Three Days Grace

In my ongoing battle against Dad's Disease, my staunchest ally is my grandson Jai. For the uninitiated, Dad's Disease is a dreaded malady that causes old farts like myself to not only believe that the music of their generation was the only worthwhile music ever made, but also feel the compulsion to utter such beliefs out loud to anyone in earshot. The name of this sickness was coined by a fellow blogger, Music Obsessive, who authors a blog of the same name that everyone should check out and follow. I thank him for putting a name to this chronic condition.
As I said, my grandson Jai, wise beyond his years, has convinced me to look at the more recent bands with an open mind. In the spirit of "all things rockin' from then to NOW", I submit for your consideration an exceedingly rockin' group of gentlemen calling themselves Three Days Grace.
They were formed in Norwood, Ontario in Canada in 1992, originally under the name Groundswell, broke up in 1997 and regrouped later the same year this time as Three Days Grace. Starting out as a trio, they were guitarist/vocalist Adam Guntier, drummer Neil Sanderson and bassist Brad Walst. Guitarist Barry Stock was added in 2003 and the line-up stands the same today. The band had become acquainted with producer Gavin Brown, who helped the band record a demo which they shopped around catching the attention of several record companies. EMI Music expressed a desire to hear more material, so Brown and the band recorded what would be their break-out single, "I Hate Everything About You" (a rock and roll sentiment if there ever was one) . The band finally signed to Jive Records after being sought out by the label's president.


The band's self-titled debut album was released July 22,2003 to favorable reviews. Including the hit "I Hate Everything About You", and accompanied by extensive touring, it went platinum in the U.S. and double platinum in Canada. It was later in 2003 that Barry Stock joined the band. Two more singles from the album were released, "Just Like You" and the riff -heavy stomper "Home".


After a break taken by the band to allow singer Adam Guntier time to rehabilitate from an addiction he developed to pain killers, they went to work on their sophomore album, One -X. This collection contained at least five songs written by Guntier while in rehab,"Over And Over","Gone Forever","Pain","Never Too Late" and the single, "The Animal I've Become". This album features a bit more in terms of shifting dynamics and diverse writing. It is a definite progression from the first album.
Released on June 13,2006 , One -X also went platinum in the U.S. and double platinum in Canada.


Life Starts Now, the third Three Days Grace album, was released September 22, 2009. This one debuted at #3 on the Billboard charts. The band seemed to depart from the darkness of their previous efforts while retaining the powerful riff-heavy style they've cultivated over their career. A more rock-anthemic tone overall is the result. It is on this album that in my opinion, their highest-achieving song appears. That song is "Break".


Three Days Grace definitely rocks. They display a deep appreciation for the groove, pleasantly massive guitar tones and a rhythm section that effectively pounds their message home. Topped off with Guntier's perfectly servicable rock and roll shout, this band would seem to have a compete package. I, for one, am happy to have encountered the work of Three Days Grace.
Jai, you've done it again lad!

The Dave Clark Five

Tottenham is a suburb just north of London. In 1960 this town was home to  a local soccer team, The Tottenham Highspurs. It is to this team that we owe a debt of gratitude for the second big British Invasion group after The Beatles to storm American  shores. This soccer team was in a financial bind prompting one of the players, Dave Clark to start a band in order to make some money. Clark brought himself a set of drums, taught himself to play them and put together the group that would become The Dave Clark Five.
They started out as The Dave Clark Quartet, Clark on drums, guitarist Dave Sanford, bassist Chris Walls, and keyboardist/arranger Don Vale. They were originally the backing band for North London singer Stan Saxon. As time went on, the group played more and more on their own , slowly building a local following.


Sanford, Walls and Vale left the band over time to be replaced by Lenny Davidson, Rick Huxley, and Mike Smith respectively with the addition of  Dennis Payton on saxophones. Mike Smith took over lead vocalist duties when the band eventually split with Saxon in 1962. It was in February of 1964 that the band, after several misses, had a huge hit with the song "Glad All Over" which knocked the Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand " out of the #1 spot on the U.K. singles chart. The song peaked at #6 in the U.S. Shortly after they became the second British Invasion act to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show where they performed the hit. This would be the first of 18 subsequent appearances on the show.


After the success of the Beatles' film A Hard Days Night, The Dave Clark Five released their own film Catch Us If You Can, which was directed by John Boorman. The U.S. release of the film was titled Having A Wild Weekend. The band was promoted as representatives of "The Tottenham Sound" as a response to "The Mersey Beat" sound of Brian Epstein's stable of acts. They were a successful touring act, one of the first, in fact from Britain to extensively tour the U.S. They were also touted as a "cleaner" version of the Beatles, even though in appearance and musical influence they were quite similar, and their sound actually a bit rougher than the Fab Four.


It should be noted that Dave Clark, in addition to forming, leading and writing for this band, he was also the manager and executive producer of The Dave Clark Five. He formed a media company and negotiated business deals that among other things allowed him production control and ownership of all the group's master tapes, which any astute  musical artist will tell you, is one of the first rules in being successful in this particular vocation. Musical creation and the business of music are two very different animals, the taming of one has no bearing on the ability to tame the other as too many musicians have learned to their regret. Dave Clark was one of the few musicians who had the opportunity and ability to look after the band's interests.


Hits like "Because", "Bits And Pieces", "I Like It Like That" and "Over And Over" kept the Dave Clark Five at or near the top of the charts from 1963 to 1970 when the group disbanded. All told, they had 17 hits in the U.S. They were actually a bigger attraction in the U.S. than in their native England for that period, but enjoyed a bit of a renaissance in the U.K. during the period of  1967 to 1970. On December 17,2006 saxophonist  Dennis Payton died after a lengthy battle with cancer at the age of 63. Keyboardist/vocalist Mike Smith returned to performing putting together Mike Smith's  Rock Engine in 2003. They did two short tours in the U.S. and Smith made an appearance on Late Night With David Letterman substituting for bandleader Paul Schaffer as Schaffer himself was the guest host that night. In September of 2003 Smith suffered a spinal cord injury from a fall at his home leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. On February 28,2008 he died of pneumonia. Two weeks later on March 10,2008, The Dave Clark Five were inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

My Chuck Berry Top Five

If I may, I submit to you the five best songs Chuck Berry ever recorded (in my humble, though greatly informed opinion, of course). The songs are ranked in order of greatness. Thank you very much.

Devo

Their name is derived from the theory of De-evolution, the concept of which is society , instead of evolving with time to a higher consciousness, it instead goes backward resulting in what they see as the dysfunction and herd mentality society exhibits today. Food for thought indeed, but this blog is about all things rockin' and as such , this band would not appear here unless they rocked...and they did. using sometimes atonal melodies, robotic beats and plenty of synthesiser all filtered through the mind of the geek misfit, they were an influence on acts such as Art Of Noise, They Might Be Giants, Rammstein and even Lady Gaga.


Formed in 1972 by Kent State art students Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh, on bass and synthesizer respectively with both as vocalists. They were rounded out with Bob Casale (Bob 1) and Bob Mothersbaugh (Bob 2) on guitars and Alan Myers on drums. They released their first single "Mongoloid" b/w "Jocko Homo" on their own independent label Booji Boy. This was followed in 1977 by an utterly insane re-working of The Rolling Stones' classic "Satisfaction".

The band's mix of discordant pop, deadpan surrealist humor, cheesy science fiction themes and satirical social commentary caught the attention of many, including David Bowie and Iggy Pop who got behind the band and helped them get signed to Warner Brothers Records. Bowie was set to produce their first album but had to pull out due to prior obligations. Brian Eno ended up producing the album entitled  Q. Are We Not Men? A. We Are Devo, which contained re-recordings of  "Mongoloid" and "Jocko Homo", as well as "Satifaction". An appearance on the tv show Saturday Night Live October 4,1978 gained them national exposure.


The band's follow-up album, Duty Now For The Future, saw the band delve deeper into electronic music, and while not a major success, it contained some fan favorites such as "Blockhead" and a cover of the Johnny Rivers hit "Secret Agent Man", songs they performed on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert later that year. A higher level of visibility was gained in 1980 with the release of the next album Freedom Of Choice which featured their break-out hit "Whip It" as well as popular songs "Gates Of Steel" and the title track. More tv appearances on shows like American Bandstand and Fridays did much to spread the word.

In 1981 the next album New Traditionalists contiunued the band's popularity, containing stand out tracks like "Through Being Cool" and "Beautiful World" with accompanying videos containing sharp social commentary. The album was shipped with a bonus disc upon which was a cover of "Working In The Coal Mine", the old Jimmy Dorsey hit done surprisingly faithful (for this group) to the original. This would prove to be the peak of the band's success as subsequent releases met with diminishing commercial and critical response.

Outside of a few bright spots, such as the theme song to the movie Doctor Detroit, and a harder rocking re-recording of "Girl U Want" for the movie Tank Girl, there seemed to be little steam left in the Devo machine. Mark Mothersbaugh had some success writing theme songs for tv, the most notable being Pee Wee's Playhouse, but by 1984 the band began a cycle of changing personell, break-ups and re-formations, ultimately fading from the scene until 2007, when their songs appeared on the video games Rock Band and Rock Band 2. Highly influential, many later bands have adopted Devo's formula and expanded on it , creating an entire rock sub-genre. Devo itself still occasionally perform one-off shows and short tours.

Soul Train

As announcer Sid McCoy would intone in the opening credits, Soul Train was indeed "The hippest trip in America". It was also Sid informed us, the longest running nationally syndicated show in history and will remain so unless the next show in line, Entertainment Tonight stays on the air until at least 2016. If not, it may possibly be overtaken in 2017 by the game show Wheels Of Fortune. Soul Train aired in syndication from October 1971 to March 2006. During this time practically every act with a top selling R'n'B ,soul or funk hit appeared on the show, many of them multiple times. The engine that drove the show was The Soul Train Dancers. The conductor, at least during the years that counted, was one Don Cornelius.
Don Cornelius was a news reader and disc jockey in Chicago circa 1965 for radio station WVON. In 1967 he was hired by tv station WCIU as a news and sports reporter. He also was promoter and emcee for a series of local dance shows. These shows caught the attention of the station and Cornelius was invited to bring them  to television. After getting sponsorship from the Sears And Roebuck Co., the show, called Soul Train aired on WCIU-TV on August 17 1970 as a live weekday afternoon show.


The show's success attracted the attention of another local company, The Johnson Products Co., maker of Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen hair products. They agreed to co-sponsor the show's move to syndication. Cornelius along with the show's syndication company Syndicast targeted 24 cities for syndication. The show aired October 2,1971 and by the end of the first season was on in all 24 targeted markets. The show,now weekly, was picked up by CBS-owned WBBS-TV, and operations were shifted to the Los Angeles where it remained for the duration of the show's run. Syndicast remained the syndication company until 1985 when Tribune Entertainment took over.


Soul Train's identity was determined by a few enduring elements. One was the Scramble Board, where one dance couple was chosen to re-arrange randomly placed letters on a magnetic board to spell out the name of , as Don would say, "a famous artist whose name you should know". While the couple worked on this, a recorded hit would play and the audience at home could yell things at the tv like, "come on you idiots, it's The Bar Kays", or some such.


Another element was the group of dancing couples that were featured during the recorded songs. They were alternately known as The Soul Train Dancers and The Soul Train Gang. During the years people such as Rosie Perez, Nick Cannon, Carmen Electra, Jermaine Stewart, and MC Hammer were first noticed among their ranks. Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniels, two former dancers, went on to fame as part of the group Shalamar with Howard Hewlitt, and in Watley's case, as a solo artist. These dancers, many of them professional, were watched by young people in all markets keeping up with the latest in dance and clothing styles. The Soul Train Line, another of the show's defining elements was made up of two single lines formed by the dancers while a couple or a single dancer would dance down the length of the space between them. This was where the best dancers highlighted their technique.



The greatest identifying element of all was the face and voice of the show, the inimitable, and later to be proven irreplaceable Don Cornelius. He combined a towering presence with a booming baritone voice that announced the hits as "a groove that definitely makes you wanna move", or "a big'un everybody's sure 'nuff diggin' ". He brought many years of announcing experience to the table as well as definitively cool demeanor. He hosted the show until 1993, remaining a creative force behind the scenes for the remainder of its run. Succeeding hosts were comedian Mystro Clark, actor Shemar Moore, and actor Dorian Gregory. The sad simple fact is, when Don left he took the show's personality with him.



Soul Train stands as an icon in rock music history. Countless artists were brought into millions of homes by this influential show. The spin-off Soul Train Awards and Soul Train Lady Of Soul Awards shows gave recognition to the best and the brightest in the genre. Mr. Cornelius said it best..."and as always in parting we wish you love, peace and soul".