Review: Ritchie Valens - In Concert At Pacoima Jr. High (1960)

Tracks: 1) Bob Keane Intro; 2) Come On, Let’s Go; 3) Donna; 4) Summertime Blues; 5) From Beyond; 6) La Bamba; 7) Bob Keane Intro; 8) Rhythm Song; 9) Guitar Instrumental; 10) Malaguena; 11) Rock Little Darlin’; 12) Let's Rock And Roll.

REVIEW

This is, by all means, one of the oddest-sounding records released in 1960 — and the very fact that it exists is the result of a highly accidental set of circumstances. First, much like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Ritchie Valens was still dead, but his legend was still very much alive and demanded extra fuel to burn. Unfortunately, with his career being so short and all, he had a lot less left behind in the vaults than his older partner Buddy Holly, and most of it had already been assembled and released on Ritchie the previous year. All that was left behind were some really rough-quality demos and live recordings that a major label like Decca or Columbia would probably never have dared to put out, at the risk of ruining their professional reputation.

Luckily, Ritchie was not signed to Decca or Columbia, but rather to Del-Fi Records, the property of the entrepreneurial Bob Keane (who, at the time, spelled himself as Keene) — set up after he’d been tricked out of his first label, Keen Records (the one that had all those early Sam Cooke singles). Valens was Keane’s biggest and most successful find on the label, so it was only natural that he had to squeeze out every last drop of Ritchie’s legacy — and, quite likely, not even just for the money, but rather because he may have had a hunch he’d never again be able to sign up anybody of Ritchie’s caliber to his label (the closest he ever got to was with some of Frank Zappa’s earliest doo-wop recordings, but Keane and Zappa parted ways even before Zappa really became Zappa as we properly know him). The result is this short, strange, confusing record, which somehow accidentally ends up being (a) officially the first live rock’n’roll album by an American artist (Cliff Richard’s Cliff over in the UK actually beat it by more than a year), and (b) unofficially — one of the first examples of the «lo-fi» genre, as thoroughly accidental as it is... but we do know that most of the trends in music are due to accidents, one way or another. Some people drop their amps, some cut off the tips of their fingers, and some just... die.

Anyway, there’s really not that much to write about the actual contents of the album. The most listenable component of it consists of Bob Keane’s introductions, as he explains that Side A contains low quality recordings of a short set that Ritchie performed on December 10, 1958, at his own school (Pacoima Junior High), while Side B hosts a few unfinished demos from late 1958 and early 1959 that Ritchie apparently had recorded at Keane’s own home studio.

Keane takes the time to stress that it is only by the fans’ own demand that these low quality recordings are being released — but it is a little hard to believe him when the very first song on the album already turns out to be a lie. Apparently Ritchie did play ‘Come On Let’s Go’ on that particular night, since we hear the song introduced by Ritchie’s schoolmate Gail Smith, the MC for the evening (and later the president of Ritchie’s fan club) — but if you are wondering why he only plays it on acoustic guitar, without any accompaniment from the rest of his band, it is because the recording is actually an early studio demo with overdubbed crowd noises. So much for «authenticity». It’s a nice demo, and it wouldn’t have sounded out of place or un-exciting even if Ritchie did open his show with just his acoustic guitar, but it’s not nice to begin your tribute to your recently fallen hero with a lie. The Only Solitaire Morality Police disapproves.

On the other hand, it does sound marginally clearer than the actual four live recordings that follow. "I can’t hear what I’m singing", Ritchie smirks before launching into ‘Donna’, and while this rather refers to the overwhelming screaming of his Ritchiemaniacal girl fans than to the quality of the equipment, it is a pretty symbolic statement all the same. Actually, the singing is less problematic than the music, with all the guitars splurging together in an ugly gray mix, the kind we are all familiar with through audio-quality bootleg recordings of our favorite artists. Which is just too bad if you want to learn for certain whether Ritchie’s backing band showed more pizzazz while blasting their way through Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summer­time Blues’ than Eddie’s own band did. (Vocally, it is not very impressive: Ritchie’s natural shyness prevents him from giving the song the same cocky, jerky attitude that came so naturally for Eddie).

In addition to that particular cover and the predictable ‘Donna’ and ‘La Bamba’, the only «new» song performed at the show is the instrumental ‘From Beyond’, a lumbering, mid-tempo twangy instrumental with an impressively proto-metallic sheen to it — another tiny touch to Ritchie’s reputation as one of the forefathers of classic hard rock, though it is unclear just how much of that low distortion was intentional and how much is the result of an auditory illusion stemming from the overall piss-poor quality of the recording. In any case, it’s definitely heavier than The Ventures.

In between the songs, there’s a lot of stage banter between Ritchie and Gail Smith, most of which I have serious trouble deciphering — although you don’t even need to understand the English language to deduce that (a) the president of the Ritchie Valens fan club must have had a serious crush on Ritchie Valens (DUH!) and (b) Ritchie Valens was a sympathetic, modest, and shy teen, which actually does quite often come hand-in-hand with a lumbering and burly appearance. He certainly had less confidence in himself than Elvis, and was more of a natural musician than showman — confirming, once again, that there was no way to predict anything about his future in the music business, since it is always more difficult to make predictions about natural musicians than it is about natural showmen.

The shorter and sonically clearer (though still obviously lo-fi) second side of the album, where each track is preceded by a quick Keane introduction, agrees with that. On one hand, the demo version of ‘Malagueña’ here clearly shows that Ritchie’s dedication to the Latin side of his musical ancestry was serious: although his Spanish guitar skills remain relatively amateurish (but keep improving — maybe in a few years’ time, Ritchie could have become a serious master of the craft), ‘Malagueña’ is a far more complicated piece than ‘La Bamba’ — and far more on the classical than the rock’n’roll side as well, showing a desire to expand into wider, more «progressive» areas.

On the other hand, the short unfinished pop-rock ditties ‘Rock Little Darlin’ and ‘Let’s Rock & Roll’ are fairly second-rate Buddy Holly-isms which I do not really see evolving into anything more outstanding and memorable; and the two instrumentals are... okay. (Ironically, ‘Rhythm Song’ features some really tasty lead guitar licks — too bad it all went to waste). ‘Guitar Instrumental’, as Keane justifiedly introduces it, shows a strong Bo Diddley influence, but is interesting in that it tries to build on the Bo Diddley beat rather than copy it blindly; even so, it is essentially just a piece of focused jamming, more of an ongoing attempt to find something that works than a careful fixation of something that has already been found and fixed in place.

Overall, there’s no harm in hearing the album at least once — just out of historical interest — but other than the frantic assault at mastering flamenco guitar on ‘Malagueña’, there is hardly anything here to recommend for inclusion on that abstract «perfectly comprehensive» Ritchie Valens playlist. The attempt to expand a promising young artist’s discography in the face of his terribly premature demise is commendable, but you can’t really create something out of nothing. Oh well, at least Bob Keane did not endorse the wonderful idea of overdubbing these leftovers with extra rhythm sections and strings and releasing them as genuinely new commercial material, sparing Ritchie from the indignant treatment that Coral and Decca had reserved for Buddy Holly. Let us be thankful for that at least.

• Only Solitaire reviews: Ritchie Valens