The Church of Rock and Roll

I spent today’s sunny Sunday stroll with my favorite album: Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones.  Starting my walk in a kind of brain dead, crabby haze (too much grading of papers and writing of report cards!), by the time I returned I was alive, exhilarated, my head clear.  My soul and spirit had been raised and cleansed.  “Exile” was, as it always is, a religious experience: a statement which I make in very literal, very serious sense.

I don’t go to church.  The truth is, houses of worship give me the creeps, as does religion in general, particularly all the large, organized varieties.  The iconography, the incense, the ritualistic superstitious supplication, the handing over of control of my own present and future to some unseen force, the notion that going through some elaborately choreographed  set of words, gestures, or songs somehow makes me a better person— none of this has ever rung true for me.  I don’t think any supreme, sentient being is looking down, guiding, judging, or paying attention to our tiny little rock or me in any way, and even if some as yet undetermined, undefined force or being does exist, I certainly don’t think any religion or any person here on earth has ever got a clue as to what such an entity is up to at all.  If you’re a believer and religion helps you makes sense of things, that’s fine with me, but it doesn’t for me and I stay away from those places.

However, I do believe that some phenomena within our human experience do defy rational or scientific explanation.  A few years back my family had just returned from a blissful 2 week vacation.  We had visited relatives, camped, hiked, taken in ballgames, toured historical sites, and had a wonderful time in general, all at the height of summer.  We returned on a Sunday afternoon and were NOT looking forward to the harsh return to work and the weekly grind on Monday morning.  While I was certainly not faced with any tragedy or terrible hardship, I was certainly on a buzzcrash—my mood, as it was this afternoon, was bleak, unpleasant.   As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur.”  I took my kids for a walk by the lake while my wife made dinner.  The Chicago Park District stages concerts by local ensembles at parks around the city throughout the summer, and on that particular evening my kids and I encountered a local gospel ensemble—a chorus backed by organ, drums, and bass—in full flight.  Tragically I forget the name of the outfit (I believe it was Bobby Rush’s Praise Ensemble, but I’m not sure), but I’ll never forget the lady singing a solo in front of the band with her eyes closed and clapping her hands, her voice rich and throaty, melodious and gritty all at once.  She was oblivious to everything in the Universe except the music coursing through her at that moment, and she appeared to be merely a conduit for this current, though one able to conduct the current because she had spent a lifetime in convocation with it.  We caught the last 20 or 30 minutes of their set, and by the end, like this afternoon, I had been turned around: my head was clear, my outlook was now positive, my soul and spirit had been raised and cleansed.  The music had been a religious experience—defying not only rational or scientific accounting but also any straightforward mental health explanation whatsoever.  No conflict had been resolved, no therapeutic epiphany reached—the music had simply fixed me up.  It was at this moment that I realized that music is my religion and that I am a member of the Church of Rock and Roll.

And so what does this mean?  “I belong to the Church of Rock and Roll” sounds like some hamhanded, trite, clichéd movie script crapola, and in some respects it is.  But for me, and, I suspect, for many others, music—not church—is where we go, what we turn to when we’re lost or bleak, what we rely on to bring us back around when everything and everyone else has failed us, the way church and religion does for people who believe in these institutions.  And so yes, in all seriousness and absolutely: music is my religion and I am a member of the Church of Rock and Roll.  Music has the power to raise and cleanse me, to exorcise my soul and brain of my own personal demons, to remind me what is really beautiful and important in this world.  The phenomenon defies rational explanation, but is undeniably real.  While on that particular afternoon, I came to this revelation through music that would be classified as “gospel,” the music which speaks particularly to me, my own personal denomination of the Religion of Music, is Rock and Roll—that raw, crass, mutt of a genre, born of a fusion of black, white, gospel, blues, jazz, folk, and country influences whose first prophet was Elvis, that crazy boy from Tupelo, Mississippi.

Religions encompass a set of ethos, of values, codified in a set of “sacred” texts.  So it is with Rock and Roll: the music has traditionally valued a youthful spirit, passion, racial and cultural diversity and equality, a questioning of authority, a respect for nature, a sense of political and civic duty, peace and love, a celebration of sexuality and bacchanalia as a response to the stresses of modern life, a self-mocking, dark kind of humor.  While not exactly the same as the values laid down in the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, or any other “sacred” text, they’re not far from them, and certainly represent a modern conversation with them. 

These values are embodied in a set of sacred texts: records.  I don’t have a fuckin’ bible.  I have a record collection (here broadly defined as any music I have access so—vinyl, CDs, stuff I’ve downloaded, whatever).  This is where I always turn, always have turned when I’m lost.  Hooks from these records limn the way I live.  From Exile on Main Street: “…the sunshine bores the daylights out of me…” “…you got to scrape the shit right off your shoes…”  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the way I roll, a credo, fer sher. 

Religious folks spend time praying—communing with their values using scared texts as a basis for conversation with some higher being—every day.  Music plays in my house and in my head without stopping for a minute ever.  It fills me up and makes me think, every minute of every day.  Yeah, I pray—every time I put on a record, I invoke a power larger than myself, something which defies rational or scientific explanation—and I pray every day, all the time.

And so: I consider myself a pretty spiritual guy, despite the fact that I’m not religious at all, and am somewhere towards the atheist side of the agnostic-atheist spectrum.

Unlike many (though certainly not all) folks who do subscribe to more conventional, organized religions, I don’t think my own beliefs are “right” or appropriate for anyone else.  They’re right for me, and my bible—the colossal, dynamic body of recorded music, in particular of the rock and roll variety—allows me to have a very personal and individual set of religious beliefs, that won’t even be the same for everyone in my particular “church.”  Actually, anyone with a particular artistic bent—painting, writing, dance (my daughter)—is likely to have their own personal religion and church in an analogous way.  This is a powerful and beautiful notion: that bodies of artistic work constitute a set of sacred “texts” which articulate the human experience and transcend scientific explanation by raising and cleansing the souls and spirits of individuals who come to know these bodies of work intimately.  “You got to scrape the shit right off your shoes.”  Rock and Roll is my scraper and, thus, my salvation.  Amen.

