Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.

    Priča iza pesme

    Erős Pista

    Posts : 81199
    Join date : 2012-06-10

    Priča iza pesme Empty Priča iza pesme

    Post by Erős Pista Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:32 am




    This song was written by Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell for his father Jerry Cantrell Sr., who went by the nickname "Rooster" while serving with the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Jerry Cantrell has stated that his father, Cantrell, Sr., had this family nickname "Rooster" since childhood due to the way his hair stood up on end as a youth.[3] The "Rooster" nickname is often mistakenly attributed to a reference to men carrying the M60 machine gun ("Walking tall machine gun men"), the muzzle flash from which makes an outline or pattern reminiscent of a rooster's tail. It is also often mistakenly attributed to the 101st Airborne Division - in which Cantrell's father served - who wore shoulder sleeve insignia on their arms featuring a bald eagle. As there are no bald eagles in Vietnam, the closest thing to which the Vietnamese could draw a comparison was the chicken, thus leading to the pejorative "chicken men."[4]
    In the liner notes of 1999's Music Bank box set collection, Jerry Cantrell said of the song:
    It was the start of the healing process between my Dad and I from all that damage that Vietnam caused. This was all my perception of his experiences out there. The first time I ever heard him talk about it was when we made the video and he did a 45-minute interview with Mark Pellington and I was amazed he did it. He was totally cool, totally calm, accepted it all and had a good time doing it. It even brought him to the point of tears. It was beautiful. He said it was a weird experience, a sad experience and he hoped that nobody else had to go through it.[2]
    In a 1992 interview with Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine, in response to the question "Do you feel you communicated with (your father) with this song?", Cantrell responded:

    Yeah. He's heard this song. He's only seen us play once, and I played this song for him when we were in this club opening for Iggy Pop. I'll never forget it. He was standing in the back and he heard all the words and stuff. Of course, I was never in Vietnam and he won't talk about it, but when I wrote this it felt right...like these were things he might have felt or thought. And I remember when we played it he was back by the soundboard and I could see him. He was back there with his big gray Stetson and his cowboy boots — he's a total Oklahoma man — and at the end, he took his hat off and just held it in the air. And he was crying the whole time. This song means a lot to me. A lot.


    When Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell found himself temporarily homeless at the start of 1991, he turned to a fellow grunge legend for help. “I was between places to live at that time,” Cantrell recalls, “so I moved in with [Soundgarden singer] Chris Cornell and his wife Susan Silver at their house in Seattle. Susan was managing Alice In Chains at the time. I stayed for a few weeks, up in this little room.”
    Alone, late at night, Cantrell’s thoughts kept turning to his estranged father, whose psychological scars from his service in the Vietnam War had contributed to the breakdown of the family some years earlier. “That experience in Vietnam changed him forever,” explains Cantrell, “and it certainly had an effect on our family, so I guess it was a defining moment in my life, too.
    “He didn’t walk out on us. We left him. It was an environment that wasn’t good for anyone, so we took off to live with my grandmother in Washington, and that’s where I went to school. I didn’t have a lot of my father around, but I started thinking about him a lot during that period.”
    Sitting in front of a four-track recorder, the song that poured out of Cantrell might have been laced with bitterness. Instead, its harrowing lyrics were written from the standpoint of his father; describing the ‘stinging sweat’ and ‘mosquito death’ of a trek through the jungle, and an imagined skirmish with the Vietcong. The title was the nickname given to Cantrell Snr. by his great-grandfather: “Apparently he was a cocky little kid, and his hair used to stick up on top of his head like a rooster’s comb.”
    “I certainly had resentments,” Cantrell notes, “as any young person does in a situation where a parent isn’t around or a family is split. But on Rooster, I was trying to think about his side of it – what he might have gone through. To be honest, I didn’t really sit down intending to do any of that; it just kinda came out. But that’s the great thing about music – sometimes it can reach deeper than you ever would in a conversation with anybody. It’s more of a forum to dig deeper.” Alice In Chains had enjoyed some success with their 1990 debut album Facelift and its single Man In The Box, but Rooster was arguably the first song to announce the depth of the band’s talent. Cantrell recalls that “it felt like a major achievement for me as a young writer,” and this sentiment was echoed when he played the demo to vocalist Layne Staley, bassist Mike Starr and drummer Sean Kinney.
    When it came to recording Rooster, the band turned a prior engagement to their advantage. “Cameron Crowe had already come to us to ask for a song for his movie Singles,” recalls Cantrell. “So in the session that was meant for recording that one song [Would?], we ended up demoing about 10 songs, which included all the stuff that ended up on the [1992] Sap EP, Rooster and a couple of others from Dirt.”


    Rooster was taped at Eldorado Studios on LA’s Sunset Boulevard, which the band co- produced with Dave Jerden. “It turned out to be really powerful,” notes Cantrell, “and the way Layne sang on it is amazing.”
    Similarly powerful was the video, in which director Mark Pellington [fresh from Pearl Jam’s Jeremy] interspersed scenes of Apocalypse Now-style brutality with an interview with Cantrell’s father.
    “My father had never talked about that time in his life, and was reluctant to do so if anyone ever asked,” recalls the guitarist. “So I was amazed that he agreed to do Mark’s request, for about an hour, on film.
    “He was totally cool, totally calm, accepted it all and had a good time doing it,” Cantrell added in the notes for 1999’s Music Bank box set. “It even brought him to the point of tears. He said it was a weird experience, a sad experience and he hoped that nobody else had to go through it.”
    Released as a single in 1993. Rooster drew immediate praise, both among followers of grunge and further afield.
    “I’ve been all around the world,” explains Cantrell, “and I’ve talked to combat vets from Desert Storm and the recent war in Iraq – and they have a deep affinity with that song. I just recently got a letter from a guy in Iraq who told me his unit had changed their call sign to Rooster. Obviously it’s unfortunate that guys still have to fight for political ends. But it’s cool that people connect with that song; for it to be part of them getting through.”
    And yet Rooster’s greatest triumph was ultimately a personal one. Against all the odds, the song repaired the fractured relationship between father and son.
    “When I first played it to my father,” recalls Cantrell, “I asked him if I’d got close to where he might have been emotionally or mentally in that situation. And he told me: ‘You got too close – you hit it on the head'. It meant a lot to him that I wrote it. It brought us closer. It was good for me in the long-run and it was good for him, too.”


    _____
    "Oni kroz mene gledaju u vas! Oni kroz njega gledaju u vas! Oni kroz vas gledaju u mene... i u sve nas."

    Dragoslav Bokan, Novi putevi oftalmologije
    Erős Pista

    Posts : 81199
    Join date : 2012-06-10

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by Erős Pista Thu Feb 17, 2022 2:37 am

    Ne mogu da verujem da tek sad otkrivam ovo. Inače jako volim ovu pesmu, pa i pomalo amaterski, ali upečatljiv i atmosferičan spot koji je prati. Sa njom sam prvi put otkrio Death i zauvek mi je ostala njihova omiljena stvar.

    S druge strane, odavno znam za slučaj JP suđenja, gledao sam Dream Deceivers, i imao sam istu reakciju kao i Šuldiner: bukvalno sve je problem u okruženju u kojem su ova deca odrastala, neverovatno za šta su se uhvatili.

    Tek sad kapiram i pesmu i spot.

    Eto, svaki dan nešto novo...



    One song is called "Lack of Comprehension", for which we've shot a video. It was inspired by the whole JUDAS PRIEST scandal, when the band were accused of inciting a fan to commit suicide. It is ridiculous to suggest that music is responsible for parents' fuckups. The kid probably had a depressing upbringing, maybe he was abused by his parents, so why blame JUDAS PRIEST? Kids are like sponges, they grow up absorbing everything around them. To try and lay the blame for their misfortune on a song by OZZY OSBOURNE, DEATH or whoever is mad. I cannot believe that music can be seriously brought into question on this issue. Take DEATH, for instance. To me, the name is merely five letters of the alphabet, but it in no way represents my philosophy on life. I am a peaceful person, until someone pisses me off. I enjoy life, nature and so on. I'm not evil and into killing people
    http://www.emptywords.org/MetalForces11-91.htm



    _____
    "Oni kroz mene gledaju u vas! Oni kroz njega gledaju u vas! Oni kroz vas gledaju u mene... i u sve nas."

    Dragoslav Bokan, Novi putevi oftalmologije
    Erős Pista

    Posts : 81199
    Join date : 2012-06-10

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by Erős Pista Mon Feb 28, 2022 1:15 am

