buckley. As for myself, she just sounded immediately like I should check her out. Different. New.

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Ok, so why did this admittedly "loud mouth tree hugger" (her words) make an alliance with General Motors?

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On her excellently organized and visually compelling website http://www.brandicarlile.com, she delivered this response:

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"Hey all, I'm writing you from a plane bound for Portugal. While we're gone, you may have already heard our song "The Story" in an Olympic advertisement for GM. Depending on how you feel about music and advertising in general, you may be wondering why a band like us would do something like that. Well, I have a few good reasons, so allow me to shine a little light on the subject.

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"When GM approached our band to use "The Story" in their 2008 Olympic ad, visiions of SUVs and full-size pickup trucks driving through a rugged mountain range were dancing through my head. I promptly and politely declined. (Although I don't want to be a hypocrite: our band did tour in a GM gas-guzzling van for many years).

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"But when they came back to us and offered to involve us in [a much different] an ad campaign promoting hybrids, bio fuel, bio hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell cars, and yes, even the infamous electric car, the Chevy "Volt," I felt the need to think twice about having the opportunity to be part of a huge American car company creating an ad campaign for environmentally responsible cars. We feel they allowed more than a fair amount of input from us and made an honest effort to create an environmentally conscious ad. We are proud of it.

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"I also believe in American jobs. Keeping people employed in the US and building fuel-efficient/alternative cars could help reduce and one day help eliminate our dependency on foreign oil. To really make a positive impact regarding the climate crisis, we all need to work together to make the change, even GM.

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"Regardless of what my feelings are about the agenda behind the sudden wave of corporate environmental awareness, it's still awareness just the same.

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"The twins I play with, Phil and Tim, and I are proud to say that every last penny from the GM ad is geing donated and split between several environmental organizations exploring alternative energy and effecting change on a grass roots level.

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"Touring, while virtually unavoidable for an artist like me, can be wasteful and bad for the environment, so we're trying to find ways to lessen our footprint.We recently got involved with a non-profit organization called Reverb to help us plan a more environmentally sustainable tour. We will donate $0.50 from each ticket sold for the tour to help offset the CO2 emissions our tour will generate. The money will help support Reverb's mission as well as NativeEnergy's family-farm methane projects, which help reduce global warming pollution by reducing the amount of fossil fuels the farms themselves use for heat, cooling, and electricity, or by preventing emissions of methane gas from manure stored in lagoons.

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"The emissions we'll offset include [each] venue's electricity, our bus, and [compensate for] fans driving to and from our shows. We're offsetting the equivalent of having one car drive over 3,000,000 miles!"

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Thanks, Brandi, for giving me the opportunity to share your message with the readers of this ROCKIN' blog, and for them to chase down "The Story" for themselves. I love your sound, girl, so rock on.

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In the following blog, I'll explore what was a far more controversial link-up with GM only three years ago, that of Steve Earle's "The Revolution Starts Now." Earle of course has written many brilliant automotive-themed or highway-based songs, not the least of which is "Guitar Town," and is himself the subject of one of the essays in ROCKIN' DOWN THE HIGHWAY.

ROCKIN' with roadie Charlie Kelly and Yogi Phlegm (aka The Sons of Champlin)

(above) The Sons of Champlin's road crew, truck, equipment, and PA

(above) Yogi Phlegm in 1970, better known as The Sons of Champlin
(above) an earlier promo shot of the Sons, probably 1968 or 69
(above) the plate from their last truck

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I made it out from New Jersey in the Fall of 1969 to begin my freshman year at Stanford. I was in the first true coed dorm there on campus, Florence-Moore Hall, known as Flo-Mo. There I would encounter the music of the Grateful Dead and many more Bay Area-bands. . . including the Sons of Champlin.

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The Sons were led by vocalist Bill Champlin (perhaps better known--certainly in recent years--for his work with Chicago). In Flo-Mo, their album "Loosen Up Naturally" was played often. I remember one song in particular, that began, "why don't you . . . open the door," and in the midst of many a late night stony session, that was cause for much merriment. Ah, the strange things you remember about your first year in college.

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The Sons were a brass and organ-driven band, unusual for the Bay Area (most of the Bay Area bands were guitar-driven), and actually all of the Sons were more accomplished musicians (in the beginning) than the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Big Brother (with Janis Joplin), or Quicksilver Messenger Service.

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But they never quite caught on nationwide, despite being, to this very day, revered in their home territory, much like the Ides of March in Chicagoland (see earlier blog).

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In 1970 - 71, they went through some internal changes, reforming briefly as Yogi Phlegm, a name that promoter Bill Graham absolutely hated, and literally refused to book them under that name, despite their playing the closing of his legendary venue the Fillmore West during the summer of 1971 (they are credited on the "Closing of the Fillmore" album as The Sons of Champlin).

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Charlie Kelly was the Sons' main roadie--in the great tradition of Marin County rock band roadies. He has vastly amusing stories on his website, http://www.sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/yogi_phlegm.htm, including many (a few reproduced below, with a nod of thanks to Charlie) about trucking the band's equipment and P.A. The small photo of him and a Sons truck was taken outside Black's Butte, near Redding, probably in the mid-1970s.

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I apologize if Charlie's stories are a little bit out of sequence, but you'll fdefinitely get the flavor of what it was like to be a true 'quippie in the "good ol' days of homegrown classic rock."

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STORY SEQUENCE ONE:

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"From 1968, when I joined up with the Sons, to 1972, poverty was the principal state. This wasn't too hard on me, because I was a bachelor and could sleep standing up in the rain. Bill Champlin was the only family man, and he was always under pressure to provide his family with the minimum standard of living. Bill always had a decent rental house, and probably spent more on rent than the rest of the band put together. Even though the necessity of this arrangement was obvious, the two standards of living separated Bill from the other guys in a subtle fashion. None of the other guys had kids, and their wives/girlfriends had jobs. Terry could sleep anywhere. And did.

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"For me, the relative poverty translated into the minimum amount of truck it took to deliver the equipment. When Tooth (Steve Tobin, also aka Steve Tollestrup) and I blew up Bill Champlin's Econoline in 1969 (hey, Tooth was driving), we [resorted to using] the Quicksilver Messenger Service's truck for a while, because they weren't getting along and weren't playing any gigs.

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"By the time we used up the Quicksilver favor, Tooth had already quit, so [Sons' manager] Fred Roth hired a reasonably professional roadie, Gary Jackson, who had handled gear for the all-girl Ace of Cups. Gary was hired more for the fact that he owned a van than for any other reason, and he wasn't much into the family aspect of the Sons.

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"When we were getting ready for the two month tour that finished off 1969, Gary saw the writing on the wall: two months of hard living for not much money with a bunch of guys he regarded as marginally crazy and a partner who didn't give a shit about money. He quit, and was replaced by "Hog" Steve (Rhodes), our old friend from the Hog Farm, my third roadie partner in a year and a half.

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"Steve and I turned out to be completely compatible. He knew it was an adventure, and that comfort was not required, and he was the only guy I worked with whose stamina matched my own. We never argued over a thing.

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"We desperately needed a truck for our tour, one that was big enough to hold all of our gear plus a P.A. system. We didn't have the money, so Fred Roth and Julie Salles [the Sons' then Office Manager] went to see Bill Graham. In his office they asked him point blank if he would buy the band a truck.

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"According to Julie, Graham exploded. He went on for some time, and when he stopped, Fred and Julie were still waiting for a truck. Finally, in opposition to every commercial principle he had, Graham said he'd co-sign a loan so we could get a truck.

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"It was really the minimum truck we needed, a Ford one-ton, and it was the no-option package with a wimpy engine and a cheesy box. It had a lift-gate, which we considered essential for loading the Hammond B-3 organ, but when the lift died about three weeks after we got the truck, Hog and I had to pick the organ up to chest height to put it in the truck.

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"By the time the band broke up in 1970, the Ford was trashed. We drove it back to Graham's offices, and gave him the keys.

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"I took a job as sound man at The Lion's Share, a nightclub in San Anselmo where various groupings of the Sons and their friends played just about every Sunday night under several names, such as the Nubugaloo Express. I always roadied for them, and I doubt if they ever looked farther than me when it came time to move some equipment.

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"In late 1970, Bill Champlin decided that he was going to move to Santa Cruz, and start a band called the Rhythm Dukes with his friend Jerry Miller, formerly of Moby Grape, and John Barrett and "Fuzzy" John Oxendine. The latter two had been in a band called Boogie that had practiced at the Heliport, and Fuzzy had been the second drummer in the Sons for one awful month.

