Author archive: Gary Pig Gold

As the opening credits of this grand new MVD Visual DVD state, (and I quote), “On September 3, 2010, Iggy and the Stooges performed Raw Power live in Monticello, New York. Six fans filmed the concert and interviewed Iggy and the Stooges after the show.” Really then! A concept so crystalline in both its simplicity and beauty – much like Iggy himself, one such as myself could argue Continue reading →

“Just what the world needs:  Another record company.” And with those typically snide words, on the Seventh day of February, 1968, Bizarre Productions was duly incorporated, and two hundred shares of no par value common stock issued in the State of New York, thereby creating the first of several record companies Frank Zappa would oversee during his most colorful life and career. At this very same point in time, 3500 miles and one ocean to the east, the world’s biggest pop group launched their very own Apple company, whose singles and albums were manufactured and distributed in North America by that granddaddy of all (once-) indie labels, Capitol Records. Continue reading →

It was at a staff meeting for The Pig Paper , upstairs at Toronto’s Beverley Tavern sometime in very late 1975, that I first had the pleasure of bumming a ride home from the one, the only Imants Krumins. You see, he was the only denizen of our nascent Blank Canuck Generation way back then who not only had an (operable) car, but a job as well. Continue reading →

Although it’s already spent a good two years here in the ol’ sty, I’m hardly surprised to find I’m still discovering, hearing, and even seeing fresh goodies galore buried within that great big Neil Young Archives box of mine. But, seeing as yet another O Canada Day is now upon us, I sought to find another way to commemorate the greatest living Canucklehead this side of Dr. Continue reading →

In the utterly go-go, trans-media flurry which was mid-sixties pop(ular culture), every television star worth their Nielsens was expected to not only chase spies and rope steers, but compete with those rock ‘n’ rollers of the moment upon the Top Forty to boot. To cite but two examples, Lorne Bonanza Greene and his 1964 chart-topping “Ringo,” not to mention Captain James T. Continue reading →

While the very concept of the “Tribute” album has over the years become quite a scary one, the Beatle Tribute can strike downright terror into the hearts of any who still value their sensibilities, let alone that hitherto-durable 214-song catalog. Yes, as far back as William Shatner’s 1968 stab at “Lucy In The Sky,” John, Paul, George and even Ringo have had their melodic legacies sliced, diced, half-baked, botched and certainly butchered by those both well-meaning and, well, just plain mean. Continue reading →

A mere twenty-eight seconds into Joel Gilbert’s extensive new Bob Dylan Revealed documentary, the subject matter himself warns us “There’s many sides to the coin, y’know, and you haveta really, uh, the longer you go on, the more sides you show that are, that are, that are there to be, uh, unraveled.” So in between sessions with Daniel Mark Epstein’s 496-page The Ballad of Bob Dylan , and the actual man’s actual Original Mono Recordings box, I spent the month of Robert Allen Zimmerman’s 70th (!) birthday pondering that… 1.  Although the subject is dwelled upon for less than a minute during Bob Dylan Revealed (we are later treated to some great Super 8 footage of him gallivanting ’round Europe with his young bard however), Albert Grossman and that more-than-complex relationship with Bob Dylan is delved into, and possibly even explained, in a way Martin Scorsese failed to during all two-hundred-and-eight minutes of his own No Direction Home. 2.  “1966 Electric World Tour” drummist Mickey Jones also offers personal home movies of Dont Look Back (and almost Eat the Document ) director D.A Continue reading →

Most of us first met this latest in a long line of Fifth Beatles on or soon after April 11, 1969 with the release of a self-described little “song to roller-coast by” called “Get Back.” Never before, you see, had the Fab Four shared sacred label credit with anyone other than themselves. But there it was, printed right atop that bright green revolving Granny Smith: “The Beatles… with Billy Preston .” However, much prior to his musical roller-coasting, William Everett Preston already enjoyed a proud and prodigious career, launched from his mother’s lap where, at age three, he began playing the family piano. Soon he was performing with James Cleveland, Andraé Crouch and Mahalia Jackson, and in 1958 portrayed W.C. Continue reading →

IRWIN CHUSID (author, “Songs In The Key Of Z”): Outsider music is a slippery genre. It’s musicians who tend to be self-taught, untrained, working certainly way outside the channels of mainstream music. There are very important qualifications:  They are sincere about it Continue reading →

As the powers-that-still-be gamely inducted yet more seemingly willing accomplices on March 14  (eg: Neil Diamond? Not bad. Continue reading →

Last I checked over at All Music Dot Com, there were 591 titles listed within the Jimi Hendrix discography – all but nineteen of which representing items released after the man’s most untimely death on September 18, 1970. Let’s see:  with 572 albums / singles / EPs / 8-tracks / cassettes / picture discs / video tapes / laser discs / compact discs / Mini-discs / DATs / DVDs / Blu-rays / whatevers posthumously issued so far, someone out there is certainly making many, many dollars re-issuing, re-packaging, re-mixing, re-mastering and re-processing in general the (re-) recorded legacy of perhaps the greatest electric guitarist who ever died Continue reading →

A full disclosure right up front, one and all: ‘Way back in the 1980 hey!day of my fanzine, The Pig Paper , a certain Kevin Michael Allin sent over a sweetly autographed, stuffed with promo material copy of an album called Always Was, Is and Always Shall Be, which had been newly issued on none other than David “The Pope Smokes Dope” Peel’s Orange Records imprint. It sounded then, and remains today, a most spirited indeed collection of incredibly powerful pop in that classic Stooges / New York Dolls mold, with lyrics – especially heard in a, shall we say, immediate post-Pistols frame of ear – not really all that “shocking” whatsoever. Now, Kevin Michael grew all the way up to become, of course, GG Allin, who by the time of MVD Visual’s grand, new Live in Boston 1989 DVD was still quite happy to remain focused upon the fun as opposed to the, well, feces of his craft. Continue reading →

2010 marked the 50th (!!) anniversary of the Bee Gees’ career as fully professional all-singing, all-playing musicians, songwriters, and performers. This January 12 marks eight years since self-styled “man in the middle” Maurice Gibb’s tragic passing. And in this new year of 2011, remaining Gibbs Barry and Robin are actually threatening to continue recording, and perhaps even tour the globe, beneath the hitherto-mighty Bee Gee moniker. Continue reading →