BCE Blogs: BC Rocks

Happy Birthday, King

If he were alive today, Elvis Aaron Presley would have turned 75. For music fans, this is a holy day.

Elvis didn't invent rock 'n' roll. Hell, Elvis didn't even perfect rock 'n' roll. True music heads know these accolades are for Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Bill Haley.

What Elvis did, friends, was popularize rock 'n' roll and add that final, potent ingredient that made it worldwide: sex appeal.

Berry's backwards-hop-while-playing-blazing-solo was hot, sure, but it had nothing on Elvis' hips and curled lips. With those sunken dark eyes, Elvis took rock 'n' roll from the bluesy basements of the poor and the greaser click and shoved it into popular culture. The term teeny bopper was invented because of people like Elvis. He more or less created youth-marketed media.

He got far too much credit as the "King of Rock 'n' Roll," but he was certainly the forefather of pop-rock as an industry.

Like every great thing, that's had its negative side effects — if it weren't for Elvis, we never would have had to deal with the likes of the Backstreet Boysa and N'Sync — but who knows how rock would have survived without the flush of dollars Elvis shoved into its belly.

I often wonder what kind of music Elvis would be making if he were still around today. I have a feeling he would have tried, in the 1990s and probably once more in the 2000s, to do more upbeat remixes of his old-style of music, the way Paul Oakenfold mixed his tracks for "Rubberneckin'" in 2003. He may have had an ill-advised reach for popdom in the 80s, the way Robert Plant did ...

But mostly, I have a feeling he would have stayed relatively true the unbelievable super-hits he recorded in the 70s, before his 1977 death. He'd play a few shows here and there nowadays, but always to over-crowded major arenas where tickets in the nosebleeds cost $90. There'd be more guitar, a little more drum and bass to thicken that old a-la "Suspicious Minds" sound, but his classics and a classic style would be revered, the way Sinatra was before his death, the way Van Morrison still is today.

And that wouldn't be bad.

Unburying local treasures

In today's WOW, you'll find this column on Dani Jamerson, an Athens 16-year-old who went from a second-place 2008 Tri-County Idol contestant and now has a four-track demo being shopped around labels in Nashville.

I won't rewrite that piece here, but I want to expound a bit on my closing argument.

It was joy to write that ending, knowing that it would show my readers a small success coming from our backyard. A chance to show folks a hard-copy example of a local treasure.

When you find a treasure, if you're smart, you'll cherish it, protect it and nurture it, look at it as an investment and try to make it more valuable.

Dani's not the only one around here who's had some success: A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece about a Coldwater man who recorded an album with LaVerne Tripp in Nashville. The bands Sex & Patriotism and Gods Of Kansas come to mind as local acts who've found themselves on big festival stages alongside big names. And there are dozens more local acts who play better-than-par music but haven't yet caught their break.

Like any piece of gold or diamond, it takes care to keep these local treasures in a condition where they can appreciate in value. We have to support these acts by going to their shows, standing in front them while they're on stage, cheering them on. The bigger crowds they perform in front of here, the bigger crowds they're likely to find elsewhere, hopefully with some big label's money behind them.

Dani was just one example. There are others who will take stages around the area this weekend. Go see them and up their value ...

NOTE: Click here to listen to tracks on "Loud & Local," the Enquirer's online streaming local music player, to listen to other local treasures.

The local get loud

Click here to hear four new tracks on "Loud & Local": "Catch Me," by Dani Jamerson; "This Big Dog Can Run," by Clifford Babcock; "Squeez Tha Trigga," by Trigga Man; and "Without Love," by Electric Jug Band.

For those who aren't familiar with "Loud & Local," it's the Enquirer's streaming local music player. Twenty tracks from Battle Creek- and Kalamazoo-area artists are featured in streaming mp3 format. You can catch it 24-7 on the WOW music page.

For those who are unfamiliar with me, I do what I can to be an advocate for local music. Songs penned in our community are songs about our community, representing the loves, hates, frustrations and angst of our community. Years from now, if well preserved, local music will be the history of our community. Our culture. Battle Creek culture.

There won't be many textbooks printed about the Cereal City, especially about the hearts and minds of the people who live and work here, outside of city government. But the songs, if we play them 50 or 500 years from now, will show how we felt today.

I've featured local musicians in the pages of WOW, profiled them, pointed you to their work. And now I'm doing what I can to bring their work to you.

Good news for a new year

Click that photo above to see the Enquirer's "B.Z. Buzz" photo gallery of New Year's Eve celebrations at Planet Rock, my home away from home.

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Now, on to other good news.

Got a call today from Gary Fields, former owner of the now-shuttered legendary Gary Fields Comedy Club, who told me the blues jam he hosted Tuesday nights at the club are back on in a new location. They're now being held from 7 to 11 p.m. Tuesdays at the Ball Joint on Beckley Road. Click here for the story.

A while back, I wrote a column about the painful disappointments of the ups and downs of the music biz in our little burg. Gary's closure meant no more blues for Battle Creek, essentially, because there was no other venue here hosting blues music on a regular basis, the way Gary did.

And Gary's blues were special: they were jams, the ways the blues were intended to be played. Any musician with enough guts and even a little talent was welcomed on stage with the Gary Fields Comedy Club Band to jam to any number of covers or originals or tunes created right there, on the spot.

And Battle Creek's music scene was built on the blues. As the genre was being born in Detroit and Chicago after the turn of the last century, Battle Creek found itself an almost exact midway point for artists traveling between the two cities. And they stopped in the Cereal City for a rest between gigs and to throw little shows to make a few extra bucks. That's how people like Del Shannon got connected with record executives.

So it was a sad thing to see the blues leave, and it's a great thing to see them back. It's important to hold on to our heritage. I've always believed that if we lose sight of where we began, we'll lose sight of where we can go.

Plus, Gary's bringing his signature wings to the blues nights at the Ball Joint. And if that's wrong, I don't want to be right.