"The feeling
remains... 
Even after 
the glitter fades"

Stevie Nicks

 

 

Comments to Amanda--

Hey there, my name is Stan and I have read your postings on the Hollywood Hangover site. Glad that Nancy has chosen a mascot to give us older folk a link to the new generation who are now finally discovering that us old Rock and Rollers weren’t assholes like most of the media has portrayed us for years and years now. Nancy has done a great job with her web site to more properly capture the “persona” of the period, as well as, provide a vehicle for people like me, to re-capture the creative vigor from the times.

Well, you ask, if I wasn’t in Hollywood how could I understand about the “happenings”.

I was born in 1951 in Detroit, Michigan (now 55, eeeeh god!!) and by genetics - musically, athletic, creative, healthy, among others – inherited from my parents. Yes my formative teenage years were spent very similarly within a scene paralleling the Hollywood scene……….in Detroit, which history has it, was very, very similar in music and culture to what was happening in Hollywood.

We had the clubs, the musicians and groups, the sex, the drugs, dark people………..but it was really nothing like the historians chose to portray us, and Nancy has done an awesome job with her website for people to explore the period, a vehicle for us old fuckers to re-establish our time lines and make new connections with friends from the past.

I wasn’t in Hollywood, but I certainly had the HANGOVER she talks about. In the 70’s everything came to a standstill and everybody left…….such a loss and outright eerie experience looking back at it.

I have now visited quite a few times the Hollywood area in recent years, with and without my son, who is now 22 years old and playing lead guitar, writing music, going to college and holding down a job.

And wouldn’t you know it, other than the heavy metal that he is into, (groups like Mudvane, Slipknot, etc.), he has a particular liking for the great 60’s music of the past, Hendrix, Clapton, Amboy Dukes, Deep Purple, Doors, and so on.

The last time I was out there on Sunset Blvd, July of 2006, I still noticed a definite “commerciality” aspect to most everything, but I sensed that there was becoming a more closeness from the previous visit in April of 2006. One thing I remember most is that everyone in the Detroit Scene during the 60’s (other than the tragic and stupid racial riots of July 1967 that gave Detroit such a bad name in History) were friends and knew each other, we watched over each other, and were all participants in the “culture”.

We had great clubs with live acts over a number of “hangout” locations around Detroit in the 60’s. Actually because of Nancy’s web site, a few folks around Detroit have been “stimulated” to re-create (the best that they can) a Renaissance of the Detroit Scene. I gave Nancy several of the links, some of which include a web site specializing in the “Lost Venues”, including summaries of gig dates, bands playing and set lists (god, its great to see these types of things that we can relate our own experiences with these timelines) We are seeing now a very large underground movement where the new generation is now exploring the music and culture of the 60’s. You won’t find a better creative period than the 60’s, especially with “Words and Music”.

Detroit had its own connection with the Hollywood of the 60’s with bands originating in Detroit playing gigs there, including the likes of Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Alice Cooper, The Rationales, and on and on. Detroit is the home of 60’s groups such as The Amboy Dukes, Bob Seger System (Silver Bullet Band later on), SRC, The MC-5………..(Yeah, Kick out the Jams Mother Fuckers !!!!!)

I am looking forward to further posts from you on Nancy’s site. It would be awesome to have a summary now and then of the scene out there, and particular feedback you might receive from the younger generation, or the older generation for that matter, who reminisce about the 60’s, or your thoughts on how the “culture” of the new generation is progressing.

Warmest Regards,

Stan Babiuk  spbowl@wowway.com

P.S. Here are a couple of links of the Detroit Music Scene from YouTube that occurred from 1967-69. The Amboy Dukes performing Journey to the Center of the Mind is the first link. This video was shot at a place called the Grande Ballroom during the day, an extraordinary venue, which is rich in Rock Music History. My very good friend, whose nickname is “Wordman” and we will leave it at that, wrote the song as a ghost writer, and was the engineer who mixed it (or I should say fixed it, late at night in the studio after the other band members left). The second, is a rare video from a local Detroit TV Teen Music Show, with Bob Seger System performing his hit Ramblin Gamlin Man. The last link is a rare video performance by the MC-5, at the Grande Ballroom, doing the sanitized version of “Kick out the Jams”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnkoIT2Ps7w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2aBOTNGWMY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpBErUUI9gc

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