Albert Von Schweikert (lead guitar) and Karl Lamp (collaborator) wrote this song in 1967. The Raven was based in St. Pete, Florida and had a #1 hit with Calamity Jane in a few markets across the US. They backed Sonny and Cher and Neil Diamond, and also opened the shows for the Yardbirds (later to become Led Zeplin), the Who, and quite a few others from the 60's. To see more photos and information about the Raven, visit the Facebook pages of Albert Von Schweikert, Marc Maconi, and Paul Purcell.
Sitting in some cafe, opiated, fucked, telling the tale of some hellish war torn miasma...while the memories swirl in my brain and Paul's guitar swirls backwards in some drug fuelled psychedelic haze
There's something wrong in my head....
- Dray
'Exile' contributor Mr. Fugn Moses AKA Dray has started a new blog to do with all thing SLAB!
The Alice Cooper Group - Hempstead New York ABC In Concert 1972
Setlist
01 Eighteen
02 Gutter Cat/Street Fight
03 Killer 04 Elected (Warner Bros blocked the video)
05 School's Out
In Concert was a US TV show. The first show featured Curtis Mayfield, Seals & Croft, Bo Diddley, Jethro Tull and Alice Cooper. Four tracks were broadcast from a show at Hofsta University in Long Island, NY and it included the Hanging Scene in 'Killer' and The 'Gutter Cats' fight.
When it originally aired it created quite a stir due to the over the top theatrics of Alice Cooper: News Report:
ABC kicked off its first In Concert, pre-empting the Dick Cavett Show, on November 24, 1972, featuring performances taped a few weeks earlier at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. On the bill was the Senior General of Rock, Bo Diddley, acoustic duo Seals and Croft, R&B man Curtis Mayfield and for the opening act, shock rocker Alice Cooper.
Rock fans in Cincinnati, however, didn't get to see beyond the first few minutes of Alice's violent theatrics. Lawrence H. Rogers II was so mortified by what he saw that he ordered the ABC affiliate he owned, WKRC-TV Channel 12, to yank the show off the air immediately. Channel 12's decision to protect its viewers was responded to within minutes with a phoned-in bomb threat and several car loads of youths picketing the station. Some 4,000 letters of protest, many profane, poured in over the next few days, the biggest mail load that station officials could remember.
Station manager Ro Grignon told TV Guide that he wasn't opposed to rock concerts. "In fact, we think they're going to be a smashing success. We simply found Alice Cooper a little tense."
Meanwhile, the ABC affiliate in Kingsport, Tennessee complained to the network about the performance but ran it nonetheless. WPVI-TV Channel 6 in Philadelphia ran the show on tape delay at 1:30 a.m. Channel 12 in Cincinnati later televised an edited version of the show, sans Alice, to give viewers a chance to enjoy the other, less offensive acts that were on the show. The next In Concert show was sent to affiliate managers via closed-circuit for approval before broadcast
The Footage starts with 'Eighteen' and shots of Alice struggling to get to the stage through the audience, the police pulling him through the crowd, seemingly by his hair at times. The song proper starts with Alice lying on the stage in front of Dennis before sitting with his legs hanging off the front of the stage to sing the song. Eventually he stands up and plays to the camera a bit, swigging from a beer bottle before conducting the final fanfare by pointing to each band member as they play their final three note motif. An advert break followed before Dennis is seen picking out the opening bass notes to 'Gutter Cat Vs The Jets'. Alice throws around a trash can before starting the lyrics lying across it for the second verse.and wielding a nasty looking switchblade which he teases Dennis` hair with.
Then it`s into the taped backing of 'Streetfight' as Neal leaps over the front of his drums and attacks Alice in a very realistic fight scene, with them both wielding switchblades. Neal is victorious and plays to the audience before Alice creeps up and takes him out from behind. Dennis starts the intro to 'Killer'.
