Where else but "Michael Picasso" would we end the August series of Ian Hunter videos? This is Hunter's farewell elegy to Mick Ronson - former Spider From Mars with David Bowie and future Dylan sideman - who was Ian's longest-standing creative collaborator, lead guitarist, and his brother in the rock & roll. Ronson was the last lead guitarist of Mott The Hoople, following Mick Ralphs and Ariel Bender. And, by all accounts, if Mott's rhythm section, Overend Watts and Dale Griffin could have put aside their petty differences with Ronson that band might have gone on to the rock & roll fame & glory it so richly deserved. Who knows, they might even have gotten into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
Hunter and Ronson's finest musical moments together came in the 1970's - with Ian Hunter's self-titled 1975 solo debut album, 1979's You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic, and the blazing double-record live document of their 1979 tour, Welcome To The Club. And if you think that last-mentioned disc isn't one of the five greatest live albums of all time, you'd better think again, my little rock children.
Ronson died of liver cancer April 29th, 1993, at the age of 46, with Hunter - among other close friends & family- at his bedside. A story told by Hunter in the February 2013 issue of Uncut magazine: "Maggi, his sister, was a nurse, so he wasn't in any pain. He was still joking. At one point Suzi (the former Suzi Fussey, Bowie's hairdresser when Ronson was in the Spiders From Mars and Ronson's wife of many years) said, 'Come talk to him.' I sat down and said, 'Are you there? Are you listening to me?' He looks at me, nods his head and says, 'No.' Ha! And then that little soul flew out the window and that was it.'"
I wouldn't mind going out that way. And I certainly wouldn't mind someone writing a song like this for me afterward. Ian Hunter, thank you. Mick Ronson, rest in peace.
inspirational verse; "Once upon a time, not so long ago / The people used to stand and stare /
At the Spider with the platinum hair / They thought you were immortal" - Ian Hunter, 1997
(I Love Distortion (a rock & roll novel in 12 chapters) appears monthly in
Growing Old With Rock & Roll; January to December, 2013)
I Love Distortion - chapter eight
“I’m gonna write a novel All about the next two years And you can be my hero It’ll be about sailing away On the wings of a Monarch fluttering south And a peaceful life made to comfort me Because I deserve it And you can be my hero Keeping my head above the night waters Holding my hand in the dark” - Nicole Page, 1978
This is Nicole speaking. I haven't had very much of a voice so far in this narrative, because I Love Distortion is Sean's story more than mine. Maybe much more than mine.
I'm two girls.
One was Poet Rocker Girl. Poet Rocker Girl was the girl that Sean loved. The other was My Mother's Daughter. I loved my mom. She was kind of old-fashioned. She just wanted to be a good mom to my little sister and me. And to be a good wife to my dad. That wasn't always easy.
I know my dad loved my mom but he was kind of mean to her at times. He grew up in the country and came to Columbus to work in a factory that made car parts. Sean thought that was cool. He said, "It's just like The MC5 in Detroit." But it wasn't cool. It was just hard, grinding work and sometimes he took it out on my mom. I think that's how I got involved with Tommy, my boyfriend/fiance. It just seemed normal. Tommy was mean to me sometimes. One time in February when Sean and I were just beginning to become friends I came to work with a black eye. Sean was the only person who noticed. I had tried to cover it up with make-up, but as we were leaving the morning store meeting Sean gently took the hand my engagement ring was on and said quietly, "Don't marry that guy." I went up to the toy department warehouse loft and cried my eyes out.
I missed The Sixties.
I desperately wanted to be part of them, but I was born in 1959 and by time I came of age they were over. I grew up with smiley face stickers, mood rings, pet rocks, CB radios & streaking and KNEW I'd missed out on something important. I grew up with hippies & singer/songwriters and heavy-metal & prog-rock and disco on the radio. All my mom and dad listened to was country & western. I knew there had to be to more to music, but I had no idea where to find it.
And then there was Sean.
I had seen his band play around the West Side a couple of times and thought he was cute but I couldn't understand what he was doing working at K-Mart when I got hired there. He was in a rock & roll band. Why would he need to have a job? I didn't understand then that if you played original music like Sean did there were never enough paying gigs to be had, there was never enough money to be made. I had never met anyone who made up their own songs before.
And the first time he took me to see Lovely & Sonic - his friend Billy Ray's band - I couldn't believe my ears or my eyes. Lovely & Sonic's music was amazing, better even than Sean's band. And Billy Ray was astonishing. Five-foot, three-inch black men with dreadlocks playing left-handed guitar while singing their hearts out and and doing split-scissor kicks just did not compute in my 18-year old suburban girl world. Previous to that time I had ridden around in cars with my friends: drinking, smoking a little pot and listening to Journey, Foreigner & Kansas on the radio. And then I would go home and write poetry in my white bedroom. It was a small world.
Sean gave me Elliott Murphy and Ian Hunter to listen to. He taught me who Bruce Springsteen was and why he was so important. He gave me David Johansen and Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello. He gave me The Pop and Mink DeVille. He gave me music I never in a million years would have heard otherwise. He would constantly say things to me that made my head spin, but he never once knew he was doing it.
And he was sweet to me. Tommy wasn't sweet to me. Tommy yelled at me. And he hit me. He'd grab my mouth in his fist to stop me from talking just to show that he could. Sean was interested in every single thing I said. Sean never once raised his voice to me. Even when he probably should have.
And he wrote me such great songs to sing, songs with lines like:
“Rock & roll as a force for social change That idea got kicked to the curb About the same time the noun ‘party’ Got turned into a verb”
- Sean Richter, 1978
I wrote poems like the one that begins this chapter, but I couldn’t write direct, declamatory lyrics like those in a million years. But then Sean began to leave spaces, openings, in the songs and having me fill them in with my own words, so the songs would be more in my own voice.
I couldn’t have been any prouder when I came up with this verse for a song called “Stupid Games” that Sean wrote about loser guys:
“I don’t want no groping I don’t need no sleaze I don’t want your exclusive interest Between my belt buckle and my knees” - Nicole Page, 1978
I felt sometimes like Sean and I were twins in another life, or the king & queen of some ancient mythical rock & roll kingdom fueled by poetry & starlight.
One time after we made love on a Sunday afternoon our clothes were strewn all over the floor of the apartment Sean shared with Jeffrey Jay, our bass player. I picked up his jeans and asked if I could try them on. They fit perfectly. And mine fit him. Sean was five foot-ten, weighed maybe 140 pounds soaking wet. I was five foot-seven, kinda slim, but somehow those clothes fit us to a tee. We dressed up in each other's outfits (panties & underwear excluded) and went out for ice cream. We thought we were the two coolest kids on the West Side - or possibly on the entire planet - that Sunday.
Sean loved Poet Rocker Girl. But sometimes he forgot I was My Mother's Daughter. Ever since I was little my mom had told me to get married early and to have kids right away, and then they would be out of the house while I was still young enough to enjoy my life. My mom & dad got married when he was 18 and my mom was 17. I was born when she was 18. At the time we met, Sean's older brother was the same age as my mom. In some ways we were almost an entire generation apart even though Sean was only seven years older than me. And in a lot of ways, even though he was supposed to be a full-fledged adult, Sean was just a little boy. A really smart and talented little boy. A really kind and sweet little boy. But a little boy, nonetheless. And sometimes my mom said I had been 30 years old since I was in the eighth grade.
I loved Sean. I really did. I loved him with all my heart. You have to believe that. And I loved being a part of The Twilight Kids. God, how I loved being in that band. I loved the rush of electricity coursing through my veins when we played gigs. I loved the feel of the guitar dangling at my hips when I sang. I loved writing songs with Sean, quiet days on couches with notebooks & guitars that we turned into rock & roll songs that had crowds screaming for more. I may never have known such peace & beauty in my life.
But I was two girls.
I was Poet Rocker Girl. And I was My Mother's Daughter. And one of them had to win.
This is Nicole speaking. Thank you for letting me talk to you.
Okay, here's the deal, there are two main reasons I think I relate so much to Ian Hunter:
1) He was born June 3rd, 1939, making him a fit & robust 74 years old as I type this sentence, and he's still out here in the rock & roll universe making records and playing shows. Talk about growing old with rock & roll. He's a genuine inspiration to me, and part of the reason I don't feel silly at 61 years old still strapping on a piece of wood with steel strings running up the neck and playing songs in bars to people who don't listen.
2) Ian Hunter actually worked in factories before he was a full-time rocker with Mott The Hoople. It was a fact they kept kinda quiet at the time, but Hunter was already 30 years old - and married with two small children - when he JOINED Mott The Hoople, something that just did not happen in 1969. Back then rockers were all 16 to 22 years old, maybe 25 at the outside, but a 30 year old was supposed to be off selling insurance or working at a bank, NOT joining a rock & roll band. I never worked in a factory, but (as it says in my little blog profile) I worked a solid 24 years in warehouses, unloading trucks & stocking merchandise, and that wasn't a whole lot more glamorous than factory work, believe me. From 1974 until 1998 I never held a job where I could see sunlight while I was working.
So I think that's why I was so struck by the song "Girl From The Office" when it first came up as track six on Hunter's Man Overboard CD in 2009. Only someone who actually worked in a factory would get the details as right as Hunter does in the tune: the breath of fresh air & poetry that a pretty girl lent to those dismal working surroundings; the coarse manner in which your run-of-the-mill line workers or warehouse guys spoke of women, even (or especially) ones they liked and found attractive; the way it lifted one's respectability when said office girls would "bring you a coffee from the staff canteen."
Plus I wanted one tune in this August compendium that would demonstrate Hunter's way with a full-blown Great Pop Song. "Girl From The Office" has it all - great tune, great story, killer hooks (go ahead, get that "What's she like, what's she like, what's she like" out of your head for 24 hours after you first hear it, I dare ya), backing vocals galore, a bridge section the last place you expect it - all of the ingredients required for a Great Pop Song.
Enjoy.......
inspirational verse; "No one seems to know where the girl from the office
goes in her spare time, well I found out / She visits the Sabrina Dancing Academy /
I just got my membership card filled out" - Ian Hunter, 2009
(This video is dedicated, by me, to Michelle DeVito & Leann Sloan from Service Merchandise
and to Linda Whittington at Ross Laboratories, the girls from the office who made my - and
many of my friends' & associates' - warehouse existence bearable.)
appendix to Bonus Video Friday
Much as my friend Colin Gawel asks the musical question "Why Isn't Cheap Trick In the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame?" I must ask, as Craig Ferguson does in this interview, "Why Isn't Mott The Hoople In
the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?" Great rock intellect from Ian in this clip, and great sense of humor.
I loved Mott The Hoople from the first moment I laid eyes on them, June 13th, 1970, at the Cincinnati Pop Festival, exactly one week after I graduated from high school. They played great, they rocked like motherfuckers and they just dressed so cool. Certainly nothing like their later Bowie-influenced glam days (circa the accompanying video), but with a hearty helping of black leather and flash boots & shirts they made their de rigeur t-shirts, bell-bottoms & checked flannel-shirt sporting rock & roll brethren look like the retro prats they were that Saturday afternoon in 1970. Mott The Hoople were certainly not hippies. And they didn't just play, they performed. Ian Hunter was a true rock & roll madman from the first notes, deploying a total Jerry Lee Lewis/Little Richard-destructo rock routine - playing piano behind his back, pushing it over and playing from the other side, pulling it down on himself, wrestling with it as he pounded out notes. (Hunter exclusively played electric piano in those early days, before he moved out front with a guitar.)
On that June Saturday at that festival my all-time rock & roll best friend Dave Blackburn and I also witnessed Mountain, The Stooges, Ten Years After, Traffic, and Alice Cooper, among many others. (For a more complete list, see blog entry The First Time I Saw The Stooges, August 24th, 2012.) Were Mott The Hoople better than all of them? Yeah, except for The Stooges and Traffic, they were. Were they maybe the best live band we had seen since The Who in 1969? Yeah, they just might have been. Dave and I pooled our money and bought the first Mott album (with that incredibly cool M.C. Escher gatefold cover) a coupla days after we got back from the show and another life-long rock & roll love affair was born.
(blogger's note:Astute readers of Growing Old With Rock & Roll have brought to my attention that some of my early blog entries have had the accompanying videos stripped from them, I guess from YouTube rights attrition, including the January 6th, 2012, entry for Mott's "Sweet Angeline." So here's a repeat of that, book-ended with "All The Young Dudes" and "Drivin' Sister" for good measure. I remember being enthralled with this segment when it aired on Don Kirshner's hopelessly pathetic Rock Concert back in 1973, now it just strikes me as listless and dull. Please note how sterile & unimaginative the camera work and general presentation are compared with German programs like Rockpalast and Musikladen, which aired at roughly the same time. (See previous Bonus Video Friday segments for visual living proof.) Even English programs like Old Grey Whistle Test, now available for viewing on YouTube, were superior in every way to Rock Concert. Midnight Special might have been a little better, but really not that much. Sad.)
