Monday, October 27, 2014

This Week on Treasure Island Oldies - Halloween Week 2014

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October 26th, 2014 to November 1st, 2014

H A P P Y  H A L L O W E E N! Thanks for listening to the show again this week and the 18th Annual Halloween Spooktacular. In case you did not get to hear the Live show, be sure to listen to the Archive, especially on Halloween night. Enter the Crypt and click on the skeleton in the coffin and the show will play for you shortly. Listen if you dare! Aaaaaahhhhhoooooooooooooooooooooooo

Happy Birthday wishes go out this week to California Barb and also to Andy Desilets in Ottawa, Ontario. With the Halloween special, I was unable to do the usual birthday wishes. However, on next week’s show I’ll let everyone know about your birthdays this week and I’ll play Birthday by The Beatles in celebration of your special day. And if your birthday is coming up soon, let me know. Just send the details to birthdays@treasureislandoldies.com.

The Treasure Island Oldies Blog has dug up an on camera appearance by Bobby Boris Pickett on American Bandstand and entertains with The Monster Mash. It’s our SCARY Song of the Week.

Voice Your Choice returns on next week’s show and we’ll feature Ricky Nelson. Cast your vote at the Voice Your Choice page for either A Teenager’s Romance or Lonesome Town. I’ll play the winner on next week’s show.

The Rock and Roll News and the Top 5 Countdown will return next week.

Be safe, have fun and Happy Halloween!

Michael

Bobby Boris Pickett - Song of the Week


It's hard to imagine there was Halloween before Bobby Boris Pickett and the Krypt Kickers first arrived with the Monster Mash. It's been around now for over 50 years!

To celebrate the 18th Annual Halloween Spooktacular on Treasure Island Oldies, here is Bobby Boris Pickett in an appearance on American Bandstand with The Monster Mash. It's our SCARY Song of the Week.

Happy Halloween!

Michael



Sunday, October 26, 2014

Rock Icon Jack Bruce Has Died



There was a time when Jack Bruce was synonymous with the bass guitar in rock history, when he was widely revered as the best there was on four strings.
It is the instrument that nobody really glorifies, the invisible foundation of the groove, the low notes that underpin and hold things together, the liquid heart of the rhythm section.
Rock tends to choose its heroes from the flamboyant top line of guitars and vocals. The bass was always basic, rock bottom, the instrument you played if you weren’t quite proficient enough for six strings. As Paul McCartney (the first world famous bassist in pop, but a very reluctant convert to the instrument) admitted: “nobody wanted to play bass.”
But Jack did. He once told me he fell in love with the first one he ever saw, an old double bass in his school orchestra. The first time he touched it, he knew it was for him, so tactile and sensual, and, just as importantly, it was free to play (his working class parents couldn’t afford to buy him an instrument).
But at 11 years old, his hands weren’t big enough to handle the strings, so he practised on a cello instead. A young musical wizard, he learned to play guitar and piano, and mastered composition for strings. But he always came back to the bass. It was the instrument for him. And Jack Bruce unleashed its potential.

A product of a tough, poor, Scottish background, Bruce was a young gun on the Glasgow scene in the late fifties, playing every night, trad jazz, blues, cover versions.

By the time he was sixteen, he was making so much money he dropped out of school. He was a consummate musician. He could play any style, classical, jazz, latin, blues, but what he became famous for was playing the fluid, expressive, wildly melodic and highly charged basslines in rock’s first supergroup, Cream.

A power trio formed in 1966 by Eric Clapton, Cream was a showcase for three of the hottest virtuoso musicians on the London rock scene, Clapton, Bruce and wild drummer Ginger Baker. They were an immediate multi-million selling sensation, a gladiatorial outfit who seemed to be doing musical battle on stage, producing a heavy form of psychedelic blues that heralded the birth of hard rock.They were a famously volatile band. Bruce's love hate relationship with drummer Ginger Baker erred more on the hate side. They loved to play together because each thought the other a musical genius, but they argued all the time, offstage and on, frequently coming to blows (also offstage and on).

It became too much for Clapton, who split the band in 1968. As their pin up guitarist, Clapton was undoubtedly their star, and both Bruce and Baker’s careers flagged without him. But it was actually Bruce who sang most of the lead vocals and wrote the band’s hit singles (with lyricist Pete Brown). Sunshine of Your Love, White Room and I Feel Free are all Jack Bruce compositions. He was, even by the high standards of Sixties rock, a remarkable talent.

