Get Back, Part Two
After last week’s email, I got into a yabba-dabba-do with my buddy Kevin Vann about the Beatles documentary. Kevin played in a coupla bands way back: Recurring Nightmare and Waters of Tyme. He says he was a better drummer than Ringo Starr. I believe the bloke. Today, he’s playing the tunes in his car and drumming on his steering wheel. Hey, he’s still got the mojo goin’.
One thing we talked about was what a deep sadness and funk America was in after the JFK assassination. It was the Beatles arrival in America and their 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show that dug us out of the ditch. That and Muhammad Ali winning the heavyweight title against Sonny Liston the same year.
Another funny thing watching the Beatles documentary and the rooftop concert is that I got my start in the ad game doing outdoor traveling bandwagon shows. I talked my father into setting me up with a Daniel O’Connell’s Sons flatbed truck and one of his teamster drivers, Eddie Rosinski. I decked out the big truck with lights and a silent generator for sound. Like the Beatles on the rooftop, we’d travel around unannounced and with no permission to elderly housing projects and entertain the oldsters. Then we would go rogue traveling to neighborhoods. The locals loved it. Dancing in the streets, baby.
We pulled this routine for years with lots of great local acts: The Dustmen, an Irish group; Pizazz, a Dixieland band from Amherst College; the Crescents, a doo wop group. People love unexpected, spontaneous fun. You know, when spring rolls around again we need to encourage more of this stuff. We goddamn need it. And let’s bring along the ding-dong cart this time.
Keep your dukes up.