Frank Marino In Gnashville 10/10/07

[Hardrock69]

There is another thread around here titled: Frank Marino vs. Robin Trower in a street fight, who would win?

Frank Marino would beat the living shit out of Robin Trower, stomp him into a paper-thin smudge, and then wipe his ass with him.

No Question.


There are only a handful of Guitar Gods frequently mentioned by everyone: Page, Beck, Hendrix, Schenker, etc.

But let me say this: Frank Marino should easily be mentioned in that same category of Guitar GODS.

Here is a link to my review on the 10/30/06 performance (last year). It pretty much describes what I saw last night:

http://www.rotharmy.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41329&highlight=Frank+Marino

Of course there are some differences.

Firstly, this year I had my digital camera with me. Secondly, I was right in front of Frank for a large part of the evening. I took about 189 photos, of which maybe about 20 or so that are worthy of posting.

I did not have the time to upload as I did not get home until 12:30.

I also took a short quicktime clip with my camera. The video it takes is sorta grainy, but what the hell.

Considering that the average time of one of his 'songs' is about 15 minutes, I knew I would not have the space on my memory card to get an entire song on video, so I waited until he was playing solo, by himeself on stage, and got about one minute and 20 seconds. I will post it and the photos tomorrow.

Frank wipes his ass with 99% of ALL guitarists out there.

To say he is a MONSTER MOTHERFUCKER is a criminal understatement of the last billion years.

As with last year, the band went on at 9 sharp. It was the same band.

They played for 2 hours and 45 minutes with no fucking break, with no encore.

But after a performance like that, encores are completely irrelevant and unneccesary.

My ears are still ringing as his Marshall half-stack was 10 feet directly in front of me, and he played fucking LOUD!

Most other guitarists are one-trick ponies. They limit themselves to one style, and that is about it.


Frank plays jazz like George Benson, drifiting into fusion like John Mclaughlin, blues like an extreme version of electrified Muddy Waters, and rock like Jimi Hendrix.

And that is putting it mildly.

At one point it was just him and his drummer, and he played a 15-minute long guitar solo where he sounded like an electrified old black Delta-blues slide player. Think of Ry Cooder as far as tone.

Except he did not even use a slide.

And get this....throughout the entire evening, I cannot think of ANY moment where he repeated himself ONCE.

He makes EVERYONE who is playing live today look like Rubbish.

Van Halen wishes he could suck this guys dick.

Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, all of them would love to be allowed to lick his ass just once.

I am not exaggerating.

His band are a bunch of badass motherfuckers. You can tell they have been together for a long time, as they played several jams that were 15-20 minutes long, and they followed him on a dime.

Then at the end, he played an electrified version of the melody that ended up being Amazing Grace, but if I am not mistaken, is based on an old Scottish bagpipe tune.

And he made his guitar sound like fucking bagpipes, with the fucking correct phrasing and everything.

He only has 3 shows left on this tour.

So many of you will not be able to see him this time out.

But if you think you have seen the baddest guitarists on Earth, but have never seen Frank, think again.

He makes them seem like amateurs.

Here are the remaining dates:

10/12/07 Ram's Head Annapolis, MD (410) 268-4545
10/13/07 Ram's Head Annapolis, MD (410) 268-4545
10/14/07 The Chance Theater Poughkeepsie, NY (845) 471-1966

I am not 20 anymore. Standing in front of the stage going berserk for almost 3 hours while subjected to high volume did a number on my body, and I feel like some kind of fucked up zombie right now.

Right now...coffee is my friend.

Thus endeth the review.

:cool:

[Hardrock69]

Here is a clip from last year's tour, unknown venue/date:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PboMcHcL1eM"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PboMcHcL1eM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

[Hardrock69]

And one other thing.

Being so worn out, of course when I got home I fell into a deep sleep.

Dreamed I was at a party. Dream went on forever.

So anyway, who should show up but Marilyn Chambers.

She eventually let it be known to me that she wanted me to take her home, and fuck the living shit out of her.

As with most dreams, it never got to the good parts.

My alarm went off before we even 'left' the party.

Christ, what a night.
:rolleyes:

[binnie]

After watching that clip I'm converted!

Fuck me that was good - there's so much energy bouncing around there, cool,

Can you recommend an album?

[Hardrock69]

To be honest, I have never owned any of his albums lol.

I knew of him starting in the mid-70s, and I had friends who would play me his stuff.

The one album I was always aware of was a live album called "Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush Live" released in 1978.

