11.08.2010

SCOTT MORGAN GETTING THERE IS HALF THE FUN!


Lot's of autographed merchandise! Original vinyl records LP's and 7 inch EP's too! This Saturday at Gibraltar Trade Center Taylor Michigan! Motor City Music Legends Show and Scott definitely qualifies and has never before sold his private collection of rock memorabilia! Wait till you see the stuff he has saved over the years.


Come out this Saturday at 6pm and meet Scott Morgan in person with Retro: Kimmer (me) and my artist daughter Lesley (Gullacass).

"Talking with some friends after dinner many years ago, Rob Tyner explained how it had been the ambition of every Motor City rock singer of his generation to come as close as possible to the spirit and passion of the R&B and soul stars who surrounded them. Then he looked across the table to Scott Morgan and laughed, "All except this guy," he said. "He just went out there and did it"." (Dave Marsh, 1988).

Scott Morgan at The Michigan State Fair

Scott Morgan was 16-years-old when his first band played to an audience of 13,000 fans, literally stopping the show as the screaming crowd rushed the stage. Growing up in Ann Arbor, a hip college town 40 miles from Detroit, he fronted the Rationals, an Ann Arbor blue eyed soul (green eyes in Scott's case) outfit managed by A-Square Records impresario Jeep Holland.


Their early singles featured assistance from local luminaries like Bob Seger and a blues drummer named Jim Osterberg . A couple of years later, Osterberg was wreaking mayhem all across the U.S.A. as Iggy Pop.


The Rationals' soulful cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" pre-dated Aretha Franklin's by a year, and was picked up for national distribution by Cameo-Parkway. A couple of years later, their single "Guitar Army" neatly encapsulated the explosive ethos of the Motor City and provided a title for MC5 mentor John Sinclair's book of street and prison writings.

Morgan teaming with MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, Stooges drummer Scott "Rock Action" Asheton, and Up bassist Gary Rasmussen in the legendary Detroit super group, Sonic's Rendezvous Band. Swimming against the mid-seventies tide of commercial music, the Rendezvous played their uncompromising rock in backwoods dives as well as hip venues like Detroit's Bookies and Ann Arbor's Second Chance.


Scott wrote and sang half of the band's material, including their set-opening energy jolt "Electrophonic Tonic." But that perfect balance of Morgan/Sonic proved impossible to sustain and by the time the band stopped performing, sometime in 1980, they had completed only one vinyl artifact -- a two-sided single of Smith's classic song "City Slang."



For years, tapes of jaw-dropping live shows passed from hand to hand, fan to fan, until Mack Aborn Rhythmic Arts released the live "Sweet Nothing" disc in 1999, a classic recording of the Rendezvous in full flight. (Also in that year, the Rendezvous remnants regrouped with Radio Birdman guitarist Deniz Tek standing in Sonic's spot for a show at the Magic Stick in Detroit. A recording of the set was released on Real O Mind as "Gettin' There is Half the Fun.")

 

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