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"The first Rhythm Dukes gig took place before Bill had even moved down to Santa Cruz, and there was this little problem of getting the Hammond down there, about 100 miles. I knew a girl with a pickup truck, and I asked her if she wanted to go to Santa Cruz for the weekend with me. Oh yeah, do you mind if I throw a Hammond, Leslie and a Twin Reverb in the truck? Oh, did I mention we're driving your truck?

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"We got the stuff down there, and after a day or so, the girl started to get the feeling that I was more interested in her truck than in her. Maybe I said something, I don't know. She took off in a huff and drove home, leaving me in Santa Cruz with all this equipment that had to be brought back to Marin. I had to practically hitchhike back with it. I had my bicycle with me, so combed the area, asking about anyone who might be heading north, and I finally found some hippies who dug the band and had a VW bus headed up the coast. We loaded the gear and got it home.

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"When the Rhythm Dukes phase was over, Bill moved back to Marin and the band reformed as Yogi Phlegm. The name came from a fictional Indian mystic who was always being quoted as the guru of weirdness. Bob Cain had invented him while we were all in a restaurant one evening, and he became symbolic of new-age nebulous philosophy.

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"The real reason that the band changed the name was that the Sons of Champlin had been a brotherhood, and when Bill decided that he wanted to play with a different bass player and drummer, the problem arose: is the Sons this specific group, or does someone own the name and have the right to apply it anywhere? Rather than hassle about it, it was easier to get a couple of new guys and call the band something else. Of course, there were probably better choices than Yogi Phlegm, but the name had a lot in common with the music.

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"Yogi Phlegm was Bill, Terry [Haggerty], Geoffrey, and bassist Dave Schallock and drummer Bill Vitt. Dave Schallock had been in Bill's high school class, and along with Bruce Walford had been the unofficial producer of "Loosen Up Naturally." Yogi Phlegm never practiced, they just played gigs at the Lion's Share. They didn't really have material. Bill would name a key, count to four, and they would play something. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, and when it didn't, people left.

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"One memorable night, they emptied the Lion's Share except for one guy leaning against the bar grooving his butt off, Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead. That was probably the low point, and from that point they started to once again build a repertoire.

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"Things started to turn around when Bill Graham started putting together the "Last Days of the Fillmore" show in 1971. By this time the guys had finally put together a few tunes, but even though they referred to themselves as Yogi Phlegm, Bill Graham hated the name. On the posters for the gig there was a subtitle, (Sons of Champlin) and on the record album that was later released from the concert, the one tune ("Papa Can Play") was credited to the Sons of Champlin.

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"Of course we didn't have anything like an equipment truck for the last days of the Fillmore. I can still remember the look on the Quicksilver roadies' faces when I drove the equipment up to the back door of the Fillmore in a borrowed 1951 Chevy flatbed that looked like it might have flunked the Mexican safety inspection.I came up with what turned out to be a pretty good idea, although it didn't look that good when I had it. It looked more like desperation.

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"I had met this fellow at a Fillmore show, a roadie for a group called Rock City from Ohio. We had kept in touch, and I knew he had an old Pepperidge Farms delivery truck. What the hell, I wrote him a letter, two sentences, which I can still quote from memory. "If you want a job, come out to California. Bring your truck, your dog, and some rolling papers." And on the basis of a short letter from a guy he had met one time, Tony Black left Ohio for what turned out to be the rest of his life. (So far at least.)

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"Tony got as far as Reno before he ran out of money, so he called me and Julie, and we found fifty dollars to wire to him and get him the rest of the way. Tony arrived with Rosie, his dog, and eventually shared the little rental house behind the Church with me. Although we needed another roadie, a truck was a lot harder item to find than a guy, so it was more the vehicle than his abilities that got him the job. Sorry, Tony. But who CARES how you get where you get?

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"Once Tony arrived, he was obviously part of the gang, because he had made a major commitment to be there, and you had to respect that. I know I wouldn't have moved 2000 miles with everything I owned on the basis of two sentences from a guy I barely knew.

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"[Tony's] truck was no great deal. It had limited seating, and the third occupant had to ride on top of the engine cowling with his back to the windshield. The rear door was tiny, more suited to a guy stepping in and out with loaves of bread than a B-3. It had no gas gauge, so we kept a full gas can handy, because when it ran out, you had to jump right into the drill of getting some fuel into it. Fortunately, the fuel filler was at the bottom of the step by the passenger door, so you could reach it from inside the truck. One time it ran out on the Golden Gate Bridge, and we got it refueled before it even stopped rolling.

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"One other adventure in Tony's truck stands out. We had done a gig in Santa Cruz, and at about 3 a.m. we were headed up I-280 for home when we blew a tire. Damn, no spare, and on the big truck it took equipment we didn't have to change a tire. If you can't change the tire, what good is a spare anyway?

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"Complicating the picture was the presence of Steve, who caught a ride to the gig with us and had ingested LSD earlier in the evening. He was no problem as long as the truck was rolling, but when we pulled to the side of the road, the truck rocked from the air blast of every car passing us a few feet away. It was not a comfortable situation, and Steve started getting very anxious. "I can't take this." Like, what exactly are the options here?

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"Just then a car pulled up , and it was several members of the band, asking what our problem was. "Steve is our problem. Take him, with you." So we got rid of Steve, which improved the situation only slightly. We were still stuck on the side of a freeway in the middle of the night with a flat tire and no money. We caught whatever sleep was possible, sacked out on top of the equipment, and when the sun came up, we staggered out to deal with the situation.

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"A Highway Patrol car pulled up to see what was up. Well officer, we have this flat tire. Can you help us? It turned out that Highway Patrol officers don't do tires The tire was our problem. He just didn't want us to be there. Well, gosh.

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"We ended up hanging out there most of the day. I finally walked a mile or so to an exit, found a house where a woman didn't want to open the door, and asked her to call the CHP for us. Another officer arrived, and in the absence of any other possibility, allowed us to contact a tire shop through his radio patched into a phone.

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"The absence of any money was still a problem, so we somehow got Julie, now back in San Anselmo, to contact the tire store. I have no idea what means of persuasion she used, but they actually advanced us the $50 tire and came out to put it on. We really did pay them, too.

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"It takes a few seconds to tell about all this, but it was about twelve hours out there on the freeway, a long day, and there was no coffee shop handy.

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"Tony's truck got us through a critical phase, late 1971 to early 1972, but it was rapidly approaching the condition of toast. Good thing a new phase was opening up, the Wally Haas years.
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"As 1971 turned into 1972, hope appeared on the horizon in the form of Wally Haas. The scion of a prominent San Francisco family whose wealth goes back to the founder of the Levi Strauss company during the Gold Rush, Wally had money, was a devoted fan of the band, and felt that what they needed was a manager and some decent equipment. He said he could provide both, and with no one else lining up for the job, the Sons took him up on the offer.

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STORY SEQUENCE TWO:

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"Bill's Econoline blew up early in 1969. It had been knocking really bad for a few days, because it had run low on oil. The motor was under a cowling that was in the middle of the cab. It wasn't meant to be the pasenger seat, but it was for whoever lost the toss, if there were three in the vehicle. A long trip was torture for the loser, because that sucker got hot.

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STORY SEQUENCE THREE:

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"Whenever there wasn't a passenger in the truck, we had coats, food, whatever else you might find in a truck that we just about lived in, stacked on the motor cover. The amplifiers and instruments were jammed up against the back of the cover. Checking the oil was a bitch, so we never did it, and with a truck as beat up as that one it may have been a good idea to monitor oil usage. Somehow, the truck had never let us completely down.

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"The time when the fanbelt broke, we had enough momentum to coast into a gas station in Pismo Beach. The time when it got this big bubble in the front tire, Tooth had punctured the bubble with his pocketknife, and since the tire still seemed to hold air, we drove it 200 miles up the coast to Eureka and back. Despite bald tires, we never crashed it, and the time we got cited for the headlight being burned out we were right by a gas station outside Atascadero, and besides, that was where we met the guy from Chicken Little's Cosmic Farm and found out that King Kong died for our sins.

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"I drove that truck when I shouldn't have, in amazing weather conditions, in advanced states of fatigue, and if I had needed to stop it quickly for any reason we probably would have died, but I didn't and we didn't.

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"Of course, it was so dangerous to drive that we may have been trying subconsciously to get it off the road. We took it on that last trip to Sacramento, and it made so much noise that it was an open question whether we would get there. Loading out of the club, I remember the security clown looking at the pile of equipment next to the truck and laughing. "No way that all goes in there."