Runnin’ On Empty and My Only Regret

I’ve certainly screwed many tons of things up in my life, and there are also many cool things that I might or could have done but didn’t, but I don’t regret any of these things except one: I never trusted myself as a musician and so never had the opportunity to go on the Road.  In later years, I have at times, perhaps quite delusionally, gone all Marlon Brando on myself: “I coulda’ been somebody.  I coulda’ been a contender.”  Maybe yes, maybe no—in all likelihood, I would have amounted to just another guy in just another band who wanted to make it and didn’t.  But I’ll never know, and I’ll never have had the experience of taking it on the Road to find out.  This is my one and only regret. 

To live a life in which the whole point of your day is to get to the stage and play for an hour or even 2, to arrive at a point as a part of a band where the act of performing becomes routine enough that you are so focused and comfortable in the act of creation that you aren’t really aware of the audience but only what you and the band are playing…that’s  the one thing I wish I had done in this life.  The feeling a band gets when they truly enter a groove—it’s better than any fuckin’ drug, sex, love, french fries, or any other damn thing in the world, and the only way you get to that point, that groove, is by performing together every night.  The Road Life--  much romanticised and also much maligned—that constitutes the pursuit of this place is the subject of Jackson Browne’s “Runnin’ On Empty.”

And so: I took a walk today with Jackson Browne and the Section (a group of LA musicians who backed dozens of classic albums in the 70s and 80s) as they hit the road with Runnin’ On Empty, and, as it always does, the album left me pretty shook up by the time the band walked offstage after “The Load Out / Stay.”  The album documents the Road experience as clearly, completely, complexly (just made that word up right now, heck yeah!), viscerally, and beautifully as anything ever recorded.  The band sound is enormous—David Lindley’s lap steel and fiddle work takes a lot of the foreground, but Leland Sklar’s bass, Russ Kunkel’s backbeats, Danny Kortchmar’s rhythm guitar, and Browne’s smooth and precise vocals all are equal elements in the palette.  The tracks—recorded onstage, in rehearsal rooms, motel rooms, on the bus— vivdly document, implicitly and explicitly, the band’s love for their musical work, but also the loneliness and boredom of the Road life, and also pay homage to the hard work and cruel ironies of the life and roles of roadies, bus drivers, audience members and other non-performers involved with the Show every night.

The album opens with the title track overviewing the magic of Road Life—driving and playing and living out The Dream-- driven by a straightforward but unshakable guitar riff, mid-tempo backbeat, and soaring lap steel lead work by Lindley.  “The Road,” documenting the ironic loneliness of a performer’s full-yet-empty romantic life, is next.  The tune’s first verse is actually recorded, appropriately enough, in a motel room, and then cuts to the stage for the last 2 verses.  The nearly silent moment when the listener sails from motel room to stage in between verses, cued only by the faint hoot of an audience member, is like running off the end of a cliff and starting to fall, and eerily evokes what must be the performers sensation as he leaves partners in one town and moves to play another show in the next before repeating the same cycle over and over.  “Rosie” is a heartbreaking testimony to the jealousies of roadies, and Danny Kortchmar’s “Shakey Town” studies the peculiar and complex relationship between the guys in the band and the tour bus and truck drivers in the Road Culture.  The cover of Reverend Gary Davis’s “Cocaine”—well, that’s pretty straightforward, but it’s a hell of a rendering of the tune and that part of the Life.  By “Nothin’ But Time,” actually recorded on the tour bus and describing the phenomenon of leaving one show to go to the next, the listener knows the band loves to play and is glad for the chance to do so but also knows that the Road Life is not simply a bed of roses.

The record closes with “The Load Out / Stay,” which the band had never performed and had only run through once very quickly the afternoon of the gig on the recording.  They had to listen very closely to each other to make the damn thing hold together onstage, and the intimacy of the band’s musical moment on this number, ironically delivered in front of a packed auditorium, is a helluva thing to hear.  “The Load Out” celebrates the hard work of the road crew, the love and devotion of listeners who attend shows, and Browne’s deep appreciation for them both as well as for the opportunity to live the Road Life.  The simple piano and haunting melody which frame the song are genuine and moving and never fail to remind me of my only regret. “Stay” is a warm bit of wishful thinking that any one show could go on forever.

I don’t regret not being a rockstar, but I do regret never having the chance to live the Musician’s Life on the Road, in pursuit of that dream.  Runnin’ On Empty’s real gift to me is that it takes me there and lets me live that life in all it’s glory and loneliness, if only briefly.  Thanks, Jackson.

Judging By Covers: Love and Respect for the Art of Playing Other People’s Songs

Someone (was it you?) once said to me that a good cover of a song either does the song differently or does it better than the original version.  While that isn’t really the whole conversation about covers, it’s a good way to start.  I spent an hour walking with “Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman” this morning, and many of the cuts on this record pass this simple test in one or even both respects.  To the “different or better” question, I would also add some other ideas to consider as one contemplates cover versions of songs: first, how a given song stands up to cover-age is a test of the song itself— if people can have engaging musical conversations with the song, bend it their own way, make it say something new, cast it in a different light, then it’s probably a good song in and of itself, whoever is playing it.  Most Randy Newman songs also pass with flying colors here.  Cover versions are also a kind of crucible or benchmark test for musicians—a successful or unsuccessful cover version can say a lot of different things about a performer.  Finally, I’d say that musicians’ decisions about what songs they cover and how they cover them constitutes a legitimate musical artistic vehicle and art form—whether or not those musicians write songs of their own— potentially giving “cover bands” every bit as much musical legitimacy as bands playing “original” material.  Indeed, as a musician who spends much of my own musical time as a player / performer covering songs of other people, I am hereby moved to offer a defense, nee a celebration, of the role of cover songs in this world which, post-Beatles /  Bob Dylan, places a distinctly higher value on musicians who write their own songs than those who cover other people’s songs.  As you read along bearing my modest musings in mind, I humbly ask you to sweep the corners of your brain for your own favorite covers and be ready to share when we’re done, boys and girls…

