Pulling Out The Savoy Truffle

Walk Away, Levi

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:20:15 GMT

By now I'm sure most of you have heard that Levi Stubbs, lead singer of The Four Tops, died last week. Bob Lefsetz has a nice remembrance of him.

And I have one, too.

Like Lefsetz, I was not into the Motown thing at first. I tolerated The Supremes, but I wasn't into The Temptations. I wanted boys with guitars and dreams I felt connected to, not guys in tuxes doing silly/funky dance moves.

But it was hard to resist The Four Tops.

Those early tunes that Holland-Dozier-Holland penned like "I Can't Help Myself" (who could resist that paradoxically powerful "sugarpie, honeybunch" opening line?), "Reach Out, I'll Be There," "It's the Same Old Song," and especially "Bernadette" had a raw energy and power that Motown stuff usually didn't have, sanitized as it was to appeal to white audiences.

Most of that came from Stubbs, a baritone lead singer in an age of tenors. Unlike Smokey or Marvin, both wonderful singers, Stubbs' hoarse R&B shouting style hearkened more to the blues side of the music. (Only Wilson Pickett, to my mind, matches Stubbs for machismo.)

As the Motown machine expanded its list of artists. the Tops seemed to get the shorted when it came to material. After only a couple of years the Tops were scrambling to cover material by contemporaries. It's those covers that I want to say something about.

"If I Were a Carpenter" was a Tim Hardin song. Hardin is another of those brilliant lost folkie singer songwriters like Tim Buckley or Nick Drake who is better known for songs that others covered to great acclaim (Bobby Darin(!) had the big hit with "Carpenter," reaching #8 on the charts with it in 1966. It's a fine song, and The Tops throw themselves into it with their usual vigor, but it doesn't quite work somehow - one never believes Levi as a plaintive, long suffering lover.

The other cover they do, though, is a gem. The Left Banke's brilliantly brittle "Walk Away, Renee" is about as odd a choice for a Four Tops cover as "If I Were a Carpenter," but instead of being a "not quite" like the former, it works beautifully. The lyric, with all its aching heartbreak, works because it allows Stubbs to bewail his plight with the power he's accustomed to - "Walk Away, Renee" is much more like "Bernadette" in that it's a man's plea to a woman - not a boy's plea to his girl as the original equally powerful, is....

Great song. Great singer.

Thanks, Levi.

Ringo Sings the "No No Song" to Fans...

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:09:25 GMT

This just in - Ringo Starr, otherwise known as Richard Starkey, would be hairdresser and luckiest man in rock history, has decided that he will accept no more fan mail and give no more autographs.

I'm not sure how feel about this. Ringo is 68 now, and we're a long way from Beatlemania - or from Ringo's solo career. Sure, he does the All-Starr band thing, but that just a glorified "oldies" tour with Ringo and other aging Boomer rockers playing to adoring audiences who are there to remember when they were all young and not dependent on Viagra, Retin-A, or - Depends.

Ringo tells us in his video post that he has too much to do. Maybe that's so - though I can't imagine what a 68 year old millionaire rock star would have to do. I suppose he's acting roles, records...no... wait, no, he doesn't. Maybe he's become devoted to golf, like a lot of guys his age.

I think about his band mates - Paul, of course, still writes and records, although he's working now only for a core audience - not that money matters to him at this point. John and George are at the mercy of their wives - and doing very well.

How's Ringo doing financially? Just fine. And some of that time he's now freeing up by dropping fan mail is going to good causes.

And certainly some of the fan mail and autograph requests he's received have gone to dealers and opportunists - a burgeoning number of whom now populate E-Bay and other sites.

But I can't help feeling slighted somehow. And I'm guessing I'm not alone.

A Bit More About Covers

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:10:49 GMT

Been thinking a little more about covers and the idea crossed my mind" "What about bad covers?"

My great and good friend acrosticunivers got me to thinking about this with his comment mention of Vanilla Fudge's epic psychedelic treatment of The Supremes' hit "You Keep Me Hangin' On." I remembered The Fudge's version of Junior Walker's "Shotgun," a much less successful re-thinking of a soul classic.

I've thought about covers that were huge hits that have always given me that "fingernails on a chalkboard" feeling - The Happenings' treatment of the Gershwin classic "I Got Rhythm." And Louis Armstrong's "Hello Dolly," much loved - but not by me.

And that brings us to the cover that has always made me cringe the most....

It would have to be Frigid Pink's version of "House of the Rising Sun." See it here.

I know lots of folks who love this treatment. To me it's just a bloated, over-amped, fuzzy mess. Compared to the understated genius of The Animals' brilliant treatment which highlights the simple guitar riff and Eric Burden's wonderful growl, Frigid Pink's bombast just irks me no end.

I know - there's no accounting for taste.

"Like Blue Cheer's version of "Summertime Blues," louder does not equal better. And, of course, it's not a good idea to go head to head with The Who....

Well, there we are. I know you can come up with some that actually make my choice look puny. Go for it....

Covers as Windows into Musicians' Psyches...

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:47:23 GMT

Bob Lefsetz, that erstwhile critic of the music scene (whose musical talent is, by his own admission, mastery of playing - the radio, cd player, iPod, etc.) has recently savaged James Taylor for releasing a new album of cover songs. While Lefsetz makes a salient point (as usual) in accusing Taylor of doing the "covers" album for the money (which seems as good a reason to do an album as any in these times), he misses something that maybe one such as I, an actual musician, can enlighten all you lovely readers about - why musicians like to play covers even if they write their own material.

Lefsetz takes Taylor to task, for example, for the obviousness of some of his covers - particularly for covering "Summertime Blues," "Not Fade Away," "Hound Dog," "Wichita Lineman," and "On Broadway." Lefsetz's point that these seem too obvious and motivated more by Taylor's knowledge of what a Boomer audience might want has merit, but it ignores something - these are songs that Taylor probably admired and played for himself over his decades long career.

I'm reminded of Paul McCartney's wonderful (and slightly obscure now) album of about a decade ago, Run, Devil, Run. McCartney, grieving the loss of his beloved Linda, turned to the music he'd played as a teen to revive himself - when he and band mates John Lennon and George Harrison (also, alas, gone) had run through a series of names - The Quarrymen, Johnny and the Moondogs, until finally coming up with that one we all know. The covers are songs they played in their shows at The Casbah (the Liverpool club owned by drummer Pete Best's mom), in Hamburg, and at The Cavern (where Epstein found them). Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," Elvis' "All Shook Up," and Gene Vincent's "Blue Jean Bop," all huge hits in their time, are on the album.

That's the point. That's why The Fabs covered those songs. They were huge hits that their audience would know.

So James plays an Elvis song, "Hound Dog" - which was itself a cover of the original by Big Mama Thornton (and co-written by Hoyt Axton's mom), the old Drifters' tune "On Broadway" (continuing James' long history of R&B covers, so why should Lefsetz be grousing), Eddie Cochran's anthem "Summertime Blues" (although it's hard to comprehend any cover meaning much after The Who version), and a cover that Lefsetz excoriates but that I find interesting (and right up JT's alley), Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman" (made famous by Glen Campbell in one of those great schlock pop/country performances from the late 1960's).

This topic begs for some discussion of great covers, of course. The ultimate would be, to me, a toss up between The Who's staggering version of "Summertime Blues" and Hendrix's epic take on Dylan's "All Along the Watch Tower." But Hendrix also does a killer version of "Come On, Pt. 1" (originally by Earl King) on the Electric Ladyland album. And I love the Dave Clark 5's version of "I Like It Like That." Oh, and The Cowboy Junkies' version of Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane." And Tom Petty's wonderful love letter to the Byrds, "Feel a Whole Lot Better."

