Thoughts&Words Your letters and emails –jon@shindig-magazine.com


Paul Revere & The Raiders: Shindig! letters page’s most written about group!


Jon, I just discovered your magazine two days ago when I spotted Paul Revere & The Raiders on the cover. I’m 58 years old and I grew up in The Pacific Northwest – Lebanon, Oregon, to be specific. I started playing guitar in garage bands (still play in a gigging band) when I was around 13. Naturally, I would go see bands like The Sonics, The Wailers, Don & The Goodtimes, The Bards, etc. They played at the local National Guard Armoury, (buildings about the size of grade school gymnasiums that are located in every small town in the US) and would pack in several hundred sweaty teenagers. I can’t describe the charged-up atmosphere these bands could create. During the faster tunes you’d see kids lose all self-consciousness and get lost in the music: completely unconcerned


4


with looking cool. Hearing Gerry Roslie’s primal screaming over Larry Parypas ferociously snarling guitar while watching it visibly having an effect on an ocean of dancers was a powerful testimony of the cathartic power of rock ’n’ roll. The recorded output of any of these bands fails to reveal the impact of seeing them live. The Sonics, in particular, seemed to thrive on driving the crowd nuts. Rock ’n’ roll lost a lot of energy when “dances” mutated into “concerts”. I literally learned to play guitar by watching


Larry Parypa, Charlie Coe, (a man you forgot in your Raider article) and Denny Weaver’s fingers. I once approached Larry after a show, asked him a few questions and was surprised when he handed me his Epiphone Riviera to show me how it was strung with Ernie Ball Slinkies and


showed me how to do the “dropped D” tuning to play ‘Louie, Louie’, Sonics Style. I’ve always been grateful that he’d taken the time to deal with a pesky teenager after a three-hour show in a hot, airless and humid building. Sadly, these bands are all but forgotten in


the US. There are a few younger musicians, playing in bars, that know who these guys are, but by and large they are all but unknown. I find some comfort in knowing the


Northwest Music scene’s legacy is appreciated somewhere. It especially makes me happy that The Sonics are now playing dates in Europe in front of appreciative audiences. Thanks for helping to keep the music alive. Scott Stevens Scott, you put it so darn well. Thanks for bringing it all back to life.


Hi Jon, I just wanted to write to express my admiration for your having the wisdom and extreme good taste to put Paul Revere & The Raiders on the cover of the last issue. I think that the Raiders have been sorely overlooked by “the scholarly journals” since their inception and it is fitting that the band would finally get their due from an English magazine. They were a great singles and album band and they pretty much created the template for garage- rock way back when; I remember that every local band had at least two or three Raiders songs in their repertoire. Also, being a child of the ’60s, I have to say that it was a treat to see them nearly every day on Where The Action Is and later Happening.Thanks again for your great magazine. I am glad that it is now available locally. Trip Aldredge


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76