Elvis has NOT left the building

Elvis has not left the building!

Truly the king of rock and roll is still with us in spirit…I was reminded of that recently when I learned he had sold over 500 million records in his lifetime and earned over $100 million this year coming in at #2 on the Forbes 2023 list of top-earning dead celebrities!

Let’s back up to 1977:  In one of the most shocking 1970s events, the death of the King of Rock n’ Roll on August 16, 1977 propelled the world into mourning. 

At the young age of 42, Elvis Presley fans all over the world couldn’t believe they were saying goodbye to their idol so suddenly. His unexpected death made front-page headline news all around the world, especially since he had recently been performing before his death and showed no signs of major health problems.

At the time of his death, Elvis Presley was resting between shows at his mansion in Graceland, and he was found lying face down on the floor. 

After being pronounced dead after a speedy ambulance trip to the hospital, a doctor performs an autopsy to try and find the cause of death. 

They discovered Elvis was very ill with diabetes, but he had no signs of having suffered from a stroke, lung disease or heart disease. 

The actual cause of death still remains a mystery, with some people having a hard time believing Elvis had really died. 

Some people thought he was still alive and in hiding, and others contested the way he passed away. 

The death of Elvis ended his era of rock n’ roll but his legacy is unparalleled. 

Elvis influenced so many up and coming musicians, including the Beatles, and had a great impact in pushing rock music to a prominent position within American culture. 

This from Paul Simon:

“The first time I heard his music, back in ’54 or ’55, I was in a car and I heard the announcer say, ‘Here’s a guy who, when he appears on stage in the South, the girls scream and rush the stage.’ 

Then he played ‘That’s All Right, Mama.’ I thought his name was about the weirdest I’d ever heard. I thought for sure he was a black guy. 

Later on I grew my hair like him, imitated his stage act. Once I went all over New York looking for a lavender shirt like the one he wore on one of his albums. 

I felt wonderful when he sang ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water,’ even though it was a touch on the dramatic side, but so was the song. When I first heard Elvis perform ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ it was unbelievable, and I thought to myself, how the hell can I compete with that?”

Better than his music were his films.  And I know you’re thinking:  He made terrible movies!  But I loved them more than his music!

Who can forget ‘Viva Las Vegas’ with Anne Margaret:

Bright light city gonna set my soul

Gonna set my soul on fire

Got a whole lot of money that's ready to burn

So get those stakes up higher

That’s Vegas baby.  No one else rocked a baby blue sequined jumpsuit like the King of Rock and Roll.

No, Elvis has most definitely not left the building!

Until next time…

Reggae saved Jamaica

I’m Jamaican by birth…and didn’t listen to reggae music growing up.

Jamaica in the late 1960’s, was chaotic and dangerous.  Barely 5 years after gaining independence from the United Kingdom, political differences had spilled over into warfare.  

It was the Peoples National Party, the PNP versus the Jamaican Labour Party, the JLP.  Particularly in the Kingston area where we lived, the body count rose steadily in daily and nightly skirmishes.

The music that saved the nation…literally…was Reggae.  At a huge concert, Smile Jamaica at the National Stadium on December 5, 1976 Bob Marley took the stage and played his heart out and brought a fractured nation together with rebel music…Reggae!

Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first popular song to use the word reggae, effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. 

While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as by American jazz and rhythm and blues, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady.

Stylistically, reggae incorporates some of the musical elements of rhythm and blues, jazz, mento (a celebratory, rural folk form that served its largely rural audience as dance music and an alternative to the hymns and adapted chanteys of local church singing) and also draws influence from traditional African folk rhythms. 

One of the most easily recognizable elements is offbeat rhythms; staccato chords played by a guitar or piano (or both) on the offbeats of the measure. The tempo of reggae is usually slower paced than both ska and rocksteady

Reggae is deeply linked to Rastafari, an Afrocentric religion which developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, aiming at promoting pan-Africanism. 

Reggae music is an important means of transporting vital messages of Rastafari. The musician becomes the messenger, and as Rastafari see it, "the soldier and the musician are tools for change”. 

Buffalo Soldier, dreadlock Rasta

There was a Buffalo Soldier

In the heart of America

Stolen from Africa, brought to America

Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival

That is the opening verse of the Bob Marley and the Wailers hit, Buffalo Soldier from the album Confrontation. It sums up the deep underlying foundation of reggae.

Rock bands in the 1970s were inspired by reggae.  Big names included:

• The Police,  Walking on the Moon
• Elvis Costello, Watching the Detectives
• The Specials, Ghost Town
• The Clash, The Guns of Brixton
• Eric Clapton, I Shot The Sheriff

‘I shot the sheriff’ was originally recorded by Bob Marley and the Wailers and released in 1973 on the album, ‘Burnin’.  It was a cry for justice. A popular theme in Jamaica then and an important issue for Bob Marley in particular.

Eric Clapton was inspired.  He covered it and released it on his second solo album, 461 Ocean Boulevard.  Reggae was firmly atop the world.

Back to 1976…

The political violence worsened in Jamaica after we left for Canada in 1972.

Ahead of the national general elections planned for early 1977, the economy, driven by the tourism industry had ground to a halt and there was almost open warfare across the island.  

The nation was on the brink of disaster. 

At 8:30pm, on December 3, 1976, two days before the Smile Jamaica Concert, seven men armed with guns raided Marley's house at 56 Hope Road. 

Marley and his band were on break from rehearsal. Marley's wife, Rita, was shot in the head in her car in the driveway. 

The gunmen shot Marley in the chest and arm. His manager, Don Taylor, was shot in the legs and torso. 

Band employee Louis Griffiths took a bullet to his torso as well. 

There were no fatalities.

Despite the attempt on his life, Marley insisted his performance at the concert go ahead. What was to be only one song turned into a 90 set.  

Too strong to say Reggae saved the Nation that day?

Maybe not…

Rise up this mornin'

Smiled with the risin' sun

Three little birds pitch by my doorstep

Singin' sweet songs of melodies pure and true

Saying', ("This is my message to you")

"Don't worry about a thing

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright

Singing' "Don't worry about a thing

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright!"

I mentioned earlier that I didn’t grow up listening to Reggae Music.  Times change…

Reggae plays a big part in my life now.  

My favourite groups include Third World (Try Jah Love) and Bob Marley’s Exodus.  Both are on repeat play.

And by the time you read this, I’ll be back in Jamaica in Negril at my 12th running of the Reggae Marathon 10k event.  

Until next time…

Gas Lines: The Crisis of 1973

The world lined up to buy gas in 1973…and it was ugly!

So bye, bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey 'n rye

Singin' this'll be the day that I die

This'll be the day that I die

Don McLean wrote and released the song in 1971.  Much of it was biographical, as a reflection of what was happening in America during the 1960s with the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Vietnam War. 

For McLean, it started with what he called the end of the happy 50s, the tragic plane crash of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and JD “the Big Bopper” Richardson in February of 1959. The day the music died.

And then the gas supply dried up…

There were two separate oil crises in the 1970s:

• 1973 with a war in the middle east  

• 1979 with the Iranian revolution

North Americans from coast to coast faced persistent gas shortages as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, disrupted oil supplies.

Here’s what it looked like in the first one in 1973:

• Drivers would go to stations before dawn or late at night, hoping to avoid the lines.

• Odd-even rationing was introduced — meaning that if the last digit on your license plate was odd, you could get gas only on odd-numbered days. 

• Some gas stations took to posting flags — green if they had gas, yellow if rationing was in effect and red if they were out of gas.

• To conserve gas, the maximum speed limit was cut to 55 miles per hour. 

• To cut energy consumption in the broader economy, daylight saving time was introduced year-round at the beginning of 1974, facing criticism from parents whose kids had to go to school before sunrise in the winter months.

And we were driving big vehicles with big engines and poor fuel economy that were not particularly well made.

We felt the pain in our wallets at the gas pumps.

Not surprisingly Auto sales were hurt by the embargo as the price of gasoline soared. The industry never recovered!

A quick sidebar:  In the early 1970s GM, Ford and Chrysler had nearly 83% of the new car industry.  Yes, you heard that right…The ‘Imports’ sold only 17% of the all the cars sold!  

Fast forward 10 years and the total share was down to 71% as the Japanese automakers saw their smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles soar in popularity.

I stopped driving North American cars when I sold my 1976 Chevrolet Caprice Classic and replaced it with a Mazda.  That Chevrolet had a massively fuel inefficient 350 cubic inch V8 engine, bench seats in the front and an AM/FM radio!  I’ve never gone back!

Musicians responded to the crisis.  This novelty classic from Brent Burns was directly aimed at OPEC, ‘Cheaper food or no more food’:

If they don't lower the gas. We're gonna lower the boom, Quit shipping all that wheat and corn, forget the Golden Rule. 

If they don't lower the price of crude we're gonna cut off the food And in about a week they'll sing a different tune.

Yikes!

And 6 years later before we had the opportunity to fully recover, we did it all over again…

Until next time…

Call the Fashion Police!

I wore a light blue 3 piece velvet suit to my high school graduation in 1976.  

Let me repeat that:  A powder blue, flared leg suit with matching vest all made of velvet!  Stretched over my portly 18 year old frame. Thankfully there are no remaining photos of my take on 1970s fashion.  And I’m even more thankful that social media didn’t exist.

The overarching trend of fashion in the 1970s was individuality. I certainly extolled that!

Early in the decade, Vogue proclaimed 

"There are no rules in the fashion game now"

Due to overproduction flooding the market with cheap synthetic clothing, common items included mini skirts, bell-bottoms popularized by hippies, vintage clothing from the 1950s and earlier, and the androgynous glam rock and disco styles that introduced platform shoes, bright colors, glitter, and satin. 

Accessories in the early '70s riffed on Hippie outfits: Chokers, headbands, scarves, and jewelry made of wood, stones, feathers, and beads.

And for a certain teen in Mississauga, velvet!

Oh…and the music that inspired much of this look?

Ziggy played guitar

Jamming good with Weird and Gilly

And the Spiders from Mars

The opening lyrics from Ziggy Stardust, the 2nd track on the 5th studio album from David Bowie with the title:  ‘The rise and fall of ziggy stardust and the spiders from mars’.

Mississauga is a suburb west of Toronto.  Neither it or Toronto were fashion mecas in the 1970s.  The clothing that we wore could have been a little dated to be sure.  But we wore it proudly.

High school dances were a rite of passage back in the day.  They were held on Friday nights in the cafeteria or gym.  They usually included a live rock band made up of our fellow classmates.  They played loud and hard!  

In between sets a DJ spun rock tunes and this was when the dancing took place.

Dressing up for these dances allowed us full teenage fashion expression.  

Back to the velvet!

My typical look went like this:

• Skintight jeans tucked into knee high platform boots
• Tight floral print shirt
• Topped off with a…wait for it…navy blue velvet jacket!

I never danced much at these high school dances…I wonder why?

Pushing these fashion trends were the superstar celebrities of the 1970s:

• David Bowie of course in his ziggy stardust persona
• Elton John - glam rock extreme!
• Diana Ross - disco queen
• Cher - at the height of her sequins
• Elvis Presley - power blue ‘onsies’ as he prowled the Vegas Stages late in his career

And where best to see and be seen:  Studio 54 in New York City!

Toronto had it’s own version of hot night clubs, one of which was in the basement of the Hilton Hotel on the Airport Strip in…Mississauga!  

It was called Misty’s.  DJ Vicky Watson ran the console.  There was a raised dance floor of plexiglass with lights above and under the floor.  

Sirens, glitter balls, strobe lights and of course dry ice added to the atmosphere of decadence.

Away from the dance floor, booths and tables were tucked into dark corners…’What happened at Misty’s stayed at Misty’s’

People lined up for hours to get in and the place didn’t get rocking until late.

The night was over when Vicky put on ‘Last Dance’ by Donna Summers.

I have fond memories of Misty’s:  I was the bouncer there for one glorious summer before heading off to university.

In the immortal words of Donna Summer:

Last dance

Last chance for love

Yes, it's my last chance

For romance tonight

Until next time…