Janis Joplin – "Trust Me" (1971)

The older the grape

The sweeter the wine

[NOTE: It’s become a tradition for me to celebrate each 2 or 3 lines anniversary by interviewing myself.  Here’s part four of this year’s  four-part anniversary interview.]

Q:  There’s a rumor going around that you’re being considered to star in the second season of ABC-TV’s The Golden Bachelor show.  Is there any truth to that rumor?

A:  You’ll have to ask the network that question.

Q:  Have you been watching the show?

A:  I’ve watched every episode – despite the fact that it is so full of sh*t that it’s eyes are brown.

Q:  Why do you say that?

A:  They call The Golden Bachelor reality television, but they should call it unreality television.  They put people in an utterly artificial situation, film everything they do – which ensures that everyone is acting unnaturally at all times – and then edit the hell out of that footage so that the audience sees only a small part of what really happens.  The result is as phony as a three-dollar bill.  

Q:  What do you think of Gerry – a/k/a “The Golden Bachelor”?

A:  In the first place, he’s not a bachelor.  A bachelor is a male who’s never been married.  Gerry has been married.  His wife died, so he’s a widower – not a bachelor.

Q:  Thank you, Mr. Webster.

A:  You’re welcome, Mr. Wiseass.  To answer your question, I think Gerry is a good-looking guy, and he doesn’t appear to be an assh*le – which gives him a leg up on most men.  But he has a room-temperature IQ and zero personality.  If the women on the show had met him on a dating website, I think most of them would have said “Thanks, but no thanks” after about two dates.  

Q:  You think so?  Most of them seem very taken with him.  

A:  Most of them seem to believe they’ve fallen in love with him, despite the fact that they barely know him – which is just insane.

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Q:  I assume you saw the episode where Gerry visited each of the three finalists in their hometowns and met their kids and grandkids.  During those visits – which took place on three successive days – all three of them told him that they were in love with him.

A:  And he told all three of them that he was in love with them, too.  All in the space of three days!  

Q:  And you don’t believe that was true.

A:  Of course it’s not true.  But he said it to all three of them, and now he is well and truly f*cked – he has dug himself a huge hole, and he has no idea how to get out of it.

Q:  He seemed to find it excruciating when he had to choose between those last three women.  Do you think he was really as distraught as he appeared to be when he sent Faith home, or was he just crying crocodile tears?

Don't go away mad, Faith –
just go away!

A:  I think Gerry’s a decent guy, and that he takes no pleasure in rejecting women – especially at this point of the show, when all the women are telling him that they are in love with him, which understandably makes him think that they are going to be heartbroken if they don’t get a rose.  Because even though Gerry and these women don’t really have a deep attachment to one another, the experience of being on the show has persuaded them that they’re falling in love.  So when he rejects one of the women, it cuts her to the quick – or at least it feels like it does at the moment.  And he feels very guilty when he’s forced to do that by the format of the show.

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Q:  You seem to think that you know exactly what Gerry is thinking.  Is it possible that there’s a little transference at work here?  Are you attributing your feelings to him? 

A:  That’s certainly possible.  I’m sure that I would feel just as guilty as he does when he has to say sayonara to one of the women on the show.  After all, I find it difficult to tell someone I’ve met on a dating site that I don’t want to continue dating her . . .  even if we’ve only gone out two or three times.  

Q:  If that’s the case, I can only imagine how guilty you felt when you left your wife.

A:  Being rejected after 40 years of marriage is infinitely worse than being rejected after a few weeks on The Golden Bachelor.  I do believe Gerry’s guilt is real – but in contrast to my situation, I think that he and the women he dismisses will get over it pretty quickly.  But right now, he seems pretty overwhelmed by his situation.  Part of that is his guilt at being forced to reject women week after week, but I also think there’s something else going on here.

Q:  And what is that?

A:  Being on this show was a lot of fun for him when he had this big harem of adoring women to hang out with.  But as the field narrowed, I think Gerry began to have major doubts about the wisdom of his choices.  I look at the two finalists, and neither one of them seems like a good match for him.  I suspect he would love to have a do-over so he could make some different choices.

Caught between a rock
and a hard place

Q:  I agree that I find it a little surprising that he’s ended up with Leslie and Theresa.  

A:  I think one of two things happened.  My first theory is that in the second or third week of the show – when he had to go from 16 contestants to 13, and then from 13 to 10 – he lost track of how many roses he had left to give out.  He was going down his list, handing out roses to the women he liked, and then suddenly realized he was down to his last rose when there were two women left that he wanted to keep around.  What could he do?  He couldn’t tell the producers of the show that they needed to stop taping and take it again from the top – he was stuck.

Q:  That theory seems a little far-fetched.  What’s your other scenario?

A:  I think he may have gotten some of the contestants mixed up.  There were a lot of blondes on the show – Jeanie, Peggy, Christina, Edith, Nancy, and so on – that I had trouble keeping straight.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he got some of the names mixed up.

Q:  You’re not being serious, are you?

A:  I would challenge you to come up with a better explanation for how Gerry ended up keeping Susan and Sandra around so long, and then dumped Faith – who seemed like a pretty good match for him – and went with Leslie and Theresa as his two final choices.  

Q:  So you don’t see Gerry living happily ever after with Leslie or Theresa?

A:  Oh please.  I don’t see Gerry lasting a month with either one of them.

Q:  Final question.  Is there a part of you that’s envious of The Golden Bachelor?  Do you wish you were living Gerry’s life?

A:  Actually, I am living Gerry’s life.  Just not all at once.  And not on television.

*     *     *     *     *

Q:  Tell us about today’s featured song – which was released on the Pearl album three months after Janis Joplin’s death.  

A:  Well, I would say that it’s pretty obvious from the lyrics quoted at the beginning of this post that the guy who wrote the song didn’t know very much about wine.

Q:  Those lyrics aren’t intended to be taken literally, of course.  The songwriter was speaking metaphorically to make the point that you might be making a mistake if you pick a younger romantic partner instead of a more mature one.

A:  I think older women are great.  I have a friend who tells me that he thinks I’m lucky because I’m attracted to women my own age – he’s only interested in much younger women, and very few of them are interested in him.  I think he’s crazy – if your choice is between older women and no women, there’s no doubt which option I’m choosing.

Click here to listen to “Trust Me.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Janis Joplin – "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" (1969)

If it’s a dream 

I don’t want

Nobody to wake me

My school had a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good jazz band.  My senior year, we travelled to a state university in a nearby city to take part in a big high-school jazz band contest.  

To prepare for that competition, we had to show up at school early every day for a couple of weeks to rehearse. 

My high school

My mother usually drove me to school, but I’m guessing that our special practice sessions started too early for me to wait for her to give me a ride.  My father left for his job much earlier than she did, so I probably had to go with him – even though that meant I got to school 20 or 30 minutes before I needed to be there for rehearsals.

I have a vivid recollection of killing the time before those practice sessions began by dropping by the school’s journalism room and listening to today’s featured song a few times to get myself psyched up to rehearse.

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“Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)” is the first track on Janis Joplin’s I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! album.

I have no idea why there was a copy of that album in the journalism room, which is where the high school newspaper and yearbook staffs worked.  As I recall, there was also a copy of Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album there.  (The lyrics to one of the songs on that album included the line “Up against the wall, motherf*cker,” so you had to pick your spots if you wanted to listen to it.)

Janis Joplin

I owned both albums, so it’s possible that I had brought those LPs to school.  But I was very protective of my albums, so I don’t see myself bringing those two records to school and leaving them there.

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“Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)” doesn’t waste any time.  After a four-bar introduction, Janis Joplin jumps in – applying her trademark melisma to the word “try” – and we’re off to the races.

Producer Gabriel Mekler brings everything he’s got – trumpets, saxophones, keyboards, backup singers – but Janis more than holds her own.

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Gabriel Mekler, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1977 – he was only 35 years old – produced not only Kozmic Blues but also the best Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night albums.

The “I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues
Again Mama!”album cover

Steppenwolf originally called themselves Jack London and the Sparrows.  Mekler suggested they change their name to Steppenwolf after he read the Herman Hesse novel.

As the producer of “Born to Be Wild,” Mekler already had a song in the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  

And now he has one in the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME, too.

Not too shabby.

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Click here to listen to “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” which was co-written by Jerry Ragovoy and Chip Taylor.  (Taylor – who was born James Voight and is the brother of actor Jon Voight – decided to give songwriting a shot after failing in his attempt to become a professional golfer.  He also wrote “Angel of the Morning” and “Wild Thing.”)

Click on the link below to buy today’s featured song from Amazon:

Hot Tuna -- "Easy Now" (1974)

By this time tomorrow

Who knows where I'll be?

I almost always know where I'm going to be tomorrow.  Sometimes I wish that wasn't the case, but that's just not me.