And there's The Beatles' version of The Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout."

My own band is doing some covers, too. We've been through dozens in the last year, but right now we're doing "Michelle" by The Fabs, "Play With Fire" by the Stones, and "Itchycoo Park" by The Small Faces. These are songs we love. So we're covering them.

And maybe that's why Taylor is singing the songs he's singing. Because he loves them. So Lefsetz should lay off him for his song choices.

Nothing wrong with that...

Dead Rock Stars Shine Again...

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:36:36 GMT

A British tabloid recently conducted a survey to find out which dead rock star the public would most like to see brought back for "one show, one show only." Here are the results:

1. John Bonham

2. Freddie Mercury

3. Elvis Presley

4. John Lennon

5. Jimi Hendrix

6. Kurt Cobain

7. Bob Marley

8. Jim Morrison

9. Johnny Cash

10. Jeff Buckley

11. Stevie Ray Vaughan

12. Dimebag Darrell

13. Frank Zappa

14. Ian Curtis

15. Janis Joplin

16. Bon Scott

17. Jerry Garcia

18. Phil Lynott

19. Karen Carpenter

20. Keith Moon

A few observations:

1) Karen Carpenter IS NOT a rock star. She has a pleasant enough singing voice, but she doesn't belong on this list. I mean, really....

2) John Bonham is a drummer. I suspect what people are voting for there is a Led Zeppelin reunion with Bonzo at the kit....

3) Every decade from the 60's through the 90's is represented. The preponderance of figures here are from the "golden age" of rock, the 60's-70's, as one would guess....

4) I am impressed with the high ranking Freddie Mercury got. He beat Lennon, Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Stevie Ray, Morrison and Cobain.
And not a single vote for a Ramone. Shame on the voters....

Anybody you'd add/delete/whatever...?

Baby, It's You

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:08:12 GMT

I heard Smith's version of "Baby, It's You" today while driving back from taking the dogs for a long walk at a local park. You probably don't remember Smith. They were a "one hit wonder," with only the above mentioned song, a hit during the summer of 1969. That was the summer before my senior year in high school. I had just joined my first serious band - and I went through my first case of being "serious" about a girl.

The song is a typical pop-rock tune from it's time for the most part. There's a really competent organist (playing a Hammond B-3, I'm sure) and a decent rhythm section. The guitar is nothing to speak of.

But the singer, a good looking blonde named Gayle McCormick, does a killer job on the vocal. And that makes the song.... I really, really like it.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I got an idea because I heard this song. It's a great cover that takes a standard Shirelles' arrangement and sexes it up - a lot.

But this isn't what I was going to talk about. I was going to talk about my Smith waste basket.

When I went off to college, my mom went and bought me the usual dorm stuff - sheets, blankets, a bedspread, towels, etc. The university provided a check list, so my mom just got what was on the list trusting that I would ignore my needs until the last second. Good mom, huh?

Anyway, "waste basket" was on the list - so she came home with a waste basket that had the picture of Smith on it I've posted above.

My response was basically "WTF"? It was the summer of 1970 ( a full year after their one and only hit) and I was way, way, way, ever so many times way too cool for a Smith waste basket. Beatles/Stones/Hendrix/Cream - definitely. Steppenwolf - I could deal. But Smith? Freakin' Smith?

"It was on sale for 99 cents," my mom told me. "The choices were this or Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. I thought you'd hate this less. After all, it's only a waste basket."

Sound thinking, you must admit.

Anyway, I had that waste basket for about ten years. It was a beer cooler (lined with a plastic bag) numerous times when I was in college. After college it was a conversation piece at parties. It got cooler all the time. It was part of my mystique for a long time.

I don't remember when I lost or tossed my Smith waste basket. I hope it's found a happy second life somewhere.

Oh, the girl I mentioned. She looked like Gayle McCormick, the singer in that picture of Smith. I hope she's found a happy second life somewhere, too.

That's all I got.

Good Night, Irene, Goin' Down to the Crossroads...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:32:15 GMT

Most music historians explain the origins of rock music as the gradual blending of Southern blues (both Mississippi Delta based acoustic style and Chicago electrified) with country/western music as codified by Nashville. This over facile explanation has always seemed insufficient - hence the plethora of “(name your)-rock” divisions within rock music - like “rockabilly” (pictured at left being performed by its foremost practitioner).

This week we talk about blues. And about two giants to whom rock, that most “rebellious” of music, owes just about everything….

Huddie Ledbetter’s catalog reads like the history of both folk and rock (Hey, that would be be “folk-rock,” wouldn’t it?). But no one thinks of Leadbelly, as he’s more commonly known, as anything but a blues man. Here’s a short (and incomplete) list of his “greatest hits”: “Rock Island Line,” “Good Night, Irene,” “Midnight Special,” “Gallows Pole,” “Black Betty,” and “Cotton Fields.”

Feel free to say “Wow” to yourself here. I’ll wait. (If you’d like to hear Leadbelly singing some of these tunes, go here.)

But it’s not simply that Leadbelly wrote songs that have been covered by artists of all stripes (I’m particularly fond of The Beach Boys’[!] version of “Cotton Fields”). Like all great folk artists, Huddie Ledbetter explored the issues that affected his life and the lives of those around him: “Cotton Fields” looked at his youth in the sharecropping culture of Louisiana; “Rock Island Line” explored the railroad life; “Gallis (Gallows) Pole” looks at the criminal life from the point of view of the criminal - a view Leadbelly knew all too well, as he would freely admit. His songs are chronicles of the poor, the dispossessed - those downtrodden because of their poverty, their race, all those things that prevented them access to what matters in America - money and power.

And like other great artists, Leadbelly’s influence extended far beyond his music. Think about this for a moment:

Lonnie Donegan recorded a cover of “Rock Island Line” that ignited a skiffle music craze in England. One of those caught up in that craze was a kid named John Lennon. He formed a group called The Quarrymen. One of his bandmates introduced him to a kid named Paul McCartney who so impressed Lennon that he asked McCartney to join his band. McCartney insisted they bring in a younger friend of his - one George Harrison. So we owe Leadbelly, at least indirectly, for - The Beatles.

*********************************************************************

The other side of the coin from Leadbelly might be that other sublime influence on rock, the brooding poet Robert Johnson. As wild and sometimes troubling as Leadbelly’s life was, it is well documented.

Johnson is the shadow man, the mysterious figure whose brief life (he died, probably poisoned by a jealous husband, at 27) and mysterious death are the stuff of legend, and whose songs explore American preoccupations with the world, the flesh, and the devil. In fact, the most famous of his songs, “Crossroads Blues,” is the story of a bargain with the devil - a bargain Johnson himself is supposed to have made that gave him his incredible ability to play guitar.

Johnson’s songs focus on typically American preoccupations: “Terraplane Blues” and “Phonograph Blues” are about consumer desires; “They’re Red Hot” and “Malted Milk” are about the joys of food; “Kind Hearted Woman,” “Love in Vain,” and “Steady Rollin’ Man” are about the flesh and its pleasures and pains. Johnson chronicles the nature of America - its appetites, its follies - as incisively as his contemporaries Dos Passos or Steinbeck.

The list of his admirers and copiers is long and distinguished - Cream, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin learned his music and brought it back to us in a form more palatable to an America that originally treated his work as “race music.” Jeff Healey, Keb’ Mo’, Bonnie Raitt, and The Chili Peppers have continued to hold Johnson up as the important chronicler of the American experience that he is.

His insights into the American - and human - condition make him as important to our music as Bernstein or Dylan. His legacy continues to haunt American music.

