The FFanzeen Art of Alan Abramowitz

Introductory Text by Robert Barry Francos, 2010
Art and art text by Alan Abramowtiz, 1977-88.
Art can be made larger by clicking on it.

The following artwork was featured as a regular full-page column in FFanzeen through most of its history. I highly suggest you detatch it and use your photo software to enlarge further to full get the full effect of both the art and the text. These are presented in no particular order. -- RBF, 2010

Blondie

Patti Smith

Rockpile (Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds)

The Yardbirds

Roy Orbison

The Heartbreakers (Johnny Thunders, Walter Lure, Richard Hell, Jerry Nolan, Billy Rath)

Suzi Quatro

Sparks

Buddy Holly

Rock and roll philosophy: The Outsider and the Edge

Fear of February

Text © Robert Barry Francos
Images from the Internet

As we swing towards February, Mercury is currently in retrograde. What this means to those into astrology is that this is a bad time for making life-altering decisions and signing contracts. In fact, I know of a famous musician who is putting off a big deal until the retrograde ends, after February 1. Astrology to me is one of those things that I find cool if it works for me, but I ignore if it is negative.

It seems an irony that retrograde ends at the start of February, because that is when I start to get a little bit nervous. Early in that month seems to have an air of fear and a hint of death. After all, lets visit this period for the past few decades.

On a very early cold Midwest morning, three musicians stepped onto a plane. They were on a grinding cavalcade bus tour, and the star decided he wanted to fly ahead to wash his socks and underwear.

Though the stories are numerous about how everyone ended up being on the small chartered plane, it crashed minutes after taking off. Along the with tales of how culture changed at that defining moment, there are even songs telling of “The Day the Music Died.”

On board were the prince of rock and roll, Buddy Holly (Charles Hardin Holley), rising star Richie Valens (Richard Steven Valenzuela), and one-hit-wonder disk jockey J.P. Richardson, known nationwide as The Big Bopper. One story was that at a certain point, session guitarist Waylon Jennings was also on board, but got off, with Valens taking his place.

Ten years later, it was February 2, 1969, and a British born/Toronto raised elderly actor named William Henry Pratt passed on. He possessed one of the most imitated voices in the history of cinema, and yet, again ironically, he started his career voiceless. His first film was in 1919, a silent film called “Her Majesty’s Service.” Pratt’s roles were mostly second-string, and though he made numerous films before the advent of sound pictures, he didn’t make enough to live on, so he drove a truck to fill in the gaps.

The change came indirectly at first, in 1930 (though it was actually recorded in 1929). The film Dracula was an instant success, making the actor who played the role, Bela Lugosi, famous. He had that melodious, mysterious voice, which he considered his trademark. When the next film at Universal Studios came up later that year, to be released in 1931, he turned down the role because it was non-speaking. The person who got the role was pretty much unknown, despite his years of the craft. When the film Frankenstein came out, the actor playing the monster was listed in the credits merely as “?” No longer Bill Pratt, “?” was now monikered Boris Karloff.

Paradoxically, Karloff had a much more varied and popular career than Lugosi, probably because the former was able to remove himself from his roles, where as the latter had too much of his life mixed with his mythos. Karloff used his roles to pursue the things that interested him, such as art collecting; Lugosi merely wanted the fame, the dames, and the intoxication. Because Karloff was such a kind man, he actually made a sideline of being totally against type, by recording albums of children’s stories (I possess one of them), and even playing the narrator and main character of the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Towards the end of his career, he made one phenomenal film, Targets, essentially playing himself in an early film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, before Boris drifting off into grade C Mexican horror films while confined to a wheelchair due to an extremely advanced case of arthritis. He died on February 2, 1969.

Ten years later, it goes back to a short, flashy life in music. Or, some people may argue, around music, considering the talent of the artist. There have been many interpretations and tales about the death of John Simon Ritchie, or as he’s commonly known, Sid Vicious. Or, just Sid, even though he was Sidney (or SID-nay) to John Lydon. I share the same birthday as Sid, May 10.