Tim O’Brien’s cover of “Sail Away” opens the Newman tribute.  O’Brien trades the lush orchestral sonic palette of Newman’s original rendering of the song for country fiddles, strummed guitar, pedal steel / slide, and mandolins— sonic elements more closely associate with the South than the orchestral palette or even the solo piano Newman has used to offer the song up when performing by himself.  The song— voicing in typically razor-sharp ironic Newman fashion the huckster perspective of a slave trader kidnapping Africans into slavery in the South—is, in many ways, brought home or made more authentic by these Southern sonic elements in O’Brien’s version, directly evoking the pastoral southern landscape the trader is trying to make sound appealing (the genius of Newman’s lyric is that it begs the question “does he believe his own line or is he trying to make it sound appealing to himself or to his victims to salve his conscience?”).  O’Brien’s cover, at first blush, doesn’t sound all that different than the original—the melody, tempo, and arrangement are all intact— but  upon further consideration of the sonic palette O’Brien uses, it might well be argued that it’s both different and better.  In any case, O’Brien’s cover certainly underscores the satirical power and beauty of Newman’s songcraft—a celebration of the song and songwriter, as well as the performer, and the art of both songwriting and covering all in one.  Nicely done, Tim, nicely done, indeed.

I really dislike Joan Baez records.  I find the singing generally shrieky and yet also somehow flat and lacking immediacy, and find the songs generally preachy and precious.  One of my favorite covers of all time, however, is of Judas Priest covering Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust,” and it’s great for many reasons, not the least of which is that it sifts the song from the muck of it’s original delivery.  Baez’s lyric portrays an ex-lover addressing her ex about why or how one shouldn’t stay lost in the past.  In her original version, the tone is pedantic, preachy, and lecturish, and also lacks a hook or chorus that digs into your flesh and can’t be shaken.  Baez’s singing (as ever) is shrill and lacks any real ferocity.  In the hands of the Priest, however, the song suddenly becomes something much more savage and appealing: Rob Halford’s narrator is snide and angry, the arrangement pulls a refrain from the lyric that is not in Baez’s original rendering—“we both know what memories can bring, they bring diamonds and rust”—that sticks in your head and gut, and the wailing guitar lines and thunderous chords running around and underneath the melody suddenly make the song a much more engaging and desperate piece of expression.  Different and better, hell yes and for sure, and it also does a great job of showing the song at its best, maybe even improving it.

Sometimes straight ahead cover versions illuminate performers in revealing ways.  The Black Crowes teamed up with Jimmy Page for a Zeppelin fest some years back.  “Live at the Greek” documents the adventure.  The Crowes being the unapologetic 70s hard rock throwbacks that they are, certainly no one was surprised that they found the opportunity to cover the Zeppelin songbook with Page himself irresistible, and the renderings of the classic Zeppelin catalog are all good, clean, straight ahead, live fun—certainly not different, and not really better, in all frankness, but a fun set to stroll through, just ‘cuz you know the Crowes were living out a dream.  The outing does provide a chance to compare the players involved head-to-head, and the results are revealing both from the Zeppelin side and the Crowes side: the Crowes’ Rich Robinson goes toe-to-toe, guitar-to-guitar with his Master and comes out ahead, laying down song-foundational guitar riffs and firing off bone rattling solos with much more facility and ferocity than the aging Page, who stumbles kinda lamely through his own songs.  Chris Robinson, however, doesn’t fare so well: I love ya’ Chris, I really do, but we can all hear, after listening to this, that you really are no Robert Plant.  The singing is forced and out of tune, and Robinson doesn’t have the technical or emotional range of his forebear.  Sorry dude.  The covers outed ya’ here.

Near the end of the Newman tribute, Marc Broussard offers up a reading of “You Can Leave Your Hat On” which is as delicious as it is straightforward.  Newman’s lyric narrates a sexual encounter which has been interpreted by performers and critics in various ways— from simple passion (Joe Cocker’s rendition) to sexual disorder or deviance (as articulated in various analyses offered up by critics and listeners of varying stripes).  Newman’s own rendering of the song is curiously neutral— certainly lustful, but yet not particularly passionate or malevolently lascivious.  Broussard’s version on the tribute album is really a deliciously straightforward r and b paean to hormonal infatuation.  From the funky bass and drum driving the tune, to the smoky lead and soulful backing vocals setting the scene, to the sleazy horns, the listener is in the room and feels what’s going on here— a narrator who is VERY pleased to be spending the evening with someone he is VERY fond of.  The song stands up to this and all of the varying interpretations and allows listeners and performers to bring their own lenses to what’s, uh, laid out.

Finally, I have played in “cover bands” for many years.  Yeah, I’ve written or co-written a few songs which aren’t half bad, but I ain’t no Bob Dylan and have no delusions about this fact.  However, I sure as hell know a great song when I hear one, and take pride in my ability (and in my bands’ abilities) to have a musical conversation with a great song—to recast it using different tempos, harmonic structures, instrumentations, and stylistic approaches, and also to respect its primary melodic, harmonic, and lyrical ideas.  Kurt Vonnegut once said that he wouldn’t mind being placed in the “Science Fiction” drawer if so many people didn’t mistake that drawer for a urinal, and I feel the same way about playing in “cover bands.”  My own bands have covered everything from the Stones’ “Sweet Virginia” to Monty Python’s “Universe Song” to Bobby Timmons’s “Dat Dere” to George Jones’s “The Race Is On” to the gospel standard “Wayfaring Stranger” to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and way the hell beyond. I have a particular version of “Amazing Grace,” recast in a minor key and narrated by an unconverted unbeliever that I’m mighty damn proud of, and I’ll wager that none of the renditions we have offered of any of these songs sound like any other renditions you’ve heard and also will wager that most of them will knock your bloody socks off.  I think the songbook we’ve amassed—I can and will play any of these tunes for you on command—is a pretty wonderful thing to listen to, defines a really clear musical aesthetic, and says a lot about me and my compadres as musicians.  I also bet almost any other musician you’d wanna hear could lay out dozens of covers which would render you, dear listener, speechless and which would also lend you powerful insight into that musician’s musical heritage and passions and would probably also inspire you to check out some things you’ve never listened to.

