We Could Stay at Home and Play Games, I Don't Know

Lately I have had Steely Dan on the mind. I don't own enough of their music to do a decent Band of the Month, or they might have made it - if I started doing scaled down versions of that series, I might put them in there. But for now, just getting something on this blog will count as a Win. So - I've gotten them in my head and they aren't coming out, so I am putting them up here for your enjoyment. Go get em, boys!

Here's an early bit, Doin' it Again live on Midnight Special, back when David Palmer did a lot of the live vocals... I've posted their Reelin' in the Years too many times to post it again - this will do. Jef Baxter on congas, Denny Dias on that great solo...



This is the one I can't get out of my head lately - Rikki Don't Lose That Number... I remember hearing this back in the 70s sitting in a pizza joint in Brunswick Maine, this on the jukebox, and some guy at the next table telling two girls he was with that he had done something while he was under the influence of barbiturates... ah, decadence!



And for good measure - here are some Brooklyn hipsters (Hospitality) I had never heard of covering the Dan, and doing a fine job of it...



And from after they got back together and went on tour in the 90s - Deacon Blues, which is the first Steely Dan song I remember hearing on the radio - very cool song, I thought:



And finally, some I can't find the Minutemen doing it - here are the Mountain Goats covering Dr. Wu:

Thinking about What a Friend Had Said

(I put this post off last week because of the shootings in Dallas; yesterday, someone drove a truck into a crowd in Nice, on Bastille day. How long, how long... Well, Neil Young started out in the middle of chaos, and has always addressed it directly, so he's going up. What can you do?)



For this month's band of the month, let us go north of the border, and Neil Young. I've mentioned this a couple other times, but when I started writing this, I was amazed to see how few of his records I actually have on the computer. It's one of the artifacts of FM radio in the late 70s and 80s: these classic rock bands who got played to death - 4 or 5 songs from their best 4, 5, 6 records - to the point that you forget what you have and don't have. I had to go on to iTunes to get Southern Man on the computer just now - I've never noticed I didn't have it...

That's all right. The broader point is that old Neil has been at it a very long time, all of it solid, great swatches of it magnificent - I have not kept up for most of that career, dipping in and out of the new releases, and picking off the old classics when I can. Like Dylan, like Bowie, like Prince even, I haven't done justice to his career. A bunch of records, some of which I have listened to obsessively at times (a friend in college had Live Rust, and we went through that a few times, beginning to end, as I have since) - a bunch of songs on the radio - but a vast catalogue I have barely touched. So - well, we're into that stage of this series, I am afraid...

It is all right. He does have an impressive body of work. It's interesting, of course - being split into a couple fairly distinct streams: the hard rockers - the country rock - with a handful of songs that slide around the edges, like After the Gold Rush - folk, I suppose, but, really - hymns, right? that is basically a hymn... though even the rockers sometimes are basically hymns - the Unplugged version of Like a Hurricane comes to mind - sounding as natural on a pump organ as Rock of Ages does. They are all fairly simple, straightforward songs - always lyrically compelling, of course - and always played and sung with conviction. He bites into his songs, singing or paying - milking everything he can get from his voice and guitar. He isn't exactly a great singer - but he knows exactly how to use his voice to serve the songs. And as a guitarist, he can get as much from as little as anyone. That droned guitar solo on Cinnamon Girl, the album version especially, is as simple and as powerful as it gets. And I can listen to his epics all day - Like a Hurricane, Cowgirl in the Sand - he's always rewarding.

And finally - I have to say, he writes songs that inspire people. He's been endlessly influential, and inspired some really outstanding covers, from all across the rock spectrum. He's one of the greats.

All right - songs: Top 10:

1. After the Gold Rush
2. Like a Hurricane
3. Cinnamon Girl
4. The Needle of the Damage Done
5. Cowgirl in the Sand
6. Sedan Delivery
7. Ohio
8. Hey Hey My My
9. Heart of Gold
10. Southern Man

Video? Start before the beginning - Buffalo Springfield, miming back in the 60s:



Audio only of Cinnamon Girl, live, 1970, featuring the magnificent Danny Whitten behind Young:



The Needle and the Damage Done, on the Johnny Cash show:



Like a Hurricane, Live Rust:



And Southern Man, with CSN, in 2000:



And 3 songs from last year - After the Gold Rush, Hey Hey My My, and Helpless:



Perhaps a cover or two - starting with the pride of New Jersey, juicing up Sedan Delivery:



And Built to Spill, a band that seems built on the ghosts of Neil Young guitar anthems, doing Cowgirl in the Sand:

Blue Ocean Water Cannot Stop My Heart and Mind from Burning

For this month's Band of the Month, we're back in the 21st century, and the ubiquitous (it sometimes seems) Jack White - mainly for the White Stripes, but he hasn't really slacked off in his other bands. He has been wonderfully prolific - a dozen or so records, with various bands, along with work with other people. And it's all fine stuff - all distinctly his, but also bringing in the personalities and talents of his collaborators. The White Stripes sound like the Raconteurs - but not exactly; the Dead Weather offers a different twist - a different voice; his solo records bring in some new sounds - in fact, it's the sound that varies the most among them, the instrumentation, sometimes the style. There's continuity across all his work, but he still always seems to be evolving - trying new sounds, new styles - every record is rewarding.

Thinking about this essay, I thought of the ways he is like other favorites of mine. Iv'e had Prince on the mind - and White's record in the past decade or so reminds me of Prince in the 80s (and beyond). It is interesting: they share a work ethic - I'm not sure how many artists are as committed to getting a record out every year as White has been in that time. He can work like Prince - playing all the instruments, playing different instruments in different combos. At the same time, he's involved with other artists - all those collaborations, all his effort to work with other people. He's versatile - he's committed to controlling his art - to building the infrastructure for his creativity... He might not be the musical genius Prince was, especially as a musician - but he is a very interesting musician, and s superb song-writer, who milks rich veins of American songwriting styles. Country, blues, pop, rock, gospel, folk - he plays with them all, very successfully. He is a kind of one man industry.... He has in common with Nick Cave too - who's also put out a wealth of material throughout his career, still going strong; who's also slipped around through a variety of styles, without really abandoning his base skills. And he sometimes reminds me of Cave as a songwriter - the way he writes fiction, stories - characters who aren't necessarily him. The hints of gods and devils lurking in those songs. And a kind of characteristic hardness - he might have the best body of last lines to songs in the business:

"if there's anything good about me, I'm the only one who knows"
"not one single person on god's golden shore is entitled to one single thing; we don't deserve a single damn thing"
"Worse than All Your Dreams Could Ever Make Me"
"I never said I would throw my jacket in the mud for you, but my father gave it to me so maybe I could carry you, then you said you almost dropped me so then I did, and I got mud on my shoes"
"this kind of things must be important because somebody ripped out my page in your telephone book"

All right. He has had a pretty good career, beginning to the present, and still going strong - but I can't deny that he was particularly great at the beginning. When it was them, not him, too - the later stuff, the other projects, are fantastic, but he hasn't really matched the impact of the White Stripes. I heard the first couple records, liked them, though I didn't completely fall for them - then White Blood Cells came out, and that did it. It was very exciting - that stripped down style, the endlessly catchy tunes, the clever words - I liked the poppier garage sound more than their earlier bluesier sound, it felt more open, more adventurous, freer - I was sold. And you can guess from the comments above, I continued to enjoy their music as they got even more expansive - I like bands with wide tastes in music, and was very happy to follow them into their rockier moments, their ballads, the country, the folk, as well as the blues. And though Jack continues to work similar styles since, I don't know if he has ever quite been able to match the direct appeal of the Stripes. Simple, direct rhythms, his straightforward riffs, warped and twisted around - nothing else quite works that well. Meg focused the music, and focused him. They were a truly great band.

All right: let's do the lists. Here, to start, a White Stripes Top Ten:

1. The Same Boy You've Always Known
2. Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly worn
3. I Want to be the Boy
4. As Ugly as I Seem
5. I'm Finding It Harder to be a Gentleman
6. 300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues
7. Icky Thump
8. Seven Nation Army
9. we're Going to Be Friends
10. The Big Three Killed My Baby

And Then, an other Jack White top 5:

1. These Stones Will Shout - Raconteurs
2. Portland Oregon - with Loretta Lynn
3. So Far from Your Weapon - Dead Weather
4. Top Yourself - Raconteurs
5. Entitlement - Solo

And some video: Start with a classic White Stripes performance of Same Boy You're Always Known:



And later, acoustic and intense, Ugly as I seem, on Charlie Rose:



Here's Jack playing Seven Nation Army, with Jimmy Page and The Edge from the This Might Get Loud documentary. The more I think about that film, the more inspired the choices seem: it's not just that the three guitarists cover three generations, or even that they are three very fine purveyors of The Riff - it's that they are so different. Page, the virtuoso, the session genius, able to play anything, the improvisor, the excessive one; The Edge, the minimalist, the rhythm guitarist, the one relying on his effects almost more than his playing - building riffs out of that; and White - the songwriter - never quite so virtuosic as Page, but willing to solo, make noise, risk excess (though more economical) - but more than that, and more than the other two - making his musicianship always the servant of his songwriting. He is a very good guitarist, but he is a musician and songwriter first - he can shift instruments if it works better, he keeps the pyrotechnics tied to the song. They bounce off one another - each working differently, a fact that sometimes comes through in the movie, but mostly dawns on you later. It's a neat film, and that dynamic is part of it...



And a clip of The Raconteurs:



Here's drummer Jack, with the Dead Weather:



And singing with Loretta Lynn:



And finally some blues - St. James Infirmary - can't find a good performance clip, so here's a Betty Boop cartoon someone matched to the song:

Let Us Not Talk Falsely Now

This essay has been a while in coming. It is time to address one of the Big Boys of American Music, that I have not yet addressed - the (other) pride of Minnesota (actually, the fourth pride of Minnesota post in this series, since I got to Husker Du and the Mats a couple years back), Mr. Bob Dylan.

It's been a while in coming because Dylan is a hard one to write about - I imagine for anyone, but definitely for me. I like old Bob - always have; I respect old Bob, always have, maybe do now more than ever - and he is obviously one of the great artists of the last 60 years - but it's still hard sometimes for me to get my head around him. He isn't obvious to me - even now - his virtues are elusive, sometimes. Or what should I say? I always heard Dylan on the radio, and always liked him - I knew how important he was almost from the start, and how good he was - I've always listened to him, and, I suppose you could say, taken him for granted. I guess it's that for some reason he never made that personal connection to me most of the bands in this series have - I can't come up with stories about listening to Dylan the way I can for almost everyone else. I always liked him, but there were never times when he took over my head for a while, again - the way everyone else here has. I've written similar things about some of the others - Bowie for example - but with Bowie, there was a jump, a point where I kind of sat down and listened, and kind of reevaluated him, upwards. Dylan - has just always been this major figure I agreed with everyone else when they said how good he was. I don't know if that makes any sense. Especially since you listen to the songs and of course he's one of the great ones. That's what makes it hard to write about him - as far back as I've cared about Dylan at all, I've known how good he was, never doubted it. It probably would be easier to write about him if I dismissed him, even just had a spell where I thought Dylan was overrated - but I haven't. I suppose he is overrated if you say he's as good as the Beatles or Stones, but otherwise, no. So -

Leave it then. Let's get to the good stuff. Because there is no denying his genius: as a writer at least, though he is not slouch as a songwriter, and though he is not what you would call a singer - he is most definitely a voice. But it is the words that make him what he is. I sometimes come across people who doubt the Bob - who try to show he wasn't so good after all - they are incorrect. They might complain about some aspect of his writing - the obscurity and obliqueness of some of his songs - but they complain about those things by ignoring the songs that are nothing like that: that get to the point and fast. What's obscure about Hurricane or the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll? But plain or obscure, conventional or experimental - he was always sharp, dazzling, surprising and careful. The words make him what he is, the words and how he uses them. It's there in those piles of words, lines, images in the early songs - in the clear, direct statement of songs like the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll - in the meandering narratives of 70s songs, from Desire or Blood on the Tracks. He uses words to make music - the way they clash and throng, jammed together out of time, their mysterious pauses and transitions, repetitions, all the poetic tricks he uses - rhymes and internal rhymes and alliterations and assonance - While preachers preach of evil fates/Teachers teach that knowledge waits... lay slain by a cane... (or those three tables, also in ...Hattie Carroll...) - they all add up. However they read on the page, he always wrote these words to be sung - or performed, anyway - they are rhythmic and propulsive, ragged (usually), fitted to his voice. It's as if the words were a musical instrument.

Musically, he is not as dazzling, but he is always interesting. He gets a nice sense of propulsion in his music quite soon - the early acoustic songs usually roll along pretty well, and when he went electric, he did it in style. Right out of the gate, Subterranean Homesick Blues, fast and straight and no looking back. You feel like you've stepped onto a fast train, rattling along, steady and relentless.... He picked good collaborators for his music, and all through his career, the backgrounds remain as interesting as his voice - moments spring out at you - the piano and sleazy horns in Rainy Day Women, organ on Like a Rolling Stone, the drumming on Tangled up in Blue or all Along the Watchtower, the violin haunting Hurricane (indeed all of Desire) - making the songs, always fitting them, adding to them, pulling them away, surprising you.

And finally - it's impossible to overstate just how important Bob Dylan has been as an artist. Some many artists came directly in his path - so many I have written about - Lou Reed, The Byrds, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave; and he had profound influence on almost all rock songwriters after - the Beatles and the Stones were shaped by him, and everyone after. He raised the stakes for songwriters - issued a kind of challenge to them, to make the words matter, and carve out your own space in your words. It's obviously something that was around before him - blues and country songwriters always worked with similar material, and greatly influenced him - though that was just one mode he worked with. He shifted things - bringing in ideas from modern poetry (subject matter and devices) - bringing in (and adapting) longer narrative forms - bringing in a lot of things. His voice is everywhere in rock and roll.

And so we come to the list: not easy, but that's not new. This is made more troublesome by the fact that while I have a decent collection of Dylan records, he's been at it for almost 60 years, putting out a pretty steady stream of music for that whole time. That's another reason to put this essay off - all that work, all that unexplored work.... But that's can't be helped (except by waiting a couple more years to do this.) So here you go:

1. It's Alright Ma (Im Only Bleeding)
2. Tangled Up In Blue
3. Subterranean Homesick Blues
4. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
5. Hurricane
6. All Along the Watchtower
7. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
8. Like a Rolling Stone
9. Buckets of Rain
10. It's All Over Now Baby Blue

Here he is in 1964 - Blowing in the Wind:



It's All Right Ma - another of those acoustic songs that rocks harder than any metal and punk you might come up with:



Electric Bob, not working on Maggie's farm no more:



One of the great music videos (I hope this one's legal, and sticks around, so this post won't look like the Prince post from last month, which is all blank YouTube links now...):



Dylan in 84 with Mick Taylor, Ian McLagan, etc. - Mick takes a pretty epic guitar solo here as well, a nice touch - one fo the most underrated guitar players in the business:



Latter day Bob, tangled up in blue - 2014:



And leave with - Bob's Christian phase? whatever - this kicks ass:

Was I What You Wanted Me To Be

Well, I wasn't planning to write about Prince this month - this is not the way it is supposed to work. But I have to. I have to find words to wrap my head around this news - it is beyond unexpected. And horrible.

He is, was (how awful to write that - "was"), like Bowie and Dylan (who I was planning to write about this month, and will get to), an artist I revere, but - find very hard to get my head around. He was in the air in the 80s - the dominant musician of the decade - others might have sold more, gotten more attention (Michael Jackson or Madonna, say); I might have listened to the indie punks I've written about here over the last couple years more... But Prince was the one who got on both lists. The biggest acts of the decade - the best acts of the decade - and my favorite acts of the decade. He defined the 80s. He redeemed the 80s (though I can't deny being pretty fond of a lot of the music of that decade, not just indie and punk, but it's best pop acts - Madonna at her best; Michael Jackson especially early; George Michael - new wave stuff, like The english Beat or ABC or Talk Talk - rap, obviously - etc.) Still: Prince redeemed it, transcended it, he was better than all of it. He did everything. He did everything as well or better than anyone else. Maybe more pop/soul/funk than anything else - but everything you could do in rock is in there. He claimed all of music history for himself, and bettered it. (Look at his Superbowl Halftime Show - playing a couple of his greatest hits, and running through a quick history of American rock music - Dylan and CCR to Foo Fighters and back to himself - making it all his.) The - what do you call them? middle early records? - Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999 - are pop/soul/funk to be sure, but they are also New Wave - clean and spare and tight - put them on headphones, and they sound as minimalist and precise as Young Marble Giants - and funkier than funk. Never mind something like Sister, which, spare as it is, is basically a punk song... Then comes Purple Rain, and he takes on and betters arena rock. And you get indie rock songs like The Cross, you get hiphop, you get Zep impersonations - everything.

And in the 80s, along with the music, there was more. There was always something explicitly Utopian about Prince - getting beyond race, beyond gender, beyond sexual preference, beyond the duality of spirit and body - though without ever losing any of it. He didn't transcend race or gender, he embraced all of race and gender. Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay? - well - sure - why not? It's all good. And on a practical level, he played it out: he appealed to anyone who would listen. The rock kids, the dance kids, the pop kids - bringing all of those things with him to your favorite genre, which he played as well as anyone at home there. And always sexy and funny.

I'll tell a couple stories - this one is kind of sketchy, but the basics are this: I remember having an argument, sort of, with a girl in college. She was a Bowie fan. She was defending him - I don't remember the details, but I compared him to Prince, two chameleons, two brilliant musicians and writers who deliberately tried to be everything it was possible to be.But she didn't like Prince - or - maybe she liked the music, but she found him disturbing. The sex! the religion! the - something. I remember asking her how she could like Bowie for the very same things, and not like Prince. I wish I remembered the details - did we even finish the conversation? I remember thinking about it - thinking it came down to the fact that she was religious herself, but Bowie's polymorphous perversity was safe because he never pretended to involve god or religion. He could be cool without being religious. But Prince didn't let her break things apart like that. He was everything Bowie was, and he was steeped in the church. He claimed everything, and claimed it was all continuous - black and white, male and female, straight and gay, spiritual and physical, sex and love and ecstasy - it's all a game; we're all the same; do you wanna play? I think that's what bothered her - he didn't let people keep their distinctions, he could recite the lord's prayer and then wish we all were nude in the same song. (And I think she was complaining, specifically, about Controversy.) He really did break down barriers - and the barrier between sex and the spirit is a pretty big one - and Prince wasn't going to let anyone out of it. "I am something that you'll never comprehend." Sex and god are the same thing. Worrisome, maybe....

The other story is clearer. This happened in 1989 - the opening of Batman, with its Prince soundtrack. I saw it twice the weekend it opened. First time at a sneak preview at the old Cherie theater in Boston, the backbay - sellout crowd that looked like a Prince audience: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, all mixed up together, and everyone absolutely stoked. They cheered everything - they cheered the previews, they cheered the credits, they cheered all the stars, and they cheered Prince maybe louder than anyone. They cheered all the way through, every joke, every fight, every song. It was, easily, the best movie showing I have ever been to. The next night, I went to see it again, with a different bunch of friends (a couple black kids and 3 or 4 white guys, a fact worth noting.) This was at a suburban mall, and though the crowd might have been almost as diverse as it was the night before, the vibe was completely different. The white people and black people came in in separate groups, sat in mutually exclusive blocks, and (after a brawl before the movie started, when some white kids mouthed off to some black kids over holding seats for their friends), when the film started, cheered and booed in separate blocks. The white kids cheered Batman; the black kids cheered the joker; the black kids cheered Prince - the white kids booed Prince.

Who boos Prince? How do you boo Prince? That night was pretty decisive, I think, in making a city boy out of me - took a couple years to have the resources to afford to move to the city, but I got there... but after that second night - I never much cared about the suburbs again. I figured I'd take my chances in the city, with the city people, with the Prince fans...

And then, in the world, the 90s came - Prince got weird, changed his name, stopped sounding quite as vital. I stopped listening to the radio, MTV stopped playing music. And when Prince got weird, I let him go, and didn't really come back to him until the last couple records. Which have been pretty good in themselves - and of course, completely unlike each other. I have been hoping to dig through the last 20 years of his music before writing about him - I guess that's off, though the digging will still be on... But it gives this essay more of an 80s feel than it should have - and makes it sound as if Prince has been in hiding the last 25 years, and that's not true either. Sometimes weird, yes; probably not as immediately compelling as he was in the 80s; but still at it, and still a force.

Still, quite possibly, American's greatest rock and roll star. Which probably means, the world's greatest. Quite possibly.

All right.

Songs - a top 10? because that's the format, right? Hey, I did a Beatles top 10 - I can take a shot...

1. When Doves Cry - this is, maybe, the best single ever; I suppose you have the usual suspects - Hey Jude, say - but damn... Certainly when I was listening to the radio - seriously: was there ever a song that, the first time you heard it on the radio, came out and grabbed you by the neck like this?
2. Controversy
3. Kiss - this is a pretty damned good single too; and another example of what a light touch he had - the stripped down sound, full of space, all the sounds clean and precise, and always funky.
4. 1999
5. Sign of the Times
6. When You Were Mine
7. Dirty Mind
8. I Would Die for U
9. I Wanna Be Your Lover - though I remember the first time I heard this, too, on American top 40, Casey Kasem - I think i remember old Casey saying something about Prince playing all the instruments... I thought, ooh - listen to that dirty pun! and - cool song. Also - speaking of Casey Kasem, Richard Lyons, from Nagativland, also died today... these guys are from England and who gives a shit?
10. The Cross - yeah, I'm a sucker for tuneful guitar rock...

(Sorry, then, to many many songs - Head and Uptown, Sexuality, Let's Pretend We're Married, Delirious and Little Red Corvette, Purple Rain and Let's Go Crazy, Raspberry Beret - oh well...)

As for video - this is more trouble than it is worth, since old Prince made life hard for video posters. He had his reasons, and he had the right, but - maybe - youtube is kind of the radio of the 21st century, maybe - for some of us... It's all right. I will find what I can:

Like this full concert in 1982:



And Dirty Mind, from the same show:



Here's a live version of When Dove's Cry - I wish I could find the actual video, which is almost as much a kick in the ass as the song, but Prince's copyright lawyers have done their work - but this will do. From the period - Wendy on guitar...



Purple Rain live on TV (I had a different video here yesterday; it was gone overnight - but this one works):



Can't really ignore this video:



And here's Partyman, from the Batman soundtrack - playing Harvey Dent for the video. I remember thinking, they should cast Prince as Robin in the sequel. (Since Harvey Dent was already Billy Dee Williams). Oh well; no one listens to me. (And they even recast two-face when he got his star turn. Jesus.)



And a couple videos showing his mad skills on the guitar, on other people's songs: here he is doing Creep, with an epic solo at the end...



And here he is playing with various Traveling Wilbury's at a tribute for George Harrison - he comes in halfway through and - everything else disappears.... top this, mere Beatles!

The Slyest Rhymes and the Sharpest Suits

[well - Comcast manged to stop me from posting this this mogrning - but it's still Friday! And Smokey can bring as much happiness in the evening as the morning, right? So here we are.]

I'm in a complicated stretch of my band of the month series - Bowie last month, and one of these days I am going to have to essay Dylan - big, complicated artists that I have a somewhat uneasy relationship with, people I have been avoiding because they deserve attention, but I haven't always had the emotional or biographical connections I have with most fo these people. What can I say?

This month is not like that. This month I am going to write about a much more direct pleasure - the man I think might be the best songwriter of the rock era, and possessor of one of the best voices as well - Mr. William "Smokey" Robinson Jr. Sometimes, Motown artists can be victims of their own success - all over the radio, and the silly, oldies stations (when I was growing up - now, oldies are Nirvana and Ice Cube), trotted out during fundraiser week for PBS to do smile and mime some dance moves from 1962, covered by everybody, from Mick and Keef and Bob and Jerry down to every wedding band ever, all this repetition reducing the songs to pretty melodies and clever turns of phrase, and memories of the perfection of the original harmonies... You take it for granted. The Motown songs seem to suffer a bit more from this than, say, Stax Volt, or funk artists - maybe because they were prettier, smoother, slicker - maybe because the artists weren't as confrontational. (Do you ever take James Brown for granted? maybe as a celebrity - but now matter how many times you hear it, doesn't Sex Machine or Cold Sweat just bowl you over? right?) Maybe - they are slicker, a bit safer, a bit easier to absorb into nostalgia and sentimentality. Maybe.

I have to fight this, sometimes; not with Smokey though. All the things that made Motown's music great, he has - and he has himself, as well. His songs are just a little bit better (whether he sang them or someone else did): the melodies a bit more surprising, a bit more beautiful - and his words, always, sharp as the sharpest steel. Stories, emotions, atmosphere, he gets with great precision - it's not just the famous lines (when it's cold outside, I have the month of May), it's the gems buried in the middle of songs, not quite throwaways - most every taxi that you flag.... He's worthy of Cole Porter: she may be cute, she's just a substitute, because you are the permanent one... if good looks was a minute, you know you coulda been an hour... sweetness was only heartache's camouflage... in order to shield my pride I try to cover this hurt with a show of gladness... I've got so much honey the bees envy me...

They're good. And he had a voice to match. I won't say his is the best - Motown didn't lack for great voices - but he had an almost perfect voice for his songs. His high sweet falsetto, his emotionalism, his intimate tone, inhabit the songs, make them live. They are miniature dramas, carefully crafted, deeply felt, and performed with total conviction. And given musical settings worthy of them. I don't want to underrate the music. The records themselves are glorious - first rate musicians, brilliant arrangements, the sharp, clean production. All Motown records were spectacular productions, but the Miracles songs certainly. They are as memorable for the musical parts - the guitars on Tracks of My Tears (and many others, but that one is particularly famous); drum intro on Going to a Go Go - as as the vocals and words. Marv Tarplin, especially, was an integral part of the band, his guitars shaping many of their songs. They are sonic masterpieces.

And so it is. I can listen to Smokey all day and all night. For a top 10 - it's tempting to work in some of the songs he wrote for other people, but I won't (in this list). I will include some solo work.

1. Tracks of My Tears [there's not much better, anywhere.]
2. I Second that Emotion
3. Tears of a Clown
4. The Love I saw in you was Just a Mirage
5. Going to a Go Go
6. Cuisin'
7. Oooh Baby Baby
8. You've Really Got a Hold On Me
9. More Love
10. Shop Around

Video? It's harder to find good live video of the Miracles - the technology is more primitive, and good live television frm the early 60s is rare. And besides that - they were very much a recording act. It's hard to match their production on stage, and their sound depends, an awful lot, on their sound. That's true of quite a lot of the 60s acts - the Beatles certainly, the Stones even for a while (though they shifted gears with Beggar's Banquet, went back to a more live sound.) So these tend to be pantomime performances - but I think they give a good idea of what the Miracles were actually like live. The sounds, the look, the subtle choreography.... Here is a very cool run through of Tracks of My Tears, black and white minimalism:



And what might be an even more minimalist, cusp of the 70s abstract color set, for Tears of a Clown:



Here, on the other hand, while we still have a cool, minimalist set, we get Smokey and the band performing Second That Emoption live - no slouches:



From the 70s, here's Smokey solo, with Cruisin':



Meanwhile - to get in some of the material he wrote for other people - here are the Temptations, doing both My Girl & The Way You Do the Things You Do:



And the first Smokey Robinson song I remember hearing - Linda Ronstadt singing Tracks of My Tears, and doing complete justice to it. She had a pretty magnificent set of pipes herself, and knew how to get inside a song:



And finally, the source of the title of this post, ABC and Martin Fry's tribute to the great man - a pretty nifty song itself:

I Never Wave Bye Bye

This month's band of the month has to be David Bowie.

It's hard to know what to write. Truth is, David Bowie has always been a bit of a Problem for me. (You have to pronounce it - Problem.) I like Bowie - I always liked Bowie. As long as I listened to music and thought about who was singing it, Bowie was there, and I liked him - Fame and Golden Years were on the charts when I started listening to the top 40, some of the first songs I took special notice of. But when I was young, he was always just a singer on the radio; when I got older - he didn't seem to translate as well into my new tastes. That is strange - in the 80s, I was listening to the Velvets and U2 and Joy Division - inspirations for or inspired by Bowie - you would think he would have been more part of my obsessions. Maybe he was too much a pop star - and in the 80s, that's definitely part of it. I was into punk, and he embraced a much more mainstream kind of pop just then. Maybe I just took him for granted for a while. In any case it changed - I started to listen to the things I liked in high school, and then I dug into his back catalogue a bit, and then I really re-embraced Bowie - but always in a way I found hard to explain.

I think some of it was his his image - the calculation, the imagery, the way the imagery could obscure the music. I was young - maybe I was more impressed by "authenticity" back then. There's irony here - I reacted against musicians who asked you to hear with your eyes, like Bowie and Nick Cave, someone I probably should have liked when I first heard him - and so listened with my eyes, and discounted music I should have loved. That changed, later - maybe I became less puritanical, or maybe I started appreciating their attention to image. It all looks rather silly now. Last month I went on about AC/DC's simplicity and directness, AC/DC and their allies in unpretentiousness, the Ramones, Motorhead, The Feelies, the Stooges. But really: all of those bands (even the Feelies, who come the closest to seeming to be a bunch of people playing what they want to hear) are almost as calculated as Bowie. Obviously, The Ramones and the Stooges - and almost as obviously AC/DC (a show business family, who worked through glam and other styles to arrive at what are essentially Chuck Berry tunes played in a modern style) - all of them calculated, all of them with their costumes and personae, costumes sometimes only arrived at after some experimentation.... None of them are much more natural than the Thin White Duke. The main difference between Joey Ramone or Lemmy and Ziggy Stardust is that The Ramones found something good to do, and perfected it, purified it, used the persona to make beautiful music, and Bowie made up something new a year or so later (Halloween Jack, right?), and off he went. What Bowie perfected was change itself. Or performance itself: the act of inventing a self, a persona through which to sing.

The truth is, I can probably trace the change to my full on adoration of films that began for real in the 90s - and there's no doubt that my appreciation for Bowie the musician has been encouraged by my appreciation for Bowie the actor. Film certainly helps reveal any kind of art as a complete art - music as music, performance, appearance, and so on. I like the imagery around people like Bowie and Cave - maybe not as much as I love their music - but I find their look, their attention to the look, their way of presenting themselves, the act of performing, very compelling. I could get into something about presentational vs. representational art here - though that's going to take us down another rabbit hole. (But it's a rabbit hole I can't help think about, with Jacques Rivette's death, and the arrival of that Out 1 box...) We can say this: David Bowie is the king of the Presentational Rock Star - he's not just performing the songs, he's performing the performance of the songs. Using the performance, and the personae, to shape the meaning of the music as well. And to keep you attentive to the intelligence shaping the songs - creating their meaning. Nothing is pure; everything is art.

That's fine with me. And here is the thing: it has been hard for me to think about how to write about Bowie - hard for me sometimes to say to myself exactly how much I liked him, as a musician, as a artist, as a persona. But when he died there was no doubt. It was shocking, almost, what a sense of loss I felt. His death left a hole in the world, larger than I imagined. It's as though he was too elusive to pin down when he was alive, too many different things to get a clear idea of what he was - but taking him out of the world, you can suddenly see all the things he touched. What didn't he touch?

I don't want writing about his image to take away from the power of his music. With any musician, sooner or later it comes down to the songs - and he wrote extraordinary songs. He was an extraordinary singer. He made extraordinary music. And his music was as protean as his image. Record after record, once he hit his stride, he rolled them out for ages - great songs, great performances, impeccable productions, records designed carefully, with a sound, a look, a style, complete packages - and record after record reinvents his sound, his style, the songs, the words, the tone, the emphasis. And the performances of the music changed as well - in this age of YouTube you can pick a song, and trace his performances through the years, and see how flexible he could be. Everything can change - the music, the arrangements, the style, the instrumentation - his voice, his inflections, his performance. He didn't just change his look, constantly - he changed the sound, the style, everything. He reinvented everything, over and over, and all of it brilliant. He had help - he worked with musicians as inventive and brilliant as himself, from Tony Visconti to Mick Ronson to Carlos Alomar to Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp to Stevie Ray Vaughan - and on and on. The music always warped around his collaborators, who steered Bowie through all those changes. Which brings us to another of his virtues, and the virtues of his constant evolution - he was always open to his surroundings, always absorbing other influences, other people's ideas, always finding ways to bring those things out through his music. His partnerships with other musicians, his interest in other arts - books, films, other music, his interest in the world. He absorbed everything and gave it back to us.

All right then - the songs. A top 10 - not an easy set of choices, but it never is.

1. Heroes - which is, by the way, one of the Best of Them All. That's probably a fairly common opinion, but it's still true - one of the Great Songs.
2. Panic in Detroit
3. Fame
4. Modern Love
5. Rebel, Rebel
6. Ziggy Stardust
7. Golden Years
8. Suffragette City
9. Lazarus
10. The Man Who Sold the World

I have to post this - with Adrian Belew on guitar. I've posted it before, and will again.



Panic in Detroit, live, with imperfectly matched live footage:



Golden Years, mid 80s performance:



Not on my list, but here's Belew wailing on Stay, ca 1990:



A rocky version fo Modern Love:



And finally, Lazarus, from his last record - a devastating goodbye, this:

Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

God heavens, we're a week into 2016 already! Second Friday - band of the month time - and I think I want to start with a pretty straightforward band of the month - AC/DC, the pride of Australia. They're easy to write about, their appeal is obvious and direct and, as far as I am concerned, undeniable. I don't have to say a lot: they are what they are - straight and hard and direct and utterly reliable, from the beginning to the end. They are one of those bands whose music sounds inevitable to me - bands like Motorhead, like the Ramones - and the Feelies, in a slightly different vein. They have found a style, a sound, a groove, and they work it, pretty much just the one, and they have perfected it - and more than that - made it sound like it has always been there, always will be, and is just as it should be. They play a type of music that thousands of bands play - and somehow, sound completely unique - no one else sounds like them.

I know there is a lot more to it than that, for any of those groups - but it is a place to start. And then you can talk about their virtues - the guitars, first - those sharp, precise rhythm tracks (Malcolm Young is just about as good a rhythm guitarist as it gets), the clean, precise (that again) solos from Angus, the propulsive rhythm section, the charismatic squall of either singer (though Brian Johnson never comes close to the glories of Bon Scott), and the first rate song-writing. Simple songs, built on basic chords and obvious structures, but every riff well chosen, every melody memorable... And lyrics as efficient as anything, and usually funny as hell as well - Scott's especially. Lots of stoopid there, and more stupid, probably, that Lemmy or Iggy or the Ramones gave out - but Scott, especially, could turn (and deliver) a phrase (concrete shoes, cyanide, TNT), and build an attitude, and turn the attitude on its head... they are a funny band, as well as fun, deliberately funny - the songs, the act (Angus and his strip tease), Scott's voice - what can I say? What more can you ask?

Top 10 Songs:

1. Back in Black
2. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
3. Ride On
4. TNT
5. It's a Long Way to the Top If You Want to Rock and Roll
6. Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
7. Big Balls
8. Jailbreak
9. Highway to Hell
10. You Shook Me All Night Long

Video: Bon singing Jailbreak,



Though first - YouTube offers this - pre-Bon Scott AC/DC - that doesn't sound a bit like them...



This is more like it, complete with Scott pretending to play the bagpipes and OWNING the camera:



TNT, 1976:



Highway to Hell:



Back in Black:

Listen the Snow is Falling

This month on Band of the Month, we look at not a band: Not the Beatles, specifically. That is - John, Paul, George and Ringo, on their own. (I should add - this is not because of Boyhood - I have been planning to do something like this since the beginning - Beatles: Not the Beatles.) And Yoko, because - why not? Yoko gets a bad rap - she was an interesting part of the late Beatles music, and kept John a bit more interesting in after years - and produced (in the Plastic Ono Band) some of the best rock (at least the best hard rock) of the post-Beatles careers. Did it with John and Ringo, too - she's getting into this post, like it or not.

All right - we may come back to that, but for now ... The Beatles, after the Beatles - what is there to say? First - between the lot of them, they made a hell of a lot of great music, were very successful, remained major cultural forces. Given the quality and importance of their solo work, it's just all the more striking how disappointing it all could be. In this case - the whole of the Beatles was very much greater than the sum of the parts. I love a few of these songs, but would any of them break into a Beatles top 10? Working Class Hero, especially, is in the elite - but, let's see - 2 years ago, I had She Said She Said #10 - would Working Class Hero bump that? Not readily... I am not sure why there is such a noticeable gap: they were almost four solo acts by the end of the Beatles; they were all good musicians, but none of them so good or inventive they transformed the band around them with sheer talent (like Richard Thompson or Keith Moon or Clarence White, say); they were all liberated, in some ways, by going off on their own - they all made great music - but it's impossible to forget who they had been.

Now - this is mainly true of John and Paul. George Harrison really was liberated by the end of the Beatles, and finally got to put as much of his music out as he wanted - his career didn't really sustain the strength of All Things Must Pass, but that's a very high place to start - probably the best post-Beatles record of the lot of them. And Ringo too finally got to be the star, and has put together a very entertaining and generous career. So - George, especially, did solo music as good as his Beatles music (in the vicinity at least.) But John and Paul? I like their solo stuff - but it never lives up to their Beatles work, and it is never sustained. I look at the records I have on the computer, on the ipod - and realize there's quite a bit from either of them I'm happy to fast forward through. Are there Beatles songs I'd fast forward through? Revolution #9? if I were in a certain mood, maybe, maybe; usually not, though - I mean, I like experimental stuff! I'm sorry this is so negative - again - they are victims of their own work - everyone looks bad compared to the Beatles, even ex-Beatles.

I think there are fairly definable problems with their solo music, that might be traced to their break. John's songs tend to work pretty well (in the Beatles, I am not inclined to chose between John and Paul; as solo artists - it is John Lennon all the way, the clear and unambiguous winner [and George takes 2nd]) - but they don't have the musical thrill his Beatles songs have. There are good songs - but they are increasingly bland, unchallenging musically. Still often quite good, in a craftsmanlike way - they work, because they are built on simple direct melodies, and are lyrically satisfying - but they are, at best, decent singer-songwriter tunes, elevated by the words. He didn't slip as a lyricist - might even have become more direct and serious (whether that is all to the good, I won't say - but it's a virtue, nonetheless.) But you can read working Class Hero and it doesn't sound much worse than the song - can't say that for She Said She Said.

And Paul tends to reverse this. I can't deny - his solo and Wings material remains gorgeous - melodically, harmonically, rhythmically interesting, stylistically imaginative (if not exactly adventurous) - but... Sometimes drowning in the sweetness - a trait that crept into his music with the Beatles, but never overcame it. And there are songs - the best ones, the ones here - that are, musically especially, thrilling. But - are they songs? He did love collages - Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, Band on the Run - maybe to a fault? Band on the Run especially, is almost frustrating - he's overwhelmed with ideas, packs three into one song that might have been three songs - though I suppose my real complaint is I wish the middle one had gone on longer - that riff (give it all to charity), I think, might be the best of his career, while the final riff, the bulk of the song is just - nice... But I can't complain - for all the over-sweetness of McCartney's work, it always sound great, as sheer sound. But - some of his songs have lyrics. Not enough of them. And very few that come close to John's lyrics, or even George's (or Paul's own Beatles words.) And more songs that I care to admit barely have any words - or make the words a purely musical element. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey might epitomize this - a few words, repeated, varying the sound more than the sense - words as music. Which - there - works rather marvelously. It might as well be an instrumental - an instrumental with voices - or, what it is, a collage, of words and sounds and music. And - that's not the problem. But then you start to notice that this isn't all that different from so much of what he did - songs like Silly Love Songs, Listen to What the Man says - a kind of statement, then repeated, varied - sounds great; doesn't say much.

What it means? I think - they challenged each other when they were in the Beatles - I don't know how much they edited one another, but just the sense of competition maybe, forced them to try to make everything work, made both of them be sure they were writing complete songs. Wait, you say - the last couple records were packed full of snippets weren't that? But are any of John's solo songs as musically cool as Polythene Pam, say? No; and somehow that's got to be the point - that together, they pushed each other in ways that going on their own lost. It's strange - but I can't get away from it. It's sad - Paul's musical invention; John's continued lyrical seriousness and ambition - working apart, never pushing the other to make the lyrics or music live up to the rest. Creating two excellent artists that you can't help compare to what they had been.

All right. This is far more negative than it should be - the cruel impact of having been the best, for both of them... I do like them both - have since the 70s, especially McCartney and Wings, who were all over the radio in those days... And - I don't want to sell them short: I've implied it so I will say it plain: that John's lyrics remained pretty much as good as a solo artist as they were in the Beatles (and more direct and political, as well; sharper) - that Paul remained as inspired a composer, and almost as adventurous, as a solo artist. But John was less musical inspired - became far more conservative, as a musician (except with Yoko, interestingly); while Paul became - at worst - insipid as a lyricist... They needed each other.

Unlike George Harrison - who, at least at the beginning, was all the things the other two were as solo artists. All Things Must Pass has excellent songs - words, music; excellent melodies; and is often far more adventurous musically - shifting styles, incorporating more different sounds - harder rock, country, Indian styles, horn sections - it's all over the place in ways the other three never really did (but the Beatles did all the time.) A good place to stop - on the best record any of them made alone...

All right - let's try a top 10. This is a bit painful - nothing like picking a top 10 for the Beatles (along with the commenters back then, we got up to a top 40 that didn't really begin to cover the scope of their work... yeah.) But - Let's do it: 10 best songs by ex-Beatles (including Yoko, because I like Yoko!)

Top 10:

1. Working Class Hero - John
2. What is Life - George
3. Maybe I'm Amazed - Paul
4. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey - Paul
5. Cold Turkey - John
6. Jealous Guy - John
7. Why? - Yoko (with John and Ringo, rocking out)
8. It Don't Come Easy - Ringo
9. If Not For You - George
10. Band on the Run - Paul

And some video:

George



Here are George and Ringo playing It Don't Come Easy:



Paul McCartney, 2004:



As for John - I've posted a lot of Lennon through the years - not sure I've posted this one - How Do You Sleep, with recording footage (George playing; Paul the target) - a rather unfair piece of work, but a heck of a song:



And Yoko, Why?



And finally - 2 halves of another band that broke up too soon, covering Yoko. Which is another reason to keep Yoko in here - at least in bands I listen to a lot, she probably had more influence than the rest of them put together (post Beatles.) Her unholy squall - and the music around it - shows up all over the place in the 80s and 90s - Sonic Youth, The Butthole Surfers, The Boredoms, etc. - and the pretty stuff - well -

Take Some Time and Learn How to Play

Here we are, second Friday of November, Band of the Month Friday - another Friday the 13th (what's that - three this year?), but I don't know if that means anything, except this is one of the more unlucky and self-destructive bands in this series.... I give you - The Byrds. What shall I say about the Byrds? Staples on the radio when I was growing up, though never in the first rank of classic artists; a band easy to hear as a kind of glorified cover band, easy listening act - with a couple songs that stood out. Songs that did, it has to be said, cut through the dross.... That impression (formed from 70s radio) started to come apart in the 80s, when suddenly they were one of the most influential bands in the world - REM and all those southern/psychedelic/jangle/country-folk bands that came in REM's wake changed that - though it wasn't really until the late 80s, when I got my hands on the box set they put out about that time that I finally got them, for real. I had my hands on the box set - I didn't own it - but I taped most of it - and proceeded to listen to the cassette obsessively for the next few years. All that happened just about the time I started listening to jazz instead of rock - they were one of the survivors.... When I went back to buying rock records, I eventually got around to buying most of their records - though somehow, that was never quite as satisfying as the box set.

There are fairly clear reasons for that: I said they were unlucky and self-destructive - whichever one it is. They were loaded with talent - Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Gene Clark, David Crosby - all very good, all, I suspect, a bit on the difficult side - or maybe, bloody impossible. Clark quit, and Crosby got thrown out (for being an asshole, with an ego the size of the Washington monument? - see the video below), they started bringing in other people, who were, frankly, just as good - Gram Parsons notably, though they threw him out before they finished any records. It's that, directly, that made the box better than their records - the presence of songs like Triad, and Parsons' versions of songs like The Christian Life, 100 Years From Today and so on.

But Parsons wasn't their only recruit - there was also, about the same time, Clarence White: and come to think of it, I have to change what I said. It wasn't that their actual, released records were less satisfying than the unreleased stuff on the box - it's that their earlier (and middle) releases were less interesting than the live records they put out with White on board. Untitled, Live at the Fillmore (which I think was released somewhere in the 90s) - those records were something else again. Because of White (and Gene Parsons, who gives them a different sound, rhythmically) mainly - McGuinn, who might not have been the best technical guitarist, but always one of the most distinctive and inventive - had someone alongside him even better. What they do, 12 string and modified telecaster, twisting around their songs - the details and decorations and flourishes, all of it in perfect time - my goodness.

Which brings us back around - there are a lot of guitar bands in this world, but I'm not sure there has ever been a band as single minded in their devotion to the sounds of guitars. When you start listening to it you hear it all through their career - their early records put the drums so far down in the mix you can barely hear them, but you can always hear the guitars - especially McGuinn, that insistent Rickenbacker sound, but the other guys get their due. The early version of the band gives the vocals almost equal billing with the guitars - kind of. But really - listen to the way the guitar come in over the vocals on songs like I See You, or - most notably - Eight Miles High: pretty as the harmonies are, the guitars just lay waste to them.

And, right from the beginning, they weren't just a guitar band - they were a band that was up to something with those guitars. Lots of bands were playing around with 12 strings, Rickenbackers, jangle in all its forms in 65-66 - but no one else was pushing those instruments like McGuinn and company. (And listen to the rhythms behind McGuinn, on those old songs: harsh, chunky chords - buried a bit - but Eight Miles High, particularly, is a tour de force, all the way down. They were paying attention to the rhythms all along, they just bury it so far down in the mix you almost can't hear it; when you can, it's prime.) The solos, the sound, the extremity of it - pulling in those jazz riffs, the dense clusters of notes, pulled of Coltrane records, in 1966... The other early guitar wankers were all playing blues - Clapton? Green? Beck? Page? Hendrix? - McGuinn though is in there working through bluegrass sounds, stealing jazz bits - all of it clean and pretty. It is brilliant stuff. And then Clarence White joins, and they push it further, and White has chops, the ability to play things that are hard to even imagine. The sounds - 1:35-36 of Rock and Roll Star on Live at the Fillmore - that bend - just put that on a loop... though I can find something, maybe not that good, but something similar on every song he played on. They work in country, they master it, they work out how to blend all these influences, all these sounds so that every song is surprising and fascinating.... I - I love the early Byrds, and they are hugely influential, especially over groups I like.... But the Clarence White version of the band is mind-blowing. (Though, I confess, prone to pointless noodling - long jams that are half given over to bass solos? que? you have Clarence White and Roger McGuinn, and you're letting someone play a bass solo? Thankfully, they left most of that off the records - but you can find it on YouTube - it's not as bad as I make it sound, but - I'm not looking up Byrds' videos to see drum and bass solos.)

All right then. So let's get this top 10 down. There is no point in distinguishing between originals and covers - one of their features is a way of making every song completely their own. Those Dylan songs - lots of people were covering Dylan, but they were a vehicle for the 12 strings, really. They sounded like something completely original when the Byrds played them. And of course, in case you haven't already figured it out - the lyrics aren't all that important (though not irrelevant - I got cats and teeth and hair for sale.... see your soul to the company who are waiting there to sell plasticware... and their indisputably good taste in outside lyricists, all those Dylan songs, Parsons, songs, Lowell George songs...) - the guitars, baby:

1. Eight Miles High (from the opening bass riff on, with McGuinn coming in - damn fine stuff.)
2. So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star (though the version on Live at the Fillmore is the recording of theirs I would take to a desert island; that one thing Clarence White does, in the middle...)
3. Lover of the Bayou
4. Truck Stop Girl
5. Mr. Tambourine Man
6. 5D (Fifth Dimension)
7. Bad Night at the Whiskey
8. The Christian Life (the Parsons version)
9. Triad
10. Buckaroo (Clarence White workout covering Buck Owens)

And some video, though video is maddening hard to find - especially video that does justice to what they could sound like. Still - we can try. Here, then, is Turn! Turn! Turn! - live, early:



McGuinn and Gene Clark, in 1978, just the two of them, acoustic guitar and that Ricky. McGuinn starts slow, but works his way into it, those intricate, strange riffs, cutting against the pretty harmonies - nice:



The late edition of the band, live on German TV, doing So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star:



Live on Playboy after Dark - You Ain't Going Nowhere and This Wheel's On Fire - some neat guitar bits in there, though it's hard to see much through the dancing girls at the Hef's. There are some nice shots, though, where you can see Clarence manipulating his B-bender - pushing down the neck to operate it....



A bit of Clarence White, just noodling - apparently backstage in Boston:



And here's David Crosby - telling stories and singing Triad:



Can't help myself - another noted guitar band playing 8 Miles High - feedback takes the place of that gorgeous 12-string, but they make the guitar bits work:

Can You Help Me Occupy My Brain

Happy October, and time for another band of the month - and who better for Halloween's month than Black Sabbath? I have to admit up front, this is a very front loaded Band of the month - their later material has its attractions, but they never came close to the first 3 - maybe even 2 - records. Later - they were a more than decent metal band; Ozzy had a more than decent solo career - but that's it. Not my favorite type of music - not the best of the style.

But at the beginning - that's different. They are heavy metal, they are inventing the stuff - whatever counts as the shift from hard rock to metal, it's in those first three records. There were other bands playing heavy music in 69-70, but they still sound different. Heavier, rawer. Heavier than what a lot of metal would become - there's a lot of melody in later metal - just listen to Ozzy Osbourne's solo stuff. Who do you blame that, or Def Leppard, or Motley Crue on? Deep Purple maybe? I don't know. Not Sabbath, anyway. It's Black Sabbath haunting the hard music I like, though - and I like a lot of it - and almost all of it Sabbath inspired. Butthole Surfers - Melvins - Boris - Earth - SunnO))) - groups dear to my heart, and groups rooted very firmly in early Sabbath. I don't know where the sound came from - maybe they were just trying to play hard blues, like Cream or Fleetwood Mac, and didn't have the chops - or had to work harder at it, and slowed it down, atomized it - cause that's what it feels like. The riffs, the sounds, isolated, set adrift like zombies wandering through a foggy moor - something like that. (No - less a foggy moor than a post-apocalyptic factory, where all the people are gone - or turned into zombies - but the machinery is still running. Actually, that's probably just a documentary of their early lives. Birmingham, you know.) It is so extreme - so slow, so dominated by the low sounds, the falling bends Iommi likes to play (think Iron Man) - they seem to be coming from Mars.

They were very good. They got whacked by the critics in real time, but things aren't always apparent in real time. (I've said before - the punks redeemed a lot of these bands: changed the way you could hear them. I heard Sabbath in high school, and didn't much care - I heard them after I became a punk fan and loved it.) They were good. The riffs on the first few records are absolutely stellar - Black Sabbath - NIB - War Pigs - Paranoid - Hand of Doom - Iron Man - Children of the Grave - guitar lines as memorable and cool as they come. And the rest worked too - the clobbering, relentless rhythms; even the lyrics - not as poetry, but as raw slices of id and anger at the world, are all first rate. Better than the Zep, I am afraid, and almost as funny. They set the standard for all the hard rock to follow - a standard for heavy metal everyone else fell short of. Most punk falls short of it too (even as punk - Paranoid might as well be punk.) The best punk and best metal takes off from it.

And they make a nice Halloween band. The first time I heard War Pigs I had nightmares for weeks. That is how it should be - you hope someone with their taste in movies would be able to deliver on it. They are certainly a reminder that the best horror movies are made by good Catholic boys, too - they master the imagery as well as Bava or Argento or the like. The music feels like a horror film - those slow, hammering riffs, Ozzy's tuneless yelp - and they looked the part. I had a poster of them back in college - not sure where I got it - someone might have told me it was Led Zeppelin, though I knew better than that... had it on the wall - 4 guys in black, wearing big crosses around their neck, all that hair, standing out in a field somewhere (I think it was the gatefold art from Paranoid - not sure; it has long since disappeared) - it was very neat...

And so - 10 songs, all from the first three records, not that I can even pretend to know more than a couple songs from after that... But that's all right. They were great at the beginning; they may have behaved badly after that, but they kept plowing along, making music, and not bad music, for decades after that. I can respect that.

1. War Pigs
2. Paranoid
3. Wasp/Behind the Wall of Sleep/NIB
4. Black Sabbath
5. Iron Man
6. After Forever
7. Planet Caravan
8. Children of the Grave
9. Hand of Doom
10. Sweet Leaf

Video - I may have posted this before, I don't know - this is a live TV gig from 1970 - hair, leather, hammering riffs and drums - clean and sharp and marvelous, with most of their best songs from the first two records, sounding better than the records do (at least the crappy CD versions I have.):



Children of the Grave in 1974 - they're in California, and the wardrobe seems to reflect it - oh, the 70s!



War Pigs, when it was Walpurgis, more horror film than politics at this point, filmed in Germany, in front of a cowd of what look like random bystanders... The riffs are all there, though, and good go, isn't this a riff. Later, they play Iron Man in a boxing ring...



And finally - Black Sabbath - 2013. I can't say they've aged with dignity - at least Ozzy (Tony Iommi seems like he's aged pretty well) - but they can still bring it. I've heard Ozzy talk plenty the last 20 odd years, and never understood a word he said - but he's clear as day, singing. It's like it all comes back, up there on stage... God bless you all!

Radio Burnin Up Above

Iggy Iggy Iggy Iggy.... This month's band of the month will be Iggy Pop and the Stooges. It will also be short (at least comparatively). Not that there isn't plenty to say about Detroit's finest, but you don't have to say it all.

They are simple and direct and powerful always. They get called the fathers of punk, though not very many punk bands live up to them. They have a savvy about them, though - which punks did too, let's be fair - an ability to slip sideways into those long grooves of Fun House. They never fail to rock, and they rock all over the place, at least on those first 2 records - they manage to be calculated and completely raw, musically adventurous and brutal at once. They are almost alone out there.

And Iggy - the Stooges made three records and then he went off on his own, and something was lost. Not his doing exactly - he made a lot of good (to great) music on his own - and Iggy himself was always a beast. But he spent decades seeming wildly out of place with his surroundings - way cooler and scarier and better than anyone around him, spending a lot of time playing with journeymen. Even when he played with people who were great artists in their own right, Bowie and Lou Reed, say, he was different, off kilter - too much, even for David Bowie. Too wild, too cool - as a performer - just beyond everyone else. He's not the only rock and roller to put on an extreme show - but he's one of the few who is both awe inspiring and a bit terrifying who never comes off as even remotely desperate. He is in control, no matter how out of control he is.

But still: after those Stooges records - it's all a bit less. Which is credit to the Asheton brothers, as much as anything - I can't say they're particularly great musicians, but they are dead on to what they are doing. They had a sound, and they nailed it - fuzzy guitar, the wah wah solos, the plain, relentless drumming - it's a sound that fits Iggy's voice, growling and punching along, distilling that garage sound to its perfect form. It is relentless and punchy and I can listen to them forever. Ron's guitar sound - that's something brought to perfection right there.

All right - here are my Ten favorite songs from Iggy's long and illustrious career. The songs are still pretty good in the late 70s - but the x sound misses the Ashetons. All right - here goes:

1. 1970
2. 1969
3. TV Eye
4. I Wanna Be Your Dog
5. Loose
6. Search and Destroy
7. Lust for Life
8. Passenger
9. Mexican Guy - even in their late incarnations, they can be funny and very funky
10. No Fun

Video: I wish there was more of them in their heyday - what there is is pretty mindblowing. Here's 1970, in 1970 -



And a short documentary, that works in most of the old footage (Iggy and his peanut butter!), along with some interviews from the time of their comeback: "we never failed to make an impression"



Lust for Life, later:



Full concert from 2003:



Searching and Destroying at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with James Williamson:



Finally, since I'm going to see them tonight, here are the Feelies covering Real Cool Time, Bill and Glenn trading solo, though Bill gets the better of them, for once:



And finally, a tribute to the power of the internet - here is a cute girl covering The Passenger on the Polish Voice:

That Used to be My Favorite Song

I don't know if it is just August, or if I have hit a snag, but I am having a hard time coming up with a subject for this month's Band of the Month. Probably mostly August and sloth, but I can see the shoals a-comin'. Not that there aren't plenty of bands left to write about (and list off songs) - but it might be harder to run out those 2000 word essays I am sometimes guilty of. And - I am starting to get to bands that, well, I think I need to do more work on before I write about. I may be forced to start researching these posts.

So far, I have had 3 criteria for this series: 1) bands I love, or have loved, or something like that; 2) bands that have some autobiographical significance - though this is starting to run out - quite a few of the recent bands have just been favorites, without a huge amount of biographical importance; 3) Bands that I have listened to pretty extensively, if not exhaustively - though a lot of them are pretty close to exhaustively, at least for their regular official releases. Now - 1 is not a problem - still lots of bands I like out there, love even - some quite devotedly. 2 might be harder to continue with - I got most of the extra-musical stuff done the first year. But it's 3 that's starting to pose problems. Maybe I should put up a 4) Bands that have put out a significant amount of music, that I am familiar with all the way through. Because when I look at the bands I haven't written about yet, that I want to - I notice a couple things. On the one side, bands that haven't got a very big library of material - Joy Division, Television, Gang of Four, Mission of Burma, say. And on the other side, bands that have a huge mass of material that I have not listened to comprehensively. I have a fair amount of Bob Dylan records, say, but there is such a mass of it... David Bowie; Neil Young; Captain Beefheart; Frank Zappa; the Kinks - I have a reasonable amount of most of them, but way less than half their total output. It is a problem. Other than Johnny Cash and a couple acts I dropped in the middle of their careers (Bruce Springsteen; U2) I have, or at least have heard, more or less everything (at least the official everything) of the bands I've listed. To do that with Dylan or Young to the Kinks is going to cost me a pretty penny and lots of time. It poses a problem.

Not an insurmountable problem. I rather look forward to spending some time trying to fill out my collection of Kinks or David Bowie records. (Dylan is daunting.) And there are bands that fit the criteria pretty well, and I am shameless enough to do a top ten off a greatest hits record if I have to... Material is forthcoming. But this is a good time to mark the likelihood that I might shift the focus of this series a bit, from bands to other sets of music. I started it partly as a way to add a little substance to my weekly music posts - something I tried fitfully through the years (like this one about a particularly nice Television song), but only managed to do with this series. It is something we may see more of though. Other types of lists (by decades or years or genres or what have you) - or whatever I do to accommodate bands that have problems fitting into the top 10 format. There are quite a few of those - from bands that only managed a couple records (a top 10 Sex Pistols songs list?) to bands that don't work through conventional songs. I have listened to a lot of more experimental bands in the last 10-15 years - Earth and Acid Mothers Temple and Godspeed You Black Emperor and so on - that... work differently. Even some more conventional bands feel that way to me - Sonic Youth and Six Organs of Admittance and the Melvins and Boris - seem harder to make a top 10 of then, you know, Bob Dylan.

All right. So - sorry for the meta whatever post this month. We should be back top our regularly scheduled whatever next month.

And since I couldn't settle on a band to write about, and indeed began to brood about same - let's go the opposite direction. If I am stymied in writing about Dylan or Bowie (who are on my mind) because I am missing too much of their music - let's make a virtue of it: and write about the best songs I have totally in isolation. That is: songs I have in iTunes, rated 5 stars (and then listed in order) - that are the only song I own by the artist. Which yields an unusual set of material, actually. Peter Gabriel? I like Peter Gabriel! I like lots of Peter Gabriel songs - but this is the only one I have bothered to acquire in any form. There are a couple of those - the Eels, The Brothers Johnson - I should have more of their stuff. It's not impossible I do, somewhere in some box somewhere, a greatest hits record or some such - when I started using iTunes I stuck a lot of single songs on it. Who knows. That is certainly the case with the Hoodoo Gurus - there's a compilation somewhere in the stacks... I was worried there might be some cringy songs on here - there are - Kansas? I can imagine some pushback against the Starland Vocal Band - though at least I avoided Coldplay. A close thing, too - I like Clocks, a fact that grieves me sore.... Still: this is not a guilty pleasures kind of post. I have also steered away from outright novelty songs - Right Said Fred (song or band), that sort of thing.... And so, without further ado - here it is: best 10 songs on my computer by artists I only have one song by on my computer:

1. Hoodoo Gurus - Bittersweet [Somewhere in the past I took the rest of the record this comes from off the computer; I considered eliminating them because of this - I own more - but... no, I'll stick with the letter of the law - this is the only song on the computer, so it goes... And indeed, it should be here, since this as good a justification for this post as any: a song that is seriously perfect, by a band that is mostly forgettable. No - that's not right: I remember the rest of their material as very pleasant pop rock in the same vein as this - but this transcends the rest of it. Alex Chilton would be proud of this song. It deserves a list to top.]
2. Peter Gabriel - Games without Frontiers
3. Brothers Johnson - Strawberry Letter 23
4. Eddie Money - Two Tickets to Paradise [this is pretty much the perfect song for this list: Eddie Money is awful; this is a surprisingly good song, and the guitar solo is, of course, brilliant.]
5. Mamas & the Papas - California Dreamin' [I think I must be dreamin' I have heard Monday Monday on my iPod - apparently it's not there.]
6. The Eels - Novacaine for the Soul [I should listen to them more]
7. Roger Miller - King of the Road [sort of novelty, but who doesn't love Roger Miller?]
8. Blind Melon - No Rain [another perfect fit for this - I have never heard any other Blind Melon songs - has anyone, ever? But I do like this.]
9. Kansas - Carry on My Wayward Son [a bit surprising that Dust in the Wind, at least, has never crept onto the machine, but just as well really.]
10. Starland Vocal Band - Afternoon Delight [definitely a novelty, but it's a hell of a novelty]

Video? 4 aging Australians who have probably played this song 2-300 times a year for the past 25 years, and still hit it dead square. There is nobility in that, something positively moving.



it's a knockout.... I am rather surprised I don't have any more Peter Gabriel (or Genesis, in any form) - I'm not a huge fan, but he (and they) have made some good stuff, something I should have. I have this anyway:



As for the Brothers Johnson, I think I do have a greatest hits record buried somewhere - I might have to find that... Since I haven't put it on the computer, I can include this song in this post, and it is Ace,



Trailors for sale or rent, rooms to let 50 cents... Roger Miller performing on TV, with the kids squealing like he's a Beatle:



And I will end with Kansas - I think Steve Walsh wanted people to know he was working out.

I'm Immortal When I'm With You

For this month's Band of the Month, we are back in the 90s and 00s, this time for one of the acts that brought me back into contemporary music in the late 90s: PJ Harvey.

I don't remember exactly when this happened - late 90s, 96, 97 - after her career was established, anyway. I remember seeing her on MTV back in the early 90s, but I didn't care, I was listening to jazz then - I picked up on her later. I remember a couple things: listening to Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love somewhat obsessively for a while; then seeing her on TV, singing songs from To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire. A TV show - must have been Sessions at West 54th Street (having consulted the googles, I see it was; I saw a few episodes of that show - Cibo Matto say...) - that was 98 or 99. The records came first, but that really sealed it - seeing her sing made those songs all the better. (Big fish little fish swimmin' inna water, come back here man gimme my daughter...) Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea just deepened it - those big jangly guitars, right in my wheelhouse. But really, she's been there since I started listening to her - Bring You My Love fit in nicely with what I listened to in the 90s - Pere Ubu and Built to Spill, to Sleater Knney and Captain Beefheart - and she led me to other things. Listening to PJ Harvey probably got me to check out Sleater Kinney - I am quite sure that Nick Cave's association with Harvey was the reason I picked up his records. I think I bought Murder Ballads first because of the duet with her. In this series, I've put her at the end of a 90s and 00s artists - but the truth is, she was the source of my interest in a lot of them.

Looking back across her career now, she is even more impressive. How much range she has! From punk (or post-punk - a musical offspring of Patti Smith and Nick Cave) to electronica/blues to jangly guitar pop to weird piano ballds (starting to sound like Kate Bush) to weird folk, sometimes all at once! She is a chameleon - changing styles; changing her voice, up and down in pitch, whispers, screams, shouts, croons, belting them out, thin and pretty sometimes, rich and powerful other times, capable of anything; changing her look. Looking through videos across her career - she covers pretty much every imaginable look, from punk to trashy to glamorous, to those weird white and black dresses she's featured in recent years. The look changes, her style changes - but she's there, a calm center - commanding every stage she's on. That volatility has always been her trademark, I think - the dynamic of her songs, the soft/hard dynamic on the early records; the mix of pretty melodies and seductive rhythms with edgy themes in the later ones - the shifts in tone, texture of songs, the sudden splashes of sound. She keeps you on your toes.

And finally, as a songwriter - she's among the elites. She's among my favorites - Cave; David Thomas; Mick and Keef; Richard Thompson, Lou Reed. Like Cave (and often Thomas, Thompson, Reed) she's more story teller than lyricist - she writes as a narrator - very striking on the early records, where the voice was often a man's, and on Let England Shake, where the stories were topical - and does it with great control, telling the story, and getting you into the narrator's emotional state. She creates characters that you come to know in 3 minutes - it's a gift. And she can turn a phrase with the best of them:
Seen and Done Things I Want to Forget
I don't want to make a fuss, I want to make my own fuckups
Until the light shines on me, I damn to hell every second you breath
I've lain with the devil, cursed god above, forsaken heaven, to bring you my love
Does it have to be a life full of dread, want to chase you round a table, want to touch your head...

Yes. So - on to the list, a top 10:

1. To Bring You My Love
2. Down By The Water
3. The Words That Maketh Murder
4. The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore
5. Rid of Me
6. Big Exit
7. Man-Size
8. Catherine
9. Dress
10. My Beautiful Leah

And video: Start here, a 1991 full concert. Right at the beginning - she had such a big voice, big sound, that she could go anywhere, and has gone most places. These early clips, she is so confident and powerful - there's nothing missing, she's a neo-punk act as good as anyone else at the time, and better in ways, her song writing voice - her perspective - and her voice, which is just shocking, even then:



Here she is in 1993, playing Rid of Me on Leno - Leno; electric; solo (which I didn't really notice til the long shots came - she and a guitar can fill the world):



Down by the Water, 95 - Jools Holland:



This is the TV show I saw back in the 90s - Sessions at West 54th Street - this is I Think I'm a Mother and Is This Desire, plus an interview with David Byrne:



To Bring You My Love - playing guitar, 2003:



Speak to me of your inner charm, how you'll keep me, safe from harm - I don't think so...



Words That Maketh Murder, live:



And end with another complete concert, from 2011: