Whatever happened to beatboxing?

I wondered this as I watched the music video "Wipeout" on YouTube while bored at work a couple of days ago. "Wipeout", for those who don't remember, was a Surfaris cover done by the Fat Boys and the Beach Boys back in 1987. It was horrible and rediculous.

As a twelve-year-old, I loved this video and hated it at the same time. I often tried to mimic the beatboxing mastered by Buffy, the Human Beatbox, arguably the fattest and most talented of the Fat Boys. I thought it was hilarious yet terribly sad and embarrassing to watch the Beach Boys, once considered geniuses for their 1966 masterpeice Pet Sounds to fall vicitim to such an obvious attempt at comeback fame. Of course, they did find brief success again a year later with their hit "Kokomo" for the Tom Cruise film Cocktail and continued to milk it for some time, unfortunately, by appearing on the television sitcom Full House with their buddy and sometimes bandmate John "Uncle Jessie" Stamos.

Wikipedia describes beatboxing as "...a form of vocal percussion connected with hip hop culture (it has been called the fifth element of hip hop) although it is not limited to hip hop music. It primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism, the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments."

Modern beatboxing originated in the early 1980s, though various forms of it have been documented as far back as the 1930s with the arrival of bebop in jazz and blues music. Besides the Fat Boys, early rap artists such as Biz Markie, Barry B., and Doug E.Fresh, who is credited for being the first modern beatboxer, have all been influential in the lost art.

I remember how, for a brief moment in time, it seemed like everyone in the world either knew how to beatbox or knew someone who could. At school, there were always groups of kids who held beatboxing battles on the playground, in class and on the bus, using almost every part of their of mouths and hands to create the most distinctive sounds and beats.

As the 1980s came to a close, beatboxing began its gradual fade into obscurity as mainstream music made way for darker, more brooding music such as grunge and gangsta rap. And with the death of Buffy, the Human Beat Box in Decmber of 1995, it seemed that beatboxing died with him.

Surprisingly, beatboxing has made a dramatic comeback with the help of new beat box legends Rahzel and Kenny Muhammad. In 2005 the WBBF or World Beatboxing Federation was formed to unite beatboxers from all over the world in a grand effort to make beatboxing more popular than ever before.

For a complete history of beatboxing and to brush up on your skills, follow these links:

http://www.humanbeatbox.com/history/p2_articleid/38

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatboxing

“Sorry mate, you’re out of the band.” That’s what Beatles manager Brian Epstein said to drummer Pete Best in 1962, right before the recording of their first originally-written single, “Love Me Do”. Pete was out, Ringo was in… it went something like that, anyway.

Attending the Pete Best show a week ago at Rhythm and Brews, in many ways, was a dream come true for me.

As a teenager, I was a Beatles fanatic. Ask anyone and they can tell you. Not only did I own all of their albums on cassette (not the Capital versions but their British counterpart Parlophone) but I devoured every book I could about the band and especially, it’s murdered genius, John Lennon as well. I had twenty-two Beatles posters lining my bedroom walls. I could answer any piece of trivia that was thrown at me and I had memorized every lyric of every song they ever wrote as well as their track listings on each album. They were the reason I started playing guitar. Yeah, I was a little obsessed.

History had all but forgotten Pete Best, the “cute” Beatles drummer that toured with the band through their now-legendary Hamburg, Germany phase, playing clubs like The Dresden and the All-Star Club.

Clad in their black leather jackets, black jeans, and greasy, slicked back hair, the Beatles were far from their clean-cut, mop-top image eventual manager Brian Epstein would plan for them, causing fans all over the world to fall in love with them. Theirs was a life of booze, pills, and whores.

The six to eight hour sets they played every night involved loud, fast, edgy guitar-driven music and hordes of drunken sailors, merchantmen, and easy women; all of this opened up a whole other world for the young lads, all under the age of 21. Then, as fast it came, Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr and the Beatles began their long journey into rock and roll history. Pete Best, for the most part, became a piece of pop culture trivia that became the stuff of legends.

To be honest, I didn’t expect much from the show. After all, he was kicked out of the band. According to Beatles producer George Martin, the guy couldn’t really keep a beat.