Covers are an unheralded but powerful and joyous rock and roll tradition.  They provide glorious conversations with familiar and great songs, illuminate songs and performers in important, meaningful and revealing ways, and constitute an art form in and of themselves.  Go hear the cover band opening for the big national act at the bar down the street this weekend, and holler at that Big Act for them to do a cover or two while you’re at it.  Here are a few more of my own favorite covers:

·       Devo’s version of “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones (on “Are We Not Men?”)
·       Uncle Tupelo’s version of “No Depression” by A.P., Hardy (on “No Depression”—heck,
      this one touched off the whole “alt-country” movement)
·       Linda Ronstadt’s version of Lowell George’s “Willin’” (on “Heart Like a Wheel”)
·       Nirvana’s version of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” (on “Unplugged”)
·       Jane’s Addiction’s version of “Rock and Roll” by Lou Reed (on “Jane’s Addiction,”
      their first record which, interestingly, is a live one)
·       Two classical cellists version of “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC (I swear to god, this link
      just came through as I was writing this blog entry and it is CRAZY:
      http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/83896505/ )
What are some of yours?

Dan Zanes and Raising Kids with the Right Musical Ethos

Took a walk this evening with Dan Zanes’ Parades and Panoramas.  My children were not with me.  Often placed in the kids sections of music stores both online and on the street, Dan Zanes does not belong there.  His records, Parades and Panoramas among them, while accessible to and appropriate for kids, are NOT children’s albums.  They are folk music for people of ALL ages, and folk music in the truest, purest sense of the word, drawing on musical, cultural, and historical strains from all over the world—from Africa to South America to the USA and beyond.  Dan Zanes is a hero and an inspiration— pure love and guts— to anyone who loves rock and roll and folk music.

Zanes first appeared on the musical radar screen as the leader of the Del Fuegos, a real plain old guitar, bass, and drums rock and roll band slashing and hammering their way through the 80s, when it was almost impossible to be a real plain old guitar, bass, and drums rock and roll band.  Their records are savage, raw, and desperate (“Nervous and Shaky” will set your teeth a-rattling in the first 8 bars), but  alas, as we know, not many folks bought records like this in the 80s and so the band, despite critical acclaim (and even some help from the likes of the Band’s Rick Danko!), fizzled and, uh, disbanded.  Zanes then moved to New York, recorded “Cool Down Time” in 1994—a wonderful but unnoticed rock and roll gem—and started a family. 

 

Now a father, he put together some folk bent sessions with friends and relations around town, which eventually gelled into a truly magical series of albums: Rocket Ship Beach, Family Dance, Night Time, House Party, etc.  These were marketed as “kids music,” and while this marketing strategy helped the records sell and helped Zanes resume life as a working musician, it didn’t really accurately describe what was afoot here.  Zanes was really making folk music, of which the late Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie would be very proud, and which was accessible and engaging not just to kids but to anyone and everyone.  The records combined American classics like “Wonderful World” and “The Sidewalks of New York” with international folk songs such as “Siyahamba” and “Jamaica Farewell” and gorgeous, hooky, and / or rocking originals such as “Night Owls,” and “House Party.”  This was really folk music— friendly, fun, upbeat, funny, danceable, singalongable— for everyone, including kids. 

 

Don’t get me wrong: good records directed specifically at kids should and do exist (please go buy a Justin Roberts record or the Bloodshot Records “Bottle Let Me Down” compilation classic immediately), but the term “Kids Music” mostly conjures up the kind of saccharin sweet sanitary drek so often pushed off on kids (Raffi, et. al.), which sane adults raised on rock and roll can't bear to listen to without upchucking. Sensing that he was somehow bridging this gap with his magical brand of all-ages accessible folk music, Zanes recorded a pair of albums not really too different in feel from the "kids" albums but marketed as "traditional" music-- an album of sailors' ballads and riverboat chanteys called Sea Songs, followed by Parades and Panoramas, a collection of songs pulled from Carl Sandburg’s iconic American Songbag.  Sandburg's Songbag is a collection of about 250 American Folk Songs transcribed by Sandburg for piano sketching the first 150 years of our country’s history in song, published in 1927.  This record is really Zanes’s finest achievement in my opinion. 

 

Someone (his wife, I believe) had given Zanes a battered copy of the Songbag as a present, and he (not reading music) had taken the book to the music teacher at his daughter’s school.  The music teacher recorded every one of the 250 songs into a cassette recorder for Zanes, who then culled 25 of his favorites and arranged them for his folk band to be put on Parades and Panoramas.  This is REAL music, about real lives and real people, performed by real musicians with real musical lives which EVERYONE in your house-- ages 0 to 100-- will dig deeply. The songs on Parades and Panoramas— American roots classics, all of them— are tuneful, the recording elegant and gorgeous, the playing and singing sublime, and the arrangements clever and engaging at all turns.  From the opening, longing plea of “Wanderin’” through the rocking trains rolling through “Railroad Bill” and "The Railroad Cars are a-Comin,'" on to the desperation of “Willie the Weeper,” past the Mexican air “Lo Que Digo,” and along the travels of “Across the Western Ocean” and “The Colorado Trail,” the album touches every folk music tradition in our country’s history, traces important parts of our history in ways poignant and personal, and seems to express every emotion in our collective psyche at some point or another.

 

Covering this breadth of material in ways this engaging to all listeners, it's simply not right to call it a kids album.  It's worth noting that one online reviewer felt that it wasn't a kids album because it includes songs with bawdy or darker lyrical themes, but I disagree.  While I don't think it's JUST for kids-- again it's a folk album for everyone-- I DO think its appropriate for kids.  Kids of all ages eat it up and don't get spooked or embarrassed by the songs on edgier topics because the songs about the noted potentially dodgy topics are presented with love, humor, honesty, naiveté, and innocence (my wife and I have kindergarten and 3^rd grade students who go crazy for the thing and it has played endlessly in my home and car with and without kids of varying sizes around for the last 10 years). Indeed, the songs, along with Zanes's and excerpts from Sandburg's notes about them, provide a real education about American history and life over the past 150 years that is likely to be much more insightful, informative, interesting, and exciting than what is presented to kids in school. But, again, it's not a kids album because grups will wanna put it on even when their kids are not around-- 10 year later, I still spin the thing endlessly meself, and my own rock and roll band has pulled several tunes off the record and presents them in settings and arrangements that have NOTHING to do with kids. 

