Chamblee54

PG decided, at next to the last minute, to hang out with friends, and see a trash movie. The flick was Voodoo Academy. It is decorated with shots of  pretty bois writhing in designer underwear.
A young man is led into upstairs. Some wine is poured on him, by a man wearing a clerical collar. The boi wiggles with emotion, lights start to flash on his chest, and his shrunken head is grafted onto a voodoo doll. The other students are told that he has been expelled.
The action takes place at Carmichael Bible College. There are six students, all impossibly gorgeous. The Carmicheal dude ain’t bad either. Headmadame Mrs. Bouvier wears Frederick”s of Hollywood drag. (Mrs. is her first name.) There are dozens of candles, which are always lit and never burn down.
Whoever is responsible for this nonsense is probably a veteran of the Roman Church. That institution has a ceremony of ritual cannibalism, where wine stands in for the blood of Jboi. At Carmichael Bible College, this wine is poured on the body of a wayward student. Bad things happen.
The next morning, PG was listening to a discussion with T. M. Luhrmann. She was flogging a new book, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. There was an incident, where a person had a mystical experience, realizing that Jesus loves them. This made PG remember the afternoon when he learned that Jesus hates him. Religious imagery is very powerful, even wearing designer underwear.

There is a form letter floating through the intercourse now. It is a letter that Steve Martin used to send to his fans. (The letter was recently immortalized at Letters of Note ).
He …that is Stephen Glenn “Steve” Martin (born August 14, 1945) … has moved up in correspondence with his adoring fans. Mr. Martin now gives out business cards, with the message “This card certifies that the holder had met Steve Martin and found him genuinely friendly”. What a wild and crazy guy!
This is becoming one of those really really modern days here. Listening to a djmix with a Lady Gaga song, drinking coffee out of a Mcdonalds plastic cup, and writing a tribute to Steve Martin. What a day! Oh, before we forget, there is the story about the drive in theater on I85 that was showing “Father of the Bride”. One day, the h fell off the marquee, and the title of the movie became “Fater of the Bride”. Good times.
The story of Steve Martin and PG began one night at the Great Southeast Music Hall. PG got tired of hearing how great the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was, and decided to see a show. The show started when some guy in a white suit came out with a banjo. John McEuen stood next to him, and kept falling into the microphone stand and saying ” this guy cracks me up”. Soon, MeEuen left the stage, and the guy in the white suit comediated.
Mr. Martin said that he paid somebody five thousand dollars for a joke. He then took this arrow, with a coat hanger wire attached to it, with a shape for his head to fit in, and put it on. That got a laugh, but not worth five thousand dollars. There was another gag…”do you mind if i smoke, no do you mind if i fart”. That got a slightly bigger laugh.
In those days, you could not sell alcohol in public on sunday night in Georgia. To compensate, the Music Hall sold children’s tickets for the sunday night shows. Mr. Martin was not used to having children in the audience. “Hey kid I gotta joke for you. There were these two lesbians…”
The show went over well with the Nitty Gritty crowd. However, it is doubtful that anyone thought, this is the beloved entertainer of our generation.
Mr. Martin was not through for the night. At one point, the NGDB moved to the back of the stage, and a smarmy lounge lizard, in a white suit, came on stage. While the band played “The girl from Ipanema”, Mr. Martin sang about the girl with diarrhea.
This was one of the last shows that Steve Martin did as an opening act. ( He did return to the Great Southeast Music Hall. Once, he did a week with Martin Mull, called the Steve Martin Mull Revue.) Within two years, he was a guest host on Saturday Night Live, and a certified wild and crazy guy. A couple of years later, he was famous again as “The Jerk”. Steve Martin had arrived.
The historic pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The animated dentures are from chattering teeth. The check is in the mail. This is a repost.

It was a late may morning in Atlanta GA, and a slack blogger was searching his archives. Yes, Issac Asinov never got writers block, and when he wasn’t going to the bathroom he was typing, but that is a lifestyle choice. Easy writing makes tough reading. So, anyway, in the may archive for 2011 was a post about Bob Dylan’s seventieth birthday.  People  were taking bets on whether he would make it to thirty, and here he is at seventy one.
Hibbing MN is a cold place. At least it can claim to be the birthplace of Robert Allen Zimmerman. That’s Allen ,with an e, and double L just like hell. The original initials were RAZ, which might be a good trivia question, or, with a silent W in front, radio station call letters. The problem is, he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan, with no known middle name. Those initial are BD, which is where we are today.