The song in the video above (The Answer) was a huge hit, and I used to hear it on FM radio all the time when I was living in Seattle that year.


Here is a Wikipedia page about him:

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

One part of his "mythology" is that he wound up in a hospital in a coma due to a major acid trip, and when he came out of it he could play amazing guitar, whereas beforehand he could not play at all, or sucked really bad.

Here is what is said on the Wikipedia page about it:


Early on in his career, it was claimed on the music press that he has stated that he is a reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix, a claim that was substantiated by his playing of Hendrix classics with considerable virtuosity. This claim was dismissed by Marino himself as falsified information created by the press and he has continued to forge a style of his own through the 1970s up to present day. This is discussed in-depth on the MySpace page for Frank Marino & Mahagony Rush.


Here is his MySpace page:

http://www.myspace.com/frankmarinoandmahoganyrush

And official website:

http://www.mahoganyrush.com/


And here is the website for his personal record label:

http://www.justin-time.com/authors/frankmarino/



And lastly, here is a recent interview with him:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/12/31/140846.php

Interview With Frank Marino
Written by MuzikMan
Published December 31, 2004


Visit The Frank Marino Website

MuzikMan: You have returned in a big way with Real Live! Frank, which is an incredible album, one of the best live recordings I have ever heard. I understand what brought you back into music after a self-imposed exile were your fans, can you go into detail what prompted you to leave music and how the live recording took shape?

Frank Marino: I left in 1993 because I had been in it for so long and had seen the music business go from bad to worse. I just couldn't stand the fact that the thing I had set my hopes on, music, had become something that was all about sales, popularity, and spectacles and the like. Nobody cared anymore about the music... even the bands themselves seemed to not care about what they were playing or why they were doing it. It just became a mess. So, I quit to go home to have kids. After having three of them, I was surfing the Net one night in search of my father's family history (looking up the name Marino) and came upon a website called Strange Universe.

A guy named Willy Parsons had taken it upon himself to create this magnificent website ( www.mahoganyrush.com) devoted to my band. And, when I saw the level of interest there, I was pretty shocked and flattered. I had never even known that there were still any fans left, especially not that many. I got in touch, started participating in chats and message board conversations, and before I knew it I was being asked to put out an album, play a gig, keep in it... whatever. I gradually did this until I found myself back in it full-time.

The RealLIVE! Album took place as a part of a tour we were doing. We record every show in multi-track, and it was the last show in that series that year. We have another 27 hard-drives full of material, but I looked at the last one (which was done in Montreal, my hometown) and started mixing that one. As it turned out, it was a pretty good night. But it was never actually intended from the start to be a recording that was meant to be put out as an actual live album, when we were doing the show. Things just turned out that way.

MuzikMan: You do not have a large catalog of recordings for someone that has been in business so long, is there a particular reason for that? Are there many recordings that have not reached the light of day yet? I am sure some of those unreleased tracks will turn up on the remastered series released next year on your new label Justin Time?

Frank Marino: Well, I'm not sure you could call my catalog small, though perhaps it isn't as voluminous as some others. I did 3 albums for 20th Century Fox, 7 more for Columbia, and about 5 other ones for different labels. That's about one every two years on average. That's apart from the special package records or appearances on other records. I think I'm on something like 27 albums in all. But I don't like to make records on a year-by-year basis like I was forced to do when on Columbia. I prefer to take whatever time I want and only make an album when I feel like I have something I'd like to record. My old manager, David Krebs, used to tell me that he thought I was more like a novelist than a rock-musician, and I agree with that. There are things that no one has heard, and perhaps one day they'll see the light of day.

MuzikMan: You can talk about your equipment-what kind of guitars you prefer and what kind of recording process there was with the live album?

Frank Marino: I build my own amps, based on Fender amplifiers. But in the studio I use Marshall as well. Live, I almost never use the Marshalls. I did get a few modified Marshalls from a guy in Sweden named Tommy Folkesson, and he does the best mods I've ever heard, if you want the Marshall sound. I will only use his Marshalls, but I also have an original slightly modded one from the 70's that I will also use from time to time. My guitars are primarily Gibson SG Les Paul's, 1961-1/2. I've got a few other models of SG, but they're all modded to play like the 61's. I use the occasional Strat and Telecaster, but I prefer the feel of the Gibson.

