Saturday, October 31, 2020

Who's Next and Ram on vinyl

I am fortunate to live in a town that still has a record store. I picked up two LP's today: Who's Next, by The Who, of course, and Ram, by Paul McCartney. Each under $20.00, used and in good shape. Having picked up a turntable last year, I am slowly building a vinyl collection, more than 20 years after I dumped off my remaining records for lack of space in our old house, using the money to buy CD's. This was before the Internet, before iTunes, and before Spotify.

There is still value in owning music. You don't own the music on Spotify. You pay to access the streaming service. I already have these albums on CD. The vinyl copies have now re-entered my life. 

It occurs to me that these albums have something in common. If you are a fan of classic rock, you know these albums. It was not by design, but my purchases today were both released in 1971. They are both arguably the best albums these artists ever released. And they were both important in the careers of these artists.

For The Who, it was not their first classic album; that would be Tommy, released in 1969. Tommy featured a different band than the one that had given us My Generation, Substitute, and Magic Bus from their early period. Those were good songs, pop songs, but Tommy was a much more serious effort, a rock opera with newly-confident vocals from Roger Daltrey. Maybe people in 1969 thought Tommy was a novelty, a double-album where songwriter Peter Townsend had exhausted his creativity in writing about a pinball messiah who overcomes childhood trauma whose followers turn against him. Who's Next proved any such suspicions wrong. Song for song, Who's Next is one of the great classic rock albums of all time, with every song receiving airplay on FM radio, including Baba O'Reilly and Won't Get Fooled Again, the granddaddy of all-time rock songs. Plus Bargain, Song is Over, and Behind Blue Eyes. And maybe the greatest rock drumming we've ever heard. Who's Next told us The Who were here to stay. This is the second album of a three-album hat trick, finalized with Quadrophenia in 1973, a double-album bonanza with more FM radio classics.

Ram was an important album for Paul McCartney. As an ex-Beatle, Paul had nothing to prove, but he needed to release a great album in 1971. His first solo record, McCartney, issued in 1970, right after the break-up. By early 1970, Paul had run out of songs, having carried the songwriting workload for the Beatles in 1969. So McCartney included some leftovers from 1968-1969 and a new one, Maybe I'm Amazed. McCartney also had a few instrumentals, and the album was only around 30 minutes long, mostly recorded in secret at his farm in Scotland as he began picking up the pieces following the breakup. Paul also played all the instruments on the album. The critics did not like Ram, and while the album had some pleasant melodies, it did not seem serious like the initial John Lennon and George Harrison solo records; Lennon gave us the "primal scream" album, a musical therapy session. None of this would have mattered had the Plastic Ono Band been a lousy album. It was not; it would be Lennon's greatest solo record. George broke out with a double-album, All Things Must Pass, that showcased his spiritual songwriting, shocking everyone who saw him as the third-fiddle in the Beatles. So when Paul dropped Ram on us, with lush production but no "serious" songwriting themes, critics attacked it as the music of a content family man and inferior to the early John and George albums. This criticism was motivated in part by the rock and roll community's having blamed Paul for the Beatles breakup. 

Time has been good to the Ram album. No one places it in the context of 1971, and no one compares it to the early Lennon and Harrison solo albums. People hear Ram on its own merits. It is now regarded as Paul's best solo album. You know some of the tracks, like Uncle Albert, but there's all sorts of creativity on Ram. It's good natured and serious in its own way.




Sunday, June 7, 2020

Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones cover)

I've been doing home recordings with assistance from Apple's GarageBand app, which provides drum templates. This is my version of Sympathy for the Devil, a Rolling Stones classic from 1968. What you hear on this recording is my singing, guitar playing, and bass playing. The drumming comes from the GarageBand app.

The version of this song you probably know is from the Beggars Banquet album, released in 1968. It is more piano-centric with ample use of the bongos. But when the Stones hit the road in 1969, they turned this into a guitar extravaganza, thanks to their new guitarist, Mick Taylor, who had recently replaced Brian Jones, who was kicked out of the band in spring 1969. Taylor was a whiz-kid, only in his early 20's. He and Keith Richard trade licks on the live version, which you can year on the 1970 live album, Get Your Ya-Ya's Out.

A few notes about this song. Through the end of 1967, the Rolling Stones were probably the second-best band in music, behind the Beatles. Critics had noticed that the Stones seemed to be copying the Beatles. While the Stones had their own style, they were not trendsetting like the Beatles. This became most apparent when the Stones released Their Satanic Majesty's Request in late 1967, a Sgt. Pepper copycat album. The Stones were not big into psychedelia. I know there are contrarians who live Satanic Majesty's Request, but other than She's A Rainbow, there is nothing there quite like Satisfaction, 19th Nervous Breakdown, and Paint if Black. The Stones were losing their way.

They must have regrouped in early 1968 and determined to return to their R&B roots. Hence, Jumping Jack Flash, a single from spring 1968. That year, the band for the first time began writing topical lyrics. That brings us to Sympathy For the Devil.

Sympathy was written in response to the social unrest and riots of 1967-1968. The lyrics were changed after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968 while running for U.S. president. "I shouted out 'who killed the Kennedys,' when after all it was you and me." My favorite line in Sympathy: "I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made."

Saturday, April 18, 2020

John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band - Live at Toronto - 1969 [Full Concert]

When is it time to call it quits? It was 50 years ago this month that the world learned that the Beatles had broken up. Paul McCartney released a solo album that included a press release that said the Beatles were basically over and done with. Ever since, scholars and fans have tried to assign blame for the break up. In the 1970s into the 1980s, everyone blamed Paul. But the consensus has changed. Most people now pin the blame on John.

What we've learned is that the Beatles held a band meeting right after they completed their final album, Abbey Road. It was September 1969. The Beatles were wondering what to do next. Paul thought they should return to the road and become a touring band again. But Lennon and George Harrison nixed that idea. Touring was a pain in the ass.

Paul really wanted to keep things moving. John had had enough. He told the band he wanted a divorce, like the one he'd had with Cynthia, the nice Liverpool girl that John had married before the Beatles became famous. He left Cynthia for Yoko Ono. When Paul came up with touring ideas, John said, "I think you're daft." He then announced he was leaving the band.

There was a problem, though. The Beatles' new manager, Allen Klein, reminded the band that they were about to sign a new contract with EMI Records, and that their higher royalty rate would be jeopardized if the Beatles announced the breakup. Klein was right. He was a bulldog accountant if there ever was one, and he ended up driving a wedge between the band because Paul did not want Klein to take charge. But you don't jeopardize a new contract. And besides, the others thought John was going through one of his phases. John had been acting out lately, and his drug problem was affecting his judgment and his productivity. At around this time, he actually told the Beatles entourage that he believed he was Jesus Christ and he wanted to tell the world. As it was, John actually looked like Jesus Christ at the time, with the long hair and beard and all. But, no, he was not Jesus Christ, and the others told John to hold off on the announcement because the world was not ready for this kind of news. John agreed and moved onto some other obsession.

It wasn't like the band was getting along at this time. Ringo had quit the band for a few weeks in 1968 as they recorded the White Album. He was sick of the arguing. And George Harrison quit for a brief period during the Let it Be sessions in early 1969. Their engineer, Geoff Emerick, only a few years after taking on the dream job of working with the Beatles, begged off the assignment by then because he could not handle the tension. And except for some mop-up work on the Let it Be album (recorded prior to Abbey Road) in January 1970, the Beatles never worked together again. And that mop-up did not include John. He was off on a new tangent at the time, doing his peace stuff with Yoko.

Beatles scholars think the band had not closed off the future by this point. There was always tomorrow. Bands did not really break up in the late 1960s, and those that did usually did so with fanfare, like Cream. Other bands forged ahead without key members if they had to. The Beatles had done it all by 1969, and they were approaching their peak as musicians and songwriters. Last year, a tape recording surfaced of another band meeting in which the Beatles talked about ways to record a follow-up to Abbey Road, giving each member four songs per album. So the September 1969 meeting may not have been the end.

But other Beatles scholars think John made up his mind to leave the band when he recorded Cold Turkey, his first solo single. The Beatles had rejected that song, so John created the Plastic Ono Band and found other musicians to work with him on the song. And still other scholars think John got ideas about going solo when he did a concert in Toronto in late 1969 on his own.

Let's go with that theory for a minute. The Beatles had not played before a live audience since August 1966. They stopped touring because the concerts were crazy. The girls were screaming, the band could not hear itself play, they wanted to spend more time in the studio, and their first album following that decision was Sgt. Pepper. So who needs concerts? Yet, the rest of the rock and roll world was performing all over the place. The Rolling Stones hit the road again in 1969 after taking three years off. And don''t forget Woodstock and the other rock festivals that year.

The Toronto show was one of those festivals. It featured the old timers, like Chuck Berry, who were not even that old yet. Lennon was asked to play, and he accepted, bringing along Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Alan White as his pick-up band. Clapton was an obvious choice, a friend of the Beatles who played on the White Album. The Beatles knew Voormann from their Hamburg days of the early 1960s. He went on to play bass for Manfred Mann and guested on some of the Beatles' solo albums of the early 1970s. White became the drummer for Yes. Since the band did not have much time to rehearse, they played the songs they all knew, including Money and Blue Suede Shoes. And that's what you got in this video below. Plus some pyrotechnics from Yoko.

John is really enjoying himself during this performance. Maybe he realized he did not need the Beatles anymore. Time to break out with other musicians. Maybe breaking up the band he had started was not such a bad thing. This concert was about 10 days before John told Paul he was daft. The Beatles never worked together again. All things must pass.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Led Zeppelin - Kashmir (Madison Square Garden) 1975

I often think about the 20/20 hindsight that pinpoints when a band reached the peak of its career. Sometimes it happens when the band does not realize it. You only appreciate the peak after-the-fact. When did Led Zeppelin peak? I would say it began 47 minutes and 55 minutes into this show at Madison Square Garden in February 1975. That is when the band played Kashmir to 20,000 people who were hearing the song for the first time.

By 1975, Led Zeppelin were the biggest rock band in music. The band was in it eighth year, having released one blockbuster album after another. The fourth album, released in 1971, was their greatest record, wall-to-wall hard rock and folk, climaxing with Stairway to Heaven. The band toured the United States in 1972, 1973 and again in 1975. They toured the U.S. again in 1977. The 1977 tour (their last in the U.S.) was not considered a good one. It got off to a late start because singer Robert Plant had laryngitis. The tour ended early because Plant's young son died from natural causes. From what I have read, the band's performances during the 1977 tour were not stellar. There were drug problems, for starters. One year earlier, Led Zeppelin released Presence, a good album, but few fans place it in their top three Led Zeppelin albums. The band did not break new ground with Presence, and the album was recorded after Robert Plant was seriously injured in a car accident in August 1975. He sang most of the tracks sitting down. And after 1977, the band only released one more album, a good one but not great, and they broke up in 1980 after the drummer died from alcohol poisoning.

Prior to Plant's auto accident, 1975 was their last great year, when Led Zeppelin released their only double album, Physical Graffiti. When a great band issues a two-record set, that album becomes their defining moment. This one included tracks that were rejected from prior albums. No matter. Physical Graffiti was four album sides of stellar music of varying styles. The standout track is Kashmir. If you have listened to the radio over the last 40 years, you know Kashmir, one of the two contenders for LZ's "greatest song of all time," along with Stairway to Heaven.

Here is what interests me. Imagine you're a Led Zeppelin fan. It's 1975. Scoring a ticket to their Madison Square Garden concerts that year made you the king of your high school. You know the band's back catalogue and hope to hear Stairway and other classics. You'll get that at the Garden. But what you don't know is that Led Zeppelin will be playing stuff from their new, yet-unreleased album, including Kashmir. Remember what it felt like to hear Kashmir for the first time? Imagine hearing it for the first time at the Garden.

Now imagine you're Led Zeppelin. You are on top of the world. The band had its own airplane, Physical Graffiti was going to debut at number 3 on the charts, a rare occurrence back then. The Garden was the showcase for the most popular bands in music. Plant was in a good mood. He mentioned during the show that the snowfall in NYC gave the city a nice "vibe." Good observation. The band was about to debut one of its greatest songs. At this precise moment, LZ was on top of the world. They had it all. Things would never be the same. The song starts at 47:55.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

This is what 2020 sounds like

I knew a lawyer who used to talk with me about music, literature and related matters whenever we saw each other. In one of our last conversations before he died suddenly a few years ago, he told me that he was getting into Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album for the first time even though it was released in 1968, when he was in his late teens. He said Astral Weeks sounded exactly what 1968 felt like. I told him I was surprised to hear that. Astral Weeks is a laid-back, jazzy album with a spiritual side. It was not the Van Morrison that most people have come to associate with that artist, i.e., Brown Eyed Girl and Moondance. I reminded my friend that 1968 was a violent year: riots, the Vietnam War, assassinations, etc. My friend was politically-minded, so I thought he might agree with me. He did not. He insisted that Astral Weeks captured what 1968 felt like.


What does 2020 feel like? It's a very discordant year, and we are all watching it unravel. In the past, I would read about pandemics in passing. It was always a threat lurking in the background, but the newspaper and public officials did not dwell on the topic for long. I did not know anything about pandemics except that they involve a virus that is spread easily. We all know about pandemics now.


In 2019, I was reading some commentary on a music discussion board about a musician, Mark Hollis, who died at the early age of 64. Hollis was the bandleader for Talk Talk, a band I had heard of but knew nothing about. They had a hit in the early 1980s "It's My Life" that sounded like a sophisticated Duran Duran. After that, nothing, at least not for me. I did not know until Hollis's death that Talk Talk went on to release an album in 1988 that many music fans worship as a moody, meditative, and emotional record, the crown jewel of Talk Talk's recording career. I gave it a listen and read some reviews of the album. The album apparently was the start of something called "post rock," which for the 1980s meant it was no longer the usual loud-drums-and-power-ballads that we'd grown accustomed to 35 years ago. I hear some Pink Floyd in this album, and now I know where Radiohead must have gotten some of its ideas. The highlight for me is I Believe in You, the penultimate track. It moves slowly, but the melody is there, and the bass line picks up midway through the track, giving the song a special intensity.


One fan review of this album said this is the sound of the Earth crying. I agree. Little did that reviewer know the Earth would be crying in 2020. You may not make it all the way through this album; it takes some getting used to. If you give it a few listens, it may grow on you. It grew on me last year. I did not know it would foreshadow this year. 

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Green River (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover)

This is my home recording of Green River, the title track from the 1969 album by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I am playing all guitars and bass on this track, and handling all vocals. A drum machine is keeping the beat.



CCR was not known for its instrumental pyrotechnics. The rhythm section was solid, the songs were short, there were no extended solos, and the lyrics for the most part did not reflect the times (except for Fortunate Son, about the Vietnam draft). This makes their songs timeless, especially this one, the lyrics of which could have been written by Stephen Foster. John Fogerty looks back to the carefree days of swimming holes, tire swings and skipping-a-rock across Green River.

The final verse has the narrator telling us that the guys who ran the campgrounds told him that the world will be-a-smouldering when he gets older, but he's always free to come back to Green River.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

The Clash, The Sound of Sinners

What do you think of when you think of the Clash? I think they are still regarded as a punk-rock group, but that only really held true for a brief period, when the Clash debuted in 1977. That album was a punk record, for sure, though if you listen carefully, you could hear some melodies buried in the mix.



But the Clash were more sophisticated than we thought. By 1980, they gave us London Calling, a two-record set with a variety of styles and, most importantly, good songs. Songs like London Calling, Train in Vain, Lost in the Supermarket. There were now horns and some world music. These guys could do what the Sex Pistols and the Ramones could not.


After London Calling came Sandinista!, a three-record set. That was five albums in two years. Sandinista has some fluff, but at least two records worth of listenable variety, including more world music, ska, even some gospel. Had the Clash made Sandinista! a two-record set, it would be one of the great albums of all time.


I saw the Clash in 1982 when the opened for The Who at Shea Stadium. Peter Townsend was a big fan of the Clash. He liked their style, and he saw himself in them. The Who were the Clash of the 1960s. You know, My Generation and other mod/rebel songs. And like the Clash, The Who moved on better things, like Tommy, Who's Next and Quadrophenia. London Calling and Sandinista! are the Clash's Quadrophenia. Problem was, in 1982, I was not aware of the Clash's musical development by 1982. Rock and Casbah and Should I Stay or Should I Go were the hits that year, but the Clash were on their way down by then. Here's a Clash song from Sandinista! to wet your whistle.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Traffic - Full Concert - 08/14/94 - Woodstock 94

Traffic is one the underrated classic rock bands. Led by Steve Winwood, they thrived in the late 1960's-early 1970's. They never really reunited in the 1980s or 1990s and beyond as a means to capitalize on their hits, which probably explains why they are not held in the same esteem as their more celebrated contemporaries.

This video was recorded at Woodstock '94, the last good Woodstock, held in Saugerties, New York, about 20 miles from where I write this. The band was still relatively young, and Winwood was still in his mid-40's. He certainly looks that way. In this set, they are playing their greatest hits. Note the saxophone and flute players.

Traffic was one of the first great bands to break up in the 1960s. They split in 1969, and Winwood went on to join Blind Faith, a supergroup with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, two-thirds of the Cream lineup, which itself split in 1968. Blind Faith pooped out after one great album. Traffic reunited in 1970 and recorded John Barleycorn Must Die, a fabulous album. Then they did Low Spark of the High Heeled Boys, and you know the title track. You also know Dear Mr. Fantasy, from 1968, a psychedelic classic.

Celebrate the musicianship of a band that reunited and nailed it at Woodstock '94 despite not having played together in many years. That's how great musicians work. They can recreate greatness on short notice.

Monday, March 23, 2020

First Aid Kit, To A Poet

Who says no one is recording good stuff these days? First Aid Kit is sister-sister folk rock duo from Sweden. This song is from 2012. Harmonies will always be with us! If you are short on time (and I know that you are not), jump to the part that starts at 3:23 through the end. Ever hear anything so beautiful?

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Prince, "Baby I'm a Star"

Something was happening in the rock and roll magazines that I was reading in the early 1980s. The writers were raving about someone named Prince who was dazzling them with these great songs that no one was playing on the FM stations out of New York City. These were the days before YouTube and Spotify, so if it was not on the radio and your friends did not have the album, then you didn't hear it, and that was that. All I knew was that Prince was black and his album 1999 was the album of the year for 1982.

We all found out who Prince was in 1984, when he released the Purple Rain album. This song was not the big hit from that album, but if you did not want to run around the block after hearing this one, something was wrong with you. No song in the 1980s had the excitement of Baby I'm a Star.

Prince was the Jimi Hendrix of the modern age. We did not know this at the time, but he was a fantastic guitarist and knew how to put on a show. He was also the Sly Stone for the modern age. A great frontman who made rock and roll danceable. Except that he did not always make dance music. A year later, Prince released a psychedelic album, Around the World in a Day. And Sign o' the Times (1987) is probably the album of the decade. In all, from 1982 through 1987, Prince released five albums, two of them doubles, which brings us to seven albums in six years. Each album is a five-star classic, placing him in the highest echelon of rock and soul greats. I'd like to see you release seven classic albums in five years. Get started. We got all the time in the world.



Saturday, March 21, 2020

Pink Floyd, Dogs

I often think about the trajectory of an artist's career. How they change their styles over time and then peak before they backslide and release lesser material. Or maybe they don't backslide and progress to different levels before they break up and the band members proceed with their solo careers.

Much has been made about the Beatles' transformation during the 1960s, but other bands had also remarkable artistic growth. Pink Floyd had an artistic curve that I have never seen before. I know there are some serious Pink Floyd fans out there, but here is how I see it. They began recording in 1967 under the leadership of Syd Barrett, issuing Piper at the Gates of Dawn, one of the great psychedelic albums of all time. British psychedelia, with humor and a hard-candy sound. Then Syd left the band, David Gilmour joined, and the band sort of meandered for five or six years, issuing mediocre to decent albums year after year with pleasant meandering melodies, sitting in the second and maybe third tier of rock acts through the early 1970s. While they were popular in the United Kingdom during this time, they did not really make it in the United States. Had they broken up during this time, I am not sure you would know who they were.

Then something happened. In 1973, Pink Floyd issued The Dark Side of the Moon, which instantly threw them into mega-superstardom, and for good reason. I know of no other band that turned it around so quickly without any lineup changes. They just got better overnight. They had just released one of their average albums only one year earlier. The songwriting became more disciplined, the albums became more focused, and they became one of the "coolest" bands of the 1970s, along with Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, dominating the high school parking lot where the longhairs blasted their eight-tracks.

I wonder what an American Pink Floyd fan felt like upon hearing Dark Side for the first time. None of his friends are into the band yet, the album is released without fanfare, and suddenly this album is sprung from nowhere that is so profound it becomes one of the best-selling records of all time. Everyone has The Dark Side of the Moon. Word of mouth and radio airplay sold records back then. Dark Side must have caught fire right away.

But Pink Floyd's new discipline and focus continued through the rest of the decade. Every two years, another great concept album, each with its own lyrical and musical themes. Including Dark Side, that was four albums through 1979. None of the songs on any of these albums would have fit on their other records that decade, and they developed a mystique with artsy-fartsy album covers that did not include band photos. The last album in this sequence was The Wall. Then Pink Floyd became average again. The magic faded away. I know there are Pink Floyd fans who disagree with my "average" assessment, but you know where you can put your objections.

That brings us to 1977, the third album in this sequence, Animals. Every song is named after an animal. This one is Dogs. The theme is alienation, with an Orwellian focus. This is Animal Farm put to music. The songs are longer, so you don't hear them on the radio. Dogs is my favorite. It starts off with interesting acoustic syncopation before Gilmour unloads a wild guitar solo, then some meandering before we return to the strumming. The lyrics are among the most profound in rock history. Roger Waters describes a businessman who spent his life kissing ass and playing the game before he retires to Florida and dies of cancer. Along the way, he wonders if he was "just being used" and he briefly wonders about his "creeping malaise." The killer lyric: "deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending, that everyone's expendable, and no one has a real friend." I still get chills listening to it.

Friday, March 20, 2020

Yo La Tengo - The Race Is On Again



We are in it for the long haul, folks. Time for some Yo La Tengo, an American indie band from Hoboken that seems to have mastered every style of music there is, including 1960s psychedelia. Those who know me know that I love 1960s psychedelia. But I am skeptical of efforts to replicate that style in the modern era. Spontaneous music cannot be recreated. When I heard this album for the first time about 10 years ago (it came out in 2006), I was driving to court for some mundane court appearance when this song came on the CD player. "That sounds interesting," I thought. "Let's hear it again." I ended up playing this song on repeat the rest of the trip and on the way back to the office. I had waited my whole life to hear this song. If you like the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, early Grateful Dead, the Beatles' Revolver, you will like it also. This is where it's at. You'll be pleased to know that this three-member band includes a husband-wife team. The wife plays drums.
In 2007, I saw this band play in Woodstock, N.Y. It was a small venue, and the band was taking requests and questions from the audience. I mustered the courage to request this song from the balcony. Ira Kaplan, the guitarist and singer, pondered the request for a second and the band got to work. Most the audience was not familiar with the song, but they were mesmerized by it. It was my greatest moment as a concert-goer.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Rolling Stones, Can't you hear me knocking



As you start going stir crazy, ponder the Rolling Stones, one of a handful of bands that legitimately qualifies as the greatest of all time. This was recorded in 1971. Songs like Satisfaction, Jumping Jack Flash and Start Me Up get more airplay, but there's nothing like this. This song has it all. Keith Richard's ragged guitar, the saxophone coda and some great Keith backing vocals. The saxophone has 1971 written all over it. Mick Taylor on lead guitar, a 22 year-old prodigy who joined in 1969 and left in 1974, supposedly because being in the band was hazardous to his health, and because the band was denying him proper songwriting credits. Someone is playing the bongos. By 1971, Mick Jagger was also perfecting his vocal style.The Stones had a few good years left in the studio before lapsing into average-land and eventually a seasoned concert act.