Starship featuring Mickey Thomas: In a departure from the earlier naming convention, Mickey Thomas is not of Starship, he’s featured. Not sure how, as the only returning members from their peak popularity, Farner’s role in GFRR differs from Thomas’ in the eyes of Image Entertainment, who released this thing. Or it could be that the competing Jefferson Starship—with Marty Balin, Jack Casady, Paul Kantner—was in operation in 1999 and prohibited Thomas and band from being billed any other way, although I’ve read that Thomas used “Starship” (in every sense), unchallenged.
[Mickey Thomas puts his best face on Starship's performance.]
In a departure from the rest of the program, the final act is allowed three songs in their performance. And I use the term in the same sense that a donkey show can rightfully be referred to as a “performance,” taking things that, on their own, may be harmless or even enjoyable, and combining them in an unspeakably foul act.
Two of the three songs done here by Mickey Thomas (as featured with Starship) are r’n’r classics (living legends, some would say), great records, and from the 60s/70s era this festival seemed to be targeting.
The other one is “We Built This City.”
This is a song that, like the previous-worst selection on this DVD, required FOUR writers to fully render to its ultimate magnificence. One of them, Bernie Taupin, outdoes his lousiest work for Elton with his lyrics for this atrocity.
(While Taupin has been involved with many great songs, close listening reveals that in most cases, the songs succeed despite his lyrics, not at all due to them. He has written some decent stuff especially on early Elton John albums, but by and large, I find his work abysmal and believe EJ’s music is successful in spite of the words.)
“City” is such a cobbled-together mess of a song that I grudgingly credit this Starship for their ability to render a recognizable onstage version of it. Unlike the rest of their set, the 80s-appropriate keyboard playing is at least intermittently audible here and the guitarist’s likewise anachronistic overplaying fits the song. It wouldn’t surprise me, based on this performance, if the band weren’t asked to audition with this piece and that this is the template for Thomas’ ideal Starship sound. They do close their segment with it. My sweet lord, though, does it suck.
Somehow Thomas inherited guardianship of the Starship; if the band were a kid, we’d be frantically calling Child Protective Services. It does appear that the Balin-Casady-Kantner Jefferson Starship were active concurrent with this, so perhaps the Airplane—Starship legacy was Thomas’ only insofar as the concert promoters were concerned. I mean, in the absence of Grace Slick, who is more entitled to perform “Somebody To Love,” Marty Balin or Micky Thomas? I’d rather hear Balin sing it, that’s for sure. Heck, I’d rather hear Jorma sing it. Or Papa John Creach.
Thomas’ singing on the Elvin Bishop hit (and speaking of, why isn’t this billed as Elvin Starship or Jefferson Bishop, featuring MT), however, always struck me as a pretty terrific blast of blue eyed soul. And the song is ok here, apart from the guitarist’s misguided attempt to trump Elvin Bishop’s style with his sheer volume of notes (and volume), so perhaps not a full-blown donkey show. So to speak.
What he and his ‘ship do with Jefferson Airplane’s defining hit, though, is a noisy, shrieky mess. It’s an ugly bludgeoning. Mickey encourages the stylistically inappropriate guitar solo by interjecting the admonition, “Suck it up.” Huh? Maybe I need to check closed captioning; he may be saying, “Sucks, don’t it?”
The band looks like Micky took pot luck from Central Casting’s notion of 80s rockers: a bassist in camo shorts, which is not only a contemptable look to offer an audience, but should be prohibited from civilian wear at any time; an encephalitic-looking shredder in a wife-beater on lead guitar; a corpulent drummer who appears to be the product of a mating between a walrus and Mr. Clean.
If you’ve read this far, I’m sorry, and you will not be surprised to learn that lead vocalist Mickey reminds me of another (far more bush league) singer I’ve known. The physical resemblance may be superficial, but both share a glazed, soul-dead look in their eyes and many of the same hackneyed stage moves. What put me most in mind of the singer I know, though, is when, at the end of their set, Mickey pulls himself away from the guitarist’s “good buddy” embrace to … raise his shirt and point at his nipple.
[Show us your ti-- no, sir, not you!]
For whatever unfathomable reason he did it, he (like this local singer) clearly has a mistaken impression of what people want to see 50-year-old white guys do on stage.
Keys = Is this BOB from Twin Peaks? If not, he could certainly play his stunt double. (Looks like he may be Phillip Bennett, who is listed on the “Starship” site as having been with them since 1995.)
His hair-flipping is off-putting, but his playing “technique” is compellingly bizarre, comprised primarily pressing down numerous keys (mostly inaudibly, seemingly at random) with rigid fingers held parallel to the keyboard. At the conclusion of one passage, he pulls away his hands from the instrument, as if he’s a conjurer revealing an astonishing feat of legerdemain. On “We Built This City,” he supplements his arsenal of kool movez with a cute little single-finger thing, simply adorable. Especially for a murderous demonic entity.
ROD = Here I was going to take my usual cheap shots at Thomas’ stiff, creepy, post-plastic visage when I learn that—well, he had his out of necessity. According to the account in Jeff Tamarkin’s Jefferson Airplane biography, in 1990 Thomas got into a dustup with then-Starship drummer Donny Baldwin,* resulting in Baldwin handing the singer’s face to him. Literally. Thomas required a “cranial facial entry,” or, as he says in Tamarkin’s book, “they took my face off and then reattached it, with 60 staples in the top of my head.” So I guess my comment about Balwin removing his face is, technically, inaccurate.
[*Could it be Baldwin didn’t take kindly to an instruction to “Suck it up”?]
Regardless, not even I am so callous as to wisecrack about his looks. The rest of the band, not so much decrepit as motley and untrustworthy looking.
And so, with the image of Mickey Thomas flashing his pale chest, the credits roll on the living legends of Itchycoo Park.
I’ve certainly given the impression that seeking out this DVD would be a monumental waste of time and money, and I sort of regret that. As of this writing, many of the Itchycoo performances I wrote about, including most of those I’d actually recommend seeing, are available for online viewing at:
http://vandalproductions.com/component/k2/item/288-itchycoo-park-99.html.
I definitely recommend taking a look at the Steppenwolf and Grand Funk, possibly the Iron Butterfly, depending upon your feelings about that song.
Maybe you will be able to make sense out of the arbitrary collection presented as Live From Itchycoo Park, with its inexplicable assortment of artists, its crappy packaging, and its producers’ indefensible notion of what constitutes a “legend.” If nothing else, the existence of this DVD attests to the insatiable demand for live rock and roll footage, no matter how shoddy or arbitrary its presentation. Now where is the footage of those 40 other Itchycoo acts we actually might want to see?
Thanks for reading all, or any part of this. It was a slog, I’m sure.
While I truly am a huge fan of vintage rock concert footage, and somewhat fascinated by the Itchycoo Park Fest video, I also confess to using the tens of thousands of words from these past few posts to air some of my lingering emotions about former friends and band mates in a manner that hopefully will not get me shot or beaten by them. Feel free to apply any of the unkind characterizations used here in veiled commentary about your own pasts!
Then send the links, so I can enjoy ‘em!