 

Perhaps the only reason to classify this, and all of Zanes’s records, as “kids music” is that they are instructive to kids about what, at best, music and art in general can and should be: beautiful and edgy, old and new, funny and serious, and accessible to everyone, all at once.  This is an ethos and aesthetic worth passing on.

 

And so: the vision and courage Zanes shows in presenting such a collection, rough edges, grup themes, and all in the context of music for FAMILIES -- kids AND their parents-- is truly heroic. This is a record for the ages. Buy it for your kids, buy it for yourself, buy it for your parents and grandparents, buy it for the whole darn family, and for goodness sake, go see the Dan the Man and his Band perform if they get within a hundred miles of wherever you are.  This is a real American treat.

On the Importance of Unpluggeds

I believe that great Rock and Roll (and great music in general) incorporates:
-skill as well as passion
-subtlety as well as bombast (this could also be phrased as understatement as well
 as hyperbole)
-tradition as well as innovation, and
-great songs, period. 
I spent an hour walking with Nirvana Unplugged this afternoon, and as the final, chilling chords of Cobain and Co.’s cover of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” faded in my ears, I got to thinking about what an incredibly dramatic and wonderful reshaping of the rock and roll landscape in reference to these values Unplugged records represented when Nirvana unleashed this one on the world.

When Bob Dylan outraged his kum-ba-ya chanting minions by “plugging in” and going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he built a bridge between folk music and rock and roll—a fusing of subtlety and bombast, a clear and wonderful combination of tradition and innovation, and a prodigious demonstration of both skills and passion from one of the two most accomplished songwriters in history (I count Lennon-McCartney as one).  As a result of this bridge, rock and roll of the late 1960s and early 1970s—from the Band to Joe Cocker to Joni Mitchell to Van Morrison to the Rolling Stones to even Lynyrd Skynyrd—revered, respected, and clearly incorporated elements of acoustic music with folk and traditional blues lineage and sensibilities.  By the 1980s, however, bands like (ugh, gag, RETCH!) Soft Cell and the Human League, which barely had anyone who could play any instrument, electric or acoustic, were selling millions and filling arenas.  Electronica—drum machines, synthesizers, and computer treated voices-- dominated the airwaves.  No tradition, no subtlety, no skill (and, for that matter, no passion either).

In 1989, however, MTV—like it or not, the Tastemaker of the day—started airing “Unplugged” segments, featuring  established stars performing stripped down arrangements of well-known material in front of small, live audiences on a set which looked and felt like an old-fashioned folkie song circle.  Early MTV Unplugged guests ranged from Jethro Tull to Bon Jovi to Paul McCartney, and were well received, though more in the spirit of  quaint diversions than as serious musical offerings.  That all changed n 1992, however, when Eric Clapton rescued his career from a bland fadeout and stormed back into relevancy armed with only a Martin acoustic guitar and his voice. Clapton’s Unplugged set, in retrospect, is a flawed piece of work: stuck in mid-tempo from start to finish and often lapsing into smooth adult contemporary blah well-suited to shopping malls or elevators. 

 

However it does showcase a few kinds of things which had not been popular for many years in powerful ways.  First of all, the unplugged setting lets you hear the man sing.  While I have always felt that Clapton is an over-rated guitar player—come on now, let’s be frank: lots of rock and roll guys play the blues in ways more interesting and arresting than he does—I have also always felt that he is an under-rated singer, and the Unplugged set makes my point nicely.  His voice is rich and warm yet also steeped in grit and gravel, and his singing is clear, precise, and musical.  Listen to him sing “Nobody Knows you When You’re Down and Out,” “Before You Accuse Me,” or “Malted Milk,” and if you don’t get the shivers, well geez, ya’ must be deaf, dead, or soulless.  Without the bombast of his own screaming Stratocaster and a full blown, electrified  rock and roll band blasting away, this voice suddenly comes to the fore, and it is a wonder to behold.  Second of all, yeah—he’s a damn fine (although over rated) guitar player.  His guitar work had become predictable, however—“Clapton plays the blues on his Strat” again and again and again, from tour to album and back ‘round again.  Really, he hadn’t played anything that really sounded new or different, arguably, since leaving Derek and the Fuckin’ Dominos.  The Unplugged record, however, has that Old Dog turning some new tricks, and the stripped down setting lets you really hear it.  The fingerpicking on “Nobody Knows You,” the slide work on “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”—that’s yummy stuff and way more interesting than endless noodling on electric versions of “Cocaine” or "After Midnight” that he’d been playing ad nauseum for years, decades even.  Skill and subtlety as well as passion and bombast right there for ya’.  And the song selection and reworking of old material—covers of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, et al as well as dramatic recastings of his own original works like “Layla” and songs like “Nobody Knows You” that he has covered already-- provide a delicious combination of tradition and innovation as well as a buffet of some of the finest songs ever written.  The Unplugged format was a new kind of conversation that spoke directly to these values and the fact that the record sold roughly a gazillion copies reflected the fact that the rock and roll audience at large was ready for something Big to happen along these lines.

And then: Nirvana.  Well Holy Crap and Flaming Mother of God with her Hair on Fire.  As noted in this posting and elsewhere, by the early 90s, although rock and roll seemed to be on its deathbed, it still had a heartbeat (those first 2 Jane’s Addiction records are as much of a musical defibrillator as you’ll ever hear, methinks, even if they didn’t sell gazillions).  Nirvana’s Nevermind—  loud,  electric, passionate, and desperate-- roused the sleeping giant.  In addition to the raw bombast audible in the guitar, vocals, and drums, the songs themselves-- “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Come As You Are,” “Polly,” “Breed”— were fuckin’ unbelievable: melodic, irresistible, funny, insightful, and pressing on issues on the minds of young people everywhere.  The album and band took off like ballistic missiles.  To listen to Nevermind, however, with its screaming vocals, thunderous drumming, and wall crumbling guitars, one would not expect that the natural next thing to do would be an acoustic set.  WRONG!  