I was wrong. It was actually worse than I had expected. I knew the Pete Best Band would be playing mostly Beatles covers, or at least songs that the Beatles played around the time Pete was still in the band. I thought maybe there would be some songs Best had written on his own. Not so much. To make matters worse, he mainly stayed behind his drum kit and occasionally came out to the front of the stage to address the audience. Expecting old stories from his days with the Pre-Fab Four, stories that not many people knew except the people who were there at the time, I was sorely disappointed when the few words he spoke were to thank the audience for coming out to see him.

The other band members did more talking than he did and in fact, the ex-Beatle did no singing at all. I didn’t expect that he would but for someone who has a band named after him, I thought he would have taken a bigger part in its performance. I mean, there was another guy on drums next to Pete, which puzzled me, because the guy played the exact same thing he did. This only re-enforced the popular opinion that perhaps he really wasn’t such a good drummer after all. The show was entirely gimmick-driven to cash in on Beatles fame.

That said, do I have any regrets going? On the contrary. The band played some of my early Beatles favorites and in fact, sounded very reminiscent of how fast and raw the Beatles sounded before they gained worldwide fame. Not only did I get Pete Best’s autograph but I got my picture taken with him as well.

Even though I didn’t gain more of an insight into the mythology of the early Beatles’ career, I still got to shake the hand of the man who once knew John, George, and Paul intimately. Even if poor Pete Best was within an inch of becoming a household name, forged into the files of music history as part of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, he still left enough of a mark so that Beatles geeks like me could tell his kids that he once met one of the Beatles.

I have to be honest… I haven’t been to the Riverbend Festival in something like five years. Between the intolerable and sticky heat, the teeming mass of wall-to-wall drunk people, and that horrible smell of stale urine, sweat, beer and all things fried, I decided that it simply wasn’t worth the trouble anymore. But, when I heard that the Alex Chilton Trio and the Box Tops would be playing at this year’s Riverbend Festival, I was pleasantly surprised.

Oh, all right… I was as giddy as a schoolgirl. I mean, besides Roger McGuinn, I cannot remember the last time Riverbend has had someone as important, someone as cool, someone who has influnced a whole generation of artists as much as Alex Chilton. The man is literally a legend, forged into myth from the time he was twenty years-old by storming offstage in the middle of performing with the Box Tops because of creative differences with their record company.

For those of you who claim ignorance in the name of Chilton, who dare ask, “Why should I care about some has-been guy who my parents grew up listening to?” I humbly provide you with a brief lesson in rock music history. You say you’ve never heard of him or his music? I say you’re wrong.

Child Chilton and the Box Tops

Alex Chilton joined the Box Tops in the mid1960s at the age of sixteen. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, the band shot to stardom with their #1 international hit “The Letter”, with Alex singing lead vocals. Originally called the Devilles, the Box Tops had other hit songs including “Cry Like a Baby” in 1968 and “Soul Deep” in 1969.




I’m a Big Star Now

In the early 1970s, Chilton joined the band Big Star, named after a local grocery store with fellow musicians Chris Bell, Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens in Memphis. Though they failed to score any big hits at the time, the power-pop quartet did manage to garner critical acclaim with their first album #1 Record in 1972. Bell left the band, dissappointed by their lack of success and for a brief time, Big Star broke up. Eventually reuniting, the band released Radio City in 1974. Several years before their third album Third (later renamed Third/Sister Lovers in its 1992 re-release) was released in 1978, they had again broken up, this time for good. Chris Bell, who suffered from depression, was killed in a car crash the same year. Big Star eventually reformed in 1993 with original members Chilton and Stephens, along with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies and released the album In Space in 2005.








Children by the Millions…

In the early 1980s, Alex moved to New Orleans after a brief solo career. He worked as a dishwasher and sat in with various bands. He eventually focused again on his solo career and fell in love with the smooth sounds of jazz, and rediscovered his early love of classic R&B.
Chilton now bides his time touring with his first band, the Box Tops, as well as his Alex Chilton Trio, recording and performing classic R&B covers such as “Never Found a Girl” and “Lipstick Traces.” You can see them on Thursday, June 12th on the Bud Light Stage at 7:45 p.m.

Along with his second band Big Star, Alex Chilton has influenced a number of famous musicians, including the Replacements, Jeff Buckley, Counting Crows, Susanna Hoffs, Wilco, Elliot Smith, R.E.M. and too many others to mention here.





If you want to learn more about this “man of myth”, just click on these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Chilton
http://bigstarband.com/index.html
http://www.lastcallrecords.com/biographies/alexchilton.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/alexchilton
http://www.frontlinearts.com/bigstar/
http://www.boxtops.com/