(further blogger's note, May 18th, 2021: It has now been brought to my attention that my SECOND substitiute Mott/Kirshner video has been deleted from GOWR&R, and now all that's left is this clip of "All The Way From Memphis" from that show. I'm leaving in the text about "Sweet Angeline" below in the hopes that SOMEDAY that tune will be reinstated to YouTube (or I can find it somewhere else) and I can add it back in. For now, let me just say, it was one of my Five Favorite Stage Bits Ever.)
(FURTHER further blogger's note, September 2nd, 2022: I find now that somebody has re-posted the original Kirshner three-song video sometime in late 2021 and I missed it. Let's try this one more time.)
I witnessed Mott The Hoople doing this "Sweet Angeline" stage bit (bringing a woman out of the audience for Ian Hunter to sing to) twice, in 1973 and 1974. It went great both times; the participants were in their twenties, loved being serenaded by Ian, loved being onstage with the band. The teenager in this video, however, is THE MOST uncomfortable person I have ever seen in a TV clip. I've seen kidnap footage where people appear to be having a better time than this girl.
inspirational verse, stage patter division; "It's nice to be back in Los Angeles. We really mean that. Ummm. Actually we don't mean it, it's always a drag to be back in Los Angeles, but one must go to these places in the course of one's business. No, it's alright." - Ian Hunter, 1973
(Who - except for Mott The Hoople, and Ian Hunter in particular - travels from England to the heart of
the television industry, Los Angeles, and then proceeds to badmouth said city ON TELEVISION?!? Classic. I wonder why Mott The Hoople weren't seen on more American music programs?)
inspirational verse; "A crystal-colored, cardboard queen attacked me from my plate / And I think
that I am going mad among the swollen States / Oh, rescue me or bury me, I care not what you do / There's just one thing that I wanna know; Well, am I really YOU?" - Ian Hunter, 1972
(blogger's note, November, 2024; It occurs to me I should update this entry every once in awhile as I did in 2018 when The Hollywood Stars material was released. I STILL need/would love to have any unreleased tunes from Boston's finest, The Sidewinders, that any blog readers out there might have.)
I have no idea who constitutes the readership of this blog. I have a sketchy idea of how many times each entry is viewed, but truthfully am not really sure what that indicates. I suppose I should delve a little more into that sort of thing, but really I'm honored and humbled that ANYBODY reads my little rock & roll musings, so I'm not really concerned with the numbers game.
With that being said, let's get down to the business of begging.......
I have discovered, at the advanced age of 61, that in the process of Growing Old With Rock & Roll there is very little music that I WANT that I do not already own in my vinyl, cassette & CD collection.
The three things I covet are:
1) Anything by early-1970's Boston band The Sidewinders (led by Andy Paley, also included Eric Rose, Leigh Foxx, Mike Reed, Henry Stern, later included Billy Squier and Bryan Chase) other than their 1972 Richard Robinson-produced self-titled RCA album or the track "Streetwalker" from The Boston Incest Album compilation. Does ANYBODY out there know of or possess any live material by this band in either/any of its incarnations? (In the 1980's I sent away to Boston for, as I recall, a WCOZ compilation cassette that had two tunes - "Telephone Relations" (a far superior version to the later Piper track) and possibly "Turn The Tide" from the Billy Squier-era band - but the tape broke within a year of when I got it, before I had the presence of mind to dub those two tunes off to another cassette. Anybody have or remember that?)
2) Anything from Kim Fowley creation The Hollywood Stars in its original 1974 incarnation, other than "Escape" and "King Of The Nighttime World" that are available on YouTube. (I have the 1977 Mark Anthony-fronted band LP, I'm looking more for the earlier Scott Phares-era material.) (2018 update to this 2013 blog: I now own the Shine Like a Radio / The Great Lost 1974 Album vinyl LP from Last Summer Records, so that pretty much takes care of my Hollywood Stars wants.)
3) Canadian-by-way-of-California (or vice versa) band The Dudes CD All The Young Dudes, All The Old Demos. Again, I have the We're No Angels album, but have always heard that the rock & roll axiom: "They should have released the demos" particularly applied to Bob Segarini, David & Ritchie Henman and company.
So that's it, those three things. I'm not particular about fidelity, I just truly wanna hear more SONGS from these bands than I currently possess.
A little help, from anybody out there? That's it for Ricki C. begging for the rock & roll, over & out.