Nirvana Unplugged, following close on the heels of Nevermind, is one of the greatest albums of all time, and, as a result of the record, the values of
-skill as well as passion
-subtlety as well as bombast
-tradition as well as innovation, and
-great songs, period
were resoundingly re-established.  First: Cobain’s voice was just one part of the gigantic sonic steamroller that rolled over you as you listened to Nevermind.  In an acoustic setting, however, his voice, like Clapton’s, emerges as a specific instrument of staggering power and skill.  From the plaintive “About a Girl,” to the desperately confessional “Pennyroyal Tea,” to the threateningly eerie “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” Kurt Cobain’s singing is both skilled and  passionate,  subtle as well as bombastic.  Again, if his voice on “Lake of Fire” doesn’t give you the Willies, then geez, ya’ must be deaf, dead, or soulless.  It’s all in tune, it’s understated at least or more often than it’s overstated, and it’s all incredibly musical. The set recasts many favorites from Nevermind (and the at the time unfinished In Utero) in remarkable ways – “Come As You Are,” "On a Plain," “Pennyroyal Tea”— making clear that the songs are outstanding compositions, not just successful because of their viscerality or topical timeliness but capable of holding water, and lots of it, in many different settings.  And the band offers breathtaking and inventive renditions not only of their own songs but of contemporaries (like “Lake of Fire” by the Meat Puppets), predecessors (like “The Man Who Sold the World” by David Bowie), and musical ancestors (like “Where Did You Sleep…” by Leadbelly)—tradition and innovation all rolled into one.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Unplugged-style albums have followed.   Indeed, if I were on the proverbial desert island,  I could probably be happy with any of a number of these offerings:  Steve Earle’s Train A-Comin’, Uncle Tupelo’s April 16-20, 1992, Chris Whitley’s Dirt Floor, or even The Rolling Stones Stripped.  Yes, without any doubt, the format has, by now, become formulaic and obligatory, and so is no longer really innovative or, in some cases, even interesting or entertaining.  However I feel that it remains a useful exercise and the fact that it has become de rigeur and a rite of passage is good, healthy: if what you’re doing doesn’t sound good in an acoustic setting, then maybe it’s just smoke and mirrors, hot air.  If you’re gonna be someone now, you better be able to do what you do with only the basic tools: voices, acoustic guitars, and not much else.   You’ve gotta show that you have:
-skill as well as passion
-subtlety as well as bombast
-tradition as well as innovation, and
-great songs, period.
If you don’t, then you’re not really a Big Deal.  Period.  If you do, then maybe you’ve really got something.  Indeed, there are MANY musicians—Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Tweedy, heck, even the Rolling Stones-- who I would rather see in this kind of setting than with their whole damn band.  Brought to you by MTV, Eric Clapton, and Nirvana (quite a triumvirate!), Unplugged sets have made the rock and roll landscape a richer place.

Elvis, The Beatles, The Sex Pistols, Nirvana, and...Anyone Else?

I teach 3^rd grade and I love it.  One reason is that, in addition to teaching reading and writing and math and history, I get chances to teach kids about culture and, especially, music. Some girls in my class were recently referring to the current teeny-bopper flavor-of-the-month band One Direction as “the new Beatles.”  “No,” I said. “They are not the ‘new Beatles.’” “Whhhyyyyy?  What do you meeeeaaaan?” the girls whined.  “Because they sing very nicely, but they aren’t gonna change the world.  The Beatles CHANGED THE WORLD!” I pontificated, pounding a desk for emphasis.  In the entire history of rock and roll, I think, really, only four rock and roll artists can be said to have done this.  Many great ones have changed music in general and rock and roll in particular, but only four have really CHANGED THE WORLD.

ELVIS

Yes, we all know he was a poor white kid with a great voice who had absorbed white and black southern musical traditions and was able to stir them up in a magical and wonderful kind of way.  But he was more than a just a musician: Elvis was a hurricane that tore across our entire culture.  His hip-swiveling appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in September of 1956 didn’t simply announce the invention of a brand new musical genre.  In one fell swoop it both electrified and terrified the entire country and world: Elvis’s game pushed issues of sex, gender, and race to the fore, proclaimed clearly that these things were on young peoples’ minds, and demonstrated that the giant group of young people electrified by his performance was destined to challenge and, indeed, dynamite, traditional mores along these lines and many others.  Indeed, he was the first to galvanize these forces.  Elvis changed the world.

THE BEATLES

The rock and roll explosion set off by Elvis triggered a flood of great music in its wake: Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley, etc etc etc.  The questions about racial integration and teen sexuality raised by the music terrified the Establishment and most adults hoped rock and roll was a fad that would just go away.  Apparently beginning to fulfill these hopes, the music had started to stagnate early 1960s.  Marketing forces diluted the sound by placing toned down rock and roll songs—with edgy blues rhythms and melodies and suggestive lyrics filtered out— into the hands of more palatable bland crooners like Pat Boone.  In truth, as of 1960, rock and roll lyrically had never really moved beyond the “girls and cars” phase.  Bob Dylan hitchhiked to New York City from Minnesota and burst upon the folk scene in Greenwich Village in 1961 with songs that raised Woody Guthrie’s songwriting ethos to another level and into the political causes of the times, but Dylan’s folkies in NYC wanted nothing to do with rock and roll and were a niche music market, rather than a mainstream cultural force, anyway. 

The Beatles, however, were something else.  John Lennon got a lot of crap for saying “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus,’ but he was pretty well spot-on.  Bouncing, once again, onto Ed Sullivan’s stage in February 1964, the world shook at their feet.  While lyrically, the early Beatles songs generally hewed close to traditional subjects (“I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “Please Please Me,” “Can’t Buy Me Love”), musically the band was crafting more complex song forms and moving beyond the blues based chord and melody structures of early rock and roll.  They were ubiquitous— their records dominated the radio and covered record store racks and walls, of course, but their faces also appeared constantly on TV, newspapers, magazines— and their look, with their hair creeping ever closer to their shoulders, raised a clear middle finger to the establishment, which once again began to get nervous.  By 1966, their songwriting had completely exploded the definition and scope of rock and roll, lyrically and musically, and in the process transformed the role of not only the music but of the people who create it and listen it.  By the time “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released, rock and roll songs could address pretty much any topic, idea, issue or question—  social and political commentary, addiction, old age, war, peace, education, parents, children, etc etc etc.  These songs gave voice to ideas and feelings in many young (and older) people’s hearts and minds and thereby empowered them to come together (!) and act on these feelings and ideas.  The Beatles transformed rock and roll from a quaint musical fad or genre to an art form and a vehicle for social change, and also expressed the outlook of an entire generation and empowered that generation and generations of young people ever after to stand up for their ideals.  The Beatles changed the world.

