Yep, the Rolling Stones are back. They played the first of their 50th anniversary shows in London last night, and the grizzled Stones were joined onstage by former band members Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman, along with the ubiquitous Jeff Beck.
Save your pennies – the Stones are threatening to tour. Meanwhile you can amuse yourself with the official video for “Doom and Gloom,” featuring Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (Prometheus, the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo). By the way, there’s some nudity in here, so it’s not safe for work!
Bonus: The Rolling Stones performing “Honky Tonk Women” in London on 11/25, apparently with Bill Wyman on bass.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland announced yesterday its 2012 class of inductees, and it includes the rockin’ British quintet the Faces. Finally!
The Faces rocked the late 1960s and early 1970s like no one else, including the Rolling Stones. First known as the Small Faces, the core group of keyboardist Ian McLagan, bassist Ronnie Lane and drummer Kenney Jones found themselves at a crossroads when lead singer Steve Marriott left the group.
Salvation came in the form of two new members: guitarist Ron Wood and singer Rod Stewart. So in 1970 the Small Faces became simply the Faces, and they came on like a bunch of rowdy boozers who just happened to be great musicians. With Lane (and sometimes McLagan) the group already had strong songwriting, but Stewart and Wood contributed some great numbers too, like the classic “Stay With Me.”
The induction includes both versions of the band. Both Stewart and Wood will become second-time members of the Rock Hall (Stewart was inducted as a solo artist in 1994 and Wood as part of the Rolling Stones in 1989) for the Small Faces/The Faces.
“Well it’s quite a thrill and honor to make it in the Hall of Fame a second time,” Stewart said in a statement. “We (The Faces) were always synonymous with a good party and with this list of fellow artists being inducted I’m looking forward to (it) … and it’s a hell of a good reason to reunite and celebrate with my old mates.”
Other inductees announced Wednesday include Guns n’ Roses, the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the late singer/songwriter Laura Nyro and trippy-dippy singer/songwriter Donovan.
Other inductees include Freddie King for early influence; rock promoter Don Kirshner, who died earlier this year, receives the Ahmet Ertegun award; and Tom Dowd, Glyn Johns and Cosimo Matassa will be honored for musical excellence.
The Rock and Roll Hall of fame induction ceremony will be held in Cleveland on April 14.
If you are in or around the Austin area, you can still get a healthy dose of prime Faces by catching a performance of Ian McLagan’s Bump Band. “Mac” still plays free happy hours (at the Lucky Lounge, next door to Antone’s) and will happily take requests for Faces songs, although don’t ask him to perform any by “Big Nose” (guess who). It is, truly,the World’s Greatest Happy Hour. He says he’s gonna be there this Thursday, too! McLagan keeps alive the spirit and songs of Ronnie Lane, who died in 1997. Congratulations on your long-deserved honor, Mac!
My big sister’s bedroom is still locked tight – you think she’s on to me? Well, since we can’t riffle through her record collection I might as well share an LP from mine. Today we’re spinning Mahoney’s Last Stand, a 1976 soundtrack album by Ron Wood and Ronnie Lane, both members of the Faces.
The soundtrack music – mostly instrumentals – was recorded for the 1972 Canadian movie Mahoney’s Estate, which starred Sam Waterston and Maud Adams. The soundtrack was originally supposed to be released in North America but some kind of legal hassles delayed the movie for almost two years and the soundtrack for more than three years. So the album was finally released about a year after the Faces broke up.
Lane was of course the Faces’ bass player and Wood the guitar player. And Mahoney’s Last Stand features an all-star cast of sidemen including Faces bandmates Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones, Pete Townshend on guitar, Ric Grech (Blind Faith) and Benny Gallagher (Gallagher and Lyle) on bass, Ian Stewart (Rolling Stones) on keyboards, Bobby Keys and Jim Price on horns, Mickey Waller (Rod Stewart) on drums and producer Glyn Johns on backing vocals!
If you like the Faces’ bloozy, boozy-woozy good-time music, you’ll like the numbers here. “Car Radio” puts the pedal to the metal, and “Tonight’s Number” (with Jones, McLagan and Townshend) kicks out like Rod Stewart is going to jump out of the shadows and start wailin’ at any moment. But who needs him: Wood and Lane ably share vocals on the steppin’ “Chicken Wired,” and Wood’s Dylanesque voice is perfect for “‘Mona’ The Blues.” And “Just For A Moment,” an unmistakably Lane contribution, is supplied in two doses: an instrumental and a version with Lane’s sweet vocals.
While the album was being delayed due the legal wrangles, Lane re-cut “Chicken Wired” for his first solo LP, and he often played the song in his live appearances. In 1998 the Mahoney’s Last Stand soundtrack emerged on CD with a bunch of bonus tracks – some rejects from the original recording and a couple of tunes that were early versions of songs that would eventually appear on Ooh La La, the final Faces studio album (1973).
Wood would of course join the Rolling Stones in 1975, and Lane would quit Faces shortly after Ooh La La. He had some brilliant moments after that before succumbing to complications from multiple sclerosis in 1997. Ian McLagan, now a proud resident of Austin and the genius behind the World’s Greatest Free Happy Hour, often pays tribute to his dear friend Ronnie Lane. It’s fitting, because “Plonk” was a genius.
If you’ve gone to more than a few rock shows, or if you like to see musicians playing in small clubs, you probably have heard of these once-in-a-lifetime shows, where somebody really famous unexpectedly jumps onstage in an unlikely spot. I always wondered if I’d ever experience one of these unique occasions – and five years ago it happened.
December 2005: The Rolling Stones are touring behind their latest album, A Bigger Bang, and tonight’s show is in Houston’s downtown Toyota Center. At almost the same moment as the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” cranks up its show, another group of musicians are setting up a few miles away in the Continental Club. A small but devoted crowd of people are gathered at the Continental to see Ian McLagan and the Bump Band, from just down the highway in Austin. McLagan is, of course, the keyboard genius who powered the Small Faces and the Faces in the 1960s and 1970s. And his Bump Band this night consists of drummer Don Harvey, bass player Mark Andes and guitarist “Scrappy” Jud Newcomb – crack musicians all.
Ian McLagan, left, with Mark Andes at the Continental Club in Houston
There’s a buzz going through the admittedly small crowd: will there be a mini-reunion of the two members of the Faces in town? Guitarist Ron Wood has been with the Rolling Stones since 1975 but before that he was McLagan’s bandmate in the good-timey Faces. The buzz gets louder as the Bump Band takes the stage and rip into “Little Girl,” from their first album. Seeing a music legend like McLagan up close, you can’t help but marvel at your good fortune – these guys play free happy hours most Thursdays in Austin’s Lucky Lounge and occasionally make the 165-mile trek to Houston to make even more people feel lucky.
One of our all-time favorite musicians and all-around great guy Ian McLagan brings his Bump Band to Houston for a free concert today (Oct. 15) at 6:30 p.m. in Discovery Green park. McLagan is, of course, the greatest rock keyboard player in the world who’s played on albums by the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Thin Lizzy, Robert Earl Keen, Bonnie Raitt, Rod Stewart, the Georgia Satellites and many more. He’s prominently featured on the new live James McMurtry CD/DVD, Live In Europe.
His latest album is Never Say Never, probably his best solo work. And we’re saving the best for last – “Mac” will team up with some of his old mates from the Faces on October 25 in London for a fund-raising concert. Billed as a sort-of Faces reunion, McLagan will join ex-Faces members Ron Wood (Rolling Stones) and Kenney Jones (the Who) for a show that will certainly spotlight attention on the gone-but-not-forgotten Ronnie Lane, original Faces bassist who died in 1997 from multiple sclerosis. Former Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman will fill Lane’s spot, and instead of original Faces singer Rod Stewart (who won’t be there due to prior commitments), vocals will be handled by people like Mick Hucknall (Simply Red), Melanie C, Paul Carrack (Squeeze), Lee Mead, Mark King and Mike Lindup (Level 42), Andy Fairweather Low, Kiki Dee, Chris Difford, Georgie Fame, Jan Akkerman, Albert Lee and Martin Taylor. Read more about it here.
Ian McLagan will also play a solo gig at Dallas’ Belmont Hotel on Oct. 22, and will return to Texas for a number of dates in November and December. Here is his itinerary. We hope to talk to Mac after the big Faces show, and we’ll take some photos at the show tonight.
There was no denying that, by 1975, popular music was undergoing another change. The advances of the late 1960s had sunk in, and rock had already gotten over the Beatles by introducing bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Foghat. The second wave of hard rockers were honing their chops in 1975, and names like Aerosmith, Boston and Van Halen were waiting in the wings.
But the pop charts were showing a different shade: black. Black artists had always been a part of pop music, of course: names like Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross regularly appeared on the Top 40, as did Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and the Staple Singers. By 1975, soul music and R&B had been influenced by psychedelic guitar music, and the new music born from that was called funk.
Curtis Mayfield
One of the big artists of the early Seventies was Curtis Mayfield, who soldiered through the 1960s as the mastermind behind the Impressions and their groundbreaking hits like “People Get Ready,” “Keep On Pushing” and “We’re A Winner.” Mayfield left the group in 1970 and as a solo artist he helped put black music on the top 40 with his classic soundtrack to the blaxploitation movie Superfly. In 1975 Mayfield took his own label, Curtom, to Warner Bros., and he anchored the first sampler from that year, All Meat. In 1990 Mayfield would be seriously injured by falling stage lighting, and he was paralyzed from the neck down. After nearly a decade in this condition, Mayfield died in 1999.
Kinky Friedman sometime in the 1970s, at the Texas Opry House with dancing “waitret” in background.
Kinky Friedman is an artist for whom the term “politically incorrect” is inadequate. Even “obnoxious” is inadequate. Kinky is an equal opportunity offender, no one escapes his satirical aim. And his albums are all pretty much the same: tasteless or hilarious, depending on your point of view (or state of intoxication).
So nice to see that Madonna is now a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum – now that’s out of the way, let’s get down to some serious business. Like placing the great Faces in the Hall of Fame.
The Faces rocked the late 1960s and early 1970s like no one else, including the Rolling Stones. First known as the Small Faces, the core group of keyboardist Ian McLagan, bassist Ronnie Lane and drummer Kenney Jones found themselves at a crossroads when lead singer Steve Marriott left the group.
Salvation came in the form of two new members: guitarist Ron Wood and singer Rod Stewart. So in 1970 the Small Faces became simply the Faces, and they came on like a bunch of rowdy boozers who just happened to be great musicians. With Lane (and sometimes McLagan) the group already had strong songwriting, but Stewart and Wood contributed some great numbers too, like the classic “Stay With Me.”
30 Days Out 
