Monthly Archives: December 2013

Night Music: Petra Haden and The Who, “Armenia City in the Sky”

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Peter’s fantastic Chet Baker and Charlie Haden post of earlier today got the gears in my brain going.

That is because Charlie’s daughter, Petra, did one of the most amazing musical feats ever accomplished: Petra redid The Who’s fabulous, and my very favorite album of theirs, The Who Sell Out. The catch is that Haden did the entire album with voice only: that is, the singing, harmonies, guitars, effects, bass, drums, everything was sung by Petra.

To make the whole thing complete, she even copied the crazy cover of the album, substituting her own beak as necessary for the members of The Who. To me, this is as loving and beautiful an homage to any band or album as anyone could ever do.

Below is Haden’s cover of Armenia City in the Sky, the opening track of the phenomenal 1967 album:

And, as a means of comparison, here is the original by my all time favorite band:

Night Music: Charlie Haden and Chet Baker (w Enrico Pieronunzi and Billy Higgins), “Silence”

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I found this tonight because my friend Angela posted a Chet Baker version of Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue that was overlaid on a series of black and white video shots of really heavy snow on a farm. It was lovely.

Haden and Baker are notable because they always slow things down. Watching Haden in concert is magnificent. For one, he always plays with great musicians. For two, he has this striking confidence that the music will win. It doesn’t need to sell. And so he tends toward slow tempos, tonal poems that often make you wonder why the drum is there at all.

Chet Baker is the epitome of the California cool jazz guy, except that he missed out on all the fun. He likes to let the feeling come out of the laggardiness (not a word). And it does.

I’m blue tonight, I’m working way too hard to make sense, and listening to these guys play a tune called Silence hits the spot. Turn it up!

Night Music: Cream, “Tales of Brave Ulysses”

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10251Martin Sharp, the designer of the covers of Cream’s albums Disreali Gears and Wheels of Fire, died this week. There’s a nice overview of his psychedelic work here.

Which seems like a good reason to play another bit from Cream, from Disraeli Gears.

I was turning 11 I guess and it was my birthday and a friend’s mother asked what I wanted. I said, “I’d like the album Disraeli Gears,” and she said, in a Monty Python old biddy’s voice I hear it now, “oh, my, an album. That’s a little too expensive,” apparently thinking an “album” was a box of records. My friend set her straight and that’s what they gave me. Good present.

My good buddy Jimmy A. and I loved Jack Bruce’s singing on this one, which was written by Clapton and, surprise, Martin Sharp. The only problem is it isn’t long enough.

Here’s a video of the making of the song, with interviews with Clapton and Sharp.

Night Music: Ronnie Montrose “Town Without a Pity” and Sammy Hagar “I’ve Done Everything for You”

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I was sitting with my friend/mentor/guitar teacher yesterday and while we were talking about 70’s bands we both loved and abhorred, Ronnie Montrose came up.

Of course the real frame of reference for Montrose in the Bay Area was his first album that featured Sammy Hagar, and had the tune Rock Candy, on it.

Montrose and Hagar did it together for a few albums, but by the late 70’s Sammy went on to his own successful, if somewhat loud solo career.

Montrose continued to play, and released a wonderful instrumental album in 1978 entitled Open Fire, and that disc contained the guitarist’s well known cover of Town Without a Pity, a tune I had not thought of in years till Steve and my conversation went there.

Of course, discussing Montrose invariably led to Hagar, who had a bundle of catchy rockers around the same time such as Red  and You Make Me Crazy.

But, the song I’ve Done Everything for You,” also released in ’78, was always my favorite, though I don’t believe it ever appeared on an album till Hagar released a compilation disc (I still have my 45 of the single with Otis Redding’s Dock of the Bay on the flip side).

I guess at best you could call the vid below a guilty pleasure, as well as a nice time capsule of spandex and big hair. It does rock, although I am sure if Hagar appeared today with the giant pic of himself in the background, #Humblebrag would be all over him.

Still, it is a great cut.

Night Music: Cream, “White Room”

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A long drive yesterday, taking what should have been a four-hour trip in a world with normal traffic, led to lots of radio listening. Some of it classic rock programming on WPLR, a Connecticut station that was playing the same songs when we listened to it in high school.

One of them was Cream’s Badge, decidedly difficult to sing along with, though o so familiar. Which got me to thinking about which of this one-time one-of-my-favorite-band’s song’s I would really like to hear. This one.

Night Music: Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen, “Charlie Parker”

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Steve Allen was the host of the Tonight Show in the time of Kerouac’s popular fame, and Allen had him on the show many times. This isn’t great music. Allen was a good pianist and a prolific songwriter, but a lot of what he plays is, as Truman Capote said it, just typing.

Oops, Capote said that about Kerouac, whose literary tick was the long line, the repetitions, the onomatopoetic bursts. But in a way it also describes Allen’s voracious appetite for sounds and the way he chews them and offers them back.

When I was in high school I fell in love with Kerouac’s writing. Those long lines described the rhythm of my thoughts and the way some idea that felt really large would pull my tongue down with its gravity, til I couldn’t speak or could only speak really fast. When a boxed set of Kerouac’s readings with musicians came out, sometime in the 80s, I bought it and enjoyed it immensely. But by that time the romantic hold of Kerouac’s romantic tongue had lost its grip on me.

Tonight I’m near Lowell, Massachusetts, where Jack Kerouac grew up, and thinking about a friend who died yesterday of cancer at 59. Kerouac died when he was 56, and thoughts like this make me want to change the subject. Of course, Charlie Parker died when he was 35, so we all got a lot more of it than he did, poor Buddha.

Or did we?