If what had already been seen wasn`t enough, this is where the band really blow you away. Alice moves around the stage, seemingly dazed after his fight before snapping out of it and snarling the words at the camera. He kneels at the front of the stage, playing off the audience. The gallows sequence begins with Alice begging the audience "I didn't want to get involved in this". He seems to go limp, as if resigned to his fate before the military drum rolls announcie the appearance of the gallows. Alice is dragged kicking and screaming up the steps and his head is placed in the noose by Glen as Dennis, in vicars outfit now, reads from a prayer book. A crash of thunder and Alice drops. Stunning.
The footage then cuts quickly into 'School's Out' with Alice in top hat and tails and bubbles floating across the stage. He`s right up against the front rows of the audience, interacting and egging them on. The balloons appear as Alice teases the front rows with posters which he throws into the audience while showing the evilest grin you could ever imagine as they tear each other apart trying to secure a poster. He sings the chorus to camera before encouraging everybody to sing along.
And then it`s over. A tour-de-force that shows just how good the original band were at that stage. It`s criminal that the footage has never been officially release. Hopefully one day someone will see the light and release it.
Your writings have grappled with ruthless state violence which is often at the behest of corporate interests. Much of the corporate-owned media in India shies away from covering the civil war-like conditions in many parts of the country. The establishment tends to brand anyone who attempts to present the other side’s points of view as having seditious intent. Where is the democratic space?
You’ve partially answered your own question – newspapers and television channels do not make their money from subscriptions or viewership; in fact, corporate advertisements actually subsidize TV viewership and newspaper and magazine readership, so in effect, the mass media is run with corporate money. Some media houses are directly owned by corporations, some indirectly by majority share-holdings. Some media houses in, say, Central India, have a direct interest in mining and infrastructure projects, so they have a vested interest in the push to displace people in the huge, ongoing land-grab in which land and resources are forcibly taken from the poor and given to the rich – a process which goes by the name of ‘development’. It would be foolish to expect objective reporting: not because the journalists are bad people, but because of the economic structure of the organizations they work for. In fact, what is surprising is that despite all of this, occasionally there is some very good reporting. But overall we either have silence, or a completely distorted picture, in which those resisting their impoverishment are being labelled ‘terrorists’ – and these are not just the Maoist rebels who have taken to arms, but others who are involved in unarmed, but militant, struggles against the government. A climate has been created which criminalizes dissent of all kinds.
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of the poorest people in jails across the country under charges of sedition and waging war against the state. Many others are just charged under the common criminal penal code. There are the other ‘seditionists’ too, of course – those who have been fighting for self-determination after being inducted into the Union of India without their consent, when the British left in 1947. I refer to Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland… in these places, tens of thousands have been killed, hundreds of thousands tortured in the nightmarish interrogation centres and army camps all around the country. And now, the Indian army is migrating to the heart of the country – to fight the adivasi people whose lands the corporations covet. They say Pakistan is a military dictatorship, but I don’t think the Pakistani army has been actively deployed against its ‘own’ people the way the Indian army has been: Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland, Hyderabad, Goa, Telengana, Punjab and now, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa…
According to new reports, the Sony DADC warehouse which was burned down during rioting in north London last month, was hit by a professional robbery hours earlier, which used the ongoing rioting as a distraction to carry out the heist. The Daily Telegraph reports that the Sony DADC distribution centre was deliberately targeted by a professional gang, who arrived with specialist cutting equipment and spent up to two hours dismantling a high security fence before breaking in.
The paper's sources indicate that a fleet of vans then arrived and began to load up part of the contents of the warehouse, which also held Sony's more conventional stock like Playstations and televisions. They were able to do this after overwhelming the onsite security staff, who were unable to get police back up, as they were already overstretched in combatting ongoing disturbances across the UK capital.
After completing the robbery, the gang is thought to have invited other gangs in to continue the looting in an attempt to cover their tracks. They then left the premises. The fire allegedly broke out hours laters.
So far, five people have been arrested in connection with the break-in and fire. Two 17-year-old boys and men aged 18, 22 and 23 have been questioned over charges of looting and arson.
Stock from over 150 independent record labels, including XL, Domino and Sunday Best was lost in the blaze, with many labels still facing an uncertain future as a result of the fire.
@'NME'