TS, Found In A Groundhog
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must...undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” ― Thomas Paine
There have been too many posts written lately about giants falling…about the passing of greatness. The last thing I want this newsletter to become is an obituary section, but it is hard not to mark the passing of people who had such a deep impact on my life…on the lives of so many. Just this week we lost pianist George Winston, chanteuse Astrud Gilberto and Jack Lee from The Nerves. For me the hardest hitting loss was Tony McPhee, the founder, guitarist and singer of The Groundhogs, one of the progenitors of the English blues scene of the 1960s.
Have you not heard of McPhee or his band? I had not, until the early nineties when I was record shopping the U-district of Seattle with Steve Turner of Mudhoney (note: record shopping with Turner is always a treat). From the bins he pulled out a copy of The Groundhogs’ third record…one of their greats…Thank Christ For The Bomb. “You hadn’t heard of the Groundhogs?” he said, “You gotta love the Groundhogs.” He went on to say that not many Americans had discovered the band, even though they had been making great records since the 60s. They did not tour America, they had limited success in America….and you could usually pick up their records for cheap. He had found a copy of the one he was holding for less than a buck. Turner always peacocks about finding prized records for cheap…and regarding the Groundhogs, he was wrong. The Groundhogs had, it turned out, been discovered by the worst kind of animal prowling around: the record collector. The result of being discovered by such a beast: the days of dollar bin Groundhogs was over.
But that did not stop me from discovering their music after that faithful day, starting with the record Steve pulled out (which was more than a buck)…continuing with finding a battered but playable copy of what I consider to be their masterpiece: Split, with their anthem Cherry Red. Groundhogs records are the ultimate British rockified version of the blues. With an early version of the Groundhogs being the backing band for John Lee Hooker and Champion Jack Dupree, McPhee became a student of not only blues musical forms and style, but also swagger and the improvisational opportunities that present themselves as repetitive moments in-between the verses. Groundhogs records showcase a driving rhythm section—Ken Pustelnik on traps and Peter Cruickshank on bass for all the classic records—McPhee playing right along with said rhythm, singing with a talking blues style taken from the smokey nightclub Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee traditions, erupting into momentous solos as the chorus breaks into unknown supercharged territory (often Crickshank masterfully amping up the rhythm while acting as a second lead). Groundhog jams are best lengthy…extended, gaining momentum with time as they get lost in the glorious drive of McPhee’s guitar onslaught.
To me, the holy trinity of Groundhogs records are their second, third and fourth: the two aforementioned as well as Blues Obituary. Their debut record, Scratching The Surface, which my friend Josh Rosenthal scored a sweet and cheap OG copy for me at a KUSF record swap, matches the name: they were a four piece band at a point of finding their way around the English blues rock idiom they were simultaneously defining (it is a worthy record, just not as mighty as the others). After those first four records, their output became more patchy…sometimes attempting to grab a more radio friendly sound or diving into more progressive wanderings…trying to evolve musically in directions that just didn’t grab me (there are still moments, like Wages of Peace on Who Will Save The World or Country Blues on Black Diamond). If you have not heard the Groundhogs, those three records or some of the live releases that have since been released recorded during that classic period, will be enough to make you understand how great a guitar player Tony McPhee is, and how epic the band he put together was.
And if you want more Tony McPhee after all of that listening, you can dig into to his psych trio Herbal Mixture, also featuring Cruickshank, that made some recordings in the early days of the Groundhogs evolution. Songs like Machines and A Love That Never Died, released on Columbia records, are classic nuggets of the idiom.
You hadn’t heard of the Groundhogs? You gotta love the Groundhogs!
For more on Tony McPhee, there is a great interview with him from 2011 done by the good folks at WFMU.
‘To the class of 2023, I say three words: you poor bastards’: the year’s best graduation speeches
Patton Oswalt’s commencement speech is just stunning.
Desert Dust and Wanderlust Draw Musicians to California’s High Desert
My friend Cary Baker decided to move away from Los Angeles and his long, storied PR career, to bake his brains in the desert and do more writing. This is a mighty fine piece of journalism about the music that made/makes the High Desert high…and mighty (yes…of course Gram Parsons is discussed).
John Coltrane recordings lost in New York Public Library will finally be heard
Eric Dolphy was only in Coltrane’s band for about four years, but damn if he did not participate in a phenomenal time for the band. Olé Coltrane, Africa/Brass, Live! at the Village Vanguard, Impressions—he played on (and help electrify) some pretty killer records. Coltrane was not only an amazing sax player (one of the greatest) but never afraid to surround himself with other incredible sax players (also Pharoah Sanders). I cannot wait to hear these recordings. Thank you Ulf for alerting me to this!
“The Library of Congress has completed a yearslong effort to digitize the Yongle Encyclopedia (Yongle dadian 永樂大典), the largest reference work created in pre-modern China, and possibly the world…The massive work was compiled between 1403 and 1408 for use by Zhu Di — known as the Yongle emperor, after his reign era name — the third emperor of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). A hand-copied duplicate of the entire manuscript was produced between 1562 and 1567 during the reigns of the Jiajing and Longqing emperors. The original edition was later totally lost.”
Reality review – palm-sweatingly tense whistleblower drama
My incredibly talented friend Riva Marker produced this one-act thriller revolving around “whistleblower” Reality Winner’s initial FBI interrogation at her house leading to her arrest. Sydney Sweeney of White Lotus is fantastic as Reality, whose lines come directly from the recording done at the scene. Harkens back to those mid-70s paranoid-about-the-government spy movies (The Conversation, Three Days of the Condor)….
Cy Twombly At MUSÉE YVES SAINT LAURENT, MARRAKECH
“Much like the artist it celebrates, ‘Cy Twombly: Morocco 1952/1953’ does a lot with very little. This small, intelligent exhibition offers a glimpse into the nearly five months the artist spent exploring Morocco with Robert Rauschenberg in the winter of 1952 and the spring of 1953. Physical evidence of these adventures is sparse. Both artists traveled light, abandoning the large canvases of New York for an aesthetic of snapshots and sketches, yet minimal traces coalesce to form a compelling portrait of a turning point in Twombly’s career.”
My daughter and I saw The Boogeyman yesterday…really enjoyed it actually. Better than the reviews would make it out to be. We went back to the original Stephen King story…and it really is a classic (I had not read it before).
The Wound
By Ruth Stone
The shock comes slowly
as an afterthought.
First you hear the words
and they are like all other words,
ordinary, breathing out of lips,
moving toward you in a straight line.
Later they shatter
and rearrange themselves. They spell
something else hidden in the muscles
of the face, something the throat wanted to say.
Decoded, the message etches itself in acid
so every syllable becomes a sore.
The shock blooms into a carbuncle.
The body bends to accommodate it.
A special scarf has to be worn to conceal it.
It is now the size of a head.
The next time you look,
it has grown two eyes and a mouth.
It is difficult to know which to use.
Now you are seeing everything twice.
After a while it becomes an old friend.
It reminds you every day of how it came to be.