I'm not an individual that's given to a lot of regrets. I spent enough years on the planet earlier in my existence constantly, relentlessly looking back: wishing things had been different, turning over bad decisions in my mind to the exclusion of moving that existence forward. In the words of Warren Zevon, from 1978's sublime "Accidentally Like A Martyr" - "The days slide by / Shoulda done, shoulda done, we all cry."
That being said, here's part one of my Rock & Roll Regrets:
In July 1978 the New Musical Express, one of the premier English rock weeklies of the time (along with Melody Maker and Sounds), included my punk fanzine, Teenage Rampage, in an article on amateur rock jounalists and heaped accolade upon accolade on our little Ohio publication. (see reproduction below)
Subsequently, sometime in September '78 I got a letter from one of the editors at the NME (as everyone, including The Sex Pistols - "I use the NME / I use anarchy" - referred to it) offering me the position of Midwest Correspondent for the magazine. My responsibilities would have included covering national touring acts when they passed through Ohio and to be on the lookout for local talent the NME could talk up to their English readers. (They had plenty of top-flight pro correspondents on the East and West Coasts, but their Great Midwest contacts were kinda spotty.)
In retrospect, this would have been a perfect way for me to hype Romantic Noise, my close friend and sometimes-employer Willie Phoenix's then-current punk/power-pop assemblage. But I was so bogged down in the day-to-day drama of my marriage falling apart, working a 40-hour work-week at K-Mart, keeping my own band going, playing roadie for Romantic Noise, and writing for the local Columbus music mag - Focus - that I just let the NME offer dwindle away, to fall by the wayside (in the words of Artful Dodger).
That last misstep, choosing to continue writing for my hometown rock weekly that would go bankrupt and belly-up within a year rather than mount stories for The New Musical Express, one of the most powerful rock & roll magazines of its time - home to rock writers extraordinaire Charles Shaar Murray, Mick Farren, Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill - is particularly galling to me from my 20/20 hindsight catbird seat here in the 21st century. I could have started a rock writing career at that point that may well have blossomed into something very real and compelling, or at least coulda paid a few bills.
Two words spring immediately to mind regarding that decision: bonehead and idiot. Readers, feel free to fill in a third.
This is part one of three of my Rock & Roll regrets.
Astute readers may note that last week's Bonus Video Friday selection - "Once Bitten Twice Shy" - was the opening track on Ian Hunter's eponymous first solo album back in 1975. This week's tune - "Who Do You Love" - was the second song off that record. I don't plan on recreating that whole disc here, but I'm tempted. If I thought I could find all eight (or nine if you count "Shades Off" as a separate track, which I don't) songs on YouTube I might give it a shot. It was a GREAT debut album.
Anyway, we're jumping from 1979 last week to 2010 for this track. The backing band for Hunter in this video - The Down 'n' Outz - was formed (I discovered on Wikipedia) by Joe Elliott, once and probably still occasionally the lead singer of Def Leppard. I never really had much use for the Lepp, as it were, but any frontman of a HUGE 1980's candy-metal act that forms a band just to play Mott The Hoople and Ian Hunter covers is going to get a thumbs-up from me any day of any week. Joe Elliott HAS to have sold millions more records than Hunter. To mount that kind of tribute truly shows Elliott to possess the heart & soul of a rocker. And I intend to raise my next glass of Bailey's to the man.
inspirational verse; "There's a deep-red glow in the early morning sky / Who do you love, better make up your mind" - Ian Hunter, 1975
p.s. By the way, I've been roundly (and rightly) castigated by close (Irish) friends over the omission of Bruce Springsteen in last week's Bonus Video Friday write-up of hallowed performer favorites of mine. It was an oversight, but only partly. I didn't see Springsteen live until April 5th, 1976, and I was mainly detailing performers I saw in the 1960's or early in 1970 in that list. However, to suggest that Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band are not a VITAL force in the Ricki C. Growing Old With Rock & Roll Process is just wrong. Without Bruce Springsteen singing, "Walk tall / Or baby, don't walk at all" in 1973, there might not have been a First Act to the Ricki C. Life of Rock & Roll. And without him singing, "For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside / That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive" in 1978 there definitely would not have been a Second Act. Bruce Springsteen has been my Number One Rock & Roll Hero of all time since Pete Townshend abdicated that throne with those endless, tedious "Farewell Tours of America" he's been launching since sometime in the 1980's and still lumbers around on now, fully 30 years later. (A Rock & Roll Question I'm not about to research: Which band has mounted more "Farewell - No, This Time We Really Mean It - Tours": Kiss, Eagles or The Who?) (My money is on Pete and Roger.)
I just bought tickets to see Ian Hunter & The Rant Band at Kent, Ohio's great Kent Stage venue on October 5th, 2013. Consequently I'm thinking that Bonus Video Fridays in August will be wholly dedicated to Ian Hunter and/or Mott The Hoople videos. That theme could well extend into September and, who knows, I might just run that string right through October when my lovely wife Debbie and I head Northeast to attend the show. (I probably won't run that many in a row, but there's a cornucopia of Ian and Mott videos on YouTube, it would be eminently possible, so we'll see.)
For the uninitiated, from 1969 to 1974 Ian Hunter was the lead singer and main songwriter (along with Mick Ralphs, later of the lamentable and unlamented Bad Company) of Mott The Hoople, one of my five favorite rock & roll bands ever on planet Earth, and probably the best live band you never saw. (For the unbelievers amongst you who find that claim frivolous or overblown, track down the 2004 Sony/Columbia release Mott The Hoople Live - 30th Anniversary Edition double-CD set for a crash (pun intended) course in rock & roll aggro from the fabled 1970's.
And that's not all, folks. Ian Hunter is no nostalgia act, Jack. Starting with his Rant return-to-form in 2001, Hunter has amassed a truly world-beating run of four releases - Shrunken Heads (2007), Man Overboard (2009) and last year's brilliant When I'm President - extending his white-hot swath of rock & roll command well into the 21st century. (And let's ask ourselves at this juncture, dear readers, how many other artists have made FOUR great records in a row in the 21st century? By my count Steve Earle, Alejandro Escovedo and Jack White are the only three contenders that spring readily to mind. Bob Dylan maybe, sorta could at least have been considered if it weren't for that fucked-up Christmas debacle of a record he cut in 2009, royally screwing up his four-in-a-row curve.) (And let's face facts, three of my favorite rock acts of all time - Lou Reed, Neil Young and The Rolling Stones - haven't even made ONE great record in the 21st century, let alone four, or more particularly, four in a row.)
But I digress.......
It just occurs to me, I first saw Ian Hunter with Mott The Hoople on June 13th, 1970, at the Cincinnati Pop Festival, exactly one week after I graduated from high school, 43 years ago. I cannot think of another rock act I'm likely to see again that is going to span a longer period of time than that. I saw The Who on November 1st, 1969, but believe you me, the chances of me attending an evening of entertainment with that rotting, bloated corpse of a rock & roll assemblage that Daltrey & Townhend have taken to hauling around the States like an albatross around their necks and not-so-laughingly call The Who are - in the words of Elvis Costello - less than zero. The Who were four men - Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Enwhistle and Keith Moon. There are no substitutes (pun intended, again). (see blog entry Shows I Saw In the 1960's, part two, The Who, December 7th, 2012)
I guess it's conceivable I might see Bob Dylan again, who I first witnessed November 19th, 1965 (see blog entry Shows I Saw in the 1960's, part one, Bob Dylan & the Hawks, May 3rd, 2012) but it's doubtful, unless somebody else pays for the ticket. I saw Dylan in 1990 on the Oh Mercy tour and sometime after that at (of all things) the Ohio State Fair and, for me, the Dylan live ship has sailed. I suppose it's eminently possible I might see Iggy Pop again in my lifetime, who I first saw with The Stooges back in '69 (see blog entry The First Time I Saw The Stooges, August 24th, 2012), but we'll see. Right now we're discussing Ian Hunter.
Perhaps we'll talk more about Mott The Hoople and Ian Hunter in the coming weeks of Bonus Video Fridays, but for this week this is all I have left to say: Ladies & gentlemen, if you live anywhere around Ohio, within driving distance of Kent, you could do worse for an evening of rock & roll than to drop 35 bucks to see Ian Hunter & The Rant Band on October 5th. You'll just have to take my word for it. Have I ever steered you wrong?
inspirational verse; "'Allo, 'allo,'allo,'allo" - Ian Hunter, 1975
(no, seriously)
"You didn't know what rock & roll was / Until you met a drummer on the Greyhound bus
I got there in the nick of time / Before he got his hands across your state li-i-ine"
(or)
"Woman, you're a mess, gonna die in your sleep /
And there's blood on my amp and my Les Paul heat"
(Wait, come to think of it, every line in the song is inspirational, just listen LOUD and enjoy.......)
