Butts Band

There are so many crazy events that led up to me living in Las Vegas in the 70′s, like the fact that the band I was in The Sky High Band was in Ann Arbor Michigan because you could have less than an ounce of pot there legally and smoke weed in theaters but there were virtually no gigs and everyone was on unemployment because Detroit was killed by Chrysler going under from making those horrible K-cars so we left the ice and snow and just went to Vegas because the guitar player’s dad had a warehouse studio we could practice in when they weren’t shooting porn movies there – that I won’t bother to relate them all.

The short version is that the band broke up and everyone left town and I got a gig in this corny show band with dancers and costume changes and a whack job head case leader (the guy with the trumpet) and thus, this photo.

Tall lean lanky and handsome with a perfect 70′s ‘stash I turned 21 on the road with this group – and leaned a lot about show business, entertainment, and the mafia who owned the show and most of the places we played.

We were in Salt Lake City for 2 weeks where you could only drink in “private clubs.” The citizens in this pious religious mecca were total skalliwags, at least in the 70′s, and partied harder, drank more, and fooled around like rabbits, especially with musicians from Vegas.

By the time we got to Dalls, where this poster announced the colossal cover charge of $2.50 for ALL THAT ACTION, I was so fed up with playing the Neill Diamond Medley and the fact that the leader was a horse shit singer who could only play about 4 notes on that trumpet, and that he fired me for looking at his wife, or his lazy eye or something, and me and my bass amp and Gibson EB3 bass and a suitcase loaded up on a Greyhound bus and rode 24 hours back to my mother’s house in Terre Haute Indiana where I worked at a tulip greenhouse job for a full 4 weeks.

Then, despite my promise to the owner to “stay” and not run off back to Las Vegas to be in some band, I quit and went West in a Karman Gia hatchback I bought for $500 to a gig in Los Angeles. It broke down somewhere in the desert on the way. Winslow Arizona, I think.

This song was at the top of the Billboard Charts in December of 1990. Billy Joel’s searing video history lesson of pop culture from the 1950′s until the present (at the time) is a feast for the ears and eyes.

Joel runs through the list of the top buzz words that shaped the news and popular culture beginning with a “Lucy and Ricky Ricardo” couple coming into the TV SET kitchen of their new home still in their wedding clothes.

In rapid fire images are shown and reflected in the kitchen by the couple and their new baby. As the time on the calendar goes by – the couple grows older – the baby grows up – and at the same speedy velocity of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” you see a Lone Ranger lunch box, a Davy Crockett coonskin cap (this was so totally my childhood – I had the lunch box, and I had that cap!) and all the trappings and utensils of the day – changing to newer ones as they enter the 1960s.

Juxtaposed over against the seemingly happy family we have the awful, horrible images of war, violence, civil rights struggles, and awfulness that signify “the fire” that we didn’t start – but we try to fight.

The family goes through their kid smoking pot, their daughter burning her bra, the 70′s, and all the while Billy Joel, in sunglasses is the silent singing observer.

Each time the song goes to the chorus, the black and white photograph of some epic event – like the picture of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot in the underground transfer in Dallas by Jack Ruby, is on fire and burns higher until Joel throws the table down and declares “I can’t take it anymore!”

The family, meanwhile has the argyle sweatered dad and hair up fashionably mom drinking heavily while their kids, and grandkids go off further into counter culture – until Jr. reaches into the refrigerator just as the song says “though we didn’t light it — when we are gone – - it will still go on and on and pulls out a small fire.

The energy of this song, Billy Joel’s impressive lyrics (instead of saying downs syndrome he uses “Children of Thaladimide” and groups and angles the news events in such a way as to make a coherent narrative about life in the 2nd half of the 20th century.

And there it is.

Convenience, culture, freedom and the American way – in the midst of unthinkable violence and injustice around us – not much different than the “fire” that burned throughout history right up through World War II Nazi holocaust.

Tags: 80s music videos, billy joel, we didn’t start the fire,

Tags: 80s music videos, music video, rock and roll

Tom Petty and the HeartBreakers. Learning to fly. Tom is one of the real treasures of Rock and Roll. An American rocker who’s scratchy smooth voice fits in perfectly with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and the cool cats of the Traveling Wilburys.

But Tom’s got his own style – it’s impossible to hear one of his songs and wonder "who is that?"

This is an excellent video and should set you free for a time!

There is no one single best guitarist.
The reason for this is that there are too many styles.
If the criteria is innovation, creativity, songwriting, mood, feel, emotion, combining of old and other disciplines, I submit this list of GREATS.

My List is all about Rock and Blues. So – it’s my list!

Jimi Hendrix
Duane Allman
Jimmy Page
Billy Gibbons
Lindsay Buckingham
Carlos Santana
Roger Waters
Dickey Betts
Jeff Beck
Eric Clapton

Please add your favorites here in comments – and feel free to argue me out of these?

Rick Butts