Spreckels Organ Concert Series Closes with Rock Tribute Including Six Songs Associated with Tina Turner

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

My plan for last night (Monday, September 4) was to attend the final Monday night concert of the 35th annual Spreckels Organ summer series in Balboa Park, a rock show billed as a tribute to the late Tina Turner but also including songs by AC/DC, The Beatles, Van Halen, Heart, Led Zeppelin, Blondie and Black Sabbath (which probably accounts for the two songs in the set I didn’t recognize; of all the bands they were paying tribute to, Black Sabbath is the one I know least). The lineup of musicians was the same as it had been last year: singers Chloe Lou, Lauren Leigh Martin and William Fleming (easily the sexiest guy in the band, tall and with waist-length hair done in either dreadlocks or braids), electric guitarist Ben Zinn, electric bassist Harley Magsino and drummer Richard “T-Bone” Larson along with San Diego civic organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez mostly struggling to make himself and his organ heard over the amplified roar of the band. The 2022 concert (which I reviewed for my blog at https://musicmagg.blogspot.com/2022/09/organ-pavilion-rock-concert-september-5.html) had been billed as a tribute to women in rock – though their definition of “rock” had been rather elastic and included soul greats like Aretha Franklin and the late Tammi Terrell as well as pop singers like Cher. I was particularly irritated by the five songs from the band Heart, which not only was about three too many but it meant they had no room for quite a few other major women rockers (like Suzi Quatro, Pat Benatar, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde or Siouxsie) who would have seemed to me de rigueur in a tribute to women in rock.

Last night they opened with the same song with which the 2022 concert had started – AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” not much of a song but a great head-banger – and then they did the first of two three-song sets to Tina Turner, including John Fogerty’s “Proud Mary” (originally written for Fogerty’s band Creedence Clearwater Revival but extensively rewritten by Ike Turner for himself and Tina, who kept it in her repertory after she bailed on Ike’s physical and psychological abuse and walked out) and two songs from her 1980’s comeback, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero” from the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. After that came the two songs I didn’t recognize, which appeared to be called “Rolling Around the World on Breaking Chains” and “Revolution in My Mind,” and then a three-song set by The Beatles: the 1968 single “Lady Madonna” and two tracks from the White Album, Paul McCartney’s “Helter Skelter” and John Lennon’s “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey.” Those two White Album songs (along with George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and Lennon’s “Yer Blues,” also from the White Album) are as close as The Beatles ever came to heavy metal, and they fit in well with the sonic assault of a band that went in merely billed as “The Organ Pavilion Rock Band” but midway through the concert decided to give themselves an on-the-spot name, “Organism.” After another song I didn’t recognize which I guessed was called “Trying to Make Love to You,” the band paid tribute to Led Zeppelin with “Stairway to Heaven” and “Immigrant Song.” In previous years they’ve done “Stairway to Heaven” with a woman singing lead (which led me to joke after one concert, “I never wondered what Led Zeppelin would have sounded like with Stevie Nicks as their lead singer, but now I know”); this time William Fleming and Chloe Lou turned it into a duet, and though they played it well enough (and drummer Larson seemed thrilled by getting to do John Bonham’s licks) ultimately it seemed to get just a bit boring.

Then the band dredged up four songs from the 2022 set list, Giorgio Moroder’s “Call Me” (from the film American Gigolo, and a huge hit for Blondie after Stevie Nicks reportedly turned it down; Deborah Harry’s voice was as right for this as Nicks’ would have been wrong, but after the 2022 concert I wrote that a Blondie original like “Heart of Glass” would have been a better choice for a tribute) and three of the five Heart songs they did last year: “Barracuda,” “Alone” and “Crazy on You.” Then they played the Van Halen song “Jump,” not exactly one of my favorites but a song William Fleming remembered from his childhood when he and his parents would be in their car playing it on a cassette, and they’d bounce up and down in their seats to the command of the song’s lyrics. They closed with their second three-song Tina Turner tribute, featuring “The Acid Queen” from Pete Townshend’s rock opera Tommy (Tina played the Acid Queen and sang the song in Ken Russell’s relentlessly overdirected film version), “River Deep – Mountain High” (with Raúl doing an O.K. but doomed job trying to duplicate Phil Spector’s and Jack Nitzsche’s orchestral effects on the organ), and as their set closer, “Simply the Best.” They didn’t play an encore, though after an hour and 42 minutes of relentlessly loud rock (the genre is capable of subtlety but this band didn’t offer any last night) that was probably just as well, and I saw at least one of the organ-concert “regulars” get up in mid-show, probably to move farther back in the venue where the sonic assault wouldn’t have been quite so overpowering.

I’d still love to see Raúl Prieto Ramírez lead a tribute concert to Queen – his solo version of Freddie Mercury’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” is one of his specialties and would make a great centerpiece for a concert of Queen’s songs – but he seems stuck on these omnibus multi-band tributes. In his early years as civic organist (he’s been here since 2018 and last year he and the Spreckels Organ Society extended his contract for 10 more years, which means I’ll probably have to put up with his annoying and often offensive stage raps for the rest of my life) he did shows paying tribute to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd (and at least Pink Floyd used an organ as an integral part of their sound), though I remember his immediate predecessor as civic organist, Carol Williams, did The Doors (who also featured an organist) and David Bowie, and my husband Charles and I both decided we liked her taste in classic rock quite a bit better than his!