For example, during a recent 12-day personal-business-personal trip to San Francisco, San Diego, and Granbury, Texas, I always knew where I was going to be tomorrow.  One day I woke up not knowing where I was going to spend the night, but that was an exception to my usual policy of planning trips well in advance.

One afternoon while we were in San Francisco, my first-born child (he's the one who is most like me, I think) and I spent a couple of hours in Haight-Ashbury, which is the quintessential San Francisco neighborhood for members of my generation:

Haight-Ashbury has been cleaned up quite a bit, but it's still a very eccentric neighborhood.  Here's the storefront of the Piedmont Boutique on Haight Street:

Haight-Ashbury has some spectacular examples of the wonderful Victorian houses that San Francisco is famous for.  Here's one group of Victorians on Ashbury Street:

Janis Joplin once lived in this pink Victorian on Ashbury Street:

Here's a close-up of the doorway of that house, which probably wasn't quite as gussied up when Janis was crashing there:

The most significant "Summer of Love" site in Haight-Ashbury is the house at 710 Ashbury Street that served as the Grateful Dead's communal home between October 1966 and March 1968:

Here's a photo of the Dead and assorted hangers-on sitting on the steps of that house in 1967:

Today there are odd little images of the band's members on the sidewalk in front of the house:

Here's a closeup of an image of the late Jerry Garcia:

After our architectural explorations, we slaked our thirst at the Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery, which stands just a block from the corner of Haight and Ashbury.  The Magnolia is very serious about their beer:

We sampled the Proving Ground IPA (very hoppy indeed -- 100 IBUs), Tillie's Union Ale, Kalifornia Kölsch (served in 9-ounce glasses instead of imperial pints, for some reason), and the very odd Weekapaug Gruit.  (Gruit refers to unhopped beer, which was popular in Europe in medieval times, but was replaced by hopped beers hundreds of years ago.  Gruit is flavored with a mixture of herbs instead of hops.) 

A few blocks west of Ashbury Street is the house at 2400 Fulton Street that the Jefferson Airplane moved into in 1968:

You Airplane fans out there are probably aware that the band issued a compilation album titled 2400 Fulton in 1987.  Now you know where the album's title came from.

In 1969, the Airplane's lead singer, Grace Slick, underwent surgery to remove nodes from her throat, so she was unable to perform for some time.  Several of the band's members formed Hot Tuna to give themselves something to do during Grace's recuperation.

Hot Tuna became the acoustic alter ego for the Jefferson Airplane -- after Grace recovered, Hot Tuna opened for the Airplane's live concerts at the Fillmore East and elsewhere.

Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna's Jack Casady

But the Airplane was not long for this world.  Marty Balin -- the primary creative force behind Surrealistic Pillow -- left the group early in 1971.  The rest of the group split into two factions -- Grace Slick and Paul Kantner (who had a child together) on one side and Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady on the other.

Kantner founded the Jefferson Starship, leaving Hot Tuna to Kaukonen and Casady, who eventually morphed it from a bluesy acoustic band into a hard-rock power trio.

When I worked at the Federal Trade Commission in the 1980s, people would bring in unwanted books and records and leave them on a table in the library for anyone who was interested to take home.  That's where I found a copy of Hot Tuna's fourth album, Phosphorescent Rat, which had been released in 1974:

I must have listened to the entire album at least once, but the only song on it that did anything for me was "Easy Now."

"Easy Now" is a great rock song, despite being very simple.  (Maybe it's a great song because it's very simple.)  It features a nasty, distortion-heavy lead guitar line and suitably growly vocals, but what makes the song special is its perfect "Goldilocks" rhythmic groove -- not too fast and not too slow, but just right.

The song's structure is repetitive and hypnotic.  Every four-bar phrase climaxes with a heavily accented second beat in the fourth measure, followed by two beats of near silence.  I would be happy if the song was twice or even thrice as long as it is.

Jorma Kaukonen

The lyrics of the song are simple but perfect as well.  The singer is restless -- he's got the "riding pneumonia" (which is similar to the "rockin' pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu," I suppose), so he decides to hit the road and head for Mexico.

"What's he going to do when he gets there?" you might be wondering.

You're missing the point.  Getting to Mexico isn't the point of the trip.  The trip is the point of the trip.

The singer most likely will just head somewhere else once he reaches Mexico.  Hell, he might just turn around and come back home.  (You don't have a problem with that, do you?)

