By Surka – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8345595
They keep dying, and they will keep dying. We will keep dying, I hope not too fast.
Keith Emerson was one third of a supergroup power trio that was huge in the early 70s, riding a crest of progressive pseudo-classical rock (along with Yes, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, the Moody Blues, King Crimson and many others) in the maw of punk. And then they were over, for a while.
ELP were notable for some very good songs, like this one, which includes a striking acoustic guitar part by Greg Lake, and also monstrous bombast at times, which was all part of the fun. These guys were rock stars at the height of rock stardom as an unalloyed privilege, which only makes them figuratively immortal.
I knew Lucinda Williams had a new album coming out, but I guess it’s already in stores (as if there were stores).
Bob Lefsetz wrote a glowing piece about the song Dust, which he found on Spotify in a recommended playlist. It’s a typical Williams rant of woe (inspirational lyric “Even your thoughts are dust”), and she does these darkly and with a sonic charge on all her albums since Essence, maybe, and while it’s hard for me to get fired up by them any more (even though I’m sure this is about the death of her father, a great poet, who died last year), Lefsetz is right that the two guitar parts are gorgeous and compelling, and the song is incantatory.
Plus, the drumming is fantastic and so important.
The guitarists are the great Bill Frissell and a guy named Eric Leisz, who