(Next Time: A.P., Woody, Jimmy, Pete, and Bob….)

America Singing - The Seemingly Empty American Songbag...

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:59:54 GMT

If you’re about to explore any aspect of American culture, you rarely go wrong by beginning with a Walt Whitman quote. Here he is on the subject of music:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics–each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat–the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench–the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song–the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning,
or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother–or of the young wife at work–or of the girl sewing or washing–Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day–At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

In our time (gratuitous Hemingway allusion) you’ve probably heard one pundit or another bemoaning the conspicuous absence of music as commentary on social/political issues. So why isn’t America singing these days? Answering that question is the aim of this rambling, unscientific stroll thorough the history of American song.

The poet with the most in common with Whitman (both stylistically and in outlook) of the last 120 years is probably Carl Sandburg. Sandburg, who, in 1927 published one of the seminal collections of America singing - The American Songbag. Gathered by Sandburg in a less scientific way than Alan Lomax gathered the material for his archives and without the commercial intent of Ralph Peer, Sandburg gives us the lyrics to what Whitman heard - America singing. Here is an example:

Hallelujah, I’m a Bum

Sandburg:
“This old song heard at the water tanks of railroads in Kansas in 1897 and from harvest hands who worked in the wheat fields of Pawnee County, was picked up later by the I.W. W.’s, who made verses of their own for it, and gave it a wide fame. The migratory workers are familiar with the Salvation Army missions, and have adopted the Army custom of occasionally abandoning all polite formalities and striking deep into the common things and ways for their music and words. A “handout” is food handed out from a back door as distinguished from a “a sit down” which means an entrance into a house and a chair at a table.”

Lyrics:
1. Oh, why don’t you work
Like other men do?
How the hell can I work
When there’s no work to do?
Hallelujah, I’m a bum,
Hallelujah, bum again,
Hallelujah, give us a handout,
To revive us again!

2. Oh, I love my boss
And my boss loves me,
And that is the reason
I’m so hungry,
Hallelujah, etc.

3. Oh, the springtime has came
And I’m just out of jail,
Without any money,
Without any bail.
Hallelujah, etc.

4. I went to a house,
And I knocked on the door;
A lady came out, says,
“You been here before.”
Hallelujah, etc.

5. I went to a house,
And I asked for a piece of bread;
A lady came out, says,
“The baker is dead.”
Hallelujah, etc.

6. When springtime does come,
O won’t we have fun,
We’ll throw up our jobs
And we’ll go on the bum.
Hallelujah, etc.

The assumption of cultural historical knowledge that under girds this song says much about American cultural knowledge. It is this tradition of reference to social and political history that forms the basis of balladry and folk music - the ability of the musician to reference events that listeners know and beliefs that listeners either share or dispute is as old as the Middle Ages - and how America has always sung about herself. This music allows musicians - and the people - to observe, reflect upon, and critique their society and government.

It has long been part of our national conversation.

Even as recently as Boomers’ lifetimes, that conversation was in full bloom. Here’s Bob Dylan:

Masters Of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.

We all sense that the conversation is being stifled now. In Boulder, a high school rock band was prevented from performing the above song. Other than some raging here in the blogosphere, almost nothing happened.

Where’s the outrage, so many have asked.

And that leads us back to the punditry (almost exclusively progressive) and their complaint about the lack of music discussing the clear cultural/social/political war being fought in our country. In succeeding posts I’ll explore the evolution of our national conversation in “the people’s music,” as Alan Lomax once called it - and why we’re at the sterile place we seem to be now….

(Next time: Goodnight Irene, goin’ down to the Crossroads…)

Everybody Sounds Better on the Record.....

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:02:38 GMT

The way that the vast majority of people experience pop music (unfortunately -and btw, you should get your lazy asses out to see live music 3-4 times a month at the minimum - that way you can find good local artists and support them and quit complaining about the crappy stuff the major music industry outlets shove at you - which reminds me, still digging that American Idol compilation cd you impulse bought?) is via recordings.

What I never hear people talk about when we talk about our favorite recordings - I guess, because even music aficionados don't know or think about it - is how much records are "fixed" - how many mistakes are cleaned up, how many "happy accidents" occur and are allowed to stand - in truth, how inauthentic records might be considered (to borrow a term that still has great resonance for music writers and critics) are as documents of musicians' work. Let me offer a couple of examples from classic rock - the stuff we've all listened to many, many times.

I was making a long drive Saturday evening (coming back home from an academic conference) listening, as always, to satellite radio. I'd lost interest in XMU (the college rock channel - too much emo for me-mo) and The Loft (sorry Mike, sometimes the singer/songwriter channel, actually my fave, turns into the apotheosis of the Zappa description of James Taylor: "What we have here is a guy with a guitar, blue jeans, and a great deal of personal hurt"). So I turned to Top Tracks.

Top Tracks is just what you'd expect - the classic rock format that we heard ad nauseum for some 20+ years (it's why you know Bob Seger's and Heart's work way better than you feel you should). I hit them in one of those stretches where they could do no wrong - first came The Who, then The Stones, then Yes, then Cream, then Hendrix, then - then they played Alice Cooper (see above).

I know Alice Cooper (Vince Furnier) has had a long and interesting career since the days of Alice Cooper the band. But I prefer those early albums when he was part of one of rock's most underrated arena rock bands - Pretties for You, Love It to Death, Killer, Billion Dollar Babies.... That band gave us some absolutely great rock songs - "Eighteen," "Under My Wheels," and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" just slay me, even now. But the ultimate Alice Cooper band song, most would agree, is "School's Out."

"School's Out" has always bugged me - not that killer opening riff - that's as good as rock gets. Rather, that opening stanza:

Well, we got no choice/All the girls and boys/Making all the noise/Cause they found new toys....

What bothers me is that the band seems to be playing off time.

Let's talk a bit about making records, shall we? One of the tricks that almost all record producers/engineers use to get rock bands to play in time is the old clicker (think of it as an electronic metronome that comes in through the head phones). If you listen to that opening stanza of "School's Out," the band seems to have "lost the clicker" as they say in the recording business. The engineer jerks the band back on time with a punch (he uses the counter on the recording to time a moment when he edits in [what? an alternate take of that's played in time? Reasonable possibility....]) at "Can't salute ya/Can't fly your flag...."In other words, the record is "fixed."

The late Glen Buxton's guitar lick is so mother------g big I don't think anyone pays attention. But it's there. The band is off time - and then they're back on time. Without stopping. That doesn't happen in the real world....

I'm not picking on Alice Cooper here. There are plenty of fixes throughout rock. I heard one shortly after on Buffalo Springfield's "Bluebird" with one of Stephen Stills's guitar parts (the solo that comes in at the end of the brief jam after "Do you think she loves you/Do you think at all?"). It's again a matter of timing - either Stills missed a cue, or he's on time and the band's off. Anyway, there's a punch as Stills comes in that sets things right.

(Such fixes and "inauthentic" devices are the norm, not the exception. When you listen to music, even to "live transcriptions," likely they've been doctored in some way - ambient noise increased/decreased, vocals enhanced, etc.)

I've used classic rock examples above but there are plenty from modern rock. The low fi movement has even made a virtue of ragged sounding recordings that, while proselytizing authenticity, don't always sound enjoyable. Just saying....

(Hey, my hands aren't clean. If you go to my band's site and listen to "Salad Days," there's a punch to correct a forgotten guitar lick at the end of the lead guitar solo. And there's a harmonic in that solo that we left in because we thought it sounds cool. We could never reproduce it on stage. And there we are....)

