Got permission to publish this story sent to me the other day from my guitar-playing friend Phil Pilorz. Yes, both he and I know that “Take Me To The River” isn’t originally Talking Heads.
This is musical reality in the real world:
I’m doing a pick-up gig on Saturday with a bunch of guys. We got together tonight to run over some sets.
The keyboard player had left blank spots in the sets for tunes I would do. When we got around to trying to figure out what songs I would sing I hit them up with “Sweet Jane.” Started the riff, sang the first verse, got nothing but complete blank stares. They had never heard the song in their lives. Never really heard of Lou Reed. So I started “Take Me To The River”. Blank stares. Never heard the song, never heard of Talking Heads. Actually, one guy had. He knew “Burning Down The House.” The keyboard player suggested “Johnny B. Goode.”
I’m glad I didn’t hit them with “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”
How much have about 30 years altered this list that was put together by Dave Marsh in the Book of Rock Lists? We have a few guitarists on the site, so I’m interested to see what they think.
4. James Burton (Elvis)
5. Pete Townshend
6. Keith Richards
7. Scotty Moore (Elvis)
8. Steve Cropper (Booker T. and the MGs)
9. Link Wray
10. Eric Clapton
Other notables when the list was published in 1980/81: Eddie Van Halen (13), Duane Allman (17), Jimmy Page (22), Mick Jones (24), Steve Jones (25), Bruce Springsteen (29).
As much as I love Springsteen and his guitar playing, I wouldn’t have him on this list. I’d put Prince in the top 30, though I don’t know where. I’d have Mick Taylor (29) higher. I’d have Marc Bolan and Mick Ronson on the list. Jimmy Page would be in my top 10 because he wrote so many great riffs but I know that a lot of guitar players think he’s sloppy. I can’t hear it though. I think Tom Morello belongs on the list after seeing him with Springsteen.
I remember talking to Moyer years ago about guitarists and I questioned the extent that leads should influence the rankings and he said that there isn’t a great guitarists who didn’t play great leads. I countered with Keith Richards and Steve had to admit that I had him there. Of course, Richards played, and wrote, many of the greatest riffs in rock history.
There’s an obit in the New York Times today for Johnny Smith, the guitarist who wrote the song “Walk, Don’t Run.” Smith’s recording of the song didn’t hit, but a few years later Chet Atkins covered it and that led to the Ventures version in 1959, which became a massive hit. Here’s Smith’s version:
The Venture’s version was so big, however, that Robert Stone used the sound of it wafting down New Orleans alleyways as a unifying thread through his great hallucinatory first novel, A Hall of Mirrors. Here is the Venture’s version:
Kanye West released a new album today. It’s called Yeezus, which should piss off the Christians and Beatles fans out there, what with the self aggrandizing sacrilege and the echo of John Lennon’s claim that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. But that’s what makes this fun.
I had listened to songs from the set over the past few weeks, particularly Kanye on Saturday Night Live, and the live presentations were hard to listen to. Very loud, very jittery, very plangent, in a bad way. Metal Machine Music, or, in other words, unlistenable.
But today I listened to the record and it is, like all of Kanye’s solo work, incredible. If he wants to be Jesus, I’m fine with that. Of course, I’m not the pope.
What is more interesting, in a Dylan-ish sense, is that when Jesus Walked Kanye was a Christian. When there were Blood Diamonds out there he was the son of a Black Panther.
But his recent music has fewer goals, and is much more brain dump. Kanye has never been overmodulated, but he used to push his ego out front self-consciously, like maybe he thought he was pushing himself too far but felt he had to do it. Call it self-conscious adventurism. But here the presentation is pure self. Still self-conscious, but bold and reckless in equal parts. If a noise, a lyric, a design, whatever, makes the cut, he seems to be saying, it’s gold for the listener and the world. I think this is a Gnostic move. Yeezy is filled with God, so what he utters comes has the perfection of God and he becomes Yeezus.
This isn’t a likeable pose, and was disastrous on the Watch the Throne album with Jay Z, with all its insufferable bragging, but here Kanye is as confessional as ever, and as bracingly, surprisingly train-wreckishly honest, too, which to me feels quite extraordinarily. And the music is rich and aggressive and ambitious and fresh enough that he’s risking his pop audience (as he always has), taking them into Nine Inch Nails clangor (someplace I’m sure many have never been before) as well as pushing, on some tracks, the seventh level of hip-hop hell. I hate to say it, but when it comes to risk and reward Kanye is the rockingest dude of all time (Definition: Does whatever he wants, earns boatloads of dollars. Second definition: Quotes Gary Glitter and makes it sound new.), despite the bizarre Kardashian thing he’s doing.
The other interesting thing about this video clip is that visually it consists of a single provocative underwear shot, for no apparent reason except eye candy. But when you watch it at YouTube an overlay encourages the viewer to click either the right side (fuzzy image) or the left side (pert panties). What one gets if they click through are the chance to listen to one of two less than inspiring pop-rap crap (I’d say) songs. It appears to be a marketing gimmick which monetizes the songs, which you are playing for free. But I wonder why the fearsome artist Kanye West would make a record this sonically challenging, and then sign on to a bunch of links to bad Hollister-experience music. Should I add a question mark?
UPDATE: So what seemed to be official Kanye YouTube uploads with weird self-defeating monetization turns out to have been a Kanye account imposter trading on traffic attracted to the new songs. All the YouTube videos right now seem equally illicit but without the eye candy. You can find it.
My mates here have been lamenting the passing of several notable clubs, known for booking bands who often made it big, to larger (sic Arena) venues.
Make no mistake, paying your dues, and working the club circuit is no easy way to simply try and make a mark on the music world (let alone make a living). And, for most young musicians, it is pretty much the only path forward there is.
I know both my partners Steve Moyer and Gene McCaffrey have paid these dues, and as younger guys than I. Meaning, they did it as a job, which is indeed a hard row to hoe.
I have probably been playing dive bars off and on for the past five years, but for me it is simply because playing out is so much fun (and, since I make a comfy living outside of music, no pressure). But, at my advanced age, I don’t really have any illusions that anyone will ever discover the Biletones. In fact, though we are pretty disciplined, practicing at least every week, I know we will never be good or tight enough to be considered a serious band.
Of course that does not diminish the pleasure, for just a little over a week ago the Biletones played Rooster’s Roadhouse in Alameda, drawing a pretty typical crowd for us of about 75 folks. Which is actually not so bad for a bunch of guys in their 50’s and 60’s (well, me anyway).
Truth is I have never really played a huge venue (about 400 is the most) and I am not knocking the Arena circuit, but truth is also that I have very little use for it any more.
The best concerts I ever saw were generally at Winterland, the Fillmore, and a great old club in San Francisco that passed on a la CBGB’s and Maxwell’s, The Old Waldorf. For, I saw the Cars (first US tour), U2 (first American tour), Ian Hunter (with Mick Ronson), Hall and Oates (during their punk period, with a young G. E. Smith and Ray Cooper), The Records, Bram Tchaikovsky, Leo Kottke, Romeo Void and a lot of other bands in a venue that only held about 250 people.
There is nothing like seeing a band–especially a hot one–in a little club, however. Nothing like it for the band, and nothing like it for the crowd, for the energy feeds symbiotically, elevating the experience all around.
More to the point, I also find I am just not that interested in elbowing my way through thousands of people to sit half-a-mile away from the stage (which at my age I cannot really see too clearly anyway). In fact, most of the time I don’t even need an opening act. Let alone standing in line for 20 minutes for the honor of using a Port-o-Potty.
As it was, this past week I have been in Chicago, doing some work, but then helping Diane’s cousin Cherie and her husband Mike move into this cool house they built in Woodstock, about 40 miles northwest from the center of town.
On Saturday, I had committed to watch the Blackhawks and Bruins duke it out with Mike and his friend Jeff at a local bar, Rosie O’Hare’s, where their friend Steve Hopp, a carpenter by day, oversees the smoking of meat at night (it is good, too).
Now, I am not much of a hockey fan, but watching sports in Chicago is generally a lot more fun than watching sports in the Bay Area. Not that ATT does not rock, or even the Coliseum when the Athletics are hot. Plus, the Niners, Sharks, and Warriors all have devoted followings, and even the piece of shit Raiders (call me bitter) have the “Black Hole.”
But, football here is so different than at home, and these locals go ape shit over their hockey team (I am actually looking forward to watching the next game with Jeff and Mike, and like I said, I am not a hockey fan).
Anyway, after the game–in fact we got a two song taste before Saturday’s overtime began–the local band Jimmy Nick and Don’t Tell Mama completely blitzed the place with solid Chicago Blues.
A young band (I believe Nick is just 22 years old), grabbing the blues tradition pretty well, these guys have a great local reputation, in fact the clip here was recorded just a few weeks back at the very same Rosie’s. (They laid down a great cover of Los Lobos’ “I Got Loaded,” that featured a blazing guitar solo centered around the theme to “The Andy Griffith Show.”)
After we split from Rosie’s, Mike drove the long way back home, showing me that rural Chicago has a pretty active bar scene, and I really liked that. Kind of like I like that my mates Steve and Tom Muscarella always implore us to go to brick and mortar record stores.
For though I appreciate the fact that bulk purchasing allows big business to offer lower prices, there is something indeed to be said for supporting small business. For, those small businesses–and I am talking about mom and pop establishments, not companies like Koch Industries that masquerades as small business because only two guys own it—are largely our neighbors and community.
So, we should do what we can to keep them rocking.
Shortly after launching this rock raft of a blog, I proposed that we create a consensus Top 50 Essential Rock and Roll Albums. Something of a canon for Rock Remnant aficionados, and also a source of referral cash if we ever develop some traffic here.
As these things do, however, this project was quickly reduced to a playground of competing visions of what we were trying to do. Some of this was technical (I limited my list to one appearance per artist, Lawr allowed no compilations or best ofs), and some of this turned on taste. I picked 50 elpees that I hope demonstrated the breadth of rock, from juju to conjunto to rap to rock and pop, while others picked the albums they’d take with them to the proverbial desert island.
But perhaps the most interesting twist was Moyer’s vehemence against folky girls on the top albums list, a discussion that soon became a referendum on whether Joni Mitchell was rock or not.
That’s a discussion we may have on this site some day in more detail, but for now we have Hole’s take on Clouds…
Hellacopters drummer Robert Erickson plays a drum solo in the first video, cracking his ice cymbals but having to take out the rest of the kit with a sledgehammer.
Followed by a making of the ice drums video. Cold.
. Here is the Venture’s version:
