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Poster:
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cream-puff-war |
Date:
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Dec 8, 2008 3:48pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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The Who & The Grateful Dead - WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?? |
Here's my answer (corrected version) as to perhaps why the Who is receiving a Presidential honor and why I believe The Grateful Dead deserve one too!
Why has a British band - The Who - been singled out for an American Presidential honor?
The Who "reach for the Moon" in this actual USAF PSA they made circa 1967:
View The W h o U.S. Air Force PSA
The 30 second Public Service Announcement starts off seductively with the Happy Jack riff.
Townshend then mentions Aerospace program opportunities; and who knows, maybe somewhere out there is an astronaut or airline steward who'd like to thank the group, perhaps Pictures Of Lily helped a downed bombadier make it through a few cold winters at the Hanoi Hilton.
Maybe John McCain put in a word for Roger from Oz to receive the honor.
Jimi Hendrix served in the legendary 101st Airborne (thanks whirlwind dreamer for the correction)
- Jimi was a paratrooper and free-falling inspired some of his psychedelic blues classics such as:
"Manic Depression", "I Don't Live Today", "Stars That Play with Laughing Sam's Dice", "Astro Man", "Dolly Dagger", "Machine Gun", "House Burning Down" and "Izabella".
Keith Moon didn't wear that target for nothing!
And the military look favored by The Who must have won a few neo-cons over:
those ribbons & medals the Who wore on their Victorian regimental dress right out of the movie ZULU with Michael Caine;
then the ultra-patriotic Union Jack jackets Townshend & Entwistle wore; I never saw a photo of Daltrey wearing one, and apparently Moon ripped his to shreds the same day he got one during or after a promo where he runs towards the camera on a flatbed truck, pretty much.
Hideous haute couture but imagine upsetting the status quo and stodgy old timers on the streets of London and Soho wearing those garish bum freezers with the side vents 5 inches long.
Before Sgt. Pepper's, The Who had custom-designed military parade dress uniforms that inspired kids from the Left Bank of Paris to North Beach in San Francisco to subvert the tri-color standards of the free world freedom into a hip fashion statement.
Even Jerry Garcia posed for posterity with his top hat to Uncle Sam top hat (with the little coctail-sized flag sticking out of the hat band)
You can't arrest someone wearing red, white and blue (which goes so well with purple paisley), now can you?
Jerry actually chose to enlist in the Army rather than wind up on the streets.
But being Jerry, he wasn't exactly a model of military discipline.
He ended up stationed at the Presidio, the then-much in demand, limited availability Army base in San Francisco Jerry somehow got transferred to, and was so close to home he went home every night, but didn't always report back to the base on time or on the day his leave was over.
After a while he'd just take off whenever he felt like checking out, like what's happening in town, and the frequent awol's earned him a general discharge, by no means honorable but his parting from the service after just 9 months was mutually agreed to.
The only frontline action he saw were the lines outside the Fort Ord PX.
Garcia never recorded a PSA for the Army - which may delay his eventual Kennedy Center Honor, but I believe it will happen.
Won't that be a shocker!
And the brilliant, independent Pete Townshend for some reason recorded a recruitment message with Who music for the US Air Force... and this seems to have shocked some of you here at the archive.
Yet it seems to have made him a Pentagon favorite!
Maybe Uncle Sam will take into account that Jerry and friends sang the National Anthem at a baseball game (World Series?) and that's as all-American as it gets!
Furthermore, add to that the vague notion that since his band was one of the longest-running, top-grossing tour groups in the history of rock 'n' roll, not to mention everything we've mentioned in the last 4 years on the LMA,
The Grateful Dead might arguably go down in history as the great American rock band!
The Beach Boys are the only serious contenders and they have even more of a liability with Brian freaking out on airplanes and sitting in sandboxes all day -
just a bit too scary for a President (besides Reagan) to be unaware of:
The long even stranger trip of the not-so-clean cut Wilson brothers is going to be harder than even the Dead's chequered past to explain.
Dennis Wilson and Charles Manson, now there was a beautiful friendship
while it lasted!
corrected research courtesy of http://drop.io/creampuffwar
This post was modified by cream-puff-war on 2008-12-08 20:11:55
This post was modified by cream-puff-war on 2008-12-08 23:48:47
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Poster:
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bluedevil |
Date:
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Dec 7, 2008 6:33pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: kennedy center honors-the who and a possible present for the dead on their 50th? |
Please tell me that ad was a parody ...