Recommendation? Enjoy your recordings. Just be aware that they're not exactly the "real" band. But then we probably don't want them to be....

More Improvements to The Backyard Tea/Would Be Kings site...

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:57:34 GMT

We've added a new music player (courtesy of our friends Doco) with two new songs, "Something Someone Said" and "Dream About You." The latter is significant - it's the only recording we have of a song written by our rhythm guitarist Mike Leffew. You'll note that in the new player the sound quality has been enhanced with digital expansion of our old analog recordings. Thanks to son Josh and the magic of Cool Edit for that....

Our slide show has been revised, too, to include captions. We'll be adding more pictures shortly. In the meantime, hope you enjoy the new improvements. We'll be posting show dates for The Would Be Kings shortly.

Guitars for musicians are like cars for most guys...

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:38:51 GMT

I love guitars and basses. I've owned bunches of them in all the major brands - Gibson, Fender, Vox, Rickenbacker, Epiphone, Ovation. My guitars and basses have been on my mind lately because I've just given away some favorites of mine - a couple of Epiphone acoustics that I've had a long while and that have wonderful tone (those solid spruce tops age beautifully). And I bought a new acoustic-electric (a Gibson Songwriter a in Rosewood that is as sweet a sounding instrument as I've owned and with Fishman electronics on board which I like a lot) I'll talk about my current line-up in a bit (my wife thinks, of course, that I still own too many). But first I want to talk about a couple I let get away...

I turned down the chance to buy a couple of basses that I could kick myself for not buying. The first was a mid '60's model Hofner club bass (Hofner only has made two models - the club bass, a small single cutaway and the violin made famous by you know who). I could've had the Hofner for $250 with hard shell case. This was in 1975 and my guitarist Steve told me I should go for it. I thought the price a little high. I offered 2 hundred, but the dealer wouldn't budge. So I passed.

I priced a Hofner club bass this past weekend. $2100. That $250 looks pretty reasonable now....

I had the opportunity in 1979 to pick up a Vox Cougar bass. I'd owned a Constellation, complete with treble/bass boost and distortion buttons - my first bass. The Cougar was in good shape, and the kid selling it didn't know what he had. He wanted $125 for it. I offered $100. He wouldn't take it. Again Steve told me I should pay the extra and get it. I didn't.

Going rate for a Vox Cougar now is about $1100. Again, my tough dickering cost me....

My guitars right now:

I have one electric guitar. I had a Gibson Melody Maker, but my son Trevor took it over and uses it as his primary guitar.

I'm not complaining. The electric I have is a nice one. You can see it in my icon pic. It's a 1997 Rickenbacker 320 in a natural finish. Fantastic axe. Just had it to my luthier for set up and general maintenance. He thanked me for letting him work on it. It's worth - plenty. ;-)

I also have a Fender JP 90, 1991 model made in the US. Nice bass, even more precious because I bought it from a long time musician and guitar dealer in our area who died last year. Great guy - and since I've researched my serial number, I realize he sold me a guitar for less than it was worth. Probably because I had to sell him my Gibson EBO long neck bass a couple of years before when I was temporarily strapped for cash. It's worth - good money.

I have an Epiphone Jack Casady signature bass. It's going to be a rare one because it was one of the few sunburst models they made. Nice bass - worth a decent amount.

Finally, there's my new toy, the Gibson acoustic-electric. Made in Helena, MT. Very nice guitar. I paid plenty for it, but it'll be worth much more as time goes on. And the rosewood gives it a remarkably rich tone already.

Bored yet? I could go on like this for hours. And I haven't talked about my Silvertone acoustic or my Univox bass or the guitar my buddy Mike gave me.

Luckily for you I won't...this time.... ;-)

A couple of new songs posted at the Tea web site...

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:05:13 GMT

For those who might care:

I've posted two new songs at the Backyard Tea web site:

Now a few words of explanation about these tracks...

The two tracks, "Circa 1972" and "Masquerade for Two" represent bookends for the band. The former was written during the band's reunion period in 1994. The latter was written in 1971 when Booth and Littlejohn began writing together. It is one of the first five songs the pair composed.

Neither of the tracks is more than a very rough mix. "Masquerade for Two" probably comes off better. It's a less complex guitar driven song and those work better than longer, more complex recordings like "Circa 1972" would have eventually been. That latter song doesn't even have a complete number of tracks (we were in a 64 track studio and you're hearing only 12-16 tracks - the song chart we built called for, I think about 10-12 more tracks of discrete material with some doubling of other tracks for a total of approximately 36-40 used tracks). "Circa 1972" needs additional vocal work (what you hear is but a "scratch" vocal - the vocal track would have been re-recorded and doubled at the very least). The vocal tracking on "Masquerade for Two" is more complete, although knowing Jim's and Steve's penchant for "one more to get it better" approach to recording, these vocal tracks would likely have been redone. "Masquerade for Two" has 12-16 tracks. There would have been a few more added to allow for effects, but the heavy work was done for this song.

The abrupt ending of "Circa 1972" is intentional - it's meant as a nod to "I Want You/She's so Heavy" from Abbey Road. The chiming guitar tracks would have been quadrupled to increase the ringing tone.

As always, enjoy - and download if you're inclined. They're free as are all Tea recordings....

New song from Tea

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:27:00 GMT

For those who might give a hoot:

I posted a new song at the Backyard Tea site. Happy listening....

My Literary Debt to Jesse Helms

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:22:10 GMT

Jesse Helms is dead. He is, as somewhere in the ether a greater mind than his may be noting with some glee , consigned to “the dust bin of history.” And I, a native North Carolinian, say with the same sense of satisfaction Montressor had after walling his enemy Fortunato inside the catacombs, “in pace requiescat.”

But I owe Jesse Helms a debt of the literary variety - and today I repay it.

In the autumn of 1966 I was a 14 year old 9th grader. I was besotted with The Beatles and played my guitar at least 3 hours a night. I had been a straight “A” student throughout my academic career, but that was slipping away as I focused on the gospel of John and Paul with the zeal of the true believer. My parents grumbled, lectured, punished, and despaired. To them I was the lost lamb; to myself I was the disciple of a new way….

I was passing the TV one evening on the way to my room to play “that goddamned guitar” (as my father termed my old Silvertone acoustic) when I saw the first reports. That blustering, lisping, guy who hated everything, Jesse Helms, whose WRAL, Channel 5, Raleigh, editorials occasionally ran on WFMY, Channel 2, Greensboro, had gotten a professor at UNC fired for teaching his students a poem.

That’s not the correct story, of course, but accuracy was not so important to me in 1966. I was more into outrage - especially if I could be a cause of it.

From the next day’s Greensboro Daily News I gathered the important piece of information I had missed in my casual notice of the TV report the previous evening - the name of the poem: “To His Coy Mistress” by a guy named Andrew Marvell. I found the poem in the school library after school the next day. It was slow going for a 14 year old, even on in the Academically Talented (AT) English class who’d been reading the likes of H.D., Amy Lowell, Sara Teasdale, and Vachel Lindsay. I knew from the newspaper that the poem was supposed to be about sex, and I kind of got that, though Marvell, like all those poetry guys, had buried it in a lot of over clever language. But it had all this what seemed to me to be really dark stuff about death in the middle of it:

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying, near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

It seemed to me both then and now that the best way into a girl’s panties might not be to talk about how she was going to die and turn to dust. But it was a great poem, and I knew it even at 14.

I asked about it a couple of days later in my English class. My teacher, Mrs. Ragan, God bless her, confirmed both of my conclusions - “To His Coy Mistress” is a great poem and Jesse Helms was wrong to attack a college instructor for teaching it to students.

My father had given me what I call the “Aunt Mimi lecture” (Mimi was John Lennon’s beloved aunt who reared him and whose admonition to john goes as follows: “The guitar’s alright as a hobby, John, but you’ll never make a living at it.”). He warned me that I’d better have a back up plan in case becoming “another Beatle” didn’t work out. I decided if the Beatle thing didn’t happen that I’d become an English professor (and maybe a writer) - and that I’d teach “To His Coy Mistress” every chance I got.

****************************************************************************************************

And here we are decades later. I’ve had a sort of career as a Beatle. And I’ve had a sort of career as an English professor and writer of novels. And I’ve taught “To His Coy Mistress” every chance I’ve gotten. Though sadly, Jesse Helms never saw fit to go after me as I hoped he might when I chose my career paths in 1966.

Still, in a weird way, Jesse Helms gave me my literary career. And I’ve owed him for that.

Now my debt is paid.

In pace requiescat.

Beta testing - music you can giggle at...

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:47:12 GMT

Here's the myspace site for the old band:

http://www.myspace.com/backyardtea

The site's still in beta form and I've got savvy accomplices working on improving the sound of the tracks (going from analog to digital has its complications). We'll also be adding slide shows with more pictures as they trickle in from here and there.

Have fun. And try not to guffaw too much in your comments.

The Hits Just Keep Coming...

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:06:11 GMT

I realize that I've been a piss poor correspondent of late. I'd apologize except...well, I don't know what to apologize for.

Lots of personal stuff has been happening and I'm not one to share all that much. Some bloggers feel the need to use their posts to share lots of themselves - their hopes, fears, daily lives, etc.

I'm not that guy. I tend to back into the cave and get quiet when there's lots of heavy stuff coming down.

The downside of that is that I just go silent without explanation and everybody either forgets about me or thinks I just don't care about writing anymore.

* In October my band's long time drummer, Tony Bray, died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 60. That prompted some real soul searching on my part, as I wrote earlier, and led to my forming, with my songwriting partner and lead guitarist, Steve Littlejohn, a new project called The Would Be Kings. We've been in rehearsals since November of '07. For those of you who play music, you understand where my time has gone. For those of you who don't, just remember the musician's adage - 90% offstage for the 10% on....We play our first show 7/11/08... MySpace sites for both The Would Be Kings and our original group, Backyard Tea, will be up by this time next month. I'll post links when they're ready.

* In April my wife's job with the think tank in South side Virginia was abruptly terminated. She's been hunting a decent post since, and we're trying like hell to sell our over sized house - two things that, in this economy are full of pain and anxiety. Our primary focus right now is on getting the fuck out of this town (and this state). Let's just say we aren't feeling real sanguine about either at the moment (although the job thing has a couple of promising leads). Looks like we may end up taking another big hit on the sale of the house. I'd like to thank GWB for the Iraq War and his "corporate greed uber alles" policies (retracted federal funding cost my wife her position and lack of oversight of the $#@#@ banking industry caused the housing meltdown that's making our house sale another horror). The one good thing is that within 6-8 weeks I'll be the hell away from here....

* Then just this past Sunday our other drummer , Lynn Brown, whom we called fondly Wizard because of his prowess at pinball, committed suicide. I vacillate from feeling it's all blackly humorous, drummers dropping like we're Spinal Tap, and being so sad, conflicted, and sick of it all that I just want to wake up and it's 1970 and I get a second chance to get it right. That's not how it works, though.

Next time I wrote about music....

Rock Musicians Have Too Much Sex and Make Weird Faces While They Play...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:20:26 GMT

For those of you who’ve fallen behind on your reading about the peccadilloes and peculiarities of musicians, here are a couple of articles (don’t worry - they consist mostly of pictures) to get you up to speed on the all important areas in which our musical heroes excel - having lots of casual sex and making weird faces on stage.

First, from Blender Magazine comes a list of the most oversexed musicians (don’t worry - both Mick Jagger and R Kelly made the cut) And of course we all have some idea who might be #1 in the “having more sex than anyone should” category:

Yup. Leave it to Mr. Yuck Gene Simmons to have the dubious honor of being the most oversexed musician in the music business.

************************************************************************************************************

From that now most useless of all sources of information about music, Rolling Stone Magazine, comes this article about the (again, mostly pictures, so no worries about having to read lots of words and stuff) weird faces guitarists make while they’re playing. Lots of folks you’d expect here (Carlos Santana, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Thom York).

But my favorite is this guy - Frank Iero of of My Chemical Romance - who looks like his caption - “The Up Chuck.”

****************************************************************************************************************

Finally, here’s an album you should all have in your collections. After all, we’d never want to forget when Amishmania swept the planet:

Peace….

Godard Says "Everything is Cinema" - Except When It's Politics, Perhaps...

Sun, 25 May 2008 21:31:58 GMT

Jean Luc Godard’s 1968 epic WeekEnd closes with the following end title:

END OF CINEMA

Leonard Lopate of WNYC has a terrific interview with Richard Brody, film critic for The New Yorker and author of a new book on the cinema icon - Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean Luc Godard. You can hear the interview below.

As Lopate archly notes and Brody diplomatically tries to refute, for the vast majority of cinema aficionados, Godard’s end title was prophetic.

After WeekEnd, Godard chose politics over film making - and while he’s occasionally been provocative and interesting, he’s never been relevant in the way he was during his artistic peak in the 1960’s.

When Godard burst upon world cinema in 1959 with his breakthrough film À Bout de Souffle (Breathless), his appearance completed the emergence of the triumvirate of France’s Nouvelle Vague in film making: Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, and Godard. While both Chabrol and Truffaut went on to have careers that eventually led them into French mainstream cinema (and earned Godard’s scorn as a result even as they raised the quality of that cinema considerably), Godard stayed his radical course throughout his career, delivering masterpiece after masterpiece throughout the 1960’s - A Woman is a Woman, Contempt, Les Carabiniers, Masculin/Feminin, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, and, to me, his magnum opus, WeekEnd. It is an amazing, varied and impressive series of films. If he had stopped making films after WeekEnd, his place in the pantheon of great film makers would be secure.

But he didn’t.

Instead Godard, once a political conservative who gradually became enamored of Marxism, became a radical Maoist. And that political conversion, as it came to dominate his film making aesthetic, had a deleterious effect on Godard’s work. One might liken Godard’s imposing on himself the same sort of repression and restriction of his artistic impulses in service of a political imperative to Stalin’s meddling with the work of Sergei Eisenstein. In Eisenstein’s case, that the Russian director could produce great cinema such as Battleship Potemkin, October, and Ivan IV (Part 1) is a testament to his ability to use his genius to overcome the double thinking required in a political climate like Stalinist Russia. That Godard chose to impose such a mental burden on himself, while it may speak positively to his commitment to his political ideals, it speaks also to an artistic misstep from which Jean Luc Cinema Godard, as he once proclaimed himself, was never to recover.

Godard’s work has always carried political messages - Masculin/Feminin explores the awkwardness of men and women trying to fit both political and cultural ideals; Les Carabiniers is an indictment of war’s pointlessness and false promises to its soldiers; WeekEnd is Godard’s brilliant evisceration of a society that even in 1967 seemed to him to be amusing itself to death with consumerism and bourgeois conventionality. But after his avowed conversion to Maoism, his film making - which had always been more liberated - and liberating - from cinematic convention than perhaps any other major director, became more and more polemic in the worst sort of way: the cinematic art was too often subordinated to political diatribe. Even the best works after his post-sixties peak - Tout Va Bien, Je Vous Salue, Marie (Hail Mary) - have been discussed more for their political statements than for their cinematic innovations.