THE SEX PISTOLS…

…only existed for about 15 seconds, but they also changed the world.  Once again, despite the unbelievable explosion set off by the Beatles in the 1960s, mainstream rock and roll had become bloated and stagnant by the mid 1970s.  Some wonderful records were made during that stretch—indeed, many of my favorites (“Exile on Main Street,” anyone?)—but the sense that music or young people could or would change the world had given way to simply a “let’s party” mentality.  Rock stars staged mammoth tours and were worshipped like gods by stoned suburban kids flocking to giant arenas to see them, and all the while record companies raked in millions of dollars.  It was a business, a gravy train—running just fine, but not really a force for cultural  change. 

Then onto the scene, from the depths of depressed corners and backalleys of London, come the Sex Pistols—an unholy mess of safety pins and fury.  Flipping the bird at absolutely everything and ripping out of the radio with raging guitar hooks which frame lyrics bearing social commentary way more iron fisted than anything Bob Dylan ever wrote, the Pistols instantly gave voice to the forgotten underclass and scared the hell out of everyone else (their famous first TV appearance was, like the Beatles’ and Elvis’s, a cultural landmark moment, though for very different reasons).  They made, really, one album (yes, a few people have managed to cobble together a few other odds and ends, but they made one album, really) and imploded by the end of their only tour across America.  However, by the end of that tour, the forces of punk had been unleashed on the culture.  Underclass kids in the UK, USA, and elsewhere had been ignored and trod upon for a long time, were mighty pissed off about many things, and had been so for awhile, but now had a voice and were demanding to be reckoned with.  These people, somehow previously hiding or lurking or waiting in the shadows to come out, were suddenly everywhere—you couldn’t and still can’t walk down a street without seeing palpable traces of the punk ethos and experience: spiked hair, leather boots or jackets, piercings, body ink, etc all expressing a sense of disconnection with the stifling conventions and socioeconomic inequalities of the dominant culture.  Dozens of great bands followed in the Pistols wake—the Clash, the Dead Kennedys, etc etc etc—but it was the Pistols who, in just a few seconds, opened the door and gave voice to a whole generation of forgotten and overlooked people.  The Sex Pistols changed the world.

NIRVANA

By now you know the cycle:  after a ground-shaking cultural change set off by a world-changing trailblazer and followed by many other strong artists, rock and roll stagnates.  The 80s were the ultimate in rock and roll stagnation.  Punk had been stolen out of the hands of angry misfits and underclass rebels and turned into electronic pap performed by people who spent more on their “spiked” hairdos and pre-torn t-shirts and jeans than on their instruments.  Hell, most radio songs through the 80s didn’t even have a drummer—just some casio drum machine thing like you hear on cheezy organ store demos.  The music had no grit or grind, didn’t threaten anyone in any way, addressed no real issues lyrically, and was mostly like white bread soaked in milted vanilla ice cream—bland blah blech.  Yes, there were occasionally musical signs of life (thank god for the Red Hot Chili Peppers!).  Yes, there was Live Aid and “We Are The World,” which were nice one-offs but mostly rock star PR photo ops in the end—not really movement starters. And yes, U2 purported to have a social conscience, but I’ve gotta say that Bono lost me when, after paying $15 for the Rattle and Hum CD and $10 to get into the movie, I watched him on the screen in front of a football stadium of 75,000 people who had paid $50 or so per ticket and $20 for t-shirts sermonize about TV priests milking money out of people—what a load of crap.  If rock and roll wasn’t dead as a music and as a cultural force, then the priest was there in its room administering the Last Rites. 

And then, seemingly out of fuckin’ nowhere comes Nirvana.  On my walk this afternoon, I listened to a bootleg of them at Chicago’s legendary Cabaret Metro recorded just weeks after Nevermind was released, right at the very beginning of the time the record, and thus the band, were starting to break.  The document is one of the most arresting recordings I’ve ever heard—imagine a B52 revving its engines at the beginning of a runway before takeoff.  They were on to something much larger than themselves and they knew it.  The band had a new, raw sound which grabbed you by the throat, inward and outward looking lyrics which articulated a significant set of experiences, reactions, and observations common to a new set of young people in ways that were new, funny, painful, frank, and keenly insightful, and a general aesthetic—jeans, flannel shirts, a kind of modest, understated  regular look— that placed the emphasis on their work and disposed of all the idolatry and outward appearance crapola that had become more important than the musical or lyrical ideas expressed by purported punks, hippies, and other rock and roll musicians.  Like Elvis, the Beatles, and the Sex Pistols, Nirvana had a new musical vision that articulated and established a voice for a whole generation of young people.  The door now open, many great artists followed shortly—Pearl Jam, the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, etc etc etc. Again, suddenly not only was the music everywhere (and wow, was that music something—pure, intense, respectful and inclusive of traditions that it was also altering or even blowing up, honest, unapologetic, witty, literate, and completely unlike anything ever heard before), and not only was Nirvana on every radio and TV station, newspaper, magazine, and T-shirt, but suddenly the concerns of the entire generation they were speaking for—raised on consumerism, surrounded by scary, creepy news stories, etc etc etc—had to be reckoned with.  Like Elvis, the Beatles, and the Sex Pistols before them, they had not only pushed rock and roll music into new territory, but had also brought an entire group of people’s feelings and concerns to the fore.  Nirvana changed the world.

ANYONE ELSE…???

There are dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of other great rock and roll artists, but I think all of them were able to do what they did because these four opened doors, blazed new territories, established legitimate audiences on large scales, and remade not only the musical but the entire cultural landscapes of their times.  These four are on the top shelf, methinks, all by themselves.  One Direction is NOT the new Beatles.  I challenge you, dear readers, to make a case for anyone else in rock and roll.

