***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation
Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Falcons' You're So
Fine
Sometimes it is funny how people
will get into certain jags. Some of us will
go all out to be the best at golf or some such sport (or game, I guess you
would call golf a game because sport sounds too rough for such a gentile
pastime) or will devout endless hours to the now thirty-seven, at least,
flavors of yoga now passing through a rage period and others will climb
straight-faced (theirs and the mountain’s) sheer rock precipices. So be it.
Take me for example although I am not up for rigors of golf, yoga or
mountain-baiting recently I have been on a tear in reviewing individual[CL1] CDs in an extensive generic commercial classic Rock ‘n’
Roll series (meaning now the 1950s and 1960s) called Rock and Roll Will Never Die. The impetus for reviewing that particular
CD at first was hearing the song Your So
Fine by the Falcons after I had been listening to The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic on YouTube. That
combination was driven by a memory flashback to about 1959 when I used to
pester (I am being kind here) every available girls in my seventh grade class
by being flirty and calling her, well, “so fine” (available by the way meaning
not going “steady” with a boy, especially a guy who might be on the football
team and who take umbrage with another guy trying to cut his time). Such is the
memory bank these days.
While that particular review was
driven by a song most of these reviews have been driven by the intriguing artwork
which graces the covers of each CD, artwork drawn in such a way to stir ancient
memories of ancient loves, ancient loves, too many to count, anguishes,
alienations, angsts and whatever else teen–age life could rain down on you just
when you were starting to get a handle on the world, starting to do battle to
find your place in the sun.
Moreover to reflect that precise
moment in time, time being a very conscious and fungible concept then when we
thought we would live forever and if we did not at least let us do our
jailbreak rock and roll rock with the time we had, the youth time of the now
very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer
generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in
as the case may, to the themes of those artwork scenes.
Some artwork like those that
portrayed the terrors of Saturday night high school dance wallflower-dom, the
hanging around the you-name-it drugstore soda fountain waiting for some dreamy
girl to drop her quarters in the juke-box and ask you, you of all people, what
she should play to chase her blues away after some guy left her for another, a scene down at the
seclude end of Adamsville Beach with a guy and his gal sitting watching the
surf and listening to the be-bop radio before, well, let’s leave it at before,
and a few beauties sunning themselves at the beach waiting for Johnny Angel to
make an appearance need almost no comment except good luck and we, we of that
1950s demographic, all recognize those signposts of growing up in the red scare
cold war night. This cover however did not “speak” to me, a 1959 artwork cover
from the time when the music died (meaning Elvis turned “square,” Chuck got
caught with Mister’s girls and Jerry Lee failed to check the family tree).
This cover was a case of not fitting
in for this reviewer. On this cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since
that was the time when we had least at the feel of our generational breakout),
two blondish surfer guys, surf boards in tow, were checking out the scene, the
land scene for the minute they were not trying to ride the perfect wave. That
checking out of course was to check out who was “hot” on the beach, who could
qualify to be a “surfer girl” for those lonely nighttime hours when either the
waves were flat or the guys had been in the water so long they had turned to
prunes. That scene although not pictured (except a little background fluff to
inform you that you are at the beach, the summer youth beach and no other,
certainly not the tortuous family beach scene with its lotions, luggage, lawn
chairs, and longings, longings to be elsewhere in early teen brains), can only
mean checking out the babes, girls, chicks, or whatever you called them in that
primitive time before we called them sister, and woman.
No question that this whole scene is
nothing but a California come hinter scene. No way that it has the look of
Eastern pale-face beaches, family or youth. These is nothing but early days
California dreamin’ cool hot days and cooler hot nights with those dreamed
bikini girls. These are, no question “beach bums,” no way that they are serious
surfer guys, certainly not Tom Wolfe’s Pump House LaJolla gang where those
surfers lived for the perfect wave, and nothing else better get in the way. For
such activity one needed rubberized surf suits complete with all necessary
gear. In short these guys are “faux” surfers. Whether that was enough to draw
the attention of those shes they are checking out I will leave to the reader’s
imagination.
As I noted before and commented on
in the review the music, the 1959 music, that backed up this scene told us we were
clearly in a trough, the golden age of rock with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis,
Elvis, and Chuck Berry was fading, fading fast into what I can only describe as
“bubble gum” music. Sure I listened to it, listened to it hard on my old transistor
radio up in my lonely shared room, mainly because that was all that was being presented
to us. Somehow the parents, the cops, the school administrators and, if you can
believe this, some of those very same bikini girls who you thought were cool
had flipped out and wanted to hear Fabian, Bobby Vee and Bobby Darin, got to
the record guys, got to Tin Pan Alley and ordered them to make the music like
some vanilla shake. So all of a sudden those “you’re so fine” beach blanket
blondes were sold on faux surfer guys, flip-floppers and well-combed guys and
had dumped the beat, the off-beat and the plainly loopy without a thought.
It was to be a while until the folk,
folk rock, British invasion, and free expression rock engulfed us. As the bulk
of that CD’s contents attested to we were the great marking time. There were,
however, some stick-outs there that have withstood the test of time. They
include: La Bamba, Ritchie Valens; Dance With Me, The Drifters; You’re
So Fine (great harmony),The Falcons; Tallahassee Lassie (a favorite
then at the local school dances by a local boy who made good), Freddy Cannon; Mr.
Blue (another great harmony song and the one, or one of the ones, anyway
that you hoped, hoped to distraction that they would play for the last dance),
The Fleetwoods; and, Lonely Teardrops, Jackie Wilson (a much underrated
singer, then and now, including by this writer after not hearing that voice for
a while).
Note: After a recent trip to the
Southern California coast I can inform you that those two surfer guys are still
out there and still checking out the scene. Although that scene for them now is
solely the eternal search for the perfect wave complete with full rubberized
suit and gear. No artist would now, or at least I hope no artist would,
care to rush up and draw them. For now these brothers have lost a step, or
seven, lost a fair amount of that beautiful bongo hair, and have added, added
believe me, very definite paunches to bulge out those surfer suits all out of
shape. Ah, such are the travails of the baby-boomer generation. Good luck
though, brothers.