On May 24, 1941, the curly haired wonder boi arrived. The world was a different place. Europe was in flames, and eyeing the young men of America as fresh cannon fodder. This was twelve years, eleven months, and eighteen days before PG graced the planet. A twelve year old in Hibbing MN would have no reason to think of a newborn baby in Atlanta GA.
These days, not everyone knows who Bob Dylan is. Auto tuned automated canned music is the next big thing. If auto tune had been around in 1963, we would never had known how badly Mr. Dylan sings. In an age where rappers pay ghost writers to compose their tweets, being able to write songs is not valued. There is just no telling. And so it goes.
A.J. Weberman has made a life out of going through Bob Dylan’s garbage. He wrote a book, “The Devil and Bob Dylan”. “THIS BOOK CHALLENGES ALL PREVIOUS CONVENTIONAL THINKING ABOUT BOB DYLAN. DYLAN IS JUST THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU BELIEVE HIM TO BE. BUT WHAT PURPOSE DOES IT SERVE EXPOSING HIM AS A RACIST, HIV POSITIVE EX-JUNKIE AND HOLOCAUST DENIER? NONE EXCEPT THAT OF TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE. $17 INCLUDING POSTAGE! THE BOOK IS 500 PAGES AND FULLY ILLUSTRATED. Selling this book is like selling a book to Catholics entitled Why The Pope Sucks. The pope might such but no one wants to hear it.
This chamblee 54  birthday tribute is composed primarily of three previously published pieces of work. . The pictures are from ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
There was a comment on the Bob Dylan webpage… Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them. PG doesn’t write books. He did grow up in America, and has a few opinions about Bob Dylan. It ought to be good for a few hundred words here. (HT to dangerous minds ) (Chamblee54 has posted about Mr. Dylan before.)
The first time PG heard of Bob Dylan was probably at the record rack of Zippy’s dime store in Cherokee Plaza. There was an album of his greatest hits, and it came with a poster. The poster had a drawing of the man, with psychedelic waves of hair cascading in multi colored glory to the edges. PG never did buy the LP.
The former Mr. Zimmerman was never big on top 40 am radio. Somebody somewhere was getting a headache over those lyrics, but Atlanta GA was not somewhere in those days. By this time, Mr. Dylan had crashed his motorcycle, and gone into hiding. As the counter culture exploded (if only someone had disinfected that counter) the curly haired poet was in hiding, the subject of much speculation. At one point, people were stealing his garbage, and claiming to find evidence of investment in munitions firms. The neoscience of Dylanology continues to this day.
As PG got older and stupider, he heard more and more Bob Dylan music. In the summer of 1972, there was a performance at the Concert for Bangladesh. A couple of albums released during this era sucked, and some people stopped caring about Bob Dylan.
At the start of 1974, a tour was announced. The Band was to be the backing group. The circus came to the Omni, and PG got some of the mail order tickets. He couldn’t find anyone to use the second ticket, and sold it to a stranger outside the arena.
The show was nothing special. Bob Dylan excels at writing, is ok in the studio, and blah on stage. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was at the show, and was said to look bored. Mr. Dylan was invited to the Governor’s mansion after the show, and talked to the Governor. A lot of people in Georgia were surprised that he would want to run for President.
As the Seventies went me me meing into sex and drugs oblivion, Bob Dylan regained both his writing touch, and love of the spotlight. The Rolling Thunder tour happened, he got back together with Joan Baez, divorced his wife, became born again, became more Jewish, counted money, and generally lived the life. PG did his own version of all that, without Joan Baez or being circumcised again.
In the winter of 1991, America was consumed by war fever. Saddam Hussein had been elevated to next Hitler status, and had to be taught a lesson. One night, Bob Dylan played on a music awards show, and performed “Masters of War”. He played a discordant version of that ditty, with the result that few understood what he had said. By this time, Mr. Dylan had assembled a band, and gone out on the “Never Ending Tour”. A Bob Dylan concert had gone from being a special event, to being another name on the festival roster. Overexposure will do that.
On the last night of the Olympics in 1996, Bob Dylan played the House of Blues downtown. PG won a pair of the $80 tickets in a radio station contest. It was his only trip downtown during the games, and had to wait in a security line to get into Centennial Olympic Park.
