DownTown August Newsletter
Rock’n’Roll spoken here!
The dog days of August have appeared and so has the Mercury Retrograde, but everyone is getting set for the Cosmic Event of the Century—the Great American Total Solar Eclipse on Aug. 21!! This is a big deal because it’s the 1st time in our history that the United States will be the only country to be touched by the Path of Totality from a Total Solar Eclipse. This is a 70 mile wide path stretching from Oregon to South Carolina when the moon will be in front of the sun and its shadow crosses the USA. Remember to protect your eyes when looking at the partial eclipse, when the sun’s corona is visible and can cause serious eye damage, even blindness. The total eclipse can be looked at with the naked eye because the sun is blocked out by the moon.
NEW NEWS…This summer has been about visiting the past for us, spurred on by a strange letter in the mail last month. It was from a well-known British music journalist named Nik Cohn. WTF!!?? It turns out Mr. Cohn had been visiting Asbury Park, NJ for a few months doing research for a book chronicling the Asbury Park music scene of the late 70s and early 80s. He had been looking into the records of bands that had made an impact, big or small, during that time and had come across a band “that seemed to pop out of nowhere then mysteriously disappear called The Tupelos”. WTF!!?? That was my band!! Nik continued to write in his letter that “the band did a show at the now defunct Fast Lane club that I have been told in my interviews with locals, was the best rock’n’roll show they’ve ever seen”. WTF!!?? Am I being punked!!?? Who remembers any of this!!??
Nik had traced the origins of The Tupelos to me and was hoping he was correct. If so, he asked me to read on and answer some questions for him. He gave me his email address and I contacted him back in London. One of the things he asked me about was if I had any music I could send him. That got me thinking and realizing that I had nothing of The Tupelos in a digital format. Everything back then was reel to reel or cassette tape. Luckily I had transferred some songs to DAT in the late 90s before most of the tapes became unplayable. I found the DAT and went into Cellar Dweller Studios to see what I had. I found some interesting things and decided to master about half the tape for a possible release in the near future.
One of the tracks was a cover version of Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”, which we had released as a 45 single in 1979. This is the single that got us discovered by Garry Tallent of The E Street Band. I think the last time we played the Fast Lane, Garry played bass with us. The Tupelos do an interesting post-punk take on Chuck’s classic. After all, we had a weekend date with The Ramones and Blondie at CBGBs in the summer of 1975, so something had rubbed off on us by the time the New Wave was hitting our shores in the late 70s. And Asbury Park was the only place to play it in NJ!
Here’s an exclusive listen to “Sweet Little Sixteen” by The Tupelos on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/shalaman/sweet-little-sixteen/s-9MrMF
RADIO…This week marks the 75th consecutive week that DownTown Mystic has been on the AmericanaMusicAssn. Radio Chart!! Hard to believe that it started back on March 21, 2016 with the DownTown Nashville EP, which would go on to be our biggest release at Americana Radio. It helped to set up the release of Rock’n’Roll Romantic, which has added the last 45 weeks to the streak.
SYNC…Our man Eddie Caldwell has hooked up another one of our songs with the new TV show “Future Man” being produced by Seth Rogan. We’ve also got one in a new movie called MONUMENTAL that’s scheduled to be released later this year with actor Jeremy Irons in a featured role.
DOWNTOWN BLOG…The latest blog post is about one of our favorite subjects—Rock’n’Roll. We thought this was a good time to talk about RnR and this blog post is all about that and more: http://downtownmystic.net/downtown-blog-rocknroll-romantic-rocknroll/
VIDEO…Check out the Lyric Video for “Turn Around and Go”: https://youtu.be/0fkcr18Oaj8
SOCIAL MEDIA…Stay up to date with DownTown Mystic via Social Media. Hook up with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shalaman and https://twitter.com/DTMysticBand
Until next time…Keep It Rockin’!!
PS. Sha-La Music has a new website: http://sha-lamusic.com
DownTown Mystic Website: http://downtownmystic.net/
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