It's funny, but so many people hear my sound and think I'm playing on a Strat through a Marshall, but most of the time I'm not. As a matter of fact, most of the time I don't even use tubes... I use transistor-based power amps, like Crown. Even in the 70's, they thought I was using Marshalls for my live album when I was using Acoustic 270's, head and bottom. But now my modded pre-amp (which I do myself) is tube-based, and my power amp is still transistor. My pedals are less in number than they were in the old days... I used to have 22 of them on my board, and everybody used to give me grief over playing with pedals... now everyone plays with pedals and I hardly ever turn them on. But I mod each one of them myself... they just sound like crap out of the box, no matter which one you buy, it seems.

MuzikMan: Who was Frank Marino before he became an international rock star? You certainly did not let any of your success over the years go to your head or allow it to ruin your life like so many have, what is your secret to happiness and staying humble?

Frank Marino: I don't know if you could call it a secret... I'm just a guy who's very religious in my life, in everything I do. I'm a pretty committed Orthodox Christian, and I try to live it rather than talk about it or show it off. As for happiness, well, I get that from my children (3 little girls), my wife and my religion. I wasn't always very happy... I had alot of suffering when I was very young, and it lasted a long time. But, through the Grace of God I got through it. I still have disappointments and troubles like anybody else, but I try to tell myself that if life is a book, then the page I'm on hasn't turned yet. I always wait for the next page.

MuzikMan: I remember hearing about you back in the 70's here in the U.S. but you never broke it big like other bands, although certainly plenty of people certainly knew who Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush were. All the cool kids did back in the day when I was discovering bands like yours Frank. What stopped it all from happening on a level like Black Sabbath, Kiss, Deep Purple and other popular acts of that time? Was it a conscious choice not to get that popular?

Frank Marino: It was very much a conscious choice, because I understood very early on that the way to make that choice to be "more famous" was to also choose to do some things that went against my personality, my music and my faith. No amount of money or fame is worth a man compromising his values or abandoning his principles. It was clearly put to me that, in order to exceed the level that the band was at, I would have had to do certain things in certain ways that would have necessitated compromising at least some of those values. I simply refused, and really didn't care what the business people thought of me. I didn't think very much of them anyway and, with very few exceptions (Jim West being one for sure), I still don't.

I'm still, mentally, an old anti-establishment-type of holdover from 1969. My peers at that time had no problem with that ideology, when "the establishment" meant guys in three-piece-suits out to make a buck through corporations and governments, or going to war in Vietnam, but they balk today when I remind them that most of them (my peers) have now become the establishment... and it's not that they've become those same types with the same designs, but that they've created a new type of establishment which virtually tries to market and sell the old ideals, while calling them "cool" and "underground". But most of it is a sham. In some ways, the new "establishment", the "music-business", is far worse than the old. My good friend, Liz Vandall (Uli Roth's wife, and a fabulous singer), calls me the "anti" man!

MuzikMan: What are you listening to these days? Whom would you consider as the most enjoyable acts actively recording today?

Frank Marino: I truly don't listen to a lot of today's music... I'm still stuck in the older stuff, if I listen at all. But I do like to listen to jazz (not fusion) and blues, a lot more than I used to. But if you ever catch me putting music on, it'll probably be the Beatles, Hendrix, The Doors, Quicksilver, The Allman Brothers, George Benson, Larry Carlton or early Santana, Johnny Winter... or even Tony Bennett, whom I just love!

MuzikMan: What are you thoughts on using the Internet as a tool to distribute and market your music? Do you spend much time in cyberspace

Frank Marino: I spend a whole lot of time on the Net. I'm always on my site, talking to folks and getting involved in the chats and stuff. I think that music should be freely "streamed" from the artists' sites. I'm not necessarily saying "downloading", I'm saying streaming. You can listen to everything I've ever done right on my site... you're not downloading it, but you don't have to. Just click the tune and it plays. As a matter of fact, why would you want to download it and fill up your hard drive when it's instantly available with a mouse-click at any time? If everybody offered this, bands AND companies alike, there would be no more downloading at all. It would be like a giant radio with a million channels where you could hear whatever you want whenever you want. If, then, you like it and want to buy it, by all means go ahead. If not, listen anyway... just like the radio.

I don't think there would have been too many record companies or bands in the past who would have refused if some radio station said they'd play nothing but a certain artist 24/7 on a specific channel. They'd have been positively giddy about it. That's what live streaming will accomplish... instant access at no cost, which trusts the listener to support the act if he so chooses. But I suspect that the people who are most against allowing this are people who have no faith in the listener nor in their own music's ability to get that listener to want to own it in the first place.