The only celebrity, other than Mr. Dylan, seen at the House of Blues that night was Bill Walton. The band was competent…they impressed PG as being like a bar band that did a lot of Dylan songs, with a strangely authentic lead vocalist. The sound in the room was not good, at least in the spot where PG stood. The only song he recognized was “All along the Watchtower”, the Jimi Hendrix classic. Mr. Dylan got a cheer when he put his harmonica appliance on.

The aptly named dangerousminds has a link to a story about the recording of Blonde on Blonde, by Bob Dylan. It only happened once.
Bob Dylan was 24 years old, newly married, and had “sold out” i.e. started to play electric guitar. A bunch of Canadians known as The Hawks (later The Band) was touring with him. Barely a month after the release of “Highway 61 Revisited”, sessions started at a New York studio.
The New York sessions did not work, so a decision was made to go to Nashville. Al Kooper played organ, and served as a music director. A crew of Nashville players was recruited. A bass player named Joseph Souter, Jr. would become famous a few years later using the name Joe South. Kris Kristofferson was the janitor at the studio.
Most studios have bafflers, or sound proof room dividers, splitting the studio into cubicles. For these sessions, the bafflers were taken down, and the band played together as a unit.
The second session in Nashville started at 6pm and lasted until 530 the next morning. Mr. Dylan was working on the lyrics to “Sad eyed lady of the lowlands”, and the recording could not start until he was ready. The musicians played ping pong and waited. At 4am, the song was ready, and the record was finished in two takes.
PG had marginal encounters with two of the players on this album. He met a lady once, who worked in an insurance office. One of the customers was Joe South.  His driving record file was an inch thick.
Al Kooper had a prosperous career after his association with Bob Dylan. The former Alan Peter Kuperschmidt produced the first three Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, and sold that contract for a nice piece of change.
One night, Mr. Kooper was playing a show at the Great Southeast Music Hall, and PG sat in front of the stage. During a break between songs, PG asked his friend “what time is it?”. Mr. Kooper heard him on stage, and said it was 11:30.

If it ever quits raining, PG is going to walk to the Chamblee library and return a book, and a cd. The cd is by Bob Dylan, and is a work of genius. The book is about the former Mr. Zimmerman, and is a piece of garbage. (BTW, Dylan is not the only Zimmerman to hit the big time. Ethel Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmerman.)
When returning cd’s to a library, you need to get a check in receipt. Once, PG returned a stack of cd’s to the Brookhaven library. When checking them in, one was missed by the scanner. A few days later, there was a note in the mail about an overdue cd.
The good news was, the cd was on the shelf when PG went back to investigate, and the matter was quickly settled. It did not help that the cd was a collection of disco music called “Shake your booty”.
“The freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” was released in the early sixties, when the man was barely old enough to buy a drink. There is not a bad song on it, and several are classic rock staples. At a time when mindless pop dominated pop music, here were thoughtful, moving lyrics.
In 1991, with America in a war frenzy, Mr. Dylan appeared on a music awards show. He performed “Masters of War”, at a time when the majority would be appalled if they could understand what he was singing. Mr. Dylan has been reinvented many times, and often the lyrics get gargled.
Five years later, PG won tickets to a Bob Dylan concert. It was the last night of the Olympics, and the man was appearing at the House of Blues. (Tickets were $80, so the radio contest is the only reason PG went). It was like hearing a good bar band, that did nothing but Dylan songs, with the man as the vocalist. Due to the mix of the sound, PG could not recognize many of the songs.
The book is Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet by Seth Rogovoy. It tells the Dylan tale as a story of Jewish prophecy. PG got to page 16, where the author claims that “Like a Rolling Stone” “almost single handedly revolutionized rock’n roll music”. Huh?
PG was eating dinner, and did not have anything else to read. He got to page 38. Nothing in the next 22 pages changed his mind away from ditching the book. How does nonsense like this get published?

Donna Summer passed away today. Breast cancer claimed another soul.
LaDonna Adrian Gaines was born December 31, 1948, in Boston MA. As a young lady, she moved to Germany, and performed in a production of Hair. She married Helmuth Sommer in 1972, and kept the name, with a vowel adjustment, after the divorce. At some point, she met Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Lightning was about to strike.
Wikipedia tells the tale. “In 1975, Summer approached Moroder with an idea for a song she and Bellotte were working on for another singer. She had come up with the lyric “love to love you, baby”. Moroder was interested in developing the new sound that was becoming popular and used Summer’s lyric to develop the song. Moroder persuaded Summer to record what was to be a demo track for another performer. She later said that she had thought of how the song might sound if Marilyn Monroe had sung it and began cooing the lyrics. To get into the mood of recording the song, she requested Moroder turn off the lights while they sat on a sofa with him inducing her moans and groans. After hearing playback of the song, Moroder felt Summer’s version should actually be released. Although some radio stations refused to play it due to its suggestive style, “Love to Love You” found chart success in several European countries, and made the Top 5 in the United Kingdom.
