Terrible Week

If you’re a music fan, you didn’t need to tune in here to know about the passing of Prince, and we’ll talk about that a little later. There’s also some awful news about one of ‘60s garage rock’s most important figures, Jimy Sohns.

Jimy Sohns

For those of you who don’t know, Sohns was, and actually still is, the leader of the Shadows of Knight, one of the most important garage rock bands of the mid-‘60s. Sohns suffered a stroke on April 12. The official word is that he’s OK and he’s recovering. Here is what the Shadows of Knights’ Facebook page says:

On April 12th, Jimy Sohns suffered a stroke. Jimy has been taking this time out to rehabilitate, and is going through extensive, but definitely worth it, therapy for his speech and other things. The stroke has affected his talking voice but not his singing at all. He is re-learning the use of the right side of his body right now, which they originally said would only be able to get back up to 40% usage at most, has already gotten back up to 70% usage, in this short amount of time. Right now, the concentration is on getting Jimy better, because if you know him, you know he can't wait to get back up on that stage. So sadly, if you saw that he had to cancel his Pennsylvania, and Florida gigs this past week, he will also not be able to attend the Cornerstones of Rock concert in Skokie, IL on May 1st, as he will still be recovering. Jimy plans to be back on stage by the June 24th Cornerstones show and he is more excited than ever to get back on the stage! Send all your well wishes and thoughts his way.

Amongst the gigs in the works was a reunion of the original lineup of Shadows of Knight, the first time all members have played together since 1967.

Hailing from Chicago, the Shadows of Knight are seen as influential beyond garage rock. The rocking beat of such sings as “I’m Gonna Make You Mine” lead many to cite SoK as a marker on the road to heavy metal. The band has many great songs, including “Shake.”

 

The song that got them, rightly or wrongly, onto the top-10 in the United States was their cover of

Them’s “Gloria,” one of rock’s most iconic songs. Some have alleged the song would have reached an even higher position, but the weird machinations of the record biz got in the way.

Even being able to cut and release the song was quite the coup for SoK. Several other bands, including the Gants, already had versions ready for release, but again the suits put the kibosh on it for reasons still murky today.

The would put out some fine work but like all the other garage rock bands, they drifted apart and were no more by the ‘70s. And, also like so many of their contemporaries, they would leave a legacy that up and comers continue to discover to this very day.

There are no shortage of covers of SoK’s songs, but perhaps the best known – and hardest rocking – is Primal Scream’s version of “I’m Gonna Make You Mine.”

On a final note, we have traded a few emails with Sohns, who was willing to do an interview with Garagerocktopia, but we weren’t ever quite able to nail down a time. We’d still love to do a story, of course, but the most important thing is that Sohns recover. There’s still a lot of rock and roll left in him.

Very briefly, we wanted to acknowledge the passing of Prince. Yeah, we know, he’s not garage rock, but that doesn’t matter. He was a preeminent genius of our age. We won’t rehash is history here, since that’s been done over and over again by people much better than us at doing so. Suffice to say, the musical legacy alone is breathtaking.

This seems like a weird tangent, but bear with me please. On a recent episode of his television show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the comedian ridiculed Bono, the singer of U2 for suggesting that comedy may be an effective way to combat ISIS. We won’t get into the specifics of that, but Maher’s comment, and I have to paraphrase because the direct quote contained bad words, was that music might make bad times seem a little better but that it’s not going to solve anything.

That’s the part I’d like to comment on. Will music stop wars, revive economies and cure disease? Of course not, and nobody reasonable would say that it has.

But music does have an impact, and has particularly had a strong impact in the United States, particularly in the area of race relations. While the state of those relations currently is far from ideal, it’s hard to imagine us making even the progress we have without music.

Where would that start exactly? Perhaps with country singers like Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams unabashedly borrowing from African-American blues, and Howlin’ Wolf borrowing right back from country music. Or, maybe the jazz of Count Basie and Duke Ellington were the start. Maybe, maybe not, but you can’t deny that these things did make an impact.

I would name rock and roll itself as a turning point in race relations. Did white artists get an awful lot of glory that black artists should have gotten? Absolutely. When legions of white kids adored the music of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Jim Crow still stood stubbornly in place and change, particularly from an African-American point of view, was minimal to say the least, But it was a start.

There are far too many instances of music breaking down barriers to name here. Motown and Jimi

Hendrix would also have to be considered, as does the open debt of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan to so many African-American artists. And, the impact of rap can also not be underestimated.

Prince was a giant contributor. Perhaps a product himself of the gradual wearing away of these (largely artificial) walls, Prince was comfortable as a funk artist. Or a hard rocker. Or a smooth soul singer. Or a jazz singer. And, regardless of whatever genre he was performing or mixing together, it never lost its Prince-ness.

But maybe, as many others have observed, it was his role of tossing out social barriers along with musical barriers, that has been his most important contribution. 

In many ways, he continued what David Bowie started, but in a more genuine, heartfelt way. Was he black? White? Straight? Gay? What did it matter? What we knew was that his music was unlike anybody else’s, and it’ll be a long time, if ever, before we see anyone like him again.

I’m one of those people he affected. As a teen, I was basically a chowderhead who stayed away from “black music,” though I must admit I was very good at somehow not seeing the blues or Jimi Hendrix as such. Dumb, I know. But Prince’s music – especially some of his searing guitar riffs – made it safe for someone like me to admit what I had been denying all those years – that I also like funk a lot, something I’m not so secretive about now.

One final note on Prince. Again, this is obvious to anybody to has given his music and kind of serious listen, but the spirit of the ‘60s permeates so much of his work.

As revealed in the excellent BBC documentary, Prince: The Glory Years, he went through a period of intense interest in the Beatles and other British Invasion bands (he was also very taken with Joni Mitchell’s music). This came to the forefront most obviously in the mid-‘80s with the album Around the World in a Day, which, aside from one huge hit (“Raspberry Beret”) was not considered a masterpiece.

He also wrote a great song for the Bangles, “Manic Monday.” This influence would be at its best on his landmark album Sign of the Times, especially on the great, if overlooked track “Starfish and Coffee.”

At age 57, he was way too young to go. But, for people of our generation, sadly, we’re going to hear about more and more of the greats passing on.

On a different note, it has been a thorough pleasure writing this blog, and we’ll continue to bring it to you. We haven’t had an artist feature in a few weeks, but that should change soon. We have some in the works, really good ones, but it’s taking some time for these to develop.

For regular readers, we do appreciate you checking back and checking in so often. But, it takes time to put some of these articles together – time that I am going to have to cut back a little bit. Posts will become bi-weekly, though there may be some special posts on occasion. As I’m sure is the case with many of you, real life has a nasty way of hijacking your time away from things you want to do and towards the mundanities of life. We’re not going anywhere – we’re just not dropping in quite as often. But thanks, wherever and whenever you check in.