But first I must digress: I saw Sid once. In ’78, was at a crappy little club that lasted for two minutes near the old Bleecker Bob’s, when it was on MacDougal Street, near the Christian Science Reading Room. The show was over, and I turned the corner onto 8th Street, going toward the subway, and there was Sid, definitely wobbly with a bottle in his hand, kicking some unconscious drunken guy who was lying on the sidewalk near the curb and a pile of trash waiting for the garbage truck. Needless to say, I did not stop to chitchat.

Without saying whether it is true or not, here is the story that I heard about Sid’s death. After getting out on bail, he wanted to, well, let’s just say return to some old habits. He had his mother, who was in New York, head over to a dealer he knew in the then truly seedy Union Square Park. He told her, “Make sure it’s good stuff.” When his mom made the purchase, she asked the dealer what condition the condition was in, and he told her, “For Sid, I only give excellent. Just make sure he cuts it.” For those who don’t know (and as someone who has never tried the crap, I’m not even sure how I know), it means it’s pure and needs to have something added into it to dilute the potency.

When dear ol’ mum brought it back, Sid asked, “Is the stuff good? What did the guy say?” She told him, “He said something about it being cut.” Sid took this to mean that it had already been cut, and he OD’d.

That story may be pure fiction, I don’t know, I’m just the reteller of what I heard. Either way, he died on February 2, 1979.

In case the reader has not noticed, this was the first few days of February in three 10-year intervals: 1959, ’69, and ‘79. As far as I know, there was no cultural death-shift in 1989 or 1999, but I am still aware every first few days of that month. Perhaps I am going to be especially aware as it comes around this year, 2009.


POSTSCRIPT FEB 2009: Looks like this year proved to be another in the list, as Cramps front(wolf)man Lux Interior passed away on Feb 4, 2009. My blog about him is dated Feb 5.

The Rock and Roll Hierarchy: The Myth of Elvis

Chuck Berry Live at The Heat, NYC 3/1/80 (c) Robert Barry Francos

After having heard Elvis Presley being called the king of rock’n’roll for my whole conscious life, the possibility of seeing Chuck Berry in the 1980s was very exciting to me. I’ve come to believe that while Elvis’ (pre-army) music could be hard-hitting, he was overrated. What made him so big, from my perspective, was he bridged “white” pop music and what was then commonly known as race music, or rhythm & blues.


In the pre-Elvis 1950s, if black artists wanted their music to be played on “mainstream” radio or television, they had to not only sell away their rights, they would have to let a white musician play it, with all the “slang” and soul eradicated – hence, the popularity of the largest-selling bridge-stander of the period, Pat Boone. Have you ever heard Boone’s version of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” or Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” (reduced to “What Did I Say”)? I remember a taped, televised image of Boone singing “Tutti Frutti,” snapping his little fingers and trying to look so cool while actually looking uncoordinated and rhythmless, with a big, goofy smile across his face. Surely, the bridge on which he and other white musicians stood was the backs of the black artists, who were measly compensated for the use of their material.

Elvis, on the other hand, was a white musician who whitewashed the sound of a song. This made the possibility of soulfulness of the black artists more acceptable to the mass 1950s white audience, presenting it in a way imaginable to opening the door to more competent musicians who could actually play their instruments and write their own songs. Elvis famously yearned to be Dean Martin and Bobby Darin. He didn’t necessarily want to be a rock’n’roller; he wanted to be a pop crooner.

Even before the popularity of Elvis, he was not the first sincere white “bridge” bringing the soulful music of rhythm and blues to a mainstream white audience; some pioneers include songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, disc jockeys Zenas “Daddy” Sears (Atlanta), “John R.” Richbourg (Nashville), Hunter Hancock (Los Angeles), Dewey Phillips (Memphis), and Alan “Moondoog” Freed (Cleveland, then New York), and record producers and label owners, such as Leonard Chess (Chess Records, Chicago) and Sam Phillips (Sun Records, Memphis).