Artists always face danger when they allow any element - even the most sincere political conviction - to circumscribe or change their creative visions. Godard’s commitment to Maoism led him down a path that took him from the most vital, provocative, admirable film maker in the cinema to the isolated, embittered old man he seems to be now. As Godard proved in his work from the sixties, an artist can make powerful political statements while at the same time maintaining his art as his first priority. It is only when one’s art is (consciously or unconsciously) subsumed by other passions that the art suffers.

Godard’s most recent work is elegiac in content - JLG/JLG Autoportrait de Décembre and Histoire(s) du Cinéma both represent Godard’s best efforts to understand and perhaps explain what happened to cinema - and to Jean Luc Cinema Godard - over the last half of the 20th century. Even as thoughtful and insightful as these works are, one must wonder if Godard is haunted by his own words:

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

The Silo Effect and Love of the Music....

Tue, 20 May 2008 17:20:40 GMT

My son Trevor and I were driving to dinner one night a few weeks ago and he was complaining bitterly about how his band, Doco (pictured at right), is still struggling to get decent shows outside their local area (NC/SC/VA/WV):

“We’re not metal, we’re not emo, we’re not punk, we’re not hip hop, we’re not roots rock, we’re not power pop, we’re not jam band, we’re not any single genre. We’ve been trying to make something new, and that’s costing us money. Since club owners can’t ’silo’ us into a genre so they can package us with lower level acts, they only give us the odd bookings when they have open nights. We play lots of the ‘rep making’ clubs on Tuesday nights. It fucking sucks. Why do we have to fit a silo to get work? I love playing music. Is it asking too much to want to make my living at it?”

Welcome to the music business 2008.

The latest thing in the 21st century music business is club owners turning to a tactic as old as rock and roll: package shows. Thanks to the deconstruction of the music industry (Does anyone past the age of 14 actually give a shit about anything played on what we used to know as “top 40″ radio? Or MTV? Or any damned mass media outlet? Can anyone other than “legacy acts” from the 60’s and 70’s play venues bigger than clubs?), club owners are finding ways to bring in emerging bands and put them up for precious little pay - sometimes for no pay at all.

There’s method to this madness. What club owners do is package a group of bands who all play one of the “siloed” genres (see above) in one big show. Haven’t you noticed posters for shows with what seems a ridiculously large bill of bands? What club owners are doing is putting up a large number of acts and watching to see if anyone catches the audience’s fancy. The bands get exposure, and a few break through, perhaps. That in itself is not a bad thing - and in its own way justifies (sort of, I guess) low or no pay. Bands that click with audiences move to the top of the pecking order and get better shows - and, presumably, get paid.

But what if you don’t fit the silo model? You end up feeling like Trevor, evidently….

***********************************************************************************************

Club owners have always been assholes to their talent. They have never wanted to pay what they say - they have never wanted to provide services and amenities they’ve promised.

In the old days there were plenty of agents and managers who’d give a listen to any and all bands, help them get work if they showed a little talent, worked hard and got their act tight, and teach them about business elements of being musicians - things like contracts and getting percentages of gate and bar earnings - about getting paid to work as touring musicians. They helped kids with guitars and dreams become professional musicians. They earned their cut - and some of them got rich because they were good at spotting talent and developing it.

Now too many agents work only as predators who charge young bands up front fees - and either don’t get them any work or get them gigs that pay nothing. And too many club owners work with these agents - or sponsor them.

So in addition to having to give much of their music away for free, many musicians, those you go to see as you “support live/local music,” struggle to get paid for actually playing live and local.

Think about that for a minute.

************************************************************************************************

There used to be a system that discovered and developed musical talent and got it down on record. For a while the recording part of the music business had seemingly too few and too powerful gatekeepers - the major record companies. Think about what happened to Brian Epstein when he tried to get The Beatles a record contract. He ended up signing The Fabs with a guy who made novelty records. Luckily for us that guy was George Martin. Since then, as you may have noticed, the record companies have become much more enamored of minor talents whose careers they can manipulate. And to keep the real artists away (after all, they’re still around despite the fact they’re often ignored by these “mainstream” music business interests), they demand concessions such as “360 deals” which put legitimate artists into the same sorts of indentured servitude in which the American Idol puppets singers find themselves toiling. The execs now think they’re the talent. It’s sad, kinda - if it weren’t so damned disgusting.

And it’s why everyone from Radiohead to Madonna has just said no to record companies lately.

We know that every band can make and sell its records nowadays. We also know, many of us through the experience of buying some crappy stuff, that many bands probably shouldn’t. But there are many others who should and do, and we’re all richer for it. They work and spend their blood, sweat, tears, and money to write and record music. They usually offer their music to us at prices far less than those old major companies. We actually get more and better music at lower prices than we used to. How American dream is that?

But in our brave new 21st century Internet connected file sharing world no one wants to pay for music anymore. Too many of us use P2P sites to get all the music we want without giving those musicians any of our money - which we can then use to - enrich the fucking oil companies, I guess. Somehow, the Internet has made us all believe that things that we used to value and pay for because we valued them and the people who made them- like good music and, oh, good writing - should be free all the time.

Think about that for a minute.

***********************************************************************************************

Doco has a new record out now, The Fossil Record. Because, like many artists these days, the band has written, recorded and now sells its record itself, my other son in the band, Josh (at right) has been selling the record door to door. He’s had surprising success, including an incident when he and brother Trevor were invited into a man’s home who proceeded to take them into his den. There he had a vintage Fender Precision bass and a vintage Fender Mustang guitar plugged into vintage Fender amps (a Bassman and a Twin Reverb, respectively). After the boys had played him a couple of tunes to prove they’d actually played the music on their record, he bought two copies.

Not exactly the way most rock stars expect to move product.

Josh told me a story a week or so after my conversation with Trevor that illustrates the difficulties artists face selling their own work: “I was out in a nearby neighborhood - nice neighborhood, really. I was on foot, carrying cd’s in my “man purse” which was slung over my shoulder. It was sunny and I had on my white shades (pictured). I went up to one house and rang the bell. I could tell that someone was home because I could hear the TV playing a game show. But no one would come to the door. Based on what I’d seen in the neighborhood, I guessed it was another little old lady who was afraid to come to the door. I’d puzzled about that because I think I’m a pretty harmless guy. Just as I was about to leave the porch, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the storm door glass - shoulder length hair, white sun glasses, Atari Teenage Riot t-shirt, ratty jeans. If I’d been that lady, I wouldn’t have come to the door either.”

I think Kermit the Frog said it best: It’s not easy being green.

******************************************************************************************

So should you go see local bands and support live music? Absolutely.

Can you trust that the record companies will come to their senses and begin to discover and offer you artists who will have careers worth following? No.

Will the Internet make it possible for you to follow artists like Doco or Jeffrey Dean Foster or Antony and the Johnsons and Adam Marsland? Yes.

Will we ever see a future time like the 60’s and 70’s when music was the lingua franca of our culture? Probably not.

So what should we do?

I like to remember what Mick Ronson said: Play, Don’t Worry….

Neil Aspinall - just one of the "mad lads..."

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:52:19 GMT

I guess I could make my friend Denny the journalist happy and begin this way - with a lede:

Neil Aspinall, friend of Paul, then George, then John, then Ringo, then The Beatles’ road manager and personal assistant, then chief executive for Apple Corps for nearly 4 decades has died. He was 66.

But since I’m a storyteller, let me begin somewhere else:

My first encounter with George was behind the school’s air-raid shelters.This great mass of shaggy hair loomed up and an out-of-breath voice requested a quick drag of my Woodbine. It was one of the first cigarettes either of us had smoked. We spluttered our way through it bravely but gleefully. After that the three of us did lots of ridiculous things together (Aspinall, McCartney and Harrison). By the time we were ready to take the GCE exams we’d added John Lennon to our ‘Mad Lad’ gang. He was doing his first term at Liverpool College of Art which overlooks the Liverpool Institute playground and we all got together in a students coffee bar at lunchtime…. - Neil Aspinall in The Beatles’ Anthology DVD

I’ve long held a hypothesis that my musician and music writer friends argue with me about from time to time. I believe that the best bands form from childhood or school friends who discover in each other a deep love and understanding of music and who somehow galvanize around that love. That’s certainly true about The Beatles - and Steely Dan - and U2 - and Nirvana. You are brothers in music. This gives you some sort of synergistic power that you might never have had…and sometimes, as in the above cited cases, it makes you rich and famous….

(Neil Aspinall, Mal Evans)

There’s a corollary to my hypothesis. In the old days, when you formed a band, you had your brothers in music who were your fellow musicians, but you also had your friends outside the band. If or when the band got more serious, those in the latter group either became friends with your band mates and then took on roles as the band needed them to (roles ranging from roadie to business manager to understudy) or gradually drifted out of your orbit.

The relationships you had with these friends who followed you into the music were trust relationships based on loyalty and friendship built from childhood and only strengthened by what you and they did together. These were the guys who helped you carry your equipment - the guys who traveled and ate and drank with you. You loved the music - and they loved you and you loved them - because you made the music and they helped you to make it. And if you were smart and/or lucky, you remembered to tell them.

That’s a far cry from most of the relationships musicians have with record company executives, booking agents, and other figures in the “music business” as lovingly described by Hunter Thompson:

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

Only yesterday Paul McCartney was at Aspinall’s bedside. Trust me when I say that most musicians think about their business managers’ health rather differently than Paul’s demonstration of care suggests….

Neil Aspinall worked with his fellow “mad lads” who became music legends as only their friend could do.

That’s why Paul and Ringo grieve today.

So maybe Denny will allow me to revise my lede to reflect what musicians everywhere would want written about their own “Neils”:

Neil Aspinall, friend of Paul, George, John, and Ringo for more than 4 decades, has died. He was 66.

Madonna in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:55:10 GMT

My old pal and bandmate Mike, better known as acrosticunivers, asked me to write a few lines about this, so I will:

This year's induction group for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (hereafter referred to as the R&R HOF) includes the following:

Leonard Cohen, John Mellencamp, The Dave Clark Five, and The Ventures. Madonna's being inducted, too, but I'll get to her in a few....

Let's look at this group with a purely jaundiced eye (mine) for a few moments, shall we? And let's NOT look at them as fans but as reasonable rational creatures who know something about music, the music business, and the horse shit purveyor that is Jann Wenner (he who pushed the dying Ahmet Ertegun out of the chair of the selection committee so he could put Grandmaster Flash (a rap act) into the Hall ahead of The Dave Clark Five - who were sentimental favorites because of the illness of the late Mike Smith, their lead singer).

The selection process has long been considered tainted, but I'll say no more about that for now and simply assess the credentials of these latest inductees in my usual snarkily entertaining way:

Leonard Cohen - Quick! Name a song he wrote beside "Suzanne." Uh huh. Thought you might have that problem. Should even an intellectuals' darling who's really a one hit wonder be in the R&R HOF? Besides, shouldn't a singer/songwriter be able to sing? I think you know the correct answer.... I mean, Donovan's not in, Nick Drake's not in, and Cohen is?

John Mellencamp - You may not like his work, but it's uniformly very good - and sporadically it's great. I'd say he's an "on the bubble" case....

The Ventures - Since they taught just about every freakin' kid in America to play guitar, including Mike and me, they get in. Ask anybody over the age of 45 to play "Walk, Don't Run" or "Pipeline." You'll understand pretty quickly what the word "influence" means.... (Surely to God Dick Dale's already in, right...?RIGHT...?

The Dave Clark Five - I'm going to make my brother in music Mike go ballistic here - but, NO, they don't belong. Why? Because if THEY go in, Herman's Hermits have to go in. Same time period, career arcs almost identical, memorable tuneage equally as poppy and silly. Influence almost equally as non-existent. The Hollies would have been a much more worthy choice. (And why, I wonder, are the Lovin' Spoonful in when the Hollies aren't?) Do you want that? Do, you, Mike? That's what I thought.... ;-)

Last, but certainly not least, there's Madonna. Interestingly, the Wikipedia list of inductees calls her an "entertainer."

Madonna's about a lot of stuff - marketing, second/third wave feminism, cultural rebellion, bad acting, self-indulgent children's books - but she's NOT, repeat NOT about music. I'd be fain to guess that the song most associated with Madonna is "Material Girl." Think about that for a moment - and decide if that's what rock and roll means to you.

I feel comfortable saying it's not.

And that's why the R&R HOF has become the joke it has become. Because Madonna is about THE BUSINESS, not about THE MUSIC - and she's going into the R&R HOF because all the assholes of my generation who didn't have the talent to write and play THE MUSIC have chosen to make it about nothing but THE BUSINESS.

And so many of us who had the talent have been ignored because it's easier to manipulate - or, in the case of Madonna, collude with - creatures who are not musical artists but instead are images that can be shilled to line the pockets of guys jealous that the band always got the girls....

So now they've taken the worst girl of them all and elevated her to the status of legend.

And they're bloody well welcome to her....

Let the Yelling and Screaming Begin...

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:50:21 GMT

I haven't posted in two months. I'm not posting much these days anywhere. I'm busy playing music again and trying to get my chops in order, set up a tour, etc. I'll post here when we get the web sites we're building about the music up and running.

In the meantime, here's an amazing piece of work from Antony and the Johnsons. More proof that Jools Holland is an international treasure. Where on American TV could a guy with this kind of talent get exposure? That's a rhetorical question. We know the answer is nowhere....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6kMIFDm7rS8

Lord Byron's Birthday...

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:05:41 GMT

Today, the 22nd of January, is George Gordon’s (née Lord Byron’s) birthday. He’d be 220.

Byron was acknowledged as the first Scrogue, or Scholar/Rogue by S&R, and it seems only fitting that we should mark the anniversary of his nativity while noting a few of his more interesting cultural and literary contributions.

- Byron first gave us the style of open collared shirts on men. This isn’t to say that such hadn’t been worn before - rather, Byron made wearing one’s shirt collar undone (by either neckerchief, ascot, or other ancestor of that bane of male fashion, the necktie) into a fad that became standard fashion - sort of the way that 60’s counter culture helped denim become a wardrobe necessity;

- Byron, and his contemporaries, particularly Percy Bysshe Shelley, popularized the idea of “live fast, love hard, die young”; Byron’s decadence and scandalous behavior that challenged social mores (his social set, the English peerage, sent mostly empty carriages to his funeral procession as a mark of their disapproval of his rebelliousness) made him both a hero and pariah in his own age - and a role model for every artistic rebel since.

- Byron died of fever while fighting in the Greek war of independence; his heart is buried in Greece. The rest of his remains were transported to England in a barrel of brandy, according to popular report.

- When Byron’s remains were returned to England in the fall of 1824 (he having died that spring at the age of 36), both the deans of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral refused him burial. He is buried near the family estate of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. A memorial was finally put up to him in Westminster in 1969 - at the height of that neo-Romantic era now known generally as the age of Classic Rock.

- The changing nature of the reading public (in large part based on the democratization of literacy) has led us to forget the power a poet like Byron can exert on the public. As a professor in a course on the history of the English novel once noted to me, “In 1815 the best selling book in England would be the latest volume of Byron’s poetry; by 1845, the best selling work in England would be Dickens’ most recent novel.” (We should note that the most popular “poet” of my generation, Bob Dylan, has never published a volume of (specifically) verse….

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The argument about Byron’s place in the history of English literature rages on as it has since his death. The two largest schools of thought are these: 1) Byron is a perfect example of talent wasted, and while Don Juan is a triumph of English poetry, it is really more an extension of 18th century satire in the vein of Pope than an expression of Romanticism, and his other major work, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, though full of brilliant passages, is too self-indulgent to be the poetic success it should have been (despite its enormous popularity at the time of its original publication); 2) Byron is more important as a cultural figure than as a literary one - as a professor noted to me when I argued that he’d given Byron short shrift compared to Wordsworth, “But you must understand, Mr. Booth; Wordsworth is a great poet - Byron is a great man!”

Still, Byron invented so much of what we think of when we think of artists - whether poets, writers, or rock stars - and his sensibilities are those which speak to youth of every age. Perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in this throwaway stanza from Don Juan:

I would to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling—
Because at least the past were pass’d away—
And for the future—(but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly to-day,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say—the future is a serious matter—
And so—for God’s sake—hock and soda water!

Here’s to his lordship….

...And We're Back....

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:12:52 GMT

Hello. My name is Jim Booth and I'm (at least nominally) a writer, musician and professor. For those of you vaguely familiar with my work and wondering where I've been, here's a brief explanation of sorts.

It's been a rough couple of months.

On the blogging front, the two "big" stories I spent most of 2007 writing about, the evil that is Blackwater and the Jena 6 travesty of justice, are gone from the news cycle. In the first case Blackwater coverage is now buried - by, I suspect, tacit agreement between the Bush junta and corporate media - so as to allow Erik Prince and company to slither away with minimal (if any) punishment for their crimes against humanity in the name of protecting "American interests" in Iraq. In the second case, Jena's impetus toward equal treatment under law has dissipated (sadly) due to revelations that the principal prosecutee/cause célèbre has been something of a habitual criminal whose previous unsavory behavior had been excused with wrist taps for the following reasons: 1) he was a star athlete; 2) he committed his crimes against fellow African-Americans rather than against whites in his home town in the deep south.

Since the relegation of these important stories to Trotsky's dust bin, I've been at loose ends trying to find another story to follow to fill my niche as resident Museum Quality Boomer Idealist© for Scholars and Rogues.

On the personal front it's been a painful, contemplative time.

For those (few) of you (God bless you, every one) who've followed some of my rock music writing both here and at Scholars and Rogues you're aware that I was a musician myself for a good number of years before retreating to a life in academia and as a writer. I played in a band back in the seventies - a band that was approached by record companies (while this sounds laughable now, back in the Beatle-cene Epoch it used to be a statement of some importance). We wrote and played power pop with country, blues, and folk inflections. Some people thought we were pretty good.

Bands are fragile things - the synergy created by a particular group of people interacting social scientists would call fascinatingly amorphous, artists would claim as magical. The addition, change, or loss of a member of a band with a particular synergy can alter its, perhaps rock, history. Pete out, Ringo in. Stephen Stills spots a hearse on Sunset Boulevard, meets Neil Young. Michael Stipe, record hound, meets Peter Buck, record store clerk. Nirvana struggles for identity, Dave Grohl shows up....

So it was with us. Mike was a brilliant "in the pocket" rhythm guitar player who never desired to "make it cry or sing" as the great Knopfler once said. Steve and I wrote and sang nearly all the original material. Steve played lead; I played bass. We were the front guys - the darling boys. Every band needs them....

Tony played drums - and big brother.

Like The Fabs, we'd had our drummer issues. We'd gone through at least three other drummers before Tony sat behind a drum set (a crappy set our road manager had bought when he'd tried out as our drummer) one evening on a dare from our road manager. He'd trained with a big band drummer (a guy who'd played for one of the Dorsey brothers' big bands) and had played in several notable beach music bands (R&B for those not from the Carolinas or VA).

He was 4 years older than the next oldest of us in the band - nearly 6 years older than me, the youngest. In those far off days when we were crazy kids, he was the one who usually rescued one of us if we got ourselves too far over the line.

He spent way too much time rescuing me, in case you're wondering.

And, since I'm an artist of sorts, I'll say it this way - when Tony joined the band, magic happened.

Tony could add fills and play rhythms that made us a band operating at a whole new level. Hence the success and attention we garnered back in the day, as the kids say. It was his drumming that brought out fans at each of our (full or partial) reunions over the last 30 years.

Tony died suddenly in October. I’ve been having real trouble getting past it. I’m haunted by what might have been. I keep remembering a quote from Peter Townshend: “Yeah, fans can say,’That crazy drummer of yours is dead. Get somebody else to play drums.’ But it’s different for me - my friend is dead. Do you understand? My friend is dead.”

Events like Tony’s passing - which we Boomers are starting to experience with alarming regularity - makes stuff like, say, the Presidential campaign, which seems so important to the Xers who dominate S&R, seem like a lot of horse shit to me these days.

I’m trying to figure out what’s important to me now. While there’s still some time. I'm playing music again with my co-writer and lead guitarist, Steve. What started out as a "coffee house" act to do small gigs is picking up momentum. It's coming well. We're still good. ;-)

But we're not what we were with Tony.

Still, as Tennyson reminds us, what we are, we are:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

So here we go. Give me that eight count....

Exquisitely Sad Songs

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:24:21 GMT

Here's a downer just in time for the holidays....

Spinner.com has all kinds of lists related to rock and pop music. This one caught my eye:

The 25 Most Exquisitely Sad Songs in the Whole World.

I don't agree with some choices on their list (hell, I don't know some of those they claim are so great). So, since in this distributed culture we now inhabit my opinion is as valid as anyone's, I decided to make my own list on this topic. I'm only going to list four. I hope any of you who take time to read this will take even more time and offer your own suggestions. One rule - tell us why the song feels so ineffably sad to you.

1. "Rainy Night House" - Joni Mitchell - Let's ignore my prejudice for Joni, goddess of all that is good in singer/songwriter-dom. The plaintive piano that haunts this tune is underscored by existential lyrics that remind us of just how right Camus and all those French dudes were about our knowledge of each other: "You sat up all the night and watched me/To see - who in the world I might be...." Just kills me.

2. "I am a Rock" Simon and Garfunkel - The was a time may 16-17 years ago when I played this tune 20 times a day through the entire month of December trying to save my own life. I thought at the time it wasn't working, but now I'm pretty sure it did. I'm still here. The reminder it kept giving me, albeit with an undercurrent of sarcastic despair that would sweep a Channel swimmer to a watery grave: "I have my books and my poetry to protect me...." Still gives me a shiver.

3. "Baby, Can I Hold you" - Tracy Chapman - Nothing messes with one's psyche like lost love. This song shreds me because, as the title states, it asks for so little - and it is aimed at somebody who's a world class fuck-up in relationships. Not that I'm such a person. Oh, no, not me: "Maybe if I told you/The right words/At the right time/You'd be mine...." Yeah, but getting those "right words" seems to elude us....

4. "These Days" - Jackson Browne - This song comes from that place where one has finally started to mend from heartbreak but isn't ready to consider the possibility of finding love or happiness again. It's a bleak but honest place - and we've all spent some time there: "Please don't confront me with my failures/I had not forgotten them...." As the old saw goes, everything is good for you if it doesn't kill you....

Let's hear about your tear jerkers....