I think, also, a similar “world changer” statement might be made about one or two hip hop / rap artists, but I’m not familiar enough with the field to know for sure which one— Public Enemy, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, or____________???—was really the world changer.    Please edify me as you see fit.

Thanks for reading.

Peace, Love, and Rock and Roll

mk

Opening Doors: Singles, Jukeboxes, and a.m. Radio

Dug into the Eagles Greatest Hits (’71-’75) on my walk this evening— “Already Gone,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “One of These Nights,” “Take It to the Limit,” etc. all unbelievably compiled before Hotel California, the first side of which is a career’s worth of greatest hits that most bands would kill for by itself-- and it got me thinking about singles.  Singles (45s for old schoolers out there) constitute the “in” door to rock and roll in many ways.  Generally, I’m more of an album guy meself (sometimes I’ve been know to pooh-pooh singles—shame on me), but the importance of individual radio friendly tracks in the life of us music consumers cannot really be overstated.

Let’s start with a definition of what makes a good single.  First, it’s gotta have a hook—a guitar riff, a melody, a chorus or refrain-- that sinks deep into your flesh, draws blood, and won’t let go: you can’t get the damn song out of your head (think Keith Richards’ guitar riff on “Satisfaction”).  Really,  the song has to have something you can sing along with, and so a great melody and some killer clever or heavy lyrical turns of phrase are also pretty much requisite (try listening to “Silly Love Songs” by Macca and Wings without singing along—I dare ya’).  Vocal harmonies are a big plus (these are what really make that Eagles GH record, I think). Next, it’s gotta sound great LOUD even or especially when blasted out of crappy, tinny, lo-fi speakers (the horn break on Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke”).  It’s also gotta be pithy: you’ve got 3 and a half minutes tops and so every second has to count (“American Idiot” by Green Day knocks you out lead-pipe-cold in 2 minutes and 56 seconds).  Sounds simple and basic, and when done right it’s elegant and also beautiful, but, of course, it ain’t easy.

A friend of mine was recently mourning the loss of a jukebox that was kept in her folks basement.  When she was growing up, the jukebox was stocked by kids’ purchases from the local record store, and was downstairs with a classic 70s wet bar and a couple of pinball machines, making that basement, most definitely, Downtown Coolsville.  She recently emailed a bunch of people who had shared evenings, weekends, and summers downstairs with her asking them to name songs that they remembered were on the jukebox at one time or another.  Here’s a sample of the old Wurlitzer’s offerings:
-Changes - David Bowie
-Fly Like an Eagle - Steve Miller
-Magic Man - Heart
-Love Will Keep Is Together - Captain & Tenille
-You're the One That I Want - Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta
-Crocodile Rock - Elton John
-Respect - Aretha Franklin
-Bad, Bad Leroy Brown - Jim Croce
-The Logical Song - Supertramp
-Do You Feel Like We Do (yeah, the short version) - Peter Frampton
-Lola - The Kinks
-A-B-C-1-2-3 - The Jackson 5
-Stuck in the Middle with You - Stealer's Wheel
-Cold as Ice - Foreigner
-S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night! - Bay City Rollers
-Summer Breeze - Seals & Crofts
-Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed
I dunno for sure, but I bet you’re smiling and / or running to wherever / whatever medium and place you store your music to put some of this good stuff on…

I started buying music—albums— when I was 11, but how did I know what albums to buy, which musical branches were growing on my tree?  I had already spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours listening, absorbing, growing musical roots I wasn’t even aware of, and these songs were the songs that developed them.  Blasted out of car dashboards, transistor radios, and buzzing through door of my friends older siblings, at the beach, at the campground, at the pool, being driven around by my folks, and, of course, pouring out of jukeboxes and everywhere else, these songs, unbeknownst to me at those moments were pulling, welcoming me through the “in” door to rock and roll. 

a.m. radio, indeed, is synonymous with rock and roll for many people.  While Elvis and the Beatles first pinged onto most people’s radar screens with their appearances on Ed Sullivan’s TV show, it was their presence on a.m. radio—with several of their songs being broadcast to millions of people every hour on every major pop music station in the country-- which made them, and rock and roll, a ubiquitous bedrock staple of American culture.  a.m. radio was the place where hits lived (and, I think, still is, to some degree).  This ubiquitous-ness had a snowball effect. What had started out as a wild and extreme bit of youthful musical craziness with a few far-out practitioners and followers drew more and more attention ‘cuz it was everywhere and easily accessible on the airwaves, and so more and more people— listeners and creators— fell under its sway and jumped on for the ride.  Singles on the radio were the entry point for these folks, who have been on the bandwagon ever since hopping aboard.

Once onboard, singles and a.m. radio continued to be important ways for people to pursue their listening interests.  Singles are rock and roll musicians way of introducing themselves and of introducing their latest albums—this is what we’re about and this is what this latest set of songs is about.  Queen’s “Killer Queen” is a great example: “Hi. We’re a band that features hooky melodies, richly layered vocal harmonies, a unique guitar sound, a big role for the piano, and lyrics which mess with a bit with traditional sexual mores and roles.  Pleased to meet you.”  Pleased to meet them, indeed.  A good way to know if you will be interested in a band, in general, is to check out their singles.  If none of them grab ya’, then you probably should spend your dough on something else.  While internet radio doesn’t work exactly the same way—you can create radio “stations” based on your own, known-to-you tastes which are likely to wind up playing stuff which you have a higher likelihood of enjoying than a.m. radio, broadcasting the same stuff to everyone, did in the past—they still serve a similar purpose.  Tell Pandora enough about what you like to listen to, and it will play single songs and bands that you haven’t heard but do dig.  I have bought dozens of albums as a result of single songs flitting through my Pandora mix, and am almost always happy with the results of these pursuits.

While I stand by albums as a richer and more intimate medium—musicians can spread out, experiment, expand, develop, and take more musical and personal risks than they can in a single 3 and a half minute song—singles are the door in.  In a general sense, they are what introduces many people to rock and roll (or country, hip hop, r and b / soul, bluegrass, or any other popular musical idiom, for that matter), and they are also the best way for people to meet new artists and musical paths to explore.

What singles do you remember blasting from jukeboxes, car radios, etc?  What singles have opened doors for you?