I see rock’n’roll having a whole different hierarchy of royalty. The true king of rock’n’roll is Chuck Berry. It was Berry that brought an “almost grown” rock’n’roll sound to the fore. While based on basic I-IV-V R&B and Blues chord structures (“Johnny B. Goode” is one example) with a mixture of pop and even some country, Berry was also intelligent in his use of manipulating and playing with language (“As I was motor-vatin’ over a hill/I saw Maybellene in a Coupe DeVille”), witty in his phrasing (“Roll over Beethoven/And tell Tchaikovsky the news”), and steamrolling. He expressed the sheer joyousness of the music for the music’s sake: “Hail, hail, rock and roll/Deliver me from the days of old/Long live rock and roll/The beat of the drum is loud and bold/Rock rock rock and roll/The feeling is there body and soul.” And I agree with his sentiment that “It’s gotta be rock and roll music/If you wanna dance with me.”

The “queen,” or diva of rock’n’roll is Richard Penniman, better known as Little Richard. This is not meant in any reference to Richard’s varying sexual preferences, but rather that he brought a “fem” edge of flamboyance: glitter and bouffant hair, the make-up and the whooping, and a strong flavor of sexual tension that was different than any previous rock’n’roll headliner. In one “whooooo,” he could convey more overt sexuality than Elvis did with any hip wiggle. He brought to rock’n’roll a sense of camp and grandness.

The brother of the king (next-in-line) is Jerry Lee Lewis. His stylings are similar to Little Richard’s, both being heavily influenced by a combination of R&B, gospel and boogie, but Jerry Lee’s message was devious, less subtle, and a whole lot hornier. While Little Richard was the sex object from the ying perspective, saying, “take me” (“You keep a-knockin’ but you can’t come in/Come back tomorrow night and try again”), Jerry Lee Lewis – nicknamed “the Killer’ – was pure yang, into being the seducer and predator (“C’mon baby, don’t be shy.../You leave me/breathless-a”). Both also used the piano (along with their own physicality) as a raucous instrument of tension, frustration, and longing. Marshall McLuhan probably made a notation somewhere about the piano being a different kind of extension of these two artists.

The crown prince is Buddy Holly (during and post-Crickets). He managed to merge mainstream pop with country and swing, codifying his sound with emotion and meaning that people like Pat Boone could never achieve. It also explains Buddy’s successful gig before the infamously demanding audience at the Apollo Theater in New York. His message was one of innocence mixed with longing and, well, a Lubbock-fed Texas twang. His phrasing, both musically and lyrically, was unique (“Well All Right,” “True Love’s Ways”), sounding simple while actually being built upon innovative, complex and intricate rhythms. To take a slogan out of context, on the sexual battlefield, Buddy wanted to make love, not war in the musical arena.

Elvis, being a bridge, albeit an important and groundbreaking one, even while pre-dating Holly’s rise (and literal fall), actually brought the least to the table, except for his voice. He did not write his own music, and his guitar playing was nothing more than rudimentary. I tend to think the importance of the big “E” as the messenger, spreading the gospel of rock’n’roll to the masses, sort of like the role Paul was to Jesus. What he brought was important, but he was not the innovator.

There were also many strong women who had a pull on the direction of rock’n’roll as well, such as Big Momma Thorton, Wanda Jackson, Etta James, and Ruth Brown, but because of the period of history in which rock and roll developed and came to the forefront, women’s roles were mostly marginalized. There were more women with power behind the scenes than there were in front of the microphone. This included production, session musicians (such as bassist Carol Kaye, who, for example, played the intro to the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations”), promotion (British series Ready, Steady Go was produced by Vicki Wickham), and especially in the area of songwriting (Delores Fuller, Elli Greenwich, Carol King). It was not until the folk scene in the sixties, which had a heavy focus on both class and gender politics, did women start getting the acknowledgement they earned. Punk, too, would be heavily have a female influence, such as Patti Smith and Debbie Harry. But even then, many were treated as second class.