The song was then sent to Casablanca Records president Neil Bogart in hopes of getting an American release. Bogart informed Summer and Moroder he would release the song (now called “Love to Love You Baby”) but requested that Moroder produce a longer version for discothèques. Moroder, Bellotte, and Summer returned with a 17 minute version and Casablanca signed Summer and released the single in November 1975. The shorter version of the single was promoted to radio stations whilst clubs (mostly gay) regularly played the 17 minute version (the longer version would also appear on the album). Casablanca became one of the first record labels to popularize the 12″ single format. By early 1976, “Love To Love You Baby” had reached #2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, while the parent album of the same name sold over a million copies. The song generated controversy due to Summer’s moans and groans and some American radio stations, like several in Europe, refused to play it. Time magazine would report that 22 orgasms were simulated in the making of the song.”
Miss Summer was the right voice, at the right time, and the right place. Disco music was a snowball rolling downhill, gaining recruits every Saturday night. Mr. Moroder was an electronic wizard, creating a compelling sound. Whether another singer could have created the magic that Donna Summer did is a good question. One thing is not in doubt: the Summer-Moroder team was a disco hit machine.
It was more than just the music. As JoemyG-d notes: “Donna Summer came to fame at a magical time in the development of popular gay culture. No longer were our bars exclusively confined to unlit, unsigned, shabby doorways on shadowy streets. Those places still existed, to be sure. But in the bigger cities, often to the tune of Donna Summer records, gay men, many for the first ever, proudly crowded into giant, glittery, celebratory, and gleefully unrestrained discos.”
Getting back to Wikipedia , “Summer had often talked about her early successful years as a period of confusion and anxiety. By mid-1977, struggling with the media’s titles of her as the first lady of love, she began suffering from depression and started having anxiety attacks. Summer has written in her memoirs that she had attempted suicide a few times. Her rapid rise to success, combined with some serious regrets about mistakes in her personal life, began to take its toll. During this time, she self-medicated on prescription medication resulting in an addiction. Following a nervous breakdown at her home in 1979, Summer went to a local church attended with her sister Dara and declared herself a born again Christian.”
It is probable that Miss Summer was part of a hit machine, and had little control over the direction that it took. Keep this in mind when you read the next part of this story. Remember all the happy times that her studio songs gave people.
On Easter Sunday 1978, Donna Summer gave a show at the Atlanta Civic Center. PG was in the audience. Someone had the idea to present Miss Summer as a Las Vegas style revue. There was a horn section, backup singers, and a big band sound. The punchy electronic sound of the records was not there. PG was disappointed.
There was a song, “Try Me, I Know We Can Make It.” In the studio version, Miss Summer hits a high note, and holds it for a while. In concert, her backup singers sang that part. Looking back, that just means that it was real. Today, they would play a tape, and no one would know the difference.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

Lene Lovich was born Lili-Marlene Premilovich in Detroit, Michigan, March 30, 1949. She moved to England as a teenager, and met Les Chappell. He who played guitar in her band, and was her man.
As an art school student, she started to tie her long hair in plaits to keep it out of the clay while studying sculpture. Her recording debut was as part of an audience, when Chuck Berry recorded “My ding a ling”.
Miss Lovich played in several bands, before winding up on the Stiff label. She put out two albums that became popular in the USA, and did a tour. After a while, she retired from music to raise a family, and has made a slight comeback in recent years.
PG had the privilege of seeing Lene Lovich at the Agora Ballroom, Atlanta GA, in the winter of 1980. The opening act was The Romantics. The show was taped for broadcast on the NBC radio network, and Don Pardo was on hand to introduce the bands.
The Romantics were unknown to the crowd at the Agora that night. They came on stage wearing costumes that looked like the Beatles of 1963. Every song they did was a bit better than the one before, and they got a big round of applause when the set ended.
Don Pardo had quite a career. He was the house announcer on November 22, 1963, and was the voice of NBC when he interrupted a soap opera to announce that John Kennedy had been “cut down with assassin’s bullets”. During his career as a TV announcer, Mr. Pardo could not use profanity. That night at the Agora, he made up for lost time…every other word he said was a cuss word.