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"Of course we got it all in, then we went to a gas station and filled the crankcase with straight STP. It kept the noise down enough so we could talk over it. We had to choose between a slightly shorter route on a more deserted road, or the freeway and a little longer drive. Freeway it was, and it looked like we were going to make it. Tooth nursed the throttle, trying to maintain decent speed, without stressing what was left of the engine.

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"Just as we took the last bit of freeway into San Rafael, one mile to go, he got excited and stepped on it. Big mistake. We scattered the motor and a lot of lubricant along a hundred yards of Highway [101], and had to get it towed to my house.

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"Our good relationship with Quicksilver manager Ron Polte got us through the truckless era. We didn't have the kind of money it took to get a new truck, and our credit was... Our credit was... Credit? Quicksilver had a new truck, and Ron lent us their old truck, a Dodge van much heavier-duty than the old Econoline. One of my first acts was to rear-end a car on the way to a gig, and later I backed it into another car in a parking lot. I was not endearing myself to Ron or Fred Roth.

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"When Quicksilver was recording, we got the use of their new truck, an aluminum stepvan of the UPS style. It was noisy, cold, uncomfortable truck, but fortunately we only used it in the summer.
Then Tooth quit. It was hard for me to believe that he felt there were better personal opportunities for him in traveling to India, but that's where he and his girlfriend wanted to go, and he could hardly keep the job and go there.

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"We needed a roadie AND a truck, and we needed them pretty quick. Gary Jackson got the nod. He was a career roadie, who had worked most recently for the Ace of Cups. This Sons of Champlin family shit wasn't his thing, but he could drive forever, and he was a really big guy who had no trouble picking up his end of the organ. He even owned a set of organ dollies, an amazing luxury. He wanted a real salary, none of this communal business, and he cost the band a lot more than I did.

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"Gary and I did one long drive together, a sweep of the Northwest, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake and Boulder. We used a rental truck; actually we used one UP, and checked it in at Salt Lake City for another one. A little problem with the brakes caused by driving some distance with the parking brake on.

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"Outside of California it was more obvious that we had chosen to present ourselves a little differently from middle America. Driving through the hills outside Salt Lake City, Gary and I stopped at a pizza place. At the time both of us affected fringed leather jackets, with looong fringes, a foot or more off each arm and the back and front. Long hair, and I'm big, and Gary's much bigger at six-five and 240. When we went into the pizza place, the girl who took our order spoke for the first time to authentic, California hippies. She was so terrified she could hardly finish the transaction."

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Charlie lists the various guys "who shared the truck seat with me since 1968:"

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1968 - 1969: Steve "Tooth" Tobin

1969: Gary Jackson

1969: Paul Stubblebine

1969 - 1970: Steve "Hog" Rhodes

1971 - 1974: Tony Black

1972 - 1975: Howie Hammerman

1974 - 1977: Zero Nylin

1975 - 1977: Mark Deadman

1999 - 2002: Jeff Ocheltree

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I should also mention that Charlie is one of the great mountain bikers, a founding father of the movement so to speak, and there is much rich material on that aspect of his life on his website.

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Thanks, Charlie, for these great truckin' reminiscences. Here's hoping they'll also make it into a museum of rock exhibition someday, in Marin County no less--cause that's the plan in the works.

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Best ROCKIN automotive-themed concert posters for July '08

(above) Dan Stiles_The Hold Steady
(above) Gary Houston_Death Cab for Cutie

(above) Nix_The Hell Caminos

(above) Jeral Tidwell_311 and Snoop Dogg

(above) Print Mafia_Lucinda Williams (Maine)

(above) Jeral Tidwell_Widespread Panic

(above) Print Mafia_Lucinda Williams (Wisconsin)

(above) Nocturnal Show Print_Cory Branan

(above) Pablo_Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

(above) Stanley Mouse_Cosmic Car Show (1967)

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Hey, everyone--

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Sorry about the paucity of posts during the month of July. Been busy scoring some new jobs, and took a family excursion to the Midwest (before wife Jane and I take our son Jordan to begin college at Georgetown later this month).

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Some beautiful automotive-themed rock concert poster art here, some quite recent, a few from the archives. I'll be at the blog hard and heavy now that it's August. Enjoy!

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Paul