Showing posts with label Ken Settle Photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ken Settle Photography. Show all posts

5.05.2017

BOB SEGER/IGGY & THE STOOGES @ ROCK N ROLL FARM BY PHOTOGRAPHER KEN SETTLE


Article/Photo from Photographer Ken Settle

From The Film Archives: Very early Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band photo, taken on February 12, 1974 at a little bar in Wayne, Michigan called The Rock'n'Roll Farm. Admission was $3.00 at the door. The band that opened for Bob was called The Brooklyn Blues Busters, an outfit out of New York that had recently relocated to Ann Arbor. The singer and harp player was a guy named John Leslie, who would soon embark on a career in porn where he became one of the first male porn stars of the "Golden Age" of porn, acting in something like 300 films!!!!

The Rock'n'Roll Farm was an amazingly colorful little bar, which was also the hangout for a motorcycle club known as The Scorpions (they would kind of float between The Farm and a place down the street called The Dog House).

About a week before this Seger show, Iggy & The Stooges played The Farm, and Iggy squared off against one of the Scorpions right on the dance floor and was knocked out cold! That ended that gig, but it set the stage for the cacophonous end of the band five days later at Detroit's Michigan Palace, which was forever preserved on the Metallic K.O. album.


A suburban doctor named Leo Speer ran the Rock'n'Roll Farm, and he also ran the famous Michigan Palace in Detroit. So often times, Mr. Speer would showcase bands at The Farm that were also playing at The Michigan Palace. One such band was Aerosmith, who played at The Farm about a month after I took this Seger shot!!

Again, you could get in with three bucks at the door! Some of the other artists that played The Farm in its brief three years on the music scene was blues greats Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Luther Allison, James Cotton, as well as artists like Tim Buckley, Spooky Tooth, Spirit, Mitch Ryder and Wayne Kramer in The Knockdown Party Band, the earliest incarnation of the legendary Rockets, and local favorites like Salem Witchcraft and Stonebridge.

The Rock'n'Roll Farm eventually became a bar called Baby's. A bar called US-12 now resides at that address.

Photographed with a Canon rangefinder camera, 35mm 2.0 lens, one of those big 1950s era pan reflector flashes that took those huge bulbs, and Kodachrome X 64 ISO film.

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12.30.2013

GREASY CARLISI'S BEDPAN GUITAR: PHOTOGRAPHER KEN SETTLE


I've seen some eclectic guitars in my day, but this one takes the cake! One of the two new Rockets guitarists, Phil "Greasy" Carlisi, made this funky slide guitar using a uhmmmm, bed pan as the guitar body! If you see it from a few rows back, you might think it's an old Vox teardrop guitar. No way buddy! This is an honest to goodness BED PAN guitar.



From Greasy:
I didn't make that bed pan guitar, I bought it at a guitar show off a
dealer for 40 bucks, so I can't take credit for making that, just credit
for having the BALLS to play it.

Phil Greasy Carlisi

Carlisi played with the MC5's Dennis "Machinegun" Thompson and toured and played with Niagara Detroit,legendary Stooges members, Ron and Scott Asheton as part of Dark Carnival. He also put in time with latter day rockabilly legend, Robert Gordon (check out his version of Springsteen's "Fire.") as well as British guitarist Chris Spedding.

12.20.2013

KEN SETTLE: BOB SEGER WITH THE BORNEO BAND 1973

 Marcy Levy and Bob Seger

 Purchase this image from Ken Settle Photography

From the film archives: Here's a shot I took from sidestage of Bob Seger onstage with Marcy Levy as he played with The Borneo Band at Lakeview High School in St Clair Shores, Michigan in April, 1973. Seger brought legendary Skip VanWinkle onstage to sit in on the Hammond B-3 for a couple songs. They were having so much fun, Skip stayed onstage and banged a cowbell for the rest of the show when Borneo Band organist Dick Sims came back to the keyboard.

Seger was just brought back out for the third encore. The high school auditorium was getting rowdy and when Bob stepped up to the microphone onstage, a lady, I'm guessing a teacher or principal, came out and touched Bob's arm and said, "I think we better stop now"!!!! lollll Seger said, "We're doing one more," and called a funky guitar version of Jackie Wilson's, "Higher and Higher," with Marcy and Stoney Reese (aka Shaun Murphy) trading lead vocals with Bob!

I just regret not getting Shaun in this shot!! Not too long after this shot, The Borneo Band broke up, and Marcy, Dick Sims on organ, and Jamie Oldaker on drums joined up with Clapton for the next decade or so. Percussionist, Sergio Pastora joined on with Carol King. Of course, Drew, Alto, and Shaun Murphy stayed on for years with Seger. Alto and Shaun, of course are still with him! four or five months after this show, Seger formed the Silver Bullet Band.

12.18.2013

ROCK PHOTOGRAPHER KEN SETTLE:MOTOWN'S STUDIO B


Ken Settle From the film archives: Many, many years ago, I wanted to go photograph what remained of the old Motown Studio B. Though everyone knows about Motown's "Hitsville" Studio A, relatively few people were familiar with Studio B on Davison near Livernois in Detroit. This was the location of Golden World Records, who had a hit with The Reflections "Just Like Romeo and Juliet." In the mid '60s, Berry Gordy purchased Golden World and turned it into Studio B. This was the place where many of the incredible Motown vocals, horns and strings were overdubbed.

Most pivotal to me, was that Marvin Gaye's vocals for the groundbreaking What's Going On masterpiece were done right here at Studio B. Studio B sat vacant for much of the time after Motown moved to L.A. and has finally been torn down. At the time that I photographed this, you could still see a very weather worn Motown Studio B sign on the side of the battered structure.

I used the old Kodak Recording Film 2475 for this photo, because I wanted the incredibly grainy results that this film gave, along with its extended red sensitivity. I became real interested in that film for a time after I learned that many of the photos of the '67 Detroit riots were shot on this film. It was one of the first high speed (ISO 1000) films ever. Every time I look at this photo, I hear Marvin Gaye singing "Mother, Mother, there's too many of you crying."

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