Soon, Lene Lovich (spell check suggestion:lovechild) and her band came on stage. She was not the typical sexpot rock chanteuse… A bit chubby, with her long hair tied in plaits. Wearing a long sleeve black dress, probably stolen from a convent, she provided fantasy for only the kinkiest. Les Chappell was there, with his shaved head, to stop any trouble before it started, and play guitar.
The material came mostly from the first two albums on Stiff records. ( At some point in the evening, someone…maybe Lovich, maybe Pardo…said “Be stiff”.) She introduced “Lucky Number” by saying ” We have a song that goes ah oh aih oh”. During an instrumental jam in that song, she cried out “We have an American on keyboards”. The American was Thomas Dolby, who would soon go solo.
The first encore was ” I think we’re alone now”, which had been a hit for Tommy James and the Shondells (spell check suggestions: shoulders, shovelfuls). Soon the night was over. Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” This is a repost.
UPDATE: This comment was left on facebook “Those first two albums are GREAT. I probably saw her on this same tour; Dolby was with her. I was a club on South Street in Philly. She looked like a freaked-out Teutonic barmaid, the St. Pauli girl gone goth (before there was goth). Somehow, the sight of her playing sax was hilarious, and the concert was a blast. I bought a recent Thomas Dolby CD a couple months ago. Sucked, as, alas, did Lene’s last one.

Ted Nugent went on a “Journey to the center of the mind”. When he got there, the lights were on, but no one was home. (Spell check suggestions: Gent, Nugget)
Theodore Anthony Nugent has had quite a career. The Amboy Dukes were leaders in music, and vocalist fashion. The “motor city madman” enjoyed a prosperous solo career. He has also become a “right wing” spokesman, expressing opinions on a variety of subjects. Some comments recently earned him a private meeting with the Secret Service. That agency has it’s own PR problems. The fly on the wall, at the Nugent – USSS meeting, is not talking.
In the comments to a report on the TAN-USSS conference, PG found this: “Ted Nugent doesn’t have any right to salute flag draped coffins. He’s nothing but a coward. // How so? // he is a taxpayer,citizen.he has his rights // He literally shat his pants at a recruiting station just to avoid serving in Vietnam, for one.”
One thing Mr. Nugent likes to talk about is hunting. There is a difference between deer season and the Vietnam war… Charlie shot back. Mr. Nugent was born in 1948, making him the perfect age for the party. A copy of his draft record is available. Radio show notes discusses the codes.
1-In February 1967, Nugent was classified as 1-S (Deferment to complete high school).
2-In December 1967, Nugent was classified as 1-A (Available for unrestricted service)
3-In February 1968, Nugent was reclassified as 2-S (Deferment for college study)
4-In February 1969, Nugeent was reclassified as 1-A (Available for unrestricted service)
5-In August, 1969, Nugent was given an armed forces physical exam Two months later, Nugent was reclassified as 1-Y (A designation usually given to those with limiting medical conditions. He was eligible for military service, but only in case of war or National Emergency)
6-In December 1972, reclassified again. Hard to read on the document, but it may say 4-F. (Most former 1-Y registrants were reclassified 4-F, not acceptable for military service, when the 1-Y classification was abolished in late 1971)
In April of 1968, Journey to the Center of the Mind, the second album by the Amboy Dukes, was released. The title track, fueled by lead guitarist Ted Nugent, became a hit. The band toured endlessly, playing 300 shows a year. This was when Ted Nugent enjoyed a 2-S student deferment.
One show was at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. The headliner was Jimi Hendrix. The legend is that Mr. Nugent was playing a Hendrix song. Jimi came on stage, and told him not to play his song.
If you are eating, don’t read the rest of this post. Skip ahead and enjoy the pictures, which are from The Library of Congress . Ok, here is the best part of the story. The Rutland Herald quotes an interview Ted Nugent gave The Detroit Free Press, July 15, 1990. “He claims that 30 days before his Draft Board Physical, he stopped all forms of personal hygiene. The last 10 days he ingested nothing but junk food and Pepsi, and a week before his physical, he stopped using the bathroom altogether, virtually living inside his pants caked with excrement and urine. That spectacle won Nugent a deferment.” In the embedded video, no one in the band wants to stand next to Mr. Nugent.
The fact that Mr. Nugent did not go to ‘Nam did not prevent him from saying what he would have done. “… if I would have gone over there, I’d have been killed, or I’d have killed, or I’d kill all the hippies in the foxholes … I would have killed everybody,”