Fill Your Head with Rock

A taste of the music boomers came of age listening to

It was 1970 and while my uncle Nico had been teaching me to play classical guitar, which is still a love of mine, I was also searching for new music to play and I was the only one in my school circle in Bakkum who played the guitar. I’m not sure that anyone else even played an instrument. All my friends loved music though, it was one of our bonds.

That year an album turned up called Fill Your Head with Rock. I don’t even remember how I got it. It remains to this day, my most played and sadly mostly scratched record album. Lucky I have Spotify and YouTube.

It was produced as a sampler. For me it was heaven. Every song was a gem. The concept worked. I have bought albums of more than half of the artists on the album containing the song they had on this one double album.

As a guitarist, Small Fruit song was one that I found easy to play, although as a solo player I can only play maybe one and a half parts at once. I only have 2 hands. I did recently buy a new looping pedal, so maybe I will have a go at more parts.

The core riff has been ‘discovered’ and learned by most guitar players with the Am chord with the bass running down A, G, F, E, while the trebles play the melodic harmony. If you only heard the starting riff, you would recognise it in many songs.

It does amuse me from time to time when I hear a guitarist announce that he/she is going to play his/her new composition and it’s that same riff theme. Perhaps it’s popular because it is easy to get your fingers around. But have a listen to this. I shared it from YouTube so you can listen while you read, one of the reasons I chose this platform for my autobiography.

I love this track. I also love the technique of having a super long intro and a single verse/chorus which I have used on a few songs myself. When you have an attentive audience, as opposed to a busy bar, it can add some interest to the piece. They wait for the lyrics. Then they decide it must just be music, then when they are sure that’s the case, you surprise them. Click on the track and find out what the apple said to the orange.

In a jam/interview with Dave Machnanov, Al Stewart talked about how British guitar players in the ’60s struggled to play the alternating bass guitar music that I learned to play from tablature books like Stefan Grossman’s Mississippi John Hurt, which was loaned to me by a friend at the boatyard where we were building the family ketch.

This is me in Avalon Mississippi checking out cotton for the first time, on my way to visit the home of the late and great Mississippi John Hurt. He belonged in that era where the guitar tried to imitate the piano.

The cover of the Fill Your Head With Rock album is of a young Jerry Goodman on the electric violin, who opened up a whole new area of interest for me. As a kid, I grew up listening to musicians like Stephane Grapelli, who I had the pleasure of seeing in concert twice.

My 6’2’’ Opa, Felix Augustin enjoying a visit to Lucerne. He was born in Switzerland

Grapelli reminded me of my Opa, who was a violin teacher through much of his life. They had a similar dry sense of humour, although my grandfather was not a jazz enthusiast, he knew more than anyone else I have met about classical music.

When he played records to me, he would talk about many great composers and musicians, such as explaining the contribution that Olivier Messiaen made to Impressionist music. He also explained synaesthesia and how Messiaen saw musical notes as colours, which he used in his compositions. At that time Messiaen was still alive, composing and performing, so when I say classical, I say it as a genre, not as a historic music form. I think it was perhaps music for deep thinkers.

I love this Messiaen quote from his website. "My faith is the grand drama of my life. I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith. I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colours for those who see none". 

Speaking of humour, I remember one Grapelli concert on a Sunday in the Auckland Town Hall, where he quipped that he understood why we were at his gig because the only other things open in Auckland on a Sunday night were umbrellas. He was not wrong. Even the very last bus to Titirangi was at 9:10. If you missed that you had a real problem.

At one of the concerts I went to, Grapelli brought the legendary Martin Taylor with him. They were best of friends and toured together many times. What I really liked was that Martin was allowed to be himself, not trying to be a copy artist of Django. There are plenty of these people. Martin was his own man. I love this music, riffing on a theme and never playing the same piece the same way twice.

I was invited and encouraged to learn to play the violin at Kelston Boys High School (because I had perfect pitch). At KBHS the pinnacle of success was to get on the First 15 rugby team. I declined because I thought people would think it was a sissy instrument and would lead to my being bullied.

I subsequently witnessed many incidents of boys at the school walking around with a violin case, and being shoved around by ruffians who thought the violin was for pussies and their players were easy meat.

I found life much easier playing the guitar. I did study clarinet for 3 years, which got me out of many boring classes for lessons and practice and trips to perform in the school band and orchestra. Many of the pieces did not support guitar but the songs that did, allowed me to have fun with my instrument of choice and sometimes even play solos. That was much more fun for me and I didn’t have to play scored notes.

On the other hand, if I had the opportunity to explore rock and jazz like this track by The Flock which I first heard on the Fill Your Head With Rock album, instead of very boring classical practice parts for the school orchestra, I would have been in like Flynn.

It would take me too long to go through every track on the album in this post. I might revisit them one day because several of them were poignant to me at certain times and they are on my In My Life #Top 500 list.

You can find a track listing for Fill Your Head with Rock here.

The album was only a few years after Woodstock, so Santana’s huge percussion section in Savour was still current, although I am more a fan of his romantic tracks like Samba Pa Ti and Europa. I love playing along with the lead tracks, and have developed my own version of Europa on acoustic guitar.

Janis Joplin trying a little harder with Big Brother and the Holding Company was awesome! I so wish she hadn’t joined the 27 Club, she had much more to give. Perhaps she was simply meant to be a fireball, like some of her other club contemporaries.

I mentioned the 27 Club in a previous post, about my visit to the museum of the great Robert Johnson in Crystal Springs MS, where I met his great granddaughter. Johnson was possibly the first member of the club.

Then there were Blood, Sweat and Tears, Chicago, Leonard Cohen, and the beautiful harmonies of Trees. You can see more of the names on the cover. If you have Spotify, here’s a link so you can hear the album. Check out the Santana energy in the second track sample.

Most people feel that the era when they were growing up, was the best ever, musically. I believe that about my era, the 70s. When I go to a Santana concert, and I have been to many, half of the audience who are cheering, singing and dancing weren’t even born until the 80s and later.

My finishing thought is that this is an album where I anticipate exactly what the next track will be, and look forward to it. That’s not something I normally do anymore, as most of the music I listen to are recommendations on Spotify. One track. One artist. If I really like it, I will then listen to the album it came from, but I rarely listen to entire albums the way I used to. It’s rewarding when you do.