[Rhodes22-list] Hey Slim, A Wall Street Journal Article for om u!

Thu Mar 17 22:36:03 EST 2005

Hey Slim,

If I'm vr in you bar, and if I drop a big pile of green in front of you,  you can bet that I'm wanting the Gilligan's Island version of Stairway.

Ben

-----Original Message-----
From:  Steve Alm 
Date:  3/17/05 14:31
To:  Rhodes 
Subj:  Re: [Rhodes22-list] Hey Slim, A Wall Street Journal Article for You!

Brad,

Fun stuff--thank you!  Since I play in a piano bar, the most requested song
is of course Billy Joel's Piano Man, which we usually do a couple times a
night depending on the motivation (wink).  If we start to get tired of it,
which we did about fifteen years ago, we just start making up our own  words.
Then comes Margarittaville, Brown Eyed Girl, Great Balls of Fire and Sweet
Home Alabama.  THEN Freebird! (a cry for help)  Now they all have new words.
Stairway To Heaven is now the same melody, but the words are Gilligan's
Island.  8-)  Not everyone thinks that's funny.  Some see it as sacrilege,
but hey, who's the one with the microphone here?  We try to do all the
requests, but there's no telling what version you might get.  The unspoken
rule is the higher the motiva$ion, the closer to the original.  Oh, you want
the REAL Freebird?  The WHOLE Freebird?  That'll cost ya!  8-)

Slim

On 3/17/05 12:51 PM, "brad haslett" <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
>      
> March 17, 2005 
> 
> 
> 
> Rock's Oldest Joke:
> Yelling 'Freebird!'
> In a Crowded Theater
> 
> It's a Request, a Rebuke,
> A Cry From the Heart,
> A Tribute to Skynyrd
> By JASON FRY 
> THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
> March 17, 2005; Page A1
> 
> One recent Tuesday night at New York's Bowery
> Ballroom, the Crimea had just finished its second
> song. The Welsh quintet's first song had gone over
> fairly well, the second less so, and singer/guitarist
> Davey MacManus looked out at the still-gathering
> crowd.
> 
> Then, from somewhere in the darkness came the cry,
> "Freebird!"
> 
> It made this night like so many other rock 'n' roll
> nights in America.
> 
> THE FREEBIRD FILES
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Please note: RealPlayerG21 is required for these
> files.
> 
> "Freebird" has been a rallying cry for fans of
> Southern rock since the 1970s. This exchange2 between
> Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant and an Atlanta
> audience introduces the version of "Freebird" from the
> 1976 live album "One More From the Road". That cut has
> been a radio mainstay since the album's release,
> likely inspiring many more shouts for "Freebird."
> 
> Bands don't always welcome the request, though. Mike
> Doughty had a suggestion for audience members yelling
> for "Freebird," as captured in this clip3 from the
> 2002 album "Smofe + Smang: Live in Minneapolis."
> 
> Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins tried to shame a
> "Freebird" heckler known as Ivan into changing his
> ways with this on-stage lecture4, delivered during a
> 1993 show in Chicago. Note Ivan's proud
> self-identification as a KevHead.
> 
> And in some cases, entertainers become slightly
> unhinged when they hear the song title, especially
> after Chicago DJ Kevin Matthews urged listeners to
> yell "Freebird." In this clip5, from a Chicago show in
> the early 1990s, the late comedian Bill Hicks utters a
> string of expletives in response to an exuberant fan.
> If you're offended by profanity, don't click on it.
> 
> Here are Web sites related to the artists mentioned in
> this article:
> 
> Lynyrd Skynyrd
> (www.lynyrdskynyrd.com6)
> The Crimea
> (www.thecrimea.net7)
> Dash Rip Rock
> (www.dashriprock.net8)
> Mike Doughty
> (www.superspecialquestions.com9)
> Jewel
> (www.jeweljk.com10)
> Hot Tuna
> (www.hottuna.com11)
> Modest Mouse
> (www.modestmousemusic.com12)
> Bill Hicks
> (www.billhicks.com13)
> Kevin Matthews
> (www.kevhead.com14)
> Phish
> (www.phish.com15)
> The Dandy Warhols
> (www.dandywarhols.com16)
> 
> -- Jason Fry
> 
> 
> 
> "Freebird" isn't the Crimea's song; it's from the 1973
> debut album by legendary Southern rockers Lynyrd
> Skynyrd. The band's nine-minute march from ruminative
> piano to wailing guitar couldn't be less like the
> Crimea's jagged punk-pop. But it was requested
> nonetheless.
> 
> Somebody is always yelling out the title. "I don't
> know that I've ever seen a show where it hasn't
> happened," says Bill Davis of the veteran country-punk
> band Dash Rip Rock.
> 
> "It's just the most astonishing phenomenon," says Mike
> Doughty, the former front man of the "deep slacker
> jazz" band Soul Coughing, adding that "these kids,
> they can't be listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd."
> 
> Yelling "Freebird!" has been a rock clich? for years,
> guaranteed to elicit laughs from drunks and scorn from
> music fans who have long since tired of the joke. And
> it has spread beyond music, prompting the Chicago
> White Sox organist to add the song to her repertoire
> and inspiring a greeting card in which a drunk holding
> a lighter hollers "Freebird!" at wedding musicians.
> 
> Bands mostly just ignore the taunt. But one common
> retort is: "I've got your 'free bird' right here."
> That's accompanied by a middle finger. It's a strategy
> Dash Rip Rock's former bassist Ned Hickel used.
> According to fans' accounts of shows, so have Jewel
> and Hot Tuna's Jack Casady. Jewel declines to comment.
> Mr. Casady says that's "usually not my response to
> those kind of things."
> 
> Others have offered more than the bird. On a recent
> live album, Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock declares that
> "if this were the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and you were
> going to die in 20 minutes -- just long enough to play
> 'Freebird' -- we still wouldn't play it." Dash Rip
> Rock often plays "Stairway to Freebird," a mash-up of
> the Skynyrd epic and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to
> Heaven" that Mr. Davis boasts lasts "less than two
> minutes. ... You're finished before people get mad."
> 
> A few years ago, Mr. Doughty started promoting the
> Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" as the new
> "Freebird," asking audiences at his solo shows to call
> for the disco chestnut instead. Now, he says, he gets
> yells for both songs at every performance.
> 
> A harsh reaction to "Freebird" came from the late
> comedian Bill Hicks during a Chicago gig in the early
> 1990s. On a bootleg recording of the show, Mr. Hicks
> at first just sounds irked. "Please stop yelling
> that," he says. "It's not funny, it's not clever --
> it's stupid."
> 
> The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the
> "Freebirds" keep coming. "Freebird," he finally says
> wearily, then intones: "And in the beginning there was
> the Word -- 'Freebird.' And 'Freebird' would be yelled
> throughout the centuries. 'Freebird,' the mantra of
> the moron."
> 
> How did this strange ritual begin? "Freebird" is
> hardly obscure -- it's a radio staple consistently
> voted one of rock's greatest songs. One version -- and
> an important piece of the explanation -- anchors
> Skynyrd's 1976 live album "One More From the Road." On
> the record, singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was killed
> along with two other bandmates in a 1977 plane crash,
> asks the crowd, "What song is it you want to hear?"
> That unleashes a deafening call for "Freebird," and
> Skynyrd obliges with a 14-minute rendition.
> 
> To understand the phenomenon, it also helps to be from
> Chicago. When asked why they continue to request
> "Freebird," Mr. Hicks's tormentors yell out "Kevin
> Matthews!"
> 
> Kevin Matthews is a Chicago radio personality who has
> exhorted his fans -- the KevHeads -- to yell
> "Freebird" for years, and claims to have originated
> the tradition in the late 1980s, when he says he hit
> upon it as a way to torment Florence Henderson of
> "Brady Bunch" fame, who was giving a concert. He
> figured somebody should yell something at her "to
> break up the monotony." The longtime Skynyrd fan
> settled on "Freebird," saying the epic song "just
> popped into my head."
> 
> Mr. Matthews says the call was heeded, inspiring him
> to go down the listings of coming area shows, looking
> for entertainers who deserved a "Freebird" and
> encouraging the KevHeads to make it happen.
> 
> But he bemoans the decline of "Freebird" etiquette.
> "It was never meant to be yelled at a cool concert --
> it was meant to be yelled at someone really lame," he
> says. "If you're going to yell 'Freebird,' yell
> 'Freebird' at a Jim Nabors concert."
> 
> 
> Lynyrd Skynyrd performing in New York City in April
> 1976.
> 
> 
> Still, Mr. Matthews treasures his trove of recorded
> "Freebird" moments -- such as baffled comedian Elayne
> Boosler wondering why the audience is shouting
> "reverb." And he argues that good bands simply
> acknowledge it and move on. "The people who are
> conceited, the so-called artists who get really
> offended by it, they deserve it," he says.
> 
> But did "Freebird" truly start with the KevHeads?
> Longtime Chicago Tribune music writer Greg Kot says he
> remembers the cry from the early 1980s. He suggests it
> originated as an in-joke among indie-rock fans "having
> their sneer at mainstream classic rock."
> 
> Other music veterans think it dates back to 1970s
> audiences' shouts for it and other guitar sagas, such
> as "Whipping Post," by the Allman Brothers Band, and
> "Smoke on the Water," by Deep Purple.
> 
> They may all be right: It's possible "Freebird" began
> as a rallying cry for Skynyrd Nation and a sincere
> request from guitar lovers, was made famous by the
> live cut, taken up by ironic clubgoers, given new life
> by Mr. Matthews, and eventually lost all meaning and
> became something people holler when there's a band
> onstage.
> 
> But as with many mysteries, the true origin may be
> unknowable -- cold comfort for bands still to be
> confronted with the inevitable cry from the darkness.
> For them, here's a strategy tried by a brave few: Call
> the audience's bluff. Phish liked to sing it a
> cappella. The Dandy Warhols play a slowed-down take
> singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor describes as sung "like
> T. Rex would if he were on a lot of pills." And Dash
> Rip Rock has performed the real song in order to
> surprise fans expecting the parody. For his part, Mr.
> Doughty suggests that musicians make a pact: Whenever
> anyone calls for "Freebird," play it in its entirety
> -- and if someone calls for it again, play it again.
> 
> "That would put a stop to 'Freebird,' I think," he
> says. "It would be a bad couple of years, but it might
> be worth it."
> 
> So what do the members of Skynyrd think of the
> tradition? Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie's brother and the
> band's singer since 1987, says "it's not an insult at
> all -- I think it's kind of cool. It's fun, and people
> are doing it in a fun way. That's what music's
> supposed to be about."
> 
> Besides, Mr. Van Zant has a confession: His wife
> persuaded him to see Cher in Jacksonville a couple of
> years ago, and he couldn't resist yelling "Freebird!"
> himself. "My wife is going, 'Stop! Stop!' " he
> recalls, laughing. "I embarrassed the hell out of
> her."
> 
> Write to Jason Fry at jason.fry at wsj.com17
> 
> URL for this article:
> http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111102511477881964,00.html
> 
> 
> Hyperlinks in this Article:
> (1) http://www.real.com/
> (2)
> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_ls_freebird.rm
> 
> (3)
> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_md_freebird.rm
> 
> (4)
> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_sp_freebird.rm
> 
> (5)
> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_bh_freebird.rm
> 
> (6) http://www.lynyrdskynyrd.com/
> (7) http://www.thecrimea.net
> (8) http://www.dashriprock.net/pages/1/index.htm
> (9) http://www.superspecialquestions.com/
> (10) http://www.jeweljk.com/
> (11) http://www.hottuna.com/
> (12) http://www.modestmousemusic.com/
> (13) http://www.billhicks.com/
> (14) http://www.kevhead.com/
> (15) http://www.phish.com/
> (16) http://www.dandywarhols.com/
> (17) mailto:jason.fry at wsj.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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