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Middle Aged Dummies - Artist - Round 3 - #1's have been posted! (3 Viewers)
- Thread starter Zegras11
- Start date
Mister CIA
Footballguy
We have a 31-song Andrew Bird playlist (27 songs just barely missed the cut). Now, all that's left is to obsess over it for the next week or so and make a couple dozen edits, and then I'll be all set.
Zegras11
Footballguy
Here's the list I have so far. Please let me know if there are any errors asap.
I'll have the form up Saturday. Watch your inbox for that...
I'll have the form up Saturday. Watch your inbox for that...
| 1 | Mrs. Rannous | Brian Setzer |
| 2 | Don Quixote | Curtis Mayfield |
| 3 | Zamboni | Beach Boys |
| 4 | jaxtatarot | The Cure |
| 5 | kupcho1 | Belle and Sebastian |
| 6 | Karma Police | Oingo Boingo |
| 7 | Mt. Man | Ronnie James Dio |
| 8 | ILov80s | Mitski |
| 9 | landrys hat | Mazzy Star |
| 10 | Charlie Steiner | The Moody Blues |
| 11 | tau837 | Dave Matthews |
| 12 | jwb | The Doors |
| 13 | Pip's Invitation | Fanny |
| 14 | Raging weasel | Judas Priest |
| 15 | John Maddens Lunchbox | The Sweet |
| 16 | JMLs Secret Identity | Chvrches |
| 17 | The Dreaded Marco | Destroyer |
| 18 | New Binky The Doormat | Bryan Ferry |
| 19 | Mister CIA | Andrew Bird |
| 20 | Uruk-Hai | Earth, Wind & Fire |
| 21 | tuffnutt | Iron and Wine |
| 22 | -oz- | Blue October |
| 23 | Hov34 | Sturgill Simpson |
| 24 | YoMama | Stone Temple Pilots |
| 25 | Yambag | The Slambovian Circus of Dreams |
| 26 | falguy | April Wine |
| 27 | Scoresman | The Tea Party |
| 28 | Mac_32 | Kenny Chesney |
| 29 | Eephus | Strand Of Oaks |
| 30 | Zegras11 | Susanna Hoffs |
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titusbramble
Footballguy
I've never even heard of half the artists there
Yo Mama
Footballguy
Metoo
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
The fifth album got bad reviews at the time but I was pleasantly surprised by it.
All that's left is the 2018 reunion album, which I am not expecting much from.
Zegras11
Footballguy
both
krista4
Footballguy
OK. OH will do one. His artist will be Steve Albini.
I thought it could be...I don't know if "cathartic" is the right word...but at least positive for OH. He's only recently stopped crying every day. And today we got the invite for the "intimate" celebration of Steve's life from July 26-29, so I guess this countdown will be going on while we're there. Perhaps he can add stuff from the memorial to the write-ups.
I wasn't sure what he'd think so asked him, and he is in!
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Mrs. Rannous
Footballguy
When my dad died, I had a few months to go through my parents' stuff. It was very peaceful and sort of soothing. I was able to go through our lives together that way. Maybe OH will get some of that same experience. I sure hope so.
-OZ-
Footballguy
Same. Also, same applies to Chesney, the doors and the cure for me. I like them all but probably couldn’t do 31 without a lot of research.This is one I'm looking forward to. I have my STP comfort zone, but it's not 31 and unlike most early-mid 90's rock I'm not familiar with most of what's not already in my library.My Stone Temple Pilots list is complete.
Many of my top groups that I felt comfortable enough to rank were already taken in the first 2 rounds or spoken for here in the third, but STP is still one of my favorite bands all time and I had a strong connection to them through some important formative years in my life. They definitely have a strong presence in the soundtrack of my life.
STP was prominent through my 20s, which covered from prime bachelorhood years, to engagement and early married years with my wife, to starting a family. I think they are top 5 of all bands in the amount of times seeing them live (after Rush, Incubus, Foo Fighters, and Linkin Park).
Definitely a group that had a pretty wide range of styles as they progressed through their careers and dealt with different stages of life and addiction. I was never able to connect with STP after Scott’s death, so nothing from their later albums made my list.
I won’t have the same amount of writeups with them as I did in the first 2 rounds for a lot of their songs, but will try to comment on the ones that I had the most connection with.
Tale of the tape by album:
7 - Core (1992)
7 - Purple (1994)
6 - Tiny Music. . . (1996)
2 - No. 4 (1999)
5 - Shanghai-La Dee Da (2001)
1 - MTV Unplugged version of a song from an album above
1 - bonus track from an album above
2 - songs previously unreleased from any studio album
Definitely a few surprises for me when I put my list together.
Hope you enjoy.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I'm interested in whatever people want to throw into the mix. I remember listening to the first 2 albums of DMB a bit in college, but don't think I've heard a single song since then.
-OZ-
Footballguy
I remember thinking Live from Red Rocks was the greatest album ever (slight exaggeration but I loved it). Hopefully you’ll have a few from it.
I’m very happy to see my current favorite live album is on Spotify. My go to for music while on Zwift has been BO’s live from Manchester. I’ll definitely use that version for a few songs.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
How many albums does Mitski have?
Ilov80s
Footballguy
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
Looking forward to this one. I've heard maybe a few songs, but thought she only had 3-4 albums.
tuffnutt
Footballguy
Got my Iron and Wine list pared down to 45 songs... getting to 31 is proving to be a task. Honestly have no idea how familiar they are to you all.
Looking most forward to the STP, The Doors and Dave Mathews lists. Lots of new to me artist this round that im excited to check out
Looking most forward to the STP, The Doors and Dave Mathews lists. Lots of new to me artist this round that im excited to check out
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
On the broader countdowns (US artists, British Isles artists, rest-of-the-world artists, covers), people were able to submit "Last 5 Out" lists, which were revealed before the countdown. Here, those might be considered spoilers (unless your artist is unfamiliar to most/all of the other posters) since we are drawing from a much shallower pool of songs, but some people posted them after the countdown in the previous two of these exercises. I certainly plan to do that.It’s almost worth having an “honorable mention” round. 1-4 songs each.
Don Quixote
Footballguy
I posted a handful beforehand previously, but I think case-by-case and what participant wants to do. Jorge Ben was definitely a case of an unknown, and viewed as limited chance for any spoilers.On the broader countdowns (US artists, British Isles artists, rest-of-the-world artists, covers), people were able to submit "Last 5 Out" lists, which were revealed before the countdown. Here, those might be considered spoilers (unless your artist is unfamiliar to most/all of the other posters) since we are drawing from a much shallower pool of songs, but some people posted them after the countdown in the previous two of these exercises. I certainly plan to do that.It’s almost worth having an “honorable mention” round. 1-4 songs each.
If I post some bonus songs for Curtis Mayfield, I’d probably avoid stuff left off from something like Superfly. Maybe some extra tracks from something that I would consider lesser listened to like The Impressions’ The Young Mods Forgotten Story (because who can’t use some extra songs featuring the combo of Mayfield plus Donny Hathaway as arranger).
-OZ-
Footballguy
BLUE OCTOBER
Blue October is an alternative rock band headquartered in San Marcos, Texas, but is originally from Houston, Texas. The band was formed in 1995 when two former high school friends Justin Furstenfeld (lead vocals) and Ryan Delahoussaye (violin/viola, mandolin, keyboards, and vocals), set out to create an alternative rock band that has since gone on to have twelve Top 40 singles across nine studio albums and six albums reaching the Top 40 charts. (I had no idea they’ve been this successful but they earned it).
Popularized by their platinum-certified album Foiled (2006), which features the hit singles “Hate Me” and “Into the Ocean,” the group has continued to evolve… shifting from a far more pensive sound to one that is more optimistic and reflective of lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Justin Furstenfeld’s transformation
Once known for their stormy dynamic and self-destructive tendencies, Blue October couldn’t be more distinct from the band it once was.
(The first half of the list can best be described as angry rock, the second half gets much more upbeat and happy).
Furstenfeld’s vocal style is characterized by its emotional intensity and range, allowing him to convey a wide spectrum of emotions, from anguish to hope. His live performances are known for their raw, unfiltered delivery, captivating audiences with his powerful stage presence and heartfelt delivery.
In addition to Justin Furstenfeld, Blue October’s current lineup includes Ryan Delahoussaye (violin, keyboard, and vocals), Matt Noveskey (bassguitar and vocals), Jeremy Furstenfeld (drums), and Will Knaak (lead guitar).
History
Studio Albums represented:
History for sale 4 (2003 album, the first I heard and became a fan)
Consent to treatment 4
Home 3
Approaching normal 3
Spinning the truth around 3
This is what I live for 2
I hope you're happy 2
Foiled 2
Sway 1
Any man in America 1
Blue October is an alternative rock band headquartered in San Marcos, Texas, but is originally from Houston, Texas. The band was formed in 1995 when two former high school friends Justin Furstenfeld (lead vocals) and Ryan Delahoussaye (violin/viola, mandolin, keyboards, and vocals), set out to create an alternative rock band that has since gone on to have twelve Top 40 singles across nine studio albums and six albums reaching the Top 40 charts. (I had no idea they’ve been this successful but they earned it).
Popularized by their platinum-certified album Foiled (2006), which features the hit singles “Hate Me” and “Into the Ocean,” the group has continued to evolve… shifting from a far more pensive sound to one that is more optimistic and reflective of lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Justin Furstenfeld’s transformation
Once known for their stormy dynamic and self-destructive tendencies, Blue October couldn’t be more distinct from the band it once was.
(The first half of the list can best be described as angry rock, the second half gets much more upbeat and happy).
Furstenfeld’s vocal style is characterized by its emotional intensity and range, allowing him to convey a wide spectrum of emotions, from anguish to hope. His live performances are known for their raw, unfiltered delivery, captivating audiences with his powerful stage presence and heartfelt delivery.
In addition to Justin Furstenfeld, Blue October’s current lineup includes Ryan Delahoussaye (violin, keyboard, and vocals), Matt Noveskey (bassguitar and vocals), Jeremy Furstenfeld (drums), and Will Knaak (lead guitar).
History
- Justin Furstenfeld: The band's lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter since its formation in 1995. Furstenfeld's emotive vocals and introspective songwriting style are considered key to the band's sound.
- Jeremy Furstenfeld: Plays drums and percussion.
- Ryan Delahoussaye: Plays violin, viola, mandolin, piano, and sings backing vocals.
- Matt Noveskey: Plays bass guitar and sings backing vocals.
- Liz Mulally: Played bass from 1995–1998.
- Brant Coulter: Played lead guitar from 1999–2000.
- Cole Bradshaw: Played lead guitar in 2000.
- Dwayne Casey: Played bass from 2002–2003.
- Piper Skih Dagnino: Played bass from 2003–2004. (She was awesome, not sure what happened to her)
- Julian Mandrake: Played rhythm guitar in 2006 and lead guitar from 2011–2013.
- C.B. Hudson: Played lead guitar from 2000–2010, and again from 2013–2016.
- Matthew "Feathers" Ostrander: Played lead guitar from 2016–2018.
- Will Knaak: Played lead guitar and sang backing vocals from 2018–2022.
- Sus Vasquez: Played lead guitar from 2022–2023
Studio Albums represented:
History for sale 4 (2003 album, the first I heard and became a fan)
Consent to treatment 4
Home 3
Approaching normal 3
Spinning the truth around 3
This is what I live for 2
I hope you're happy 2
Foiled 2
Sway 1
Any man in America 1
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
Combining two things the YouTube algorithm knows me for -- Fanny and The Midnight Special -- here is their 1973 Midnight Special appearance, performing the original "All Mine" and a cover of Randy Newman's "Last Night I Had a Dream." Both appear on their fourth album, Mothers Pride (1973).
www.youtube.com
All Female Rock Band "Fanny" performs at @ The Midnight Special in 1973
Produced by https://The4Muses.com. FANNYFanny was an American rock band, active in the early to mid 1970s. They were one of the first all-female rock groups ...
www.youtube.com
Don Quixote
Footballguy
I’ve currently got 19 albums represented on my list of Curtis Mayfield songs (plus a non-album single from The Impressions days). These include 7 albums with The Impressions, 9 solo albums, and 3 from soundtracks that he wrote, produced, arranged, and played guitar on for other artists.
I’ve got full range from a song released in 1958 when he was 15 years old, to a song from his last album that he recorded lying on his back after he was left paralyzed when the stage lighting fell on him at a concert.
Hopefully even the Mayfield fans here find something new to enjoy.
I’ve got full range from a song released in 1958 when he was 15 years old, to a song from his last album that he recorded lying on his back after he was left paralyzed when the stage lighting fell on him at a concert.
Hopefully even the Mayfield fans here find something new to enjoy.
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
I don't think the French knew what hit them. Fanny perform their covers of Cream's "Badge" and Ike and Tina Turner's "Young and Dumb" on French TV in 1972:
www.youtube.com
Rock Group Fanny on French TV
All female rock group Fanny appears on a French TV program circa 1972 or so. They perform their covers of "Badge" and "Young and Dumb." Audio quality is a bi...
www.youtube.com
John Maddens Lunchbox
Socialism for Dummies
Maybe they do a medley of two of their songs somewhere?
It will come to you, you will have 2-4 songs as possibilities to cut.
What ive done in the past is flog them to death and one will get tiresome or a song you thought was a cut comes back into contention and now you have to cut 2. I have found that easier lol
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
I've got my 31 and the order. Happily, I miscounted and had 30 on the first go, so the song I was most disappointed about cutting made it.
Now working on the introductory essay, which will be very long -- I'm expecting it to exceed the one-post character limit easily. There's a whole lot of sociology to go over in addition to music.
Now working on the introductory essay, which will be very long -- I'm expecting it to exceed the one-post character limit easily. There's a whole lot of sociology to go over in addition to music.
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Tau837
Footballguy
I don't really get the concept of posting last 5-10 out as being spoilers. If there are surprising songs in there, that just means there are (in the list maker's viewpoint) better songs in the top 31. That could mean deeper cuts, which is a good outcome for an exercise like this. Arguably, that just makes the top 31 even more interesting.
Of course, I will go along with the group decision on this, just don't really see any issue there.
Of course, I will go along with the group decision on this, just don't really see any issue there.
krista4
Footballguy
OH will have a "last one out" that isn't going to spoil anything for anyone.
He started working on his list, and I asked him what his #1 would be. He played me the version of it that he's going to select, and then we were both in tears. This is going to be tough but hopefully soothing, as Mrs. R mentioned. In any case, he'll get a chance to share stories about someone he loved.
He started working on his list, and I asked him what his #1 would be. He played me the version of it that he's going to select, and then we were both in tears. This is going to be tough but hopefully soothing, as Mrs. R mentioned. In any case, he'll get a chance to share stories about someone he loved.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
This is an awesome idea, and I am glad he is willing to share it with us. I forget how he knew Steve, and look forward to the posts and songs. I had recently randomly listened to Shellac, which reminded me of OH because of some random draft. I didn't realize the Steve connection or his passing at the time. Sorry to hear of the loss of your friend.
jwb
Footballguy
The Doors part 2
The Doors were Ray Manzarek (keyboards / bass), Robby Krieger (guitar), John Densmore (Drums), and Jim Morrison (vocals).
I’ll focus on the three musicians in this post.
Ray Manzarek
The Doors “sound” has two unique elements – Jim’s deep baritone vocal, and Ray’s keyboard, which takes on an unmistakable circus organ sound.
Ray was the driving force behind the band’s formation – he saw brilliance in Jim’s words and wanted to put them to music. And while all three musicians were into the hippie thing, Ray was the overly-idealistic one saying how their music could deliver a world-changing message.
Ray was a brilliant musician, so much so that when they couldn’t find a bass player, they settled on Ray playing a keyboard bass with his left hand and his signature Vox organ with his right. Although they used a studio bassist from the second album on, he still played double duty in concert.
Ray was also a little older than the other three by 4-5 years, so he kind of took on the more mature / father figure role. And when Jim died, and especially after they disbanded, Ray took it upon himself to champion the Doors legend and Jim’s mystique, constantly hinting that Jim might have faked his death. The other two would roll their eyes and think “yup, that’s good old Ray”.
Robby Krieger
Many people believe Jim wrote all the lyrics, but Robby largely wrote the biggest radio hits, including Light My Fire, Touch Me, Love Her Madly, etc. He never wrote songs before until Jim challenged them all to contribute while the band was forming. Jim said “use universal elements- air, fire, water, etc”. Robby comes back in a day or so with most of “Light My Fire” – Jim adds lines about “wallow in the mire” and “funeral pyre”, Ray does a carnival like intro, and bam, a monster #1 hit.
The Doors are not a guitar-driven band, so there’s few truly notable leads from Robby (Light My Fire comes the closest). But he’s a master at eerie type tunings and sounds, and blues-based bottleneck too. I always likened him to Ringo Starr – not flashy technically, but always right there with what’s needed for the song.
Robby is the chill, quiet guy in the band.
John Densmore
John Densmore is somewhat known as the angry, agitated guy in the Doors. It’s a little unfair because he was mostly agitated with Jim’s drunken behavior and self-destruction, and it’s pretty easy to see why someone would become agitated with him.
John grew up loving Jazz, and learned drums in his school’s marching band, where he played snare. He had a wide range of styles and was very versatile – he could play blues, jazz, rock, Latin, whatever. Not a showman like Keith Moon or particularly charismatic like Ringo, he was pretty content to play whatever was needed for the song, and while he was annoyed with Jim a lot, he also loved playing music with him because Jim could be so reactive to drumming while performing.
John seems the most grounded of the four, and it was he who successfully sued the other two to stop them from using the Doors name for their tour/project in the early 2000’s. He wanted them to call themselves anything but “The Doors”. He also refused to let Cadillac use “Break on Through” in an SUV commercial, turning away millions. He remembered how vehemently Jim was against Buick using “Light My Fire” in the 60’s, so he took the same position now.
Note: that Buick thing is depicted in the Doors movie. It didn’t happen that way. When the commercial was offered, the other three were like “yea, let’s make $$” and voted to do it. Jim, who was unreachable at the time, was angry when he returned and basically said “no, we have artistic integrity” and that was that – the commercial was never made, and the other three eventually ended up agreeing with Jim.
Anyway, there’s the three musicians. Jim gets his own post that I will write soon.
The Doors were Ray Manzarek (keyboards / bass), Robby Krieger (guitar), John Densmore (Drums), and Jim Morrison (vocals).
I’ll focus on the three musicians in this post.
Ray Manzarek
The Doors “sound” has two unique elements – Jim’s deep baritone vocal, and Ray’s keyboard, which takes on an unmistakable circus organ sound.
Ray was the driving force behind the band’s formation – he saw brilliance in Jim’s words and wanted to put them to music. And while all three musicians were into the hippie thing, Ray was the overly-idealistic one saying how their music could deliver a world-changing message.
Ray was a brilliant musician, so much so that when they couldn’t find a bass player, they settled on Ray playing a keyboard bass with his left hand and his signature Vox organ with his right. Although they used a studio bassist from the second album on, he still played double duty in concert.
Ray was also a little older than the other three by 4-5 years, so he kind of took on the more mature / father figure role. And when Jim died, and especially after they disbanded, Ray took it upon himself to champion the Doors legend and Jim’s mystique, constantly hinting that Jim might have faked his death. The other two would roll their eyes and think “yup, that’s good old Ray”.
Robby Krieger
Many people believe Jim wrote all the lyrics, but Robby largely wrote the biggest radio hits, including Light My Fire, Touch Me, Love Her Madly, etc. He never wrote songs before until Jim challenged them all to contribute while the band was forming. Jim said “use universal elements- air, fire, water, etc”. Robby comes back in a day or so with most of “Light My Fire” – Jim adds lines about “wallow in the mire” and “funeral pyre”, Ray does a carnival like intro, and bam, a monster #1 hit.
The Doors are not a guitar-driven band, so there’s few truly notable leads from Robby (Light My Fire comes the closest). But he’s a master at eerie type tunings and sounds, and blues-based bottleneck too. I always likened him to Ringo Starr – not flashy technically, but always right there with what’s needed for the song.