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Poster:
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cream-puff-war |
Date:
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Dec 7, 2008 7:21pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: kennedy center honors-the who and a possible present for the dead on their 50th? |
it was real.
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Poster:
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veblen |
Date:
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Dec 7, 2008 7:36pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: kennedy center honors-the who and a possible present for the dead on their 50th? |
sadly I had a feeling you were going to say that...this is one of the few times I am glad that I don't have a sound card on this machine...
but just knowing about it is enough...
(so I guess the banned kinks never have a chance...)
anyway, this is from a washington post article on their honor:
"The semiofficial reason for giving a British rock band this American prize is that the Who helped resuscitate interest in American blues."
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/05/AR2008120500971.html)
and this is their blurb on the kennedy center site, but it doesn't answer or even touch upon the question of WHY:
"Roger Daltrey (Musician, singer, composer and actor; born March 1, 1944 in London, England)
Roger Harry Daltrey was born in 1944 in Hammersmith and grew up in the working class London suburb of Acton. He attended Victoria Primary School and then Acton Grammar School for Boys, alongside Pete Townshend and John Entwistle. A born rebel, Daltrey found a home in music and made his first guitar from a block of wood, forming a skiffle band called The Detours. He got his first electric guitar in 1959, got in trouble in school, and was expelled. Pete Townshend recalled of his friend that "Roger has been a good pupil. Then he heard Elvis and transmogrified into a Teddy Boy with an electric guitar and a dress-sneer. Was it simply rock and roll? It was obvious to a young man as intelligent as Roger that there was no future in conforming any more."
Daltrey was a teenage dropout and sheet-metal worker when he brought together Entwistle and Townshend in the Shepherd’s Bush Youth Club in 1961, in effect forming the band that would become The Who. Daltrey was the front man, and his unstoppable energy then as often through the years drove the band’s elegant resolve. But Townshend became the leader, early on, The Who’s great songwriter. When songwriting itself grew more ambitious, Roger Daltrey became Tommy—play and player were one bare-chested sexy bundle of charisma and curls, with a distinctive voice rivaled by few in the history of popular music. He took that role to heart, on record, on tour, and in Ken Russell’s controversial movie that earned Daltrey a Golden Globe nomination in 1975. He went on to star in Russell’s outrageous Lisztomania, establishing a happy double routine of continuing his singing career with The Who while enjoying acting gigs including McVicar on the big screen, Lois & Clark on American television, The Beggars’ Opera and The Comedy of Errors for the BBC, The Hunting of the Snark in the West End, and A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden, where he played Scrooge in 1998. He has played Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Doolittle in My Fair Lady. What other rock star can claim such credits? Since 2000, Daltrey has been a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, for whom he began working by launching the event The Who & Friends at the Royal Albert Hall that raised more than $2.5 million in ticket, CD and DVD sales for the fight against cancer."
so it must be the usaf ad along with the change in seating policies...(and I had tickets for the first canceled show scheduled after cincinnati in the burgh)
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Poster:
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cream-puff-war |
Date:
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Dec 8, 2008 12:21pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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The Who USAF PSA vs. The Animals - (non-Dead '68 psych) Sky Pilot |
View the-twain-shall-meet-sky-pilot-mono-e-r-i-c-b-u-r-d-o-n-a-n-i-m-a-l-s
The Twain Shall Meet is an album released in 1968 by Eric Burdon and The Animals. It includes "Sky Pilot," one of the most famous anti-war songs of the Vietnam War era, including the sound of a plane crashing and a terrific guitar riff by Vic Briggs.
When released as a single, "Sky Pilot (Parts 1 & 2)" was split into two parts due to the length.
The double-A sided single reached number 14 on the U.S. pop charts.
I recall Part 1 getting the most airplay. Sometimes late at night daring AM djs in Boulder, Colorado (where I was "stationed" at the time - in 9th grade) played both sides without interruption.
The mono single featured a different mix than the stereo LP version, and I'll get to that later.
The Sky Pilot of the title is a military chaplain, as revealed by the opening verse:
He blesses the boys
As they stand in line
The smell of gun grease
And the bayonets they shine
He's there to help them
All that he can
To make them feel wanted
He's a good holy man
The line-up includes Eric Burdon on lead vocals, Vic Briggs on guitar, John Weider on guitar and electric violin, Danny McCulloch on bass guitar, and Barry Jenkins on drums.
The song is a balladic "slice of life" story about a chaplain who blesses a body of troops just before they set out on an overnight raid or patrol, and then retires to await their return.
"Sky Pilot" is organized into three movements: an introduction, a programmatic interlude, and a conclusion.
The introduction begins with the verse quoted above, sung a cappella and solo by Eric Burdon. Thereafter the band joins in with instruments for the chorus. Several verse-chorus iterations follow, leaving the story with the "boys" gone to battle and the Sky Pilot retired to his bed. The verses are musically lean, dominated by the vocal and a pulsing bass guitar, with a strummed acoustic guitar and drum mixed in quietly.
The interlude starts as a guitar solo, but the guitar is quickly submerged under a montage of battle sounds. First come the sounds of an airstrike; then the airstrike and Rock band fade into the sounds of shouting, gunfire, and bagpipes. Near the end of the interlude the battle sounds fade, briefly leaving the bagpipes playing alone before the third movement begins.
The bagpipe music is a covert recording of the pipers of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards playing "All The Bluebonnets Are Over The Border", captured by Burdon while performing at a school. He received an angry letter from the UK government (or possibly the Crown) over his use of the recording in the song.
The conclusion begins with the return of the bass and strummed acoustic guitar, accompanied by strings. After a few measures the verses resume, but with a quieter, melancholy atmosphere: one verse is sung along with bass, guitar, and strings, and then without a choral break a final verse (quoted below) is sung to bass, guitar, and woodwinds. Finally a strong bass line announces the return of the chorus, now accompanied with horns and piccolos, repeated several times as it fades. The musical effect is very upbeat, in stark contrast with the "downer" content of the movement's lyrics.
The song is universally interpreted as an anti-war protest song. There are no overt anti-war statements, but no glorification of war either. The (presumed) anti-war message is conveyed simply and obliquely, by lines such as:
But he'll stay behind
And he'll meditate
But it won't stop the bleeding
Or ease the hate
and the final verse:
In the morning they return
With tears in their eyes
The stench of death
Drifts up to the skies
A young soldier so ill
Looks at the Sky Pilot
Remembers the words
'Thou Shall Not Kill'
There is also a sense of futility, or perhaps moral judgement upon the chaplain, conveyed by the chorus:
Sky Pilot
How High Can You Fly
You'll never reach the sky
The war in question is usually assumed to be the Vietnam War, though the bagpipes and apparent sounds of a dive bomber in the interlude, taken with the UK nationality of the artists, may suggest an earlier era.
Differences between the mono and stereo mixes
The mono single version is unique as it features several effects not included in the stereo version, including more echo in the a cappella introduction, heavy reverb effect at the end of the line "How high can you fly?" (Part 1 only), and an extra bagpipe passage at the end of the fadeout on Part 2.
Also, the airstrike and battle sounds are both moved forward in the instrumental break.
(There is a split-second length click at the start of the song that occured when I transferred it. Just the one click, not to worry that more jolting sounds - besides Burdon's band's FX - will happen. I'll fix it later).
"Sky Pilot" contrasts somewhat from the pro-Air Force promo by Pete Townshend, to be sure!
The Who "reach for the Moon" in this actual USAF PSA they made circa 1967:
View The W h o U.S. Air Force PSA
This post was modified by cream-puff-war on 2008-12-08 20:21:07
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Poster:
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whirlwind dreamer 65-95 |
Date:
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Dec 7, 2008 10:15pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: kennedy center honors-the who and a possible present for the dead on their 50th? |
:) now its fact!!! cream!!
This post was modified by whirlwind dreamer 65-95 on 2008-12-08 06:15:18
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Poster:
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whirlwind dreamer 65-95 |
Date:
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Dec 7, 2008 10:17pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: kennedy center honors-the who and a possible present for the dead on their 50th? |
we love ya billy wuz a mountain!! FZ. /MOTHERS!!! 72
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Poster:
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whirlwind dreamer 65-95 |
Date:
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Dec 7, 2008 9:42pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: kennedy center honors-the who and a possible present for the dead on their 50th? |
wrong jimi was 101st screaming eagles AIRBORNE!!!~
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