OF the many great shows your humble blogger attended last year, one of the very finest was a performance by Bambi Kino, a kind of indie-rock supergroup formed to pay tribute to the Beatles ragged, rockabilly-loving years in Hamburg.
The show, at Echo Park’s Taix, was full of so much energy and musical invention (Guided by Voices’ guitarist Doug Gillard was especially inspired that night) it made The Misread City crave a document of this quartet’s triumph. (Here for my earlier post on Bambi Kino and its mission.)
“We didn’t want to do any song that ever appeared on a Beatles studio album and we wanted to include a couple of numbers the Beatles were known to have performed but never recorded at all. Meaning, they were never used for auditions or BBC radio shows or were never bootlegged. Those would be ‘Wild Cat,’ by Gene Vincent, ‘Ramrod,’ a Duane Eddy instrumental they apparently used when they backed strippers, and ‘Shakin’ All Over,’ by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, a big hit in the UK in 1960 that also happened to be Pete Best’s audition number. They were almost certainly playing all of those numbers at the Indra Club in 1960. We also wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to sing a couple of numbers.
(Here they are, by the way, playing “Slow Down,” a song not on the album.)
“The future is the past!” he says. “Let’s see… we’ve got a residency lined up at Bowery Electric in New York for April and then a probable return to Hamburg at some point in 2011. There are more 50th anniversaries on the way, of course. One thing: I don’t ever see us putting on suits and wigs and Beatle boots. But we’d like to keep this going for a couple of years and try to learn another 100 songs or so. “
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