Here's "Easy Now":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Jimi Hendrix Experience -- "Are You Experienced?" (1967)

Are you experienced? 

Have you ever been experienced? 

Jimi Hendrix was certainly experienced.  He experienced himself to death on this date in 1970.

You and I may disagree on a lot of things, but I hope we can agree that Keith Moon is the greatest rock and roll drummer of all time and Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitarist.  Both Moon and Hendrix were tremendously innovative and absolutely unique musicians -- neither sounded like anyone else.

Both lived excessive lives and died very young.  Moon died when he was 32 and Hendrix didn't live to see his 28th birthday.

Hendrix had a string of hit singles in the UK and elsewhere in 1966 and 1967, but was largely unknown in the United States until he appeared at the Monterey International Pop Festival in  June 1967.  D. A. Pennebaker filmed the concert and released a documentary titled Monterey Pop late the next year.  Hendrix's performance of the Troggs' hit, "Wild Thing," got a lot of attention -- Jimi set his guitar on fire and then smashed it to pieces.  

Hendrix first set a guitar on fire while on stage in London in March 1967.  Frank Zappa, who was a friend of Hendrix, ended up with the burned Fender Stratocaster and played it on at least one of his albums.

Zappa's son, Dweezil, found it in 1991 under the stairs in his father's recording studio, and restored it.  Here's a video in which he describes the guitar and its restoration in great detail:



Hendrix was left-handed, but played a right-handed guitar -- he simply turned it upside down and reversed the order of the strings.

The Are You Experienced? album -- his first -- had been released in the UK in May 1967, and it climbed to #2 on the UK album charts (behind only Sgt. Pepper).  After Hendrix's show-stealing Monterey Pop appearance, his record company released a version of the album in the U.S. in August.

Here's Hendrix performing "Hey Joe" at Monterey Pop.  Watch closely beginning at 1:33 -- that's where he plays his guitar with his teeth:



Here's the end of Hendrix's Monterey Pop appearance.  After performing "Wild Thing," he sets his guitar on fire, smashes it into pieces, and tosses the pieces into the crowd:

I think I bought his Smash Hits album shortly after Hendrix appeared at Woodstock in August 1969.  It had been released in the UK in 1968 -- only a few months after the group's second studio album had been issued.  Smash Hits wasn't released in the U.S. then because Hendrix hadn't yet had any hits in the U.S.   (Neither "Purple Haze" nor "Foxy Lady" had cracked the top 40.  "All Along the Watchtower" -- which peaked at #20 in September 1968 -- was the only Hendrix single to make the top 40.)

On September 17, 1970, Hendrix was at a party in London.  His German girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, drove him to her Notting Hill flat well after midnight.

Monika Dannemann with Jimi Hendrix

It's not clear what happened after that.  Hendrix apparently took nine of Dannemann's prescription sleeping pills, which were a lot more than he should have taken.  Dannemann tried to wake him around 11 AM, and called an ambulance when he was unresponsive.  

Dannemann (who committed suicide in 1996) always claimed that Hendrix was alive when the ambulance arrived, and that she rode in it to the hospital with him.  The ambulance crew denied that she was there when they arrived at the flat, and said that Hendrix was already dead and had been dead for some time.

A doctor who initially attended Hendrix said he asphyxiated on his own vomit, which consisted mostly of red wine.  It's not clear why he didn't perform a tracheotomy.   The autopsy report said nothing about red wine, and stated that there was relatively little alcohol in Hendrix's system.

To confuse matters even further, Eric Burdon (the former lead singer of the Animals) said that he believed Hendrix had committed suicide.  He based that conclusion on some song lyrics written by Hendrix that Burdon found in the flat.  Years later, a former Animals roadie wrote a book that said that Hendrix's manager had told him that he had the star killed because Hendrix wanted to end his management contract.  

About two weeks later, Janis Joplin overdosed on heroin.

Hendrix is buried in a suburb of Seattle

I was a freshman in college when Hendrix and Joplin died.  I bought Are You Experienced? and Electric Ladyland (his third studio album) from an upperclassman who was selling off his record collection  a year or two later.  I remember his comment when I said I wanted those two albums: "Isn't a little late for you to be getting into Hendrix?"  (I'm guessing paid 50 cents each for those LPs -- certainly no more than a dollar each.  I think I got one or two Spirit albums from him as well.)

Jimi Hendrix was unbelievably cool.  I wonder what it would feel like to be that cool -- even just for five minutes.

Here's "Are You Experienced?":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon: