***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.

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