Well, since we have been talking about both selling out, and tattoos, it just seemed right to post this as some lunch break fun.
The Who Sell Out is my favorite album by the band, and I brought this disc into the tattoo parlor when I was inked with my Tigger/Owl tat (in memory of my late wife Cathy, and son Joey) as I thought it would be perfect background music (it was).
BTW, I love Keith’s playing, but I also think it is a good example of Townshend being frustrated with him when he says “can’t you just be a metronome?”
Maybe it is inherent in the species. The argument certainly comes up here often enough. And, that issue/question is delineating between driving for success, and selling out.
It does seem there is a consensus, that once a band does indeed make it big, and has some money and serious production behind them, the group loses the vitality and drive sought while spending every day for years practicing and every night over the same span playing dive bars, hoping to develop a sound, move up the venue chain, and ultimately make a comfortable living as a musician.
Obviously some bands make it big–like U2 and KISS–but it seems inevitable that at some point, with commercial success, “the edge” (pun intended) gets lost, and though the band may enjoy an even larger audience, the sound or vision that grabs most serious music junkies becomes lost.
There are exceptions. Elvis Costello. Bob Dylan. Neil Young. Prince. Joni Mitchell. Stevie Wonder. David Bowie. The Beatles. The Stones. The Kinks. Bruce Springsteen. I would even throw U2 and the Dead in there.
But, for the most part, bands have a sound, are discovered, make it big, and then spend an album or two trying to recapture the raw energy that pushed them in the first place in a more formal recording setting, become commercial, overproduced, and then has-beens.
I guess like every riddle in life, this one really has no answer, but we all have opinions.
But, the whole argument reminded me of something I believe Cyril Neville said when his band released their album, Uptown.
Uptown was a departure for the Neville Brothers, who were certainly renowned within the music world as artists and performers, but despite four singles released between 1978 and 1987, including a great cover of Iko Iko (1981, from Fiyo on the Bayou), they never cracked the Billboard Top 100.
With Uptown, the Nevilles cashed in on their industry cred, showcasing Keith Richards, Ronnie Montrose, Branford Marsalis, and Carlos Santana as guests, with Daniel Lanois producing.
The result was a hit, Whatever it Takes, a song which I still think is great, but which is a far cry from their take on Iko.
But, though the band got a hit, the album was not well received critically, nor was it well thought of by the hard core Neville fans because the sound was so much more commercial.
So, when asked about selling out, Cyril said something to the effect of, “we thought we might like to send our kids to college one day.”
I guess this piece goes back to the determining the difference between what is good, art/music wise, as opposed to what we like.
To a degree, I will buy into Steve’s notion that once the “Average Joe’s” are hep to a band or performer, I am usually done with them.
That said, his comment on the Rubettes piece, that Dave Evans could not pick up a Jimmy Page lick is kind of specious to me.
I did think of the great Jimi Hendrix in this sense, for though he was indeed a tremendous and innovative player, as much of his performance was rooted in the volume and feedback he employed. And, I don’t mean that as a slam. I LOVE Hendrix, and was lucky enough to see him four times.
But, if you doubt this, check out Randy Hansen, who does his Hendrix tribute.
I actually saw Hansen in action, maybe 35 years ago, and no question he had the Hendrix chops and sound down as you can see. Does that mean it is good? Does that mean Bono sucks because he cannot sing Come on Feel the Noise a la Noddy?
Does it mean Hendrix sucks because Dylan wrote All Along the Watchtower? Or that Joan Jett sucks because she made a hit out of Bad Reputation, even though Freedy Johnson wrote it? Despite the fact that both deconstructed the songs and essentially made them their own?
Does it mean the the movie Clueless sucks because it is based upon Jane Austen’s Emma, which was given a truer representation to the original with Gwyneth Paltrow?
Is there a difference between “this sucks,” and, “I don’t like it?”
I say rock’n’roll is about attitude, and that Joni has it in spades.
This piece, written by Eric Rovie at the AV Club, says everything you need to know about it. Name another performer willing to take that path?
The text is:
One of the truly great pastimes of the Taylor Swift Era is trying to figure out which celebrities inspired Taylor’s musical tales of heartbreak and inevitable recovery and triumph. We’ve been pretending not to move our feet to “Shake It Off” all summer, but now we have some insight into the possible meaning of the line “haters gonna hate, hate, hate” with confirmation that folk singer Joni Mitchell put the kibosh on a Swift-fronted biopic.
The movie, which Swift has been eyeballing since 2012, would have been based on Sheila Weller’s book Girls Like Us, a group biography of Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon. Alison Pill of The Newsroom fame was rumored for the part of King, with John Sayles and Kate Jacobs on board as screenwriter and director, respectively. But Mitchell was apparently not enamored with the gossipy content of Weller’s book, nor with the possibility of being represented on film by America’s biggest pop star, telling the film’s producer, “All you’ve got is a girl with high cheekbones. It’s just a lot of gossip, you don’t have the great scenes.” By putting her foot down on the project, Mitchell appears to have killed off our only chance to see Swift performing “A Case of You” while pensively smoking cigarettes, which is tragic in its own right.
I am not sure why pop/soul songs of the early 60’s have been jumping into my brain of late.
Earlier this week it was Dick and DeeDee’s The Mountains High. This morning it was Ruby and the Romantics Our Day Will Come, which I promptly went to on YouTube.
I found the original, plus a pretty good cover by Amy Winehouse, but in the process, there popped up a bunch of other great like songs from the era. Tell Him, by the Exciters, One Fine Day, but the Chiffons, Easier Said Than Done, by the Essex, and this tune.
The songs, and those of the Brill Building and Motown were not only so finely written and crafted, but they were a lot like the movies of the Hollywood system in the late 30’s and 40’s, when it just seemed the competition was tight and everything produced–or at least released–was a the top of its respective game.
It did make me realize that times have changed, and there is no real vehicle for simple pop tunes like these any more. It is rock, or alt, or headbanger, or rap, or house music, but the old homogenization of the pop charts where The Impressions and Conway Twitty and the Beachboys and the Four Seasons and Marvin Gaye could all share Billboard space seems to be long gone.
For, though there were specific genres back in the 60’s, the big deal was to have a cross-over hit, like A Little Bit of Soap, which made it on the soul charts, but also made it on the Billboard Top 100 as well.
Maybe with the death of radio it was inevitable for genre selection to be driven by Pandora and her ilk, but irrespective, it doesn’t seem like bands and songwriters and producers labor to produce little two-minute-plus gems as they did when radio was in its heyday. Not that I am longing to return to those old times, but I did start a new category call “Classic Nuggets” just to cover these lovely little works of musical art.
I always think that I don’t post enough stuff with contributions from newer bands, and, I really like this band (well, the band is really the vehicle for singer/songwriter Matt Shultz) a lot, and this song has a nice dreamy almost John Lennon quality to it. As does Shultz’ voice at times.
Really a sweet tune as we all try to relax during the calm, prior to the onslaught of turkey and family and football.
My post of yesterday, Me Talk Pretty One Day reminded me of the great Percy Henzell film from 1972, The Harder They Come.
In the movie, Jimmy Cliff plays frustrated singer Ivanhoe Martin, a young man with talent, but one unable to generate any buzz or interest in his skill either within the music industry, or with the Jamaican population.
So, he becomes and outlaw, first as part of a record deal, and then because it becomes too late to turn the clock back.
Not only is the film really great, but the soundtrack is maybe the best compilation of reggae ever assembled.
But, it was also the first film I ever saw where the words were spoken in English, but the accents were so thick, that American audiences were blessed with subtitles (I think the words of the Pikers in the movie Snatched also might have had subtitles).
Irrespective, here is the clip from the movie with Jimmy recording the title track:
Any of you read David Sedaris’ very funny reflections, Me Talk Pretty One Day?
Well, I am not sure why that emerged as an appropriate title for this, but Diane and I schlepped up to the Tahoe house for the Thanksgiving holiday (rest of family will start arriving tomorrow) and we were watching Life of Brian (watching Brian, or The Holy Grail when we get here is part of the ritual for us).
Of course I was cracking up, as I think Life of Brian is not just one of the funniest–and best–movies ever, but I felt strongly that before America engaged in any invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, every American should watch the film (and then keep watching it once a week until we were out of the middle east).
That is because the issues in that region are indeed 6000 years old, and, well, they run deep and silly. But, as the “Biggus Dickus” scene popped on, it made me wonder why it is so extra funny when characters are speaking the same language, and yet still cannot understand one another.
Not to mention, maybe such language miscues really get to the heart of human problems: that we simply don’t listen or hear to one another.
Here are some pretty good cinematic examples of this, starting with the oh so brilliant Pythons.
Yet another favorite, and perhaps the greatest parody of all time (sorry Spinal Tap), this scene also completely kills me.
While Father of the Bride does not even close to rank in a favorites list, this scene with Franck (Martin Short) does always get me, especially in the sense that the women totally get Franck, and poor, flustered Steve Martin has no clue. (I know this scene is pretty much ripped from the original, with Elizabeth Taylor and Spencer Tracy, but I like this sequence better.)
Beats me where it came from, but I was making dinner (a nice shepherd’s pie on a rainy evening) the other night and out of nowhere, The Mountains High got tripped off in my head somehow and I found myself singing it while I cooked.
Was it a Proustian moment, where the scent of thyme and garlic with ground beef and carrots triggered memories of being eight and getting totally knocked out by the song? I actually doubt that. My mother was at best a pedestrian cook, and she would never have understood the Proust reference anyway.
But, the song did completely nail me when it came out in 1961 (I was eight, so cut me some slack). I think it was mostly the machine gun drums that got me, but something about the almost dissonant, but somehow very right mix of the vocals of Dick and DeeDee also got under my skin in a good way as well.
That and as a precocious eight-year old, I saw a pic (see above) of DeeDee and had a horrible crush on her. In fact I think that my tastes in women were largely as set there as anytime, as black hair and bangs and the skinny Parker Posey/Chrissy Hynde/Joan Jett look has always been my preference, although add glasses and being a Southpaw for some reason kicks that attraction into outer space. We humans are so odd, no?
