- #REVERB LP SMASH YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL PATCH#
- #REVERB LP SMASH YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL FULL#
She really sounds great,’” Charlotte said. When Charlotte arrived at Jeannie’s house, she heard music through the front door, an accordion being played with unexpected precision and skill.
They’d been taking music lessons-Charlotte piano and Jeannie accordion. When she was seventeen, Charlotte’s best friend, Jeannie, tricked her into a blind date. The only reason she made Tommy Falcone’s acquaintance in 1948 was because of a lie. A prominent stutter had left her extremely self-conscious, alienated from her peers, and distrustful of strangers.
#REVERB LP SMASH YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL PATCH#
But the officially released material was only a small fraction of his relentless output, and many of Cleopatra’s best tunes remained unheard and unreleased, scattered for decades on dusty reels and lost acetates.Īnd there in the studio in the middle of the night, amid the cigarette smoke and the instruments, the snaking patch cords and the wild teenagers, was Falcone’s wife, Charlotte-Cleopatra herself-laughing and shaking a tambourine with all the joy in her heart.īefore she became queen of the Nile, Charlotte Sims was a shy girl in Newark who loved music and hated new people. Songs ranged over topics as wide as lovestruck ducks, sexual predators, and meta-commentary on the music industry itself. With an interest in everything, Falcone tried anything, chasing the popular trends of the era and anticipating a dozen more: surf, soul, doo wop, girl groups, garage rock, novelties, exotica, pop, crooned balladry, teen idols, protopunk, psychedelia, and more. The story of Cleopatra is first a romance, then a tragedy-a tale of obsession, invention, and mortality that spirals out to include rapping cops, karate-chopping robots, and suicide-inspired religious conversions. He founded Cleopatra Records from his home in Hazlet, New Jersey, ran the label from his basement, and recruited bands that practiced in garages. From 1960 to 1970, Falcone produced an unending stream of wild visionary music and released it on a half-dozen different labels, including his own. The kids knew Falcone as an unstoppable fountain of human energy-a DIY pioneer and indie label mogul before such things were celebrated, a songwriter, a performer, a trained accordionist, an arranger, a talent scout, a producer, a promoter, a mentor, a manager, and a salesman all rolled into one. And then, with minimal sleep, another day at the office for Falcone, another evening with the family, another late night in the studio with another group of teenagers making more magic. These late hours in the studio were discounted, and the teenagers would attempt takes until the sun was nearly up. Despite the late hour, Falcone was a whirlwind of activity in the studio, setting up microphones, helping the band tune, tweaking their arrangements, testing out strange echo effects, generating unusual sounds, throwing out a million ideas a minute, lighting cigarette after cigarette and leaving one burning on the edge of every amplifier.
They pulled up the studio on West 48th Street, only a five minute walk from the seedy explosion of Times Square. But Falcone, a straight-laced sharp-dressed family man with a deeply unfashionable crew cut, had been doing this for years-working days at a corporate gig and living nights as a rock ‘n’ roll impresario, shuttling kids to and from the big city.
#REVERB LP SMASH YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL FULL#
It was even more rare to be there at a time when they’d normally be asleep, when the scandalous side of the city emerged in full streetwalking glory. Though they lived just on the other side of Raritan Bay at the north end of the Jersey Shore, it was a rare occurrence for these kids to make a trip into Manhattan, then just beginning its slide into disrepute and decrepitude. The kids in the backseat jockeyed wide-eyed to see the bright lights and big buildings, to take in the concrete and steel lit up like midday. The yellow glow and tile walls of the Lincoln Tunnel fell away and a sparkling metropolis reared up before them like a dream. As usual, it was past midnight when Tommy Falcone pulled into New York City with a car full of teenagers.
0 kommentar(er)
