Had
a bit of wine fuzz to work through at the gym this morning. One of those mornings you most
definitively do not want to be there.
The walk over, drudgery.
Slower than usual. The slightest excuse, would be enough to send you
home with the towel thrown in. I
stepped up and fiddled around for a song to start it off with and thumbing
aimlessly I landed on old “Maybellene” by Chuck Berry. I smiled and got underway. It was gonna be alright.
Recorded in 1955 on Chess records the tune effectively
launches Rock n’ Roll guitar. I searched around and found a live recording of
him performing it what appears to be someone where in Western Europe given the
accented English of the intro before he appropriately tears off the stage as if a bomb is
going to hit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvKDr8AgvK8
The man himself looks quite young of course. But I checked and he was already twenty-nine
at the time. Far older than say
Hendrix was, when he died. He
bounces out into the ring though like a school kid, 年轻气盛.[1] In my mind he must have been six foot
six as every time you see him standing next to John Lennon or Keith Richards he
towers over them and he’s all legs when he’s rockin one back and forth across
the stage. But a quick look
suggests he was 6’2”. He and I
could see eye to eye. Watching the
clip he seems to be channeling the future to the stayed audience. The voice is irresistible. The song tame today must have been
reckless and racy and fundamentally American. But the guitar playing, when he solos and skips across the
stage and wails that distorted axe, shaking it in the air. You can just imagine fifteen-year old
Paul McCartney’s and Jimi Hendrix’ hearing that sound, seeing that prancing and
lusting for that irresistible, loud, currency of power.
I know there was another fifteen year-old who was tuned
in. My pop can’t help but curl
over like a kid whenever the tune comes on. He and the tune are fused in my mind. I imagine him, cherub like, fascinated
with cars, and girls and the whiff of danger from across the tracks. He always maintained that the song was
banned which is wonderful to imagine.
But it went to number 5 on the Billboard charts and Number 1 on the
R&B charts. I’m sure it was
“banned” in his home, and at his Catholic school, and perhaps it wasn’t given
proper air play on his local station, but I labored to find evidence of Sex
Pistols “God Save the Queen” outright ban.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybellene Pop, you gotta weigh in on the
Maybellene-ban, below. Who
banned it?
The song was apparently an adaptation the song by Bob Wills
& The Texas Playboys, called “Ida Red.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Red As in “Ida Red, Ida Red, I’m a
plum fool about Ida Red.” And in this remarkable world we live in, I can access
“Ida Red” and play it with about four minutes of searching. Some other time I’ll have to learn more about these Texas
Playboys who probably got quite a few rooms moving in their day. But if I was a patent attorney
I’d have a hard time identifying any sort of plagiarism here by Chuck. Other than the washboard drum beat, and
the fact that the gent is a fool for the woman, the older country tune doesn’t
speak to the rock classic in any way I can hear. I like the idea that Berry thought “Ida Red” too countrified
and apparently when he and his partner Johnie Johnson saw a box of mascara on
the floor the latter said: ““Well, hell, let’s name the damn thing Maybellene.” And changed the name from the make up
to avoid a lawsuit. That’s
great. Rock on Mr. Johnson.
Now I’m writing you all this morning on my wife’s
computer. This, because when I
dutifully clicked on the auto OS update on my Mac yesterday the computer shut
itself down and till now has been unable to turn itself back on. This is a massive drag that ate and
continues to eat up hours of wasted time.
I, for one, can suffer fools lightly. I have copious patience for human beings. Perhaps too much. But things? When things break, I have no patience and cannot keep from
swearing like a sailor, huffing and groaning, when this method and that method
all fail, and you see your work day slip away. The on-line help threads say, “if these all don’t work, you
need to make an appointment with the Genius Bar” Great. I’ll be off to a local Mac place today
and if that’s a flop we’ll head to the Genius Bar downtown, which is invariably
packed. Wish me luck. Still, it is amazing how much is
recoverable immediately now, resting as it does up in the cloud.
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