    The Story Behind The Song: Kreator’s Pleasure To Kill

    By   Dom Lawson   ( Metal Hammer )  published March 12, 2021

    How Kreator wrote the Euro-thrash game-changer that proved America didn’t have the monopoly on vicious noise


    Priča iza pesme Kr5A9Bpx8eqV63xqPZmwHJ-320-80
    (Image credit: Press)  

    1986 was an extraordinary year in the evolution of heavy music. With Metallica and Slayer releasing their respective masterpieces, Master Of Puppets and Reign In Blood, the thrash metal scene consolidated its reputation as an unstoppable force. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Europe’s metal militia were beginning to pick up the same kind of furious momentum, with Germany’s Kreator firmly at the forefront of things, alongside fellow countrymen Sodom, Destruction and Tankard. After releasing a raw and chaotic debut album, Endless Pain, in 1985, this teenage trio from Essen slowly began to realise that they were leading the charge for the European thrash scene.

    Pleasure To Kill is very primitive. It could only have happened in 1986, in a studio close to the Berlin Wall.
    Mille Petrozza

    “When we made Endless Pain, we thought that recording an album would be a one-off thing for us,” says Mille Petrozza, still Kreator’s frontman and creative driving force today. “Of course, we were hoping that people would like the album, but it was more like, ‘OK, let’s go into the studio and try stuff out!’ We didn’t know anything about production or how music could sound outside the rehearsal room. The first time I kinda realised that people actually liked what we do, it was when I went to a show – it was Venom, Exodus and Atomkraft – and we saw that this guy had a Kreator patch on his jacket. Suddenly we knew people had got the album and were enjoying it.”

    Famously, Mille was so young when Kreator were offered a record deal that his mother had to sign the contract. Two years on, it was slowly dawning on the young guitarist that his band were having a remarkable impact, not just in their home country but on an international level, too. Exhilarated by what they saw as a golden opportunity to forge an authentic career as musicians, Mille and bandmates Ventor (drums) and Rob Fioretti (bass) threw themselves into the process of writing the most brutal and vicious metal album imaginable.

    “It was really special to go into the studio and make another album,” Mille recalls. “We didn’t feel pressure but we knew it was a real chance. This wasn’t a one-off anymore, it could turn into something cool. So we just wrote what we thought was a better album than Endless Pain. It was faster, it was more complex, it was more of everything. We still had the same attitude, the same sturm und drang, teenage angst inside of us. It was just a continuation, but we were digging more into the stuff that we listened to back then, which was stuff like Slayer’s Hell Awaits and Possessed’s Seven Churches. We wanted to be even heavier, really.”


    With sales of their debut exceeding expectations, Kreator entered the studio once more, early in 1986, eager to capitalise on their newfound popularity. With their label, Noise Records, increasing the band’s recording budget, Kreator checked in at Musiclab Studio in Berlin, with the Berlin Wall looming in the background, to work with Harris Johns. An increasingly in-demand producer with highly regarded albums by the likes of Helloween, Grave Digger and Coroner on his resume, Harris clearly saw huge potential in the young band and pushed them to new heights. 

    “The main difference for Pleasure To Kill was that Harris Johns was a real producer. He was someone that wanted to help the band. No offence to the guy who recorded Endless Pain, but he just didn’t get the music, so he just recorded what we did. Harris Johns was really producing us. He made sure that everything sounded right.”
    Every classic album needs a stand- out anthem or two, and when Pleasure To Kill was released in May 1986, its wild and violent title track was immediately hailed as precisely that. A twisted diatribe, spat from the bloody lips of a gore-hungry vampire, Pleasure To Kill remains one of the nastiest thrash metal songs of all time, as Mille shrieks away like an actual psycho: “The colour of your blood from your open body is all I wanted to see / Tasting the blood from your lips as you die means satisfaction to me… pleasure to KILL!” Giving even Slayer a run for their money in the fast’n’furious stakes, Pleasure To Kill neatly encapsulated the intended theme of Kreator’s second album.

    “The main idea… there was one point where we thought about calling the album ‘Faces Of Death’, because at the time there was this strange mockumentary [John Alan Schwartz’s notorious 1978 ‘mondo horror’ movie of the same name] doing the rounds on video. We were like, ‘This is the most brutal thing ever!’ so it became an album about all these different ways to die. Ripping Corpse is about a corpse coming into town and killing everybody. Command Of The Blade is about this Conan-type battle. Under The Guillotine is pretty obvious, and Pleasure To Kill is this undead, vampire creature that’s coming to kill you. So the album is basically about getting killed. We thought it was an amazing idea at the time! Ha ha ha!”

    Released in May 86, Pleasure To Kill was plainly too extreme to propel Kreator into the mainstream, but its impact on the thrash scene and the burgeoning metal underground was immediate and huge. Still in their teens, the band suddenly began to receive offers for live shows and festivals, leading to a deep commitment to touring that has since sustained Kreator through several decades. As Mille states today, those early shows were a real revelation for a young band that had only occasionally ventured outside of the rehearsal room.

    “There was never a particular moment when I felt, ‘Oh, this is a big record now!’ but I do remember that we played a tour with Destruction and Rage across Europe, and then we were flown to Montreal in Canada to play a tour with Voivod,” he recalls. “Before that, we played two headlining shows, one in Quebec City and one in Montreal, and the show in Montreal was huge. We thought, ‘All these people came to see us!’ When we played in the US for the first time, we met all these bands that we looked up to. Danny Lilker from Nuclear Assault came to see us in Brooklyn and he showed me around. Just great memories on a human level, you know? It was a crazy time.”
    An unquestionable benchmark in the history of metallic savagery, Pleasure To Kill has remained a permanent fixture in Kreator’s live sets since its namesake album’s release. Thirty-five years later, the band are still one of Europe’s biggest and most revered metal bands, with a vast catalogue of acclaimed full-lengths. Nonetheless, the one song that is absolutely guaranteed to send any Kreator crowd into a violent, limb-threatening frenzy is the nasty one about the murderous vampire, written by a bunch of fresh- faced teenagers with big dreams and deeply unpleasant video collections, more than three decades ago.
     
    “I honestly don’t know why Pleasure To Kill stands out,” Mille concludes. “Maybe it’s the raw brutality, the primitive approach. Maybe it’s a blueprint for a raw, thrash metal song with nasty lyrics. I don’t know! We usually play it at the end of the set, so we try to put everything that’s left in us into that song, after a 90-minute set. That’s when we get the craziest pits too, even though it’s right at the end of the show! Ha ha ha!”

    Mille notes that he regularly receives messages from fans asking Kreator make another album “like Pleasure To Kill”, but while he observes that it would certainly be technically possible to write an album in the same vein, recreating the atmosphere and intensity of those original recordings would be utterly impossible. Instead, Kreator keep Pleasure To Kill alive by playing it at every single show and watching total chaos unfold. 

    “In some ways I haven’t changed, and that 17-year-old is still inside me somewhere,” Mille grins. “The core of the band is still the same, it’s me and Ventor. We talk about this a lot, and we both still have the same attitude towards the old stuff. It’s not about showing off how well we can play those songs these days, it’s more about an emotion, an energy that we try to capture. Pleasure To Kill is very primitive. It’s not rocket science. But it could only have happened in 1986, in a studio close to the Berlin Wall, with Harris Johns and us being totally crazy, partying all of the time. It was pure energy and emotion.” 

    Published in Metal Hammer #345

    Priča iza pesme Missing-image
    Dom Lawson  

    Dom Lawson has been writing for Hammer and Prog for 14 intermittently enjoyable years and is extremely fond of heavy metal, progressive rock, coffee and snooker. He listens to more music than you. And then writes about it.




    _____
    "Oni kroz mene gledaju u vas! Oni kroz njega gledaju u vas! Oni kroz vas gledaju u mene... i u sve nas."

    Dragoslav Bokan, Novi putevi oftalmologije
    Notxor

    Posts : 8095
    Join date : 2020-09-07

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by Notxor Thu Mar 10, 2022 5:14 pm



    _____
      Sweet and Tender Hooligan  
    Daï Djakman Faré

    Posts : 7994
    Join date : 2014-10-28
    Location : imamate of futa djallon

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by Daï Djakman Faré Wed Dec 06, 2023 1:27 pm

    jos jednom hvala puno za ovo, fikrete Priča iza pesme 903208043

    LJUDI U VREMENU

    Pjesma o otkupu

    Godine 1972., točnije 18. veljače te godine, Vijeće okružnoga suda u Doboju donijelo je odluku o trajnoj zabrani gramofonske ploče na kojoj je snimljena „Pjesma o otkupu“, u izdanju „Glasa komuna“ iz Doboja. Kako je rečeno, ova odluka je donijeta na osnovu optužnice Okružnog javnog tužitelja u Doboju i društveno-političkih organizacija dobojskog regiona, koje su ocijenile „da sadržaj pjesme vrijeđa neke nužne poslijeratne državne i partijske mjere.“

    „Pjesma o otkupu“ nastala je u narodu, a otpjevali su je Ilija i Marko Begić. Iako je, od svega toga, prošlo mnogo godina, Ilija Begić živo se sjeća svih pojedinosti toga slučaja, u kojem se kao jedan od tužitelja našle čak i društveno-političke organizacije jednog regiona:

    „Krajem 1971. godine snimili smo tzv. singlicu na kojoj je bila i „Pjesma o otkupu“. Bilo je to jedno od brojnih izdanja ondašnjeg „Glasa komuna“ iz Doboja, a sve je rađeno u „Beograd-disku“. Prvi tiraž ploče dogovoren je na 50 tisuća komada. Ploča je odlično išla. Svi primjerci bili su gotovo razgrabljeni! Normalno, započeli su i pripremni poslovo za novi tiraž, čini mi se, za najmanje novih 30 tisuća primjeraka. Nakon gotovo dva mjeseca prodaje započela su neka šuškanja, neke tajnovite rasprave, kako zadržaj te pjesme vrijeđa ovoga, onoga... i prve najave da bi ploča mogla biti čak zabranjena. Na kraju svega došlo je do velikog suđenja. Dobro se sjećam da je u sudnici na gramofonu puštana ta pjesma. Inače, cijeli slučaj došao je na raspravu i kod tadašnjih visokih dužnosnika u BiH. Pričalo se poslije da se u ovom slučaju da se u ovom slučaju posebno angažirao Branko Mikulić. Iako su iza nas odlučno stali i „Glas komuna“ i „Beograd-disk“ i gotovo cjelokupna javnost, ploča je trajno zabranjena, a odlučeno je također, da se pokoja neprodana ploča, oduzme. Angažirana je čak i milicija. Poslije su pojedini milicajci pričali da su ono malo što su negdje našli neprodato, oduzimali i nosili kući!"

    Iz današnjeg kuta gledanja sve je sasvim jasno i oko ove pjesme. Ne treba zaboraviti da je to bila 1971. i 1972. godina, vrijeme gušenja „hrvatskoga proljeća“ i vrijeme jačanja ortodoksnih krugova u bivšoj Jugoslaviji. U tom sveopćem metežu, eto, nastradala je je i jedna lijepa narodna pjesma. Pjesmu o otkopu snimili smo ponovo 1990. godine. Narod je i dan-danas vrlo rado sluša i mi je na našim nastupima gotovo uvijek pjevamo, jer „Pjesma o otkupu“ je pjesma o jednom vremenu i ljudima koji su u njemu živjei, i ništa drugo!

    Pjesma o otkupu

    O moj brate moje dobro milo
    pjevat ćemo što je nekad bilo.
    Sastala se dva kulaka jaka
    pa govore obaveza jaka.
    Onaj treći po glavi se češka
    javoj moja obavezo teška.

    Ode moja naka šuma gusta
    moja štala ostade mi pusta.
    Imao sam marve punu štalu
    a sad imam samo jednu kravu.
    Moje krave ustala je dreka
    hoće od nje obavezu mlijeka.

    Tri metera obaveze traže
    a dva i pol moja krava važe.
    Provuče se propaganda neka
    da će tražit po tavanu špeka.
    Neka traže moga naći neće
    ja sam svoj spakovo u vreće.

    Vreću mesa i dvije kante masti
    i odnijo gdje se sijeno plasti.
    Nije prošlo toga dana pola
    kod mog sijena zakrenuše kola,
    hoće vozit moga sijena pola.
    Usta dreka odbornika brate
    pronašo je meso neka znate.

    Nemoj druže moj rođeni brate
    nosi meso ostavi mi kante.
    On na mene podigo galamu
    što ti nije meso na tavanu?
    Mi hodamo gladni po terenu
    a ti hraniš miše po sijenu.

    Eto tako moja braćo mila
    sve je meni moja žena kriva.
    U odboru uhvati je neko
    da je vodu sipala u mlijeko,
    a u vunu kamenje od kile
    takve su nas nesreće pratile.

    PV

    17.08.2009

    https://vremeplov.jimdo.com/ljudi-u-vremenu/pjesma-o-otkupu/




    _____
    i would like to talk here about The Last of Us on HBO... and yeah, yeah i know.. the world is burning but lets just all sit and talk about television. again - what else are we doing with ourselves ? we are not creating any militias. but my god we still have the content. appraising content is the american modus vivendi.. that's why we are here for. to absorb the content and then render some sort of a judgment on content. because there is a buried hope that if enough people have the right opinion about the content - the content will get better which will then flow to our structures and make the world a better place
    fikret selimbašić

    Posts : 9410
    Join date : 2020-06-19

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by fikret selimbašić Wed Dec 06, 2023 2:37 pm

    Priča iza pesme 359476144 :posavski:


    _____
    Međuopštinski pustolov.

    Kijevljani, Kijevljani, paganski skupe. Da niste Mihajlika izdali, nikad Tatari Kijev ne bi zauzeli.

    A onda, kad mjehne Raspotočje, onda je jebeno.
    avatar

    Posts : 18178
    Join date : 2014-12-12

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by beatakeshi Wed Dec 06, 2023 2:57 pm

    BoškO u svom predizbornom jaše na istom talasu. Neprolazne teme.
    Daï Djakman Faré

    Posts : 7994
    Join date : 2014-10-28
    Location : imamate of futa djallon

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by Daï Djakman Faré Sun Mar 17, 2024 12:35 pm

    mislio sam se dal stavim na feminizam ili ovde, al reko bolje ovde. hey joe, pesma o femicidu sto bi rekle gender studije - najikonickija pesma jimmy hendrixa i pesma koja je zatvorila originalni woodstock - je zapravo case study o seksizmu muzicke industrije. autorki neili miller sem pete seeger-a niko nije pomogao u ostvarivanju prava na pesmu. pritom baba (1935, a izgleda bar 15 godina mladje) nije neki nesretni narkoman koji je nestao u vrtlogu vremena nego je poznati psihoterapeut koji se artikulise besprekorno i opet se manje vise svi ponasaju kao da ne postoji. jezivo  Priča iza pesme 3579118792



    Folk Music, the Musical Industrial Complex, and “Hey Joe.”

    American Pastimes by Tom Leonardi, 4-9-2014

    The musical industrial complex can be as mercenary as its military counterpart; especially for folk musicians.  Most old-time folkies agree that prior to the Kingston Trio hitting it big in 1958 with a best selling record of “Tom Dooley,” commercial instincts were usually ignored by the majority of musicians who played traditional songs on traditional string instruments. The lucrative success of the trio changed the culture and music ownership and publishing rights became an obsession.  Business minded musicians became more focused on publishing.  Randy Sparks (founder of the New Christy Minstrels and their farm team The Back Porch Majority) carried a notebook with the copyright expiration dates of every Stephen Foster tune and dozens of folk tunes. The day each expired was the day he re-wrote the song and submitted his new version for copyright approval.

    “Hey Joe” sounds like an old murder ballad that somehow found its way into the set lists of 1960’s garage bands; it sold millions of copies after Jimi Hendrix recorded it and as of 2010 has been recorded at least 1600 times.  It’s dark and disturbing but it’s not very old. And its history is almost as dark as the story it tells.

    It all began in 1955 when a New Yorker named Niela Miller wrote a song called “Baby Please Don’t Go to Town.” It used a circle-of-fifths chord progression; C G D A E E7 and a ‘question and answer’ lyric format.  In 1956 Niela taught her boyfriend, guitarist Billy Roberts, her tune.

    A few years after Niela and Billy went their separate ways Roberts re-wrote the song: He kept the chord progression and the same question and answer format, but her song about a romantic breakup became his song about a murder.  Roberts possibly was also inspired by Carl Smith’s 1953 country hit "Hey Joe", which shared the title and the 'question and answer' format; and by the traditional ballad "Little Sadie", which tells of a man on the run after he has shot his wife.  Roberts performed the song from 1959 until 1962 without recording it or copyrighting it.  It was a compelling song and numerous folkies recall him performing it that early. Some, like Dick Weissman and Pete Seeger, recognized Niela’s composition at the root of it.

    In 1962 while performing in Washington D.C. Roberts took the time to register “Hey Joe” at the Library of Congress, and there is a demo tape that he made at about the same time. He told friends that he wrote out the chord progression and lyrics and mailed them to himself in a registered letter years earlier. It remained unopened as proof that he wrote it.  That same year Niela recorded an acetate of her song catalog and copyrighted her songs.  Seeger encouraged her to seek a legal remedy over “Hey Joe” and offered to testify on her behalf.  She didn’t because chord progressions can’t be copyrighted.

    The copyright conflict didn’t end in 1962 however. Billy had traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe with his friend Dino Valenti. Everywhere they went they busked on the street and performed in clubs.  “Hey Joe” was always in Robert’s set list and when Valenti moved to Los Angeles in 1963 he began performing it himself.  Subsequently a number of local bands added the song to their live sets, including the Byrds, the Leaves, Love, and the Buffalo Springfield.  There was actually a race to release a folk-rock or rock version of the song on record in 1965 and the Leaves won. The Leaves were tenacious: They eventually released three different recordings of “Hey Joe” in the course of two years, and the third one became a regional hit and gained some national radio exposure.

    That’s when Roberts found out that Valenti had copyrighted the song for himself in 1963 and signed a publishing contract with a Los Angeles publishing house.  Roberts was able to regain his composing credit through negotiations, but couldn’t get out of sharing the publishing income with the L.A. publisher.

    Los Angeles however was good for “Hey Joe.” There were numerous recordings being made of the song; some slow versions and some faster.  Tim Rose was a folk musician who had been around for a while, previously performing in Greenwich Village with John Phillips and Cass Elliot (who later formed the Mamas & Papas) and then with Jake Holmes (whose 1967 acoustic song “Dazed & Confused” was famously stolen by Led Zeppelin - he sued, and they finally settled in 2012.)  Rose was a bluesy shouter who slowed “Hey Joe” down, changed some words and the key, and also copyrighted it as his arrangement of a traditional public domain song. It wasn’t the first time he made that mistake: He also had claimed Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew” was in the public domain after he adapted Fred Neil’s version. Rose told journalist Ritchie Unterberger that he first heard “Hey Joe” in 1960 at a bluegrass festival, and that Vince Martin had taught him how to play it and that Martin told him that he had learned it from a woman. Vince Martin was a member of the Tarriers in the late 50’s and Fred Neil’s duo partner in the ‘60’s.  You don’t have to dig deep on the internet to find Vince’s rants against record companies and publishers. He’s still looking for royalties and residuals from the Tarrier’s 1957 hit song “Cindy, Oh Cindy.”

    Rose released his slow version of “Hey Joe” on a 1966 Columbia single that came out while the Leaves version was already on the charts.  So it didn’t sell well, but one guy who heard it (or saw Rose perform it) was Jimi Hendrix who incorporated Tim’s arrangement into his performances at Greenwich Village’s Café Wha? A few months later Hendrix was in England recording his first single, “Hey Joe.” When it was released it listed Roberts as composer.

    Billy Roberts finally recorded a commercial album, Thoughts of California in 1975. It didn’t contain “Hey Joe.” He lived and performed in Northern California until he was seriously injured when his car drove off an embankment along Highway 1 north of San Francisco in 1991. He passed away in 2017.

    Niela Miller originally began performing after meeting Eric Weisberg in Greenwich Village. One of her other songs “Mean World Blues” was recorded by Dave Van Ronk. She eventually became a psychotherapist, counselor, author and educator.  She continues her crusade for acknowledgment as a composer of “Hey Joe.”

    Spoiler:


    _____
    i would like to talk here about The Last of Us on HBO... and yeah, yeah i know.. the world is burning but lets just all sit and talk about television. again - what else are we doing with ourselves ? we are not creating any militias. but my god we still have the content. appraising content is the american modus vivendi.. that's why we are here for. to absorb the content and then render some sort of a judgment on content. because there is a buried hope that if enough people have the right opinion about the content - the content will get better which will then flow to our structures and make the world a better place

    Priča iza pesme Empty Re: Priča iza pesme

    Post by Sponsored content


      Current date/time is Thu Mar 28, 2024 6:07 pm