MuzikMan: What are you looking forward to now with the release of the live set and the forthcoming reissues? Do you plan on recording a new album or touring?

Frank Marino: Oh, I hope to tour. I much prefer to tour than to record, really. We are supposed to be doing a DVD and a Blues album and a few other things, but that's down the road and I'll rely on God's Grace to make that happen. In the meantime, I'd like to go out and do some gigs, get to know more people and generally have a grand old time playing music. That's why I picked up a guitar in the first place... no?

[binnie]

Cheers Hardrock....

[ThrillsNSpills]

Originally posted by binnie
After watching that clip I'm converted!

Fuck me that was good - there's so much energy bouncing around there, cool,

Can you recommend an album?


Get his Live album brother.
You won't be disappointed !

He really is amazing .
If there is an anthology of his best studio work it would be a must have.
Thanks for the info HR and congrats for catching a live show.

[binnie]

Cheers Thrills!

I will be on the lookout for them when I'm next in a record store...

[ThrillsNSpills]

Albums and Reviews (http://www.mahoganyrush.com/albums.htm)


Check out this review from the Strange Universe album:


Frank really outdid himself with his third offerring. A 10+ record which is superbly produced. In my unbiased opinion, this record features his best work of all time. Every cut on this album stands alone as a great force to be reckoned with. From the very different "King Who Stole The Universe" and the sensuous "Moonlight Lady" down to my favorite rocker "Land of a 1000 Nights", 19 year old Frank pulls out all the stops and delivers a solid performance throughout. One of the best albums of all time, by anyone!!! Must own.

Sounds like this guy's a fan :)
The only album I remember besides the live album from the 70's is the Power of Rock and Roll, which pretty much kicks your ass right out of the gate. Hendrix fans should check out Frank's work if they haven't already.

I've never heard the song the Answer on the radio although it's pure power, but I do remember Strange Dreams getting a bit of airplay.
You can get some of these on Amazon, from the link above.

[Hardrock69]

Yeah I remember hearing Strange Dreams also back in the day.

I heard The Answer enough that whenever I think of Frank, that is the song that comes to mind.

By the way, the radio station that was playing the shit out of that song in 1978 was the mighty KISW!!!
:D

[binnie]

The more I hear, the more I like!

[Hardrock69]

Here are the pics.

As I have no broadband at home (Comcast and BellSouth can EAT FUCKING SHIT! :mad: )
I will post the video from work tomorrow.

http://i23.tinypic.com/n4ftps.jpg

http://i24.tinypic.com/311njax.jpg

http://i21.tinypic.com/34iifkp.jpg

http://i23.tinypic.com/2ebxyza.jpg

http://i23.tinypic.com/xgmuqg.jpg

http://i24.tinypic.com/29y3uar.jpg

http://i24.tinypic.com/2nleekp.jpg

[Hardrock69]

http://i20.tinypic.com/15yf6dg.jpg

http://i21.tinypic.com/j7xpwl.jpg

http://i21.tinypic.com/aabszo.jpg



And just to make this thread complete, here is a link to the thread with a boot from October 2005:

http://www.rotharmy.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49719

I am listening to the first disc right now. 3 songs, the length of each is:

24:06
22:46
11:59

disc 2 the song lengths are:

31:05
18:51

Disc 3:

13:33
25:47
10:40
10:13
10:37

Now WHAT guitarist or any rock artist for that matter plays 3-hour sets with songs that are no less than 10 minutes long?

Gee have a I ranted enough about him?
;)
:D

[Diamondjimi]

Fuckin A Hardrock.

Frank is a fuckin legend. Unlike EVH this guy has not lost a step in 35 years. Great stoner rock.

A friend of mine (a non musician btw) is a Marino fanatic. About 6 or 7 years ago before Frank re-emerged back on the scene he got the # to his studio in Quebec. Don't ya know it the fucker gets him on the phone and yaks with him for 20 minutes. Really cool dude. His re-emergance on the stages he said is largly due to the fact that when Frank discovered the amount of fan sites and tributes online ,he knew the demand was there and got the band together again.

World Anthem , Juggernaut , and the live album are my favs.

If your a fan of great guitar playing, killer grooves I highly recommend Frank Marino !

[Hardrock69]

Son of a bitch....I forgot to bring that video clip into work today.

Oh well.

Tomorrow I try to remember again.
:rolleyes:

[Hardrock69]

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If you want the original Quicktime .mov file, you can download it here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ENGYC8KL