Baby's 1st Concert by Glyph Jockey at 12/01/2007
Baby's 1st Concert
I've been doing a few guest posts at The Perfect American
which to the uninitiated, is a roiling vortex of lust for the illness
called Rock n' Roll. It's a journey, and for me, it's been kinda
liberating, and thanks to MrJyn for asked me to plug in some stuff.
There's a post about Spade Cooley stomping his wife to death, one about Jim Carroll & those who worship and/or study his Basketball Diaries, one about singer Billie Davis, with a broken jaw, pulling Jet Harris from the Shadows out of a wrecked limo and lastly I'll mention the one that led to this post; the one about Dino Valente
Quicksilver
Messenger Service was my first concert. It was right after their second
album featuring Dino, and it was all we were listening to at the time.
Eric Burdon and War opened and my eyeballs almost fell outta my head
when I realized that the Boss of the Animals was up there singing "Spill
the Wine" It was cooler than anything, and why in hell did my parents
let me go?!?!?! But yay!
But Dino - kind of an interesting guy as explained in this exact transcription from my 1st edition of Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia (1969)
DINO VALENTI (Chester Powers)/Dino
Valenti is one of those living legends. He worked in a carnival for
seventeen years, was a trapeze artist for three of them, sang around the
clubs of Los Angeles for years, but never made a record because he
wanted it to be perfect when he did. (The story was that he kept making
them, refusing to have them released, dropping them and making more.) He
spent nearly a year in jail for possession of amphetamine and sold his
rights to his most successful song, Let's Get Together, to get money to
get out of jail. It's one of the most recorded songs ever (the song's
composer is listed as Chester Powers)—the Youngbloods, Jefferson
Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service have all done it. He also
co-wrote Hey Joe. But his album, finally out in 1968, has none of
this—just strange, mysterious, intimate songs that sneak up behind you.
"An underground Bob Dylan," said critic Ralph Gleason. Well, he has that
curly Dylan look anyway. "A five-year-dead Orphan Annie," said Emmet
Lake of the East Village Other. Yes, he's a songwriting legend, and a
one-year-in-gaol-for-amphetamine legend, and a macrobiotics-solar-energy
legend, but mainly he's a ladies' man legend. It was San Francisco
radio personality Tom Donahue who said simply: "If every chick Dino's
ever known buys the record, it will be number one."
Album/DINO
(October 1968): Time; Something New; My Friend; Listen To Me; Me And My
Uncle; Tomorrow; Children Of The Sun; New Wind; Everything Is Gonna Be
OK; Test.
Now lissen: