The Next Big Thing

Don's been out on the town again...

"went to the red devil lounge and saw some of the "pop overthrow" festival. i caught 3 acts: jill olson, chris von seidern and bobby sutlliffe.

jill olson (olsen?) was great great great. one good tune after another. country-pop in the laura cantrell vein. she had a really good band. she plays bass - a big old hollow body kay. someone told me she used to be in a band called red meat. i thought she looked familiar. she got an encore on a night with a lot of bands and short sets -- she was that good.

then von sneidern came up -- first meticulously wiping jill's lipstick off the mic. he did an acoustic set, solo, on a takamine 12 string. he moved his capo up a fret for each song. in one song he changed keys by moving the capo up in the middle of the song. i never saw that before. he was good but i kept wondering how his songs would've sounded if he had a band behind him.

he was followed by bobby sutliffe from ohio. bobby had written to me asking if i could get cyril to come and play. cyril showed up just in time to catch his set but didn't bring a guitar or amp so he just watched. sutliffe opened with chuck berry's "let it rock" which immediately brought back groovies memories. his next tune was NRBQ-ish. he had a white gibson SG with one P-90 pickup-- an oddity which neither me or cyril had ever seen before. matt piucci from the rain parade came up (with gretsch tennessean) and they did television's "glory". good but didn't quite fit... a little too art-rock. then sutliffe switched to a rick 12 and did a great song which cyril really dug. after that bobby said, "we'd like to finish with a song by the greatest san francisco band ever, the flamin' groovies". and they did "i can't hide". it was great. jill was up front rockin' out. for me it was even more of a kick standing next to the guy that wrote it! cyril then told me all about how he wrote it at 5AM at rockfield while everyone else was asleep except for him and dave edmunds. and they woke everyone up to hear it.

we hung out upstairs at barry simons office for a while then came back down and i went in and said hi to mr. sutliffe and introduced him to cyril. a good night."