Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
Beat me to it.
Palmer had a pleasant voice but was occasionally the worse for drink on stage. He seems to be okay in that Midnight Special performance, but there's a certain lack of swing and a rabbit-in-the-headlights quality that doesn't really suit an exposed front man.Originally Posted by 3LockBox
Steely Dan did two more Midnight Specials but they seem to have been wiped, so we won't get to see two other versions of Reelin' in the Years, plus My Old School and Show Biz Kids from those.
So Skunk played the conga on Only A Fool Would Say That......?
I read that he does that Spanish talking at the end of the song. Pretty funny and clever.
Skunk did live in Mexico. “Jeffrey Baxter was born in Washington, D.C., and spent some of his formative years in Mexico.” From Wiki.
I’ll never forgive him for f@@king up the Doobie Bros:
Wiki:
Baxter suggested bringing in singer-keyboardist Michael McDonald, with whom Baxter had worked in Steely Dan. With Johnston still convalescing, McDonald soon was invited to join the band full-time. McDonald's vocal and songwriting contributions, as well as Baxter's jazzier guitar style, marked a new direction for the band.
Even before MMcD was in, Skunk had already stunk up the Doobies: Stampede was a mediocre album, compared to the first 4. (not that their debut was great, though)
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Michael McDonald ruined Genesis!
...or at least music as we know it.
Seriously, I hate that guy's voice with a passion.
JG
"MARKLAR!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pva2h9EbSfw&t=375s
It's not as if the Doobies had that much to ruin. They were competent popsters, nothing more.
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
There was pop and AOR in the 70’s. I wouldn’t consider the Doobies before MM as pop. It seems that proggers lump every in the same basket. To me pop is top 40, and the top 40 in England in the 80’s wasn’t equivalent to the top 40 in the US.
That was a great clip! Thanks.
JG
"MARKLAR!"
I saw the Doobie Brothers last year on their postponed 50th anniversary tour. They were great. I expected nothing less. They also did their proggiest track (something from their 1st LP, I think), and even mentioned that during the intro.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I saw them back up the Allmans about 15 years ago. They were excellent then too.
What can this strange device be? When I touch it, it brings forth a sound (2112)
Yeah, they really jumped the shark (AOR) after Vice/Habits.
Before that, they were cool with rockers.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
I'm not particularly conversant on the Doobie Brothers, but I do know Stampede has a really cool track called I Cheat The Hangman
The only full album of theirs I really know is the original reunion album from the late 80's, called Cycles, which I thought was a decent rockin' kind of album> I remember reading at the time that it was a "return to form", because they backed away from the MOR sound that McDonald brought to the group.
I also remember seeing one of the concerts from the early 80's Farewell Tour (they apparently filmed two of them, both open air shows, but one was played in broad daylight, but the one I remember seeing on TV back in the 80's, and in fact recording on VHS, was a night time show, with Tom Johnston and a couple of the other then former band members joining them for the encores).
I remember liking John McFee's guitar work and his Dean V guitars. I was really surprised that, other than the Doobies, he's mostly a country oriented guitarist, having played with Clover during the 70's, and Southern Pacific in the 80's, a fact that I know because Guitar Player did an article on him during the Southern Pacific days. That article was also where I learned why Clover weren't credited with playing on the first Elvis Costello album (UK musician's union regs dictated that if they were credited, each band member would have had to be paid union scale like session musicians, which Stiff Records couldn't afford to do). He's also done a lot of session work, again mostly country oriented stuff, including playing pedal steel on the Grateful Dead song Pride Of Cucamonga.
It's interesting that Jeff Baxter might have been the guy who suggested that the Doobies get McDonald in to replace Tom Johnston, since he ended up quitting because he felt that McDonald pushed the band too far into the MOR thing, and basically de-emphasized the guitars in the band's new music. Going back to that late 80's period, I remember seeing an interview with Pat Simmons on TV at the time where he was asked about McDonald's time in the band (McDonald did return until the mid 90's), and the interviewer says something like "A lot of people felt that wasn't 'true' Doobie Brothers music", and Simmons sort of chuckles and says, "Well...at the time it was true Doobie Brothers music".
I checked on my XL-IIS compilation (easy to find, I had drawn a joint of the label) and indeed the excellent Hangman was on it. I guess it was the only song on the compilation because of lack of space, and over the years, I probably forgot the reason why it was so
Sooo, I Yooted Stampede and I must say that I have to revise my opinion of it.
It's still a valid Doobies album and there is more to it than just Hangman.
Neal's Fandango, Music Man, I Cheat the Hangman, Précis, Double Dealin' Four Flusher are all worthy tracks, which in numbers equate the good tracks of the début and only miss by a narrow margin V&H, C&Me and Toulouse.
Actyally, there is no real stinker in this album: Take Me in Your Arms and Texas Lillaby are just yawners, but nothing offensive.
So yes, I will definitely reassess my Stampede reviews & ratings.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
I had the producer Ted Templeman's memoir out from the library a while back and I remember he said it was hard for him to work with Baxter as he thought Baxter pushed to make their records weirder and less commercial.
And yet he also produced Van Halen (as well as David Lee Roth's Eat 'Em And Smile). Granted, Van Halen wasn't that weird, but even still, they weren't all that MOR either. Well, at least not until they got to 1984, and somehow Michael McDonald gets his name into the byline on one of the songs (since I only owned that album on cassette during the 80's and 90's, I never knew that Mr. I Keep Forgetting had anything to do with Van Halen).
But that's corporate logic for you. Don't you dare even one minute of anything that's too weird, because it'll alienate all the top 40 AM radio listening nitwits who actually enjoy that Minute By Minute dren. I can only imagine what Ted's reaction to something like the Little Guitars intro or Spanish Fly or Intruder must have been like.
It was a good book but to be honest although he did write about Van Halen I don't remember the stories.
One interesting story that was in there was about how his 60's group Harpers Bizarre were on a hijacked flight. There is a brief mention of that on their Wiki page.
Does he talk about producing Captain Beefheart? That's another one that blows my mind: Ted Templeman producing Beefheart. I think Zoot Horn Rollo said that Ted was the first guy who had the guts to say "Shut up, Don!" once in awhile, which Bill found refreshing.
I think he did and I'm pretty sure there was a section about the fiasco of having Allan Holdsworth on Warner Bros. in the early 80's, but I don't remember those stories either. I should get the book again, I guess.
It was a fiasco in terms of circumstance, but a great record.
Holdsy hated it, of course.
Th eonly reason Templeman signed Holdsworth was "to keep Eddie Van Halen happy". Or at least, that was Allan's take on the matter, apparently Eddie was pestering Templeman (who besides being a top flight producer, was one of the big wigs at Warners). But Allan said it was a major debacle. He said that Templeman had decided he didn't like Paul Williams' singing, so Allan had to "smuggle" him onto the record, and Templeman found out, he was really unhappy about it.
I may have thought this song was Jethro Tull at one time :
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