rock – Lee's Perspective

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 1.25.2025

It may only be rock and roll. And I Iike it.

I need a break from the Felon Trump.

What better way than to write about some good old rock and roll. Taking a walk this evening I stopped at a Little Lit Library near my house and found the book ‘Parachute Women’ by Elizabeth Winder. The 2023 tell all about the Rolling Stones wives and companions is a play on their song from the 1968 Beggars Banquet album.

The Stones did a memorable performance of the song in London as part of the ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ in 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones_Rock_and_Roll_Circus_(album) Listen to the lyrics as Mick Jagger rattles off a number of cities as he riffs through Parachute Woman.

The well received book goes into documentary style tabloid detail about the Stones well chronicled personal lives.

The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is the fifth release of the Rolling Stones music by former manager Allen Klein‘s ABKCO Records (who gained control of the band’s Decca/London material in 1970) after the band’s departure from Decca and Klein. Released in 1996, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is a live album that captures the taping of their ill-fated 1968 TV special, which was not broadcast until almost three decades later.

https://storiesla.com/item/lUy-ceNRsMXAyspstxoBzg/lists/7RTDeXp-ph8/

SAN FRANCISCO – THANKSGIVING DAY 2024

Lee Heidhues 11.28.2024

The bicycle is now the motorists favorite political punching bag.

There was a time when the bicycle in America was a curiosity piece and the favorite delivery vehicle for another American icon, the morning newspaper.

Back in 1963 Frank Zappa, soon thereafter to become famous with his group The Mothers of Invention, appeared on The Steve Allen Show. His instruments of choice were a pair of bicycles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa#

Frank Zappa earned enough money to allow him in 1963 to stage a concert of his orchestral music and to broadcast and record it.^[11]: 74 In March of that same year Zappa appeared on Steve Allen‘s syndicated late night show playing a bicycle as a musical instrument^{[26][27]: 35–36}— using drum sticks and a bow borrowed from the band’s bass player he proceeded to pluck, bang, and bow the spokes of the bike, producing strange, comical sounds from his newfound instrument. – Excerpted from WIkipedia

A couple of years later Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention became musical icons. Their perhaps most famous album was the 1966 Freak Out! Which included the overtly political song “Trouble Everyday.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_Out! Composed after the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.