So what happened? Bruce slowly disappears from rock history over the following decades. He made a lot of music in a lot of different set ups, but none of it made much of a commercial impact.
There were esoteric singer-songwriter albums and forays into jazz, funk, heavy rock and fusions of all three. He was probably too esoteric for his own good, shifting his musical attention too often, never really pinning his flag to any particular post.

In a way, he was too famous and too restlessly creative just to become a bit player in another band, but too musically complex for the mainstream. His relationship with the usual self-destructive rock star vices didn’t help. When journalist Harry Shapiro told friends he was collaborating with Bruce on his autobiography a few years ago, the most common reaction was surprise that Bruce was still alive. Given his lifestyle, Bruce sometimes expressed surprise about that himself.

But what he never expressed was regret. I spent an evening with him in 2010 at the launch of his book, Jack Bruce: Composing Himself, and he was fantastic company, addressing all my questions with an air of fierce candour, then carrying on the conversation for hours afterwards.

He told me off the record rock and roll stories that made my ears melt but insisted that the only thing he really cared about was the music. The music he had made all his life, and the music he still intended to make. For him, Cream was only a small part of a big picture.

They came, they played, they conquered, and then he went on playing for the rest of his days, whether anyone was paying attention or not. Perhaps his epitaph should be his song Cream, from the very first Cream album. “I’ve been in and I’ve been out, I’ve been up and I’ve been down / I don’t want to go til I’ve been all around.”

By
The Telegraph

18th Annaul Halloween Spooktacular on Treasure Island Oldies


Join me, Count Michael, tonight at 6 pm Pacific 1 am Universal..
If you dare!

Monday, October 20, 2014

This Week on Treasure Island Oldies - Week of October 19th, 2014


October 19th, 2014 to October 25th, 2014

Another week and another 4 hours flew by faster than a spinning 78! Maybe when I retire I’ll be able to do the show more frequently. However, I have no idea if or when I will retire, so the once a week show is it for now. LOL I very much enjoy your comments via email Facebook and in the chat room, where a group of listeners gather every week to share the four hours together and memories the music brings to everyone. If you’ve never experienced the Chat Room, give it a try any Sunday during the live show. Just click the Chat tab on any page of the website and follow the simple directions. I’d love to welcome you as one of the Nuts in the Hut.

I had a great time at lunch this past Friday. I brought together two legends of broadcasting in Canada, Red Robinson and Dave Boxer. They both have had parallel careers on air in Vancouver (CKWX for Red) and Montreal (CFCF for Dave), massive fan followings, and they both introduced The Beatles onstage in 1964. While they knew of each other and each one’s impressive career and reputation, they had never met. That was resolved when I arranged for the three of us to have a real Montreal Smoked Meat sandwich at an all-time classic deli, Dunn’s Famous Deli. The Vancouver Dunn’s  location is the only one outside Montreal, and it is true to form. While the three of us enjoyed “essential Montreal food”, they told great stores and discovered they had both worked with and for the same general manager and other on air personalities. What a treat it was to have my two friends meets for the first time. And it won’t be the last time either!

I’d like to thank you for the warm birthday wishes, as I celebrate my birthday this week. And if you have a birthday coming up soon, please let me know. Send the details to birthdays@treasureislandoldies.com.  I’ll wish you Happy Birthday on the show and also play Birthday by The Beatles for you.

Be sure to listen to the show next week for the 18th Annual Halloween Spooktacular with chills and thrills for all you freaks and ghouls. The excitement begins at 6 pm Pacific, 1 am Universal. You’ll really dig it! And of course, you’ll be able to listen to the Archive up to and including Halloween night. And also a reminder that the following week we “Turn Back The Hands Of Time”, as many places switch back the clock by one hour. I’ll recognize that change in time with some very “timely tunes” on the show, Live Sunday, November 2nd.

The Treasure Island Oldies Blog is playing the antidote to the hippie influx of 1967, at least according to MGM Records, the label that signed them. Here are Every Mother’s Son with Come On Down To My Boat. It’s our Song of the Week. Enjoy!

Please note that there will not be our regular Voice Your Choice next week on the show due to the Halloween Spooktacular. Voice Your Choice returns the following week when we spotlight young teenage TV star, Ricky Nelson. Cast your vote at the Voice Your Choice page for either A Teenager’s Romance or Lonesome Town. I’ll play the winner in the 3rd hour of the November 2nd Live show.

Here’s the Rock and Roll News for the week of October 19th.



Listen to the Top 5 Countdown from 1960

http://www.treasureislandoldies.com/assets/multimedia/top_5.ram


That’s it that’s all for this week. A reminder to listen to next week’s 18th Annual Halloween Spooktacular – IF YOU DARE!

Bye for now.