Robby is the chill, quiet guy in the band.
John Densmore
John Densmore is somewhat known as the angry, agitated guy in the Doors. It’s a little unfair because he was mostly agitated with Jim’s drunken behavior and self-destruction, and it’s pretty easy to see why someone would become agitated with him.
John grew up loving Jazz, and learned drums in his school’s marching band, where he played snare. He had a wide range of styles and was very versatile – he could play blues, jazz, rock, Latin, whatever. Not a showman like Keith Moon or particularly charismatic like Ringo, he was pretty content to play whatever was needed for the song, and while he was annoyed with Jim a lot, he also loved playing music with him because Jim could be so reactive to drumming while performing.
John seems the most grounded of the four, and it was he who successfully sued the other two to stop them from using the Doors name for their tour/project in the early 2000’s. He wanted them to call themselves anything but “The Doors”. He also refused to let Cadillac use “Break on Through” in an SUV commercial, turning away millions. He remembered how vehemently Jim was against Buick using “Light My Fire” in the 60’s, so he took the same position now.
Note: that Buick thing is depicted in the Doors movie. It didn’t happen that way. When the commercial was offered, the other three were like “yea, let’s make $$” and voted to do it. Jim, who was unreachable at the time, was angry when he returned and basically said “no, we have artistic integrity” and that was that – the commercial was never made, and the other three eventually ended up agreeing with Jim.
Anyway, there’s the three musicians. Jim gets his own post that I will write soon.
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Yambag
Footballguy
The Slambovian Circus of Dreams
Welcome to Slambovia! Your reaction might be the same as mine when I got invited by a friend to see them live for the first time. What the hell is the Slambovian Circus of Dreams??? Is it a band? Is it a variety show? Is this for real? My friend said that they couldn’t describe them and you just had to come see it for yourself. Well, ever since that first concert, I was hooked and since that day, I have been telling anyone I can about them.
I have to say that doing this song list was a great way to delve even more into their history through interviews and internet sleuthing as there is not a ton out there. I was able to find enough info to write something for each of the 31 songs ranging from song info, musical influences, band members, personal experiences and more.
To kick things off is a bit about the band from Slambovia.com: New York’s Slambovian Circus of Dreams has been coloring ‘outside the lines’ of the Americana genre with their fantastic stories and performances since forming in 1998 in the Hudson Valley of New York. Voted "Best Band" by NY’s Chronogram Magazine in 2022 for their rootsy, rockin’ psychedelia, the Slambovians' deep connection with audiences and exciting live shows are legendary. Musical influences of Dylan, Bowie, Incredible String Band, Syd Barrett, and The Waterboys can be heard.
Joziah (the resident shaman of Slambovia), leads with vocals described as "soothing and bewitching as a snake oil tonic.” Longtime bandmates Tink Lloyd (accordion, cello, mandolin, flute) and guitarist/mandolin wizard Sharkey McEwen bring their magic to the Slambovian brew with “a little help from their friends” - RJ McCarty (keys, bass, sax), Bob Torsello (bass), and Matthew Abourezk (drums).
"Longo, a god of the rock underworld!" – John Platt, WFUV Radio, NY
"The best band since the Beatles" – Jim Pons, bassist: Frank Zappa, John Lennon
"The cool end of Americana" - Maverick Magazine, UK
Welcome to Slambovia! Your reaction might be the same as mine when I got invited by a friend to see them live for the first time. What the hell is the Slambovian Circus of Dreams??? Is it a band? Is it a variety show? Is this for real? My friend said that they couldn’t describe them and you just had to come see it for yourself. Well, ever since that first concert, I was hooked and since that day, I have been telling anyone I can about them.
I have to say that doing this song list was a great way to delve even more into their history through interviews and internet sleuthing as there is not a ton out there. I was able to find enough info to write something for each of the 31 songs ranging from song info, musical influences, band members, personal experiences and more.
To kick things off is a bit about the band from Slambovia.com: New York’s Slambovian Circus of Dreams has been coloring ‘outside the lines’ of the Americana genre with their fantastic stories and performances since forming in 1998 in the Hudson Valley of New York. Voted "Best Band" by NY’s Chronogram Magazine in 2022 for their rootsy, rockin’ psychedelia, the Slambovians' deep connection with audiences and exciting live shows are legendary. Musical influences of Dylan, Bowie, Incredible String Band, Syd Barrett, and The Waterboys can be heard.
Joziah (the resident shaman of Slambovia), leads with vocals described as "soothing and bewitching as a snake oil tonic.” Longtime bandmates Tink Lloyd (accordion, cello, mandolin, flute) and guitarist/mandolin wizard Sharkey McEwen bring their magic to the Slambovian brew with “a little help from their friends” - RJ McCarty (keys, bass, sax), Bob Torsello (bass), and Matthew Abourezk (drums).
"Longo, a god of the rock underworld!" – John Platt, WFUV Radio, NY
"The best band since the Beatles" – Jim Pons, bassist: Frank Zappa, John Lennon
"The cool end of Americana" - Maverick Magazine, UK
kupcho1
Footballguy
One of four artists I've never even heard of (along with Fanny, Blue October and The Tea Party) let alone listened to their music.
I'm going in cold.
-OZ-
Footballguy
That’s the fun part.
Those 3 (obviously other than BO) Mitski, destroyer and strand of oaks don’t ring a bell to me. Quite a few others I’m only vaguely familiar.
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
I’ve actually seen Destroyer and Strand of Oaks live. I saw Strand open for My Morning Jacket. I saw Destroyer open for The New Pornographers. Their frontman, Dan Bejar, is an “auxiliary” member of The New Pornographers and sat in with them.That’s the fun part.
Those 3 (obviously other than BO) Mitski, destroyer and strand of oaks don’t ring a bell to me. Quite a few others I’m only vaguely familiar.
New Binky the Doormat
Footballguy
what is the name of that cool list ranking tool you turned us onto?
Eephus
Footballguy
John Maddens Lunchbox
Socialism for Dummies
Just making sure no one else has the entry form yet. Zegras must have got busy
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
Some light reading for your morning.
FANNY: PART 1
“They were one of the finest f@cking rock bands of their time. They were extraordinary: They wrote everything, they played like motherf@ckers, they were just colossal and wonderful, and nobody’s ever mentioned them. They’re as important as anybody else who’s ever been, ever; it just wasn’t their time. Revivify Fanny. And I will feel that my work is done.” -- David Bowie to Rolling Stone, 1999
“It wasn’t just the pressure. It was the psychic and emotional energy you had to expend to prove over and over that you could play as good as guys, or in a lot of cases, better.” -- June Millington to Rolling Stone, 2018
“If you close your eyes, it’s like listening to the Stones” -- British music journalist Steve Peacock
Fanny was the first all-female band to release an album on a major label, in 1970. They were signed by Reprise Records because they were a curiosity, and they could have disappeared without a second thought after the initial publicity bump. But they didn't, because they turned out to be just as good as any of their hard rock peers in the early 1970s. There were many barriers in their way -- this was a band not just with women, but minority women and queer women, playing loud hard rock, a genre considered at the time to be for men only -- but Fanny surmounted them to release five albums, put four singles on the charts (two in the top 40), perform numerous TV gigs in the U.S. and Europe, and open for some of the biggest names in rock before calling it quits in 1975.
They were left out of the Wennerites' and radio programmers' "classic rock" pantheon, so it took some digging for people who weren't there at the time to discover them, but as all-female bands became less of a rarity over the years, Fanny has been given their due by their successors and some sympathetic ears in the music press. The new attention culminated in a reunion album released in 2018 and a documentary released in 2021. With this exercise, I hope to show why Fanny was one of the best hard-rock acts of its time regardless of gender, race or any other labels. They were just f@cking good, especially as a live act (I've dropped a few breadcrumbs about that in this thread so far).
Fanny's story began in 1961, when June and Jean Millington, the oldest of seven children of a Filipino mother and an American sailor father, moved from the Philippines to Sacramento, California. Feeling ostracized because they were biracial, the Millingtons began writing songs and performing, first as a folk duo, and then, in 1965, as the guitarist (June) and bassist (Jean) of The Svelts, an all-female band that at times included drummers Alice de Buhr (who had moved to Sacramento from Iowa) and Brie Berry (later Brandt, Howard, Howard-Darling and Darling), who would later play in Fanny; Berry was also from a Filipino-American family. Jean, like June, was a guitarist when the band formed, but switched to bass because they needed someone to do it, and no one else was willing.
By 1967, The Svelts were playing gigs all along the West Coast, but the shortly thereafter Millingtons took a break to attend college. De Buhr and other members continued the band and changed its name to Wild Honey. Eventually, they invited the Millingtons to rejoin when they decided to drop out of college and become full-time musicians. During this period, Wild Honey played gigs with The Turtles, The Youngbloods and Creedence Clearwater Revival. In 1969, the band relocated from Sacramento to LA in hopes of securing a record contract.
Disillusioned by "playing all nasty inappropriate little gigs, suffering all the demeaning little scams" and from being disrespected in the male-dominated scene, Wild Honey decided to disband, but not before playing one more time at an open-mic night at the Troubador. In the audience was the secretary of producer Richard Perry, who recommended them to her boss, who was looking for an all-female band to mentor. He arranged for them to come to his studio. “What did Richard see in us? He saw a bunch of good-looking girls rocking their asses off and he said: ‘This is a band that needs to be recorded,’” de Buhr told Louder in 2015.
Guitarist Addie Lee Clement, who had been with the Millingtons and de Buhr since the Svelts days, was part of the band on the fateful open-mic night, but was out of the lineup by the time the band started recording. I don't know what happened there.
Perry convinced Warner Bros. to sign the band, which they did (to their Reprise subsidiary) without hearing them -- their priority was to promote the all-female "gimmick" -- and to round out the lineup, the Millingtons and de Buhr recruited former member Brandt to be percussionist and lead singer, and Nickey Barclay, who belonged to a circuit of session musicians called the Musicians Contract Service and already had a bunch of credits to her name, to be keyboardist. (Barclay was reluctant to join because she had only ever worked with male musicians and was unsure how she would fit in with three women who had worked together for years; this ambivalence would characterize her entire tenure in the group.) Through Perry, they found themselves a manager, Roy Silver, who was a sleazebag even by music-industry standards, and who soon started dating Jean Millington, greatly complicating the band dynamic.
The band renamed themselves Fanny to denote "a female spirit." (The rumor that George Harrison picked the name is untrue.) "I loved that there was a girl’s name in it and we all started trying to think of something similar,” June told Louder in 2015. “Someone called out ‘Fanny’ and it got added to a list of wild, zany, far-out, psychedelic sixties names. A few days later I found out that our manager and producer liked that name too. And just like that we had the name of our band: Fanny.”
“We weren’t aware of the different connotations until we went over to play in Europe,” de Buhr told Louder in 2015 ("Fanny" means vajayjay in British slang). “That’s when everybody started saying: ‘Well, you know… ha-ha-ha, titter-titter.’ We said: ‘Well, sorry, that’s our name. It’s a woman’s name, it’s got nothing to do with that part of the body. So get over it, you pricks!’” (This of course did not prevent Reprise from launching marketing campaigns such as "Get Behind Fanny!")
The band was set up in a house overlooking the Sunset Strip, which the band christened Fanny Hill after the infamous novel, and which became a mecca for hippie parties and such, with the difference that it was very much a "safe space" for women. "The men would have loved that there were so many naked women walking around, but they would not have loved that they wouldn't have a chance with most of them because they were lesbians," June Millington said in the 2021 documentary "Fanny: The Right to Rock." June Millington and de Buhr are lesbians and Barclay is bisexual, but that was not publicized at the time. "While everybody knew ... you didn't talk about it," June said in 2004.
Perry dismissed Brandt from the band because he wanted a self-contained "Fab Four" with everyone singing, writing and playing instruments. June Millington: "That was kind of hard on us because that placed A LOT of mental pressure on us. It was hard enough to be the first all-girl band to make it but to have THAT as a template was crushing."
FANNY: PART 1
“They were one of the finest f@cking rock bands of their time. They were extraordinary: They wrote everything, they played like motherf@ckers, they were just colossal and wonderful, and nobody’s ever mentioned them. They’re as important as anybody else who’s ever been, ever; it just wasn’t their time. Revivify Fanny. And I will feel that my work is done.” -- David Bowie to Rolling Stone, 1999
“It wasn’t just the pressure. It was the psychic and emotional energy you had to expend to prove over and over that you could play as good as guys, or in a lot of cases, better.” -- June Millington to Rolling Stone, 2018
“If you close your eyes, it’s like listening to the Stones” -- British music journalist Steve Peacock
Fanny was the first all-female band to release an album on a major label, in 1970. They were signed by Reprise Records because they were a curiosity, and they could have disappeared without a second thought after the initial publicity bump. But they didn't, because they turned out to be just as good as any of their hard rock peers in the early 1970s. There were many barriers in their way -- this was a band not just with women, but minority women and queer women, playing loud hard rock, a genre considered at the time to be for men only -- but Fanny surmounted them to release five albums, put four singles on the charts (two in the top 40), perform numerous TV gigs in the U.S. and Europe, and open for some of the biggest names in rock before calling it quits in 1975.
They were left out of the Wennerites' and radio programmers' "classic rock" pantheon, so it took some digging for people who weren't there at the time to discover them, but as all-female bands became less of a rarity over the years, Fanny has been given their due by their successors and some sympathetic ears in the music press. The new attention culminated in a reunion album released in 2018 and a documentary released in 2021. With this exercise, I hope to show why Fanny was one of the best hard-rock acts of its time regardless of gender, race or any other labels. They were just f@cking good, especially as a live act (I've dropped a few breadcrumbs about that in this thread so far).
Fanny's story began in 1961, when June and Jean Millington, the oldest of seven children of a Filipino mother and an American sailor father, moved from the Philippines to Sacramento, California. Feeling ostracized because they were biracial, the Millingtons began writing songs and performing, first as a folk duo, and then, in 1965, as the guitarist (June) and bassist (Jean) of The Svelts, an all-female band that at times included drummers Alice de Buhr (who had moved to Sacramento from Iowa) and Brie Berry (later Brandt, Howard, Howard-Darling and Darling), who would later play in Fanny; Berry was also from a Filipino-American family. Jean, like June, was a guitarist when the band formed, but switched to bass because they needed someone to do it, and no one else was willing.
By 1967, The Svelts were playing gigs all along the West Coast, but the shortly thereafter Millingtons took a break to attend college. De Buhr and other members continued the band and changed its name to Wild Honey. Eventually, they invited the Millingtons to rejoin when they decided to drop out of college and become full-time musicians. During this period, Wild Honey played gigs with The Turtles, The Youngbloods and Creedence Clearwater Revival. In 1969, the band relocated from Sacramento to LA in hopes of securing a record contract.
Disillusioned by "playing all nasty inappropriate little gigs, suffering all the demeaning little scams" and from being disrespected in the male-dominated scene, Wild Honey decided to disband, but not before playing one more time at an open-mic night at the Troubador. In the audience was the secretary of producer Richard Perry, who recommended them to her boss, who was looking for an all-female band to mentor. He arranged for them to come to his studio. “What did Richard see in us? He saw a bunch of good-looking girls rocking their asses off and he said: ‘This is a band that needs to be recorded,’” de Buhr told Louder in 2015.
Guitarist Addie Lee Clement, who had been with the Millingtons and de Buhr since the Svelts days, was part of the band on the fateful open-mic night, but was out of the lineup by the time the band started recording. I don't know what happened there.
Perry convinced Warner Bros. to sign the band, which they did (to their Reprise subsidiary) without hearing them -- their priority was to promote the all-female "gimmick" -- and to round out the lineup, the Millingtons and de Buhr recruited former member Brandt to be percussionist and lead singer, and Nickey Barclay, who belonged to a circuit of session musicians called the Musicians Contract Service and already had a bunch of credits to her name, to be keyboardist. (Barclay was reluctant to join because she had only ever worked with male musicians and was unsure how she would fit in with three women who had worked together for years; this ambivalence would characterize her entire tenure in the group.) Through Perry, they found themselves a manager, Roy Silver, who was a sleazebag even by music-industry standards, and who soon started dating Jean Millington, greatly complicating the band dynamic.
The band renamed themselves Fanny to denote "a female spirit." (The rumor that George Harrison picked the name is untrue.) "I loved that there was a girl’s name in it and we all started trying to think of something similar,” June told Louder in 2015. “Someone called out ‘Fanny’ and it got added to a list of wild, zany, far-out, psychedelic sixties names. A few days later I found out that our manager and producer liked that name too. And just like that we had the name of our band: Fanny.”
“We weren’t aware of the different connotations until we went over to play in Europe,” de Buhr told Louder in 2015 ("Fanny" means vajayjay in British slang). “That’s when everybody started saying: ‘Well, you know… ha-ha-ha, titter-titter.’ We said: ‘Well, sorry, that’s our name. It’s a woman’s name, it’s got nothing to do with that part of the body. So get over it, you pricks!’” (This of course did not prevent Reprise from launching marketing campaigns such as "Get Behind Fanny!")
The band was set up in a house overlooking the Sunset Strip, which the band christened Fanny Hill after the infamous novel, and which became a mecca for hippie parties and such, with the difference that it was very much a "safe space" for women. "The men would have loved that there were so many naked women walking around, but they would not have loved that they wouldn't have a chance with most of them because they were lesbians," June Millington said in the 2021 documentary "Fanny: The Right to Rock." June Millington and de Buhr are lesbians and Barclay is bisexual, but that was not publicized at the time. "While everybody knew ... you didn't talk about it," June said in 2004.
Perry dismissed Brandt from the band because he wanted a self-contained "Fab Four" with everyone singing, writing and playing instruments. June Millington: "That was kind of hard on us because that placed A LOT of mental pressure on us. It was hard enough to be the first all-girl band to make it but to have THAT as a template was crushing."
Last edited:
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
FANNY: PART 2
The band began recording in early 1970 with Perry producing and the following personnel:
June Millington on guitar and vocals. By this point, despite being deaf in one ear, she had become an adept player on lead, rhythm and slide, and was a major reason why the band could branch out beyond four-on-the-floor rockers when it wanted to. An avid fan of Motown, she was the leader and primary songwriter of the band until Barclay -- who hated Motown, loved Stax, and was a prolific writer -- arrived, which caused tension throughout the band's tenure. She had the most gentle and limited voice of the three primary singers, but it worked well enough with the right material.
Jean Millington on bass and vocals. As with most hard-rock bands in the early '70s, the bassist wasn't asked to do heavy sonic lifting, but she had good chemistry with de Buhr and the same ease with different styles as her sister. She had by far the best vocal range of the band members, pulling off everything from a powerful wail to a hushed wisp, and was sometimes tapped to sing songs written by other members. She also sang lead on most (but not all) of their covers. She said she did not write as much as June and Barclay because "I was extremely insecure, and there was that whole dynamic of June was my oldest sister and always the leader. I was really scared to see what I could come up with. So, I mean, all that stuff was rolled into that scenario."
Nickey Barclay on keyboards and vocals. Born and raised in the South, with a voice that made it obvious, Barclay (who on her page on Fanny's site says "Nickey Barclay" is not the name she was born with or goes by now) gave the band much of its grit and soul. She aggressively attacked the piano and Hammond organ, but provided more subtle shades when needed. She was the band's most prolific writer for its first four albums -- the people who she worked with and was influenced by will be discussed during her song entries -- and graced most of her compositions with a gruff but compelling bellow not unlike what you heard from some of the male hard-rock frontmen of the time.
Alice de Buhr on drums, percussion and vocals. A powerful player, de Buhr was legitimately one of the best drummers of her time. No qualifiers needed. None of the power of the band's rockers or the flexibility of its midtempo and slower numbers happen without her. I will be linking various of Fanny's TV appearances along the way; she's the one to watch on these. She did not write by herself but has co-writing credits on some of the band's best songs. She also acquitted herself well singing backup, though her only solo lead vocals were arranged purposefully for her limited voice: One was recorded while drunk, and the other was to convey "we're just gonna rock out and not care about how polished we sound." Neither are in my top 31.
Soon after work on the self-titled debut album began, things came to a halt because Barclay was recruited for Joe Cocker's infamous Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour; she appears on the album of the same name. When it was over, she did not want to return to Fanny but was persuaded to -- by Cocker himself, among others. One wonders if the track listing for the first album is a reflection of those negotiations. Barclay has six writing or co-writing credits, compared with four for June, three for Jean and one for de Buhr (and there are two covers). However, the Canadian version of the album is starkly different, as it was taken from the wrong masters and may reflect an earlier version of the running order. Most of the Barclay songs from the final version aren't there, and there are more Millington/Millington songs and covers in their place.
Reprise issued two non-album singles in mid-1970 (though the A-sides and B-sides of both appear on the Canadian version of the debut album) before releasing the debut in December of that year. Perry was known as a producer who made bands sound slicker and softer than they sounded live, and there is certainly evidence of that on the debut album, but most of the offenses are relatively minor -- the songs are not overwhelmed with unnecessary instruments, but some of them have hippie-dippie arrangements that aren't really well-suited to a band that could flex rock power with anyone. “We progressed with each successive record,” de Buhr told Louder in 2015. “Sometimes I cringe when I hear something on the first album and the drum is rushing the beat."
But the debut album did garner the band some respect. Their cover of Cream's "Badge" got some FM radio play and the band opened for a number of acts -- though not for long in the cases of those who were uncomfortable with being blown off the stage by women.
The second album, Charity Ball, with a cover photo shot by actress Candice Bergen, followed quickly in July 1971. In my opinion, this album and its follow-up are Fanny's greatest accomplishments and form much of the case for the band's significance. The hippie-dippie arrangements are gone, the material is more diverse and the band's writing and playing talents are allowed to shine. The album's title track became their first charting single and top 40 hit (peaking at #40 exactly) and to this day is considered their signature song; they end their reunion shows with it. But don't sleep on the rest of the album, as much of it is top-notch and it is well-represented in my top 31.
Nickey Barclay: "I have to say that, for me, the album that came across as strongest and most possessed of a distinctive sound and style was Charity Ball, by a long chalk. I think we were at our peak then, still running on excitement and not yet beginning to feel the long slow burnout that always comes with years of constant touring, and the live recordings from that period ... tend to give weight to that."
After Charity Ball's release, the band opened for Slade, Humble Pie and Jethro Tull and made repeated visits to Europe; on one of these visits, they befriended David Bowie, and would remain in his circle for the rest of their tenure. Perhaps not surprisingly, they were treated with more respect in Europe than they were in the US. Many of the video clips that survive on YouTube from the band's run in the '70s are from European TV appearances. The most renowned among fans are from the German show Beat-Club in 1971 and 1972. They show the band as an absolutely vicious live act, as powerful as any rockers of the time.
(In a way it is unfortunate that so many of the band's gigs were short sets opening for other artists. It meant many of their songs, including some of their best ones, never got into the live rotation -- or if they ever did, there is no surviving evidence of it.)
Also around this time, Barbra Streisand recruited Barclay to play on her album Stoney End, and then, wanting to play with a smaller band, had all of Fanny back her on her follow-up album, Barbra Joan Streisand. And while there were people in the industry who disparaged them, they became friends with a number of their contemporaries including Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, Ry Cooder and the members of Chicago and Sha Na Na. On the other side of the pond, aside from Bowie, top-tier artists who promoted Fanny and/or had them as an opening act included George Harrison, Deep Purple and The Kinks.
The band began recording in early 1970 with Perry producing and the following personnel:
June Millington on guitar and vocals. By this point, despite being deaf in one ear, she had become an adept player on lead, rhythm and slide, and was a major reason why the band could branch out beyond four-on-the-floor rockers when it wanted to. An avid fan of Motown, she was the leader and primary songwriter of the band until Barclay -- who hated Motown, loved Stax, and was a prolific writer -- arrived, which caused tension throughout the band's tenure. She had the most gentle and limited voice of the three primary singers, but it worked well enough with the right material.
Jean Millington on bass and vocals. As with most hard-rock bands in the early '70s, the bassist wasn't asked to do heavy sonic lifting, but she had good chemistry with de Buhr and the same ease with different styles as her sister. She had by far the best vocal range of the band members, pulling off everything from a powerful wail to a hushed wisp, and was sometimes tapped to sing songs written by other members. She also sang lead on most (but not all) of their covers. She said she did not write as much as June and Barclay because "I was extremely insecure, and there was that whole dynamic of June was my oldest sister and always the leader. I was really scared to see what I could come up with. So, I mean, all that stuff was rolled into that scenario."
Nickey Barclay on keyboards and vocals. Born and raised in the South, with a voice that made it obvious, Barclay (who on her page on Fanny's site says "Nickey Barclay" is not the name she was born with or goes by now) gave the band much of its grit and soul. She aggressively attacked the piano and Hammond organ, but provided more subtle shades when needed. She was the band's most prolific writer for its first four albums -- the people who she worked with and was influenced by will be discussed during her song entries -- and graced most of her compositions with a gruff but compelling bellow not unlike what you heard from some of the male hard-rock frontmen of the time.
Alice de Buhr on drums, percussion and vocals. A powerful player, de Buhr was legitimately one of the best drummers of her time. No qualifiers needed. None of the power of the band's rockers or the flexibility of its midtempo and slower numbers happen without her. I will be linking various of Fanny's TV appearances along the way; she's the one to watch on these. She did not write by herself but has co-writing credits on some of the band's best songs. She also acquitted herself well singing backup, though her only solo lead vocals were arranged purposefully for her limited voice: One was recorded while drunk, and the other was to convey "we're just gonna rock out and not care about how polished we sound." Neither are in my top 31.
Soon after work on the self-titled debut album began, things came to a halt because Barclay was recruited for Joe Cocker's infamous Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour; she appears on the album of the same name. When it was over, she did not want to return to Fanny but was persuaded to -- by Cocker himself, among others. One wonders if the track listing for the first album is a reflection of those negotiations. Barclay has six writing or co-writing credits, compared with four for June, three for Jean and one for de Buhr (and there are two covers). However, the Canadian version of the album is starkly different, as it was taken from the wrong masters and may reflect an earlier version of the running order. Most of the Barclay songs from the final version aren't there, and there are more Millington/Millington songs and covers in their place.
Reprise issued two non-album singles in mid-1970 (though the A-sides and B-sides of both appear on the Canadian version of the debut album) before releasing the debut in December of that year. Perry was known as a producer who made bands sound slicker and softer than they sounded live, and there is certainly evidence of that on the debut album, but most of the offenses are relatively minor -- the songs are not overwhelmed with unnecessary instruments, but some of them have hippie-dippie arrangements that aren't really well-suited to a band that could flex rock power with anyone. “We progressed with each successive record,” de Buhr told Louder in 2015. “Sometimes I cringe when I hear something on the first album and the drum is rushing the beat."
But the debut album did garner the band some respect. Their cover of Cream's "Badge" got some FM radio play and the band opened for a number of acts -- though not for long in the cases of those who were uncomfortable with being blown off the stage by women.
The second album, Charity Ball, with a cover photo shot by actress Candice Bergen, followed quickly in July 1971. In my opinion, this album and its follow-up are Fanny's greatest accomplishments and form much of the case for the band's significance. The hippie-dippie arrangements are gone, the material is more diverse and the band's writing and playing talents are allowed to shine. The album's title track became their first charting single and top 40 hit (peaking at #40 exactly) and to this day is considered their signature song; they end their reunion shows with it. But don't sleep on the rest of the album, as much of it is top-notch and it is well-represented in my top 31.
Nickey Barclay: "I have to say that, for me, the album that came across as strongest and most possessed of a distinctive sound and style was Charity Ball, by a long chalk. I think we were at our peak then, still running on excitement and not yet beginning to feel the long slow burnout that always comes with years of constant touring, and the live recordings from that period ... tend to give weight to that."
After Charity Ball's release, the band opened for Slade, Humble Pie and Jethro Tull and made repeated visits to Europe; on one of these visits, they befriended David Bowie, and would remain in his circle for the rest of their tenure. Perhaps not surprisingly, they were treated with more respect in Europe than they were in the US. Many of the video clips that survive on YouTube from the band's run in the '70s are from European TV appearances. The most renowned among fans are from the German show Beat-Club in 1971 and 1972. They show the band as an absolutely vicious live act, as powerful as any rockers of the time.
(In a way it is unfortunate that so many of the band's gigs were short sets opening for other artists. It meant many of their songs, including some of their best ones, never got into the live rotation -- or if they ever did, there is no surviving evidence of it.)
Also around this time, Barbra Streisand recruited Barclay to play on her album Stoney End, and then, wanting to play with a smaller band, had all of Fanny back her on her follow-up album, Barbra Joan Streisand. And while there were people in the industry who disparaged them, they became friends with a number of their contemporaries including Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, Ry Cooder and the members of Chicago and Sha Na Na. On the other side of the pond, aside from Bowie, top-tier artists who promoted Fanny and/or had them as an opening act included George Harrison, Deep Purple and The Kinks.
Last edited:
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
FANNY: PART 3
Riding these highs, Fanny was at their peak for their third album, Fanny Hill, recorded at the Beatles' Apple Studios and again released quickly after its predecessor, coming out in February 1972. Rolling Stones sidemen Bobby Keys and Jim Price, who Barclay knew from the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, contributed horns to some tracks. The album gained notice for its innovative covers of Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar" (which became their second charting single, peaking at US #85) and the Beatles' "Hey Bulldog" (for which they wrote an extra verse that was approved by the Beatles). Another cover, Ike and Tina Turner's "Young and Dumb," was recorded around this time and released as a non-album single later in 1972 (and banned by the BBC for being "too provocative"). But the originals stand out as well, and form an outstanding blend of rock, funk, acoustic singer-songwriter stuff and gospel. "Masterpiece" may be overstating it, but Fanny Hill is one of the great lost albums of the '70s, and 9 of its 11 tracks appear in my top 31. Oh, and Rolling Stone gave it a rave review. They were often wrong, but not this time.
This should have been the jumping-off point for a leap into the next tier of success. But there was tension between what the band wanted to be and what its label wanted it to be. There was also tension within the band about musical direction and control.
“A lot of what was difficult in the band dynamic was down to us being really young,” Jean Millington told Louder in 2015. “We had no one we could really talk to and there was a lot of internal pressure. We ended up having quite a few group-encounter sessions to try and work things out. There was just so much outside pressure to release albums, tour hard and put on great shows, it brought out the inherent insecurities within us.”
Not helping was that the label wanted to promote the band as sex symbols, which the members were not comfortable with. Nor helpful was a toxic relationship with their manager.
Nickey Barclay told technodyke.com: "We had the Manager From Hell. I could write a whole book about Fanny’s manager, Roy Silver. Someone should, because he was the archetype of the crooked, sly, ego-ridden, manipulative band manager. Not to put too fine a point on it, the guy was a b@stard. He screwed us sideways – literally, in the case of Jean, because he seduced her and installed her in his Beverly Hills mansion and poured a Shakespearean amount of ‘poison’ in her ear. Having Jean in his bed and at his beck and call meant that the Millington sisters couldn’t stand united, so he was able to mess us around any way he pleased. I could tell you stories that would curl your hair – all of them provable, since the only way I could eventually get out of what was effectively an indentured servitude contract to him was to spend months gathering hard evidence of his rip-offs and misdeeds – that sonofab!tch was the main reason I left the Hollywood session circuit, and the music business altogether. I still get the shudders thinking about him."
So, instead of riding a wave of confidence, Fanny entered sessions for their fourth album plagued by conflict and doubt. Some of the members no longer wanted to work with Perry. Barclay: "Silver and Richard Perry worked as a team to dollify our sound and to keep us from having any *real* say in how we were presented to the world. May they both roast."
June Millington has more fond memories of Perry's work: "In hindsight, I think that Richard actually did a really good job. And I can only say that because I’ve become a record producer myself and I understand the things you kind of have to go through on the other side of the glass. We really didn’t have the chops. It would have been great if we could have been captured a little bit more with a live feel because one of the things that was a constant remark from fans and audience members was that we were so much better live than we were on record. We must have heard that hundreds of times. So there was obviously something that didn’t get translated and part of it was that we were not allowed to play in that same way in the studio. However, having said that, I gotta say that the records now sound really good."
Riding these highs, Fanny was at their peak for their third album, Fanny Hill, recorded at the Beatles' Apple Studios and again released quickly after its predecessor, coming out in February 1972. Rolling Stones sidemen Bobby Keys and Jim Price, who Barclay knew from the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, contributed horns to some tracks. The album gained notice for its innovative covers of Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar" (which became their second charting single, peaking at US #85) and the Beatles' "Hey Bulldog" (for which they wrote an extra verse that was approved by the Beatles). Another cover, Ike and Tina Turner's "Young and Dumb," was recorded around this time and released as a non-album single later in 1972 (and banned by the BBC for being "too provocative"). But the originals stand out as well, and form an outstanding blend of rock, funk, acoustic singer-songwriter stuff and gospel. "Masterpiece" may be overstating it, but Fanny Hill is one of the great lost albums of the '70s, and 9 of its 11 tracks appear in my top 31. Oh, and Rolling Stone gave it a rave review. They were often wrong, but not this time.
This should have been the jumping-off point for a leap into the next tier of success. But there was tension between what the band wanted to be and what its label wanted it to be. There was also tension within the band about musical direction and control.
“A lot of what was difficult in the band dynamic was down to us being really young,” Jean Millington told Louder in 2015. “We had no one we could really talk to and there was a lot of internal pressure. We ended up having quite a few group-encounter sessions to try and work things out. There was just so much outside pressure to release albums, tour hard and put on great shows, it brought out the inherent insecurities within us.”
Not helping was that the label wanted to promote the band as sex symbols, which the members were not comfortable with. Nor helpful was a toxic relationship with their manager.
Nickey Barclay told technodyke.com: "We had the Manager From Hell. I could write a whole book about Fanny’s manager, Roy Silver. Someone should, because he was the archetype of the crooked, sly, ego-ridden, manipulative band manager. Not to put too fine a point on it, the guy was a b@stard. He screwed us sideways – literally, in the case of Jean, because he seduced her and installed her in his Beverly Hills mansion and poured a Shakespearean amount of ‘poison’ in her ear. Having Jean in his bed and at his beck and call meant that the Millington sisters couldn’t stand united, so he was able to mess us around any way he pleased. I could tell you stories that would curl your hair – all of them provable, since the only way I could eventually get out of what was effectively an indentured servitude contract to him was to spend months gathering hard evidence of his rip-offs and misdeeds – that sonofab!tch was the main reason I left the Hollywood session circuit, and the music business altogether. I still get the shudders thinking about him."
So, instead of riding a wave of confidence, Fanny entered sessions for their fourth album plagued by conflict and doubt. Some of the members no longer wanted to work with Perry. Barclay: "Silver and Richard Perry worked as a team to dollify our sound and to keep us from having any *real* say in how we were presented to the world. May they both roast."
June Millington has more fond memories of Perry's work: "In hindsight, I think that Richard actually did a really good job. And I can only say that because I’ve become a record producer myself and I understand the things you kind of have to go through on the other side of the glass. We really didn’t have the chops. It would have been great if we could have been captured a little bit more with a live feel because one of the things that was a constant remark from fans and audience members was that we were so much better live than we were on record. We must have heard that hundreds of times. So there was obviously something that didn’t get translated and part of it was that we were not allowed to play in that same way in the studio. However, having said that, I gotta say that the records now sound really good."
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
FANNY: PART 4
The only person available to produce that everyone could agree on was Todd Rundgren, whom they had opened for at a few shows.
This could have been a match made in heaven, as Rundgren is a gifted producer and arranger with a keen melodic ear. But he and the band weren't really on the same page. Only a few tracks on Mothers Pride, released in February 1973, display the hard-charging rock that was Fanny's calling card. And the slower, more mellow songs are mostly not blessed with the chill-inducing melodies that Rundgren was known for coaxing out of himself and others.
In addition to the material not seeming as inspired as it was on the first three albums, the studio conditions may have played a role. According to the Right to Rock documentary, the studio was oppressively hot, to the point where de Buhr recorded her drum parts topless because any other way was too uncomfortable. That could have sapped everyone's energy and creativity. Regardless, the Millingtons wanted a more raw, live-sounding mix than what Rundgren gave them. "When it came to mixing the album, [Rundgren] essentially locked us out of the studio," Jean Millington told technodyke.com in 2003. According to several interviews after the fact, Rundgren wanted to finish the album quickly so he could start recording with his own band, so he mixed it hastily without input from anyone else.
Mothers Pride produced no charting singles and didn't otherwise boost the band's stature, and Fanny started to fall apart by the end of 1973. June Millington had a nervous breakdown propelled by a number of factors, including exhaustion, pressure to dress and act like a sex symbol, conflict with Barclay over the band's musical direction (June's love of Motown and Barclay's hatred of it was a fight that was never resolved) and, she stated many years after the fact, race-related harassment. That led her to quit the band.
“I couldn’t eat or sleep, my body just gave up,” June told Louder in 2015. “People assumed it was down to drugs, but it wasn’t. All we did was rehearse or go on the road or record. I was just really tired and I snapped under the strain. It was very scary. I didn’t want to leave Jean. I didn’t want to leave the band after we’d worked so hard. It was a pretty terrible decision to make. But I just couldn’t continue. I was lost.”
Jean Millington: "When you have two extremely powerful personalities who are extremely insecure, it’s a recipe for disaster. Both June and Nickey are extremely powerful people with tremendous insecurity, and so then a lot of defensiveness and miscommunication and all that kind of thing. So I think in the long run, it really hurt the band."
June did give her blessing to Jean and Barclay to continue the band, and they recruited Patti Quatro, sister of Suzi and a former member of the all-female bands The Pleasure Seekers and Cradle, as Fanny's new guitarist. But not long after, de Buhr also left.
“Once June quit, I really didn’t want to be in Fanny without her,” de Buhr told Louder in 2015. “Patti Quatro joined the line-up but she wasn’t June. Her guitar sound was different, she played different kinds of leads and it wasn’t interesting to me.”
For the third time, Brie Brandt, now known as Brie Howard after marrying James Newton Howard -- then a session musician, soon to be a member of Elton John's band and now a film composer -- joined Fanny, replacing de Buhr. Keeping with the theme of change, the new lineup switched to Casablanca, the fledgling label best known as the home of KISS.
The only person available to produce that everyone could agree on was Todd Rundgren, whom they had opened for at a few shows.
This could have been a match made in heaven, as Rundgren is a gifted producer and arranger with a keen melodic ear. But he and the band weren't really on the same page. Only a few tracks on Mothers Pride, released in February 1973, display the hard-charging rock that was Fanny's calling card. And the slower, more mellow songs are mostly not blessed with the chill-inducing melodies that Rundgren was known for coaxing out of himself and others.
In addition to the material not seeming as inspired as it was on the first three albums, the studio conditions may have played a role. According to the Right to Rock documentary, the studio was oppressively hot, to the point where de Buhr recorded her drum parts topless because any other way was too uncomfortable. That could have sapped everyone's energy and creativity. Regardless, the Millingtons wanted a more raw, live-sounding mix than what Rundgren gave them. "When it came to mixing the album, [Rundgren] essentially locked us out of the studio," Jean Millington told technodyke.com in 2003. According to several interviews after the fact, Rundgren wanted to finish the album quickly so he could start recording with his own band, so he mixed it hastily without input from anyone else.
Mothers Pride produced no charting singles and didn't otherwise boost the band's stature, and Fanny started to fall apart by the end of 1973. June Millington had a nervous breakdown propelled by a number of factors, including exhaustion, pressure to dress and act like a sex symbol, conflict with Barclay over the band's musical direction (June's love of Motown and Barclay's hatred of it was a fight that was never resolved) and, she stated many years after the fact, race-related harassment. That led her to quit the band.
“I couldn’t eat or sleep, my body just gave up,” June told Louder in 2015. “People assumed it was down to drugs, but it wasn’t. All we did was rehearse or go on the road or record. I was just really tired and I snapped under the strain. It was very scary. I didn’t want to leave Jean. I didn’t want to leave the band after we’d worked so hard. It was a pretty terrible decision to make. But I just couldn’t continue. I was lost.”
Jean Millington: "When you have two extremely powerful personalities who are extremely insecure, it’s a recipe for disaster. Both June and Nickey are extremely powerful people with tremendous insecurity, and so then a lot of defensiveness and miscommunication and all that kind of thing. So I think in the long run, it really hurt the band."
June did give her blessing to Jean and Barclay to continue the band, and they recruited Patti Quatro, sister of Suzi and a former member of the all-female bands The Pleasure Seekers and Cradle, as Fanny's new guitarist. But not long after, de Buhr also left.
“Once June quit, I really didn’t want to be in Fanny without her,” de Buhr told Louder in 2015. “Patti Quatro joined the line-up but she wasn’t June. Her guitar sound was different, she played different kinds of leads and it wasn’t interesting to me.”
For the third time, Brie Brandt, now known as Brie Howard after marrying James Newton Howard -- then a session musician, soon to be a member of Elton John's band and now a film composer -- joined Fanny, replacing de Buhr. Keeping with the theme of change, the new lineup switched to Casablanca, the fledgling label best known as the home of KISS.
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
FANNY: PART 5
In that context, Fanny's final album and its only one for Casablanca, Rock and Roll Survivors, released in the spring of 1974, makes perfect sense -- it's essentially a KISS record made by women. In the context of the band's first four albums, it does not. It is especially a stark contrast from Mothers Pride: Loud, bright, augmented by extra synthesizers (some of which were played by Brie's husband), glammy, metallic and over-the-top. But also quite rhythmic and melodic -- some of the songs incorporate elements of doo-w0p and '50s pop. (I wonder if Rundgren would have made them sound like this if he had worked with them AFTER he had worked with Meatloaf.) To go along with the amped-up, kitchen-sink sound, the band got all glammed up with their hair, clothes and makeup for the album art and live appearances.
Rock and Roll Survivors, produced by Casablanca's house producer Vini Poncia, received poor reviews upon release, baffling critics and some fans. The band has trashed it as well. "I'm not particularly proud of the album," Jean Millington said in 2003. "Musically, I think it's the weakest album out of all the albums ... but for the time, it was happening. It was a rock and roll glam show." Barclay in 2002 called it "a crock of sh!t" and said Poncia made them sound like "featherweight sugarcoated pop dollies."
Jean: "I don’t think we were ever produced properly. We didn’t know enough at that time and/or have enough confidence in ourselves to really step up and say, “No, that’s not all right with us”.
But IMO it has aged surprisingly well. The turns that hard rock and metal would take in the late '70s and '80s, for better and for worse, are actually anticipated here. Quatro's playing does not have the diversity of June's, but she does the glam-metal riffage perfectly. And the band's outfits presaged the costuming of 1980s Whitesnake videos!
Also in contrast to Reprise, Casablanca had a 1.000 batting average at getting the band's singles to chart. The first, a cover of The Bell Notes' "I've Had It," reached US #79. But the big story was the second one.
Despite being the songwriter holdovers, Barclay and Jean Millington contributed only three originals to Rock and Roll Survivors. Quatro wrote four and the other three tracks were covers (and in contrast to the first four albums, here, the covers were the weaker tracks). Jean's only original, "Butter Boy," was inspired in part by her brief time dating Bowie. Immensely catchy, it became Fanny's highest-charting single at US #29.
But by the time it hit, the band was over.
The creative tensions that had been brewing boiled over by late 1974, leading Barclay and Howard to leave; technically, Silver fired Barclay for doing "unauthorized" session work. Jean and Quatro played a few gigs with Cam Davis on drums before Quatro left in early 1975, effectively ending the band.
Jean reconvened with June and Howard, and with a keyboardist and a percussionist, they toured in 1975 under the name LA All-Stars to try to capitalize on the success of "Butter Boy," though they declined to play pre-Rock and Roll Survivors Fanny material. They were offered a record deal by Arista -- but only if they used the Fanny name. June refused to do that, and the band came to an end for good ... until 2016.
Between 1975 and 2016...
June Millington toured and collaborated with feminist singer/songwriter Cris Williamson for many years starting in 1976. She has released four solo albums (and another four in collaboration with Jean) and produced and/or engineered dozens of records in the lesbian/feminist music movement. With her partner Anne Hackler, she founded The Institute for Musical Arts (IMA), a nonprofit organization to support women in music and music-related businesses.
Jean Millington -- now known as Jean Millington-Adamian -- sang on Bowie's "Fame" and in the late '70s was briefly married to his guitarist Earl Slick. She recorded three duo albums with June -- she first met her current husband Leo Adamian when he played drums on the first one -- and one with a six-piece band including her and June called Slammin' Babes. She has worked as an herbalist when not doing music projects.
Nickey Barclay played on Keith Moon's 1975 solo album Two Sides of the Moon (which includes a cover of her Fanny song "Solid Gold", the one with the drunk lead vocal by de Buhr) and released a solo album in 1976 (which she later disavowed). She moved to England in the '80s and formed a band there, which made some recordings that were never released. She moved to Australia and, due to disillusionment with the industry and health issues from an autoimmune disease, ended her career in music long ago. "No, I won’t be reuniting with the other members of Fanny, now or ever," she wrote on the band's website.
Alice de Buhr moved behind the scenes after leaving Fanny, working in mundane day jobs at first but then in marketing for a number of different labels. On her page of Fanny's website, she said she quit performing because her partner at the time was jealous of the attention she got from it. While at A&M, she promoted The Go-Gos, who cited Fanny as an influence. She said: "It was kind of interesting to watch myself work through the emotions of watching them become stars, you know, and it should have been us. But at the same time, every song they wrote had a hook in it."
Brie Brandt/Howard/Howard-Darling/Darling remained in the music industry after leaving Fanny. She was drummer and co-lead vocalist for American Girls, an all-female band that released an album in 1986, and drummer/singer for Boxing Gandhis, a band she founded in the '90s with third and current husband Dave Darling. That band released two albums in the '90s and a third in 2019. She has toured as a percussionist and backing singer for Carole King, Jimmy Buffett and Robert Palmer.
Patti Quatro made a couple of solo albums and pursued session work and modeling and has occasionally reunited with Suzi and her other sisters for performances. She now works in publishing.
In that context, Fanny's final album and its only one for Casablanca, Rock and Roll Survivors, released in the spring of 1974, makes perfect sense -- it's essentially a KISS record made by women. In the context of the band's first four albums, it does not. It is especially a stark contrast from Mothers Pride: Loud, bright, augmented by extra synthesizers (some of which were played by Brie's husband), glammy, metallic and over-the-top. But also quite rhythmic and melodic -- some of the songs incorporate elements of doo-w0p and '50s pop. (I wonder if Rundgren would have made them sound like this if he had worked with them AFTER he had worked with Meatloaf.) To go along with the amped-up, kitchen-sink sound, the band got all glammed up with their hair, clothes and makeup for the album art and live appearances.
Rock and Roll Survivors, produced by Casablanca's house producer Vini Poncia, received poor reviews upon release, baffling critics and some fans. The band has trashed it as well. "I'm not particularly proud of the album," Jean Millington said in 2003. "Musically, I think it's the weakest album out of all the albums ... but for the time, it was happening. It was a rock and roll glam show." Barclay in 2002 called it "a crock of sh!t" and said Poncia made them sound like "featherweight sugarcoated pop dollies."
Jean: "I don’t think we were ever produced properly. We didn’t know enough at that time and/or have enough confidence in ourselves to really step up and say, “No, that’s not all right with us”.
But IMO it has aged surprisingly well. The turns that hard rock and metal would take in the late '70s and '80s, for better and for worse, are actually anticipated here. Quatro's playing does not have the diversity of June's, but she does the glam-metal riffage perfectly. And the band's outfits presaged the costuming of 1980s Whitesnake videos!
Also in contrast to Reprise, Casablanca had a 1.000 batting average at getting the band's singles to chart. The first, a cover of The Bell Notes' "I've Had It," reached US #79. But the big story was the second one.
Despite being the songwriter holdovers, Barclay and Jean Millington contributed only three originals to Rock and Roll Survivors. Quatro wrote four and the other three tracks were covers (and in contrast to the first four albums, here, the covers were the weaker tracks). Jean's only original, "Butter Boy," was inspired in part by her brief time dating Bowie. Immensely catchy, it became Fanny's highest-charting single at US #29.
But by the time it hit, the band was over.
The creative tensions that had been brewing boiled over by late 1974, leading Barclay and Howard to leave; technically, Silver fired Barclay for doing "unauthorized" session work. Jean and Quatro played a few gigs with Cam Davis on drums before Quatro left in early 1975, effectively ending the band.
Jean reconvened with June and Howard, and with a keyboardist and a percussionist, they toured in 1975 under the name LA All-Stars to try to capitalize on the success of "Butter Boy," though they declined to play pre-Rock and Roll Survivors Fanny material. They were offered a record deal by Arista -- but only if they used the Fanny name. June refused to do that, and the band came to an end for good ... until 2016.
Between 1975 and 2016...
June Millington toured and collaborated with feminist singer/songwriter Cris Williamson for many years starting in 1976. She has released four solo albums (and another four in collaboration with Jean) and produced and/or engineered dozens of records in the lesbian/feminist music movement. With her partner Anne Hackler, she founded The Institute for Musical Arts (IMA), a nonprofit organization to support women in music and music-related businesses.
Jean Millington -- now known as Jean Millington-Adamian -- sang on Bowie's "Fame" and in the late '70s was briefly married to his guitarist Earl Slick. She recorded three duo albums with June -- she first met her current husband Leo Adamian when he played drums on the first one -- and one with a six-piece band including her and June called Slammin' Babes. She has worked as an herbalist when not doing music projects.
Nickey Barclay played on Keith Moon's 1975 solo album Two Sides of the Moon (which includes a cover of her Fanny song "Solid Gold", the one with the drunk lead vocal by de Buhr) and released a solo album in 1976 (which she later disavowed). She moved to England in the '80s and formed a band there, which made some recordings that were never released. She moved to Australia and, due to disillusionment with the industry and health issues from an autoimmune disease, ended her career in music long ago. "No, I won’t be reuniting with the other members of Fanny, now or ever," she wrote on the band's website.
Alice de Buhr moved behind the scenes after leaving Fanny, working in mundane day jobs at first but then in marketing for a number of different labels. On her page of Fanny's website, she said she quit performing because her partner at the time was jealous of the attention she got from it. While at A&M, she promoted The Go-Gos, who cited Fanny as an influence. She said: "It was kind of interesting to watch myself work through the emotions of watching them become stars, you know, and it should have been us. But at the same time, every song they wrote had a hook in it."
Brie Brandt/Howard/Howard-Darling/Darling remained in the music industry after leaving Fanny. She was drummer and co-lead vocalist for American Girls, an all-female band that released an album in 1986, and drummer/singer for Boxing Gandhis, a band she founded in the '90s with third and current husband Dave Darling. That band released two albums in the '90s and a third in 2019. She has toured as a percussionist and backing singer for Carole King, Jimmy Buffett and Robert Palmer.
Patti Quatro made a couple of solo albums and pursued session work and modeling and has occasionally reunited with Suzi and her other sisters for performances. She now works in publishing.
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Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
FANNY: PART 6
The only Fanny activity between 1975 and 2016 was the release of a live album, Fanny Live (also called Fanny: Live in 1972) in 1998 (it appears to be out of print and not on YouTube or Spotify) and of a box set of their Reprise recordings, First Time in a Long Time -- The Reprise Recordings, in 2002 (any non-album Spotify links I provide come from here or the Beat-Club live album).
Then, one night in 2016, Darling sat in with the Millingtons at a show of theirs. They decided to work together again, and formed what is technically an offshoot band, Fanny Walked the Earth, but which fans (and Wikipedia) consider to be the latest version of Fanny.
The sessions for Fanny Walked the Earth's self-titled album, produced by Darling's husband Dave and released in March 2018, were the impetus for a documentary by Bobbi Jo Hart called Fanny: The Right to Rock. In addition to footage of the sessions, it included interviews about the band's history and legacy with all band members except the reclusive Barclay, others who were there at the time, and younger musicians who have been influenced by them. Even Rundgren, whose relationship with them was strained ("He was a complete jerk," Jean said many years later), gives them their due.
The Fanny Walked the Earth album turned out surprisingly well considering it came almost 45 years since the band last worked together. It is nowhere near as exciting as the '70s records, but it is competent throughout and never once enters embarrassing territory. None of its tracks made my top 31, but its best song is in my Last 5 Out. One song features a cavalcade of guests including de Buhr and Quatro as well as a host of other women rockers, including members of The Bangles and The Go-Gos. Side 1 mostly concerns itself with girl-power platitudes and self-mythologizing, but the more lyrically diverse Side 2 is where the most interesting tracks lie.
The release of the album, and word that a documentary about them was in progress, gave Fanny a new wave of recognition. But there wasn't as much momentum as there could have been because life got in the way. After the album was finished but before its release, and while the filming of the documentary was still in progress, Jean Millington-Adamian suffered a debilitating stroke, which left the band unable to promote the album beyond press interviews. By the time she recovered enough to consider performance, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
The documentary was released in 2021, winning Best Canadian Film at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival and an audience award at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and airing on PBS, which is where I saw it. It led to another round of appreciative press for the band.
The band did reconvene for five gigs in California in May 2023, during which Jean sang from a wheelchair, unable to move her right arm and leg. (In a nod to the Bowie quote above, the run was called the Revivify 50th Anniversary Tour.) The lineup for these shows was Jean on vocals, June and Quatro on guitar and vocals, Darling and de Buhr on drums, percussion and vocals (for the Rock and Roll Survivors and Fanny Walked the Earth songs, Howard played drums and de Buhr played tambourine or cowbell; for the other songs, they switched), and Lee John Madeloni (Jean's son) and Mia Huggs (a graduate of June's IMA) on bass. There was no keyboardist. A video of the last of these shows, in Sacramento, hometown of the Millingtons and Darling, is on YouTube in its entirety.
Mere weeks ago, after years of the band attempting to obtain the rights (Jean Millington mentioned the effort in a 2009 interview), the legendary Beat-Club recordings were released under the name "Live on Beat Club '71-'72." These performances make as good a case as any for the band's merit, and some songs in my top 31 will be represented by their Beat-Club versions.
I hope I will give you reason to at the very least give Fanny's material a chance and hopefully come to understand how good they were, especially as a live band, and why they should occupy an important place in rock history. This undertaking comes at a fortunate time, as, in contrast to most of their peer bands, all members are still alive, and what may be their greatest performance has just gotten an official release. As the review of the documentary in The Spool stated: "The beauty of Fanny: The Right to Rock is that it's being released now - long enough since their peak that the band can tell their story on their own terms, and early enough that they're very much around to receive their long-overdue flowers." That's what I hope to accomplish here as well.
Albums:
Fanny (1970): 5
Charity Ball (1971): 7
Fanny Hill (1972): 9
Mothers Pride (1973): 3
Rock and Roll Survivors (1974): 4
Fanny Walked the Earth (2018): 0
Other: 3
Some songs will be represented by live versions.
Writers (does not add up to 31 due to co-writes):
Nickey Barclay: 13
June Millington: 10
Jean Millington: 8
Covers: 6
Alice de Buhr: 3
Patti Quatro: 2
Lead vocals (does not add up to 31 due to sharing):
Jean Millington: 18
Nickey Barclay: 13
June Millington: 12
Patti Quatro: 2
Alice de Buhr: 1
The only Fanny activity between 1975 and 2016 was the release of a live album, Fanny Live (also called Fanny: Live in 1972) in 1998 (it appears to be out of print and not on YouTube or Spotify) and of a box set of their Reprise recordings, First Time in a Long Time -- The Reprise Recordings, in 2002 (any non-album Spotify links I provide come from here or the Beat-Club live album).
Then, one night in 2016, Darling sat in with the Millingtons at a show of theirs. They decided to work together again, and formed what is technically an offshoot band, Fanny Walked the Earth, but which fans (and Wikipedia) consider to be the latest version of Fanny.
The sessions for Fanny Walked the Earth's self-titled album, produced by Darling's husband Dave and released in March 2018, were the impetus for a documentary by Bobbi Jo Hart called Fanny: The Right to Rock. In addition to footage of the sessions, it included interviews about the band's history and legacy with all band members except the reclusive Barclay, others who were there at the time, and younger musicians who have been influenced by them. Even Rundgren, whose relationship with them was strained ("He was a complete jerk," Jean said many years later), gives them their due.
The Fanny Walked the Earth album turned out surprisingly well considering it came almost 45 years since the band last worked together. It is nowhere near as exciting as the '70s records, but it is competent throughout and never once enters embarrassing territory. None of its tracks made my top 31, but its best song is in my Last 5 Out. One song features a cavalcade of guests including de Buhr and Quatro as well as a host of other women rockers, including members of The Bangles and The Go-Gos. Side 1 mostly concerns itself with girl-power platitudes and self-mythologizing, but the more lyrically diverse Side 2 is where the most interesting tracks lie.
The release of the album, and word that a documentary about them was in progress, gave Fanny a new wave of recognition. But there wasn't as much momentum as there could have been because life got in the way. After the album was finished but before its release, and while the filming of the documentary was still in progress, Jean Millington-Adamian suffered a debilitating stroke, which left the band unable to promote the album beyond press interviews. By the time she recovered enough to consider performance, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
The documentary was released in 2021, winning Best Canadian Film at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival and an audience award at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and airing on PBS, which is where I saw it. It led to another round of appreciative press for the band.
The band did reconvene for five gigs in California in May 2023, during which Jean sang from a wheelchair, unable to move her right arm and leg. (In a nod to the Bowie quote above, the run was called the Revivify 50th Anniversary Tour.) The lineup for these shows was Jean on vocals, June and Quatro on guitar and vocals, Darling and de Buhr on drums, percussion and vocals (for the Rock and Roll Survivors and Fanny Walked the Earth songs, Howard played drums and de Buhr played tambourine or cowbell; for the other songs, they switched), and Lee John Madeloni (Jean's son) and Mia Huggs (a graduate of June's IMA) on bass. There was no keyboardist. A video of the last of these shows, in Sacramento, hometown of the Millingtons and Darling, is on YouTube in its entirety.
Mere weeks ago, after years of the band attempting to obtain the rights (Jean Millington mentioned the effort in a 2009 interview), the legendary Beat-Club recordings were released under the name "Live on Beat Club '71-'72." These performances make as good a case as any for the band's merit, and some songs in my top 31 will be represented by their Beat-Club versions.
I hope I will give you reason to at the very least give Fanny's material a chance and hopefully come to understand how good they were, especially as a live band, and why they should occupy an important place in rock history. This undertaking comes at a fortunate time, as, in contrast to most of their peer bands, all members are still alive, and what may be their greatest performance has just gotten an official release. As the review of the documentary in The Spool stated: "The beauty of Fanny: The Right to Rock is that it's being released now - long enough since their peak that the band can tell their story on their own terms, and early enough that they're very much around to receive their long-overdue flowers." That's what I hope to accomplish here as well.
Albums:
Fanny (1970): 5
Charity Ball (1971): 7
Fanny Hill (1972): 9
Mothers Pride (1973): 3
Rock and Roll Survivors (1974): 4
Fanny Walked the Earth (2018): 0
Other: 3
Some songs will be represented by live versions.
Writers (does not add up to 31 due to co-writes):
Nickey Barclay: 13
June Millington: 10
Jean Millington: 8
Covers: 6
Alice de Buhr: 3
Patti Quatro: 2
Lead vocals (does not add up to 31 due to sharing):
Jean Millington: 18
Nickey Barclay: 13
June Millington: 12
Patti Quatro: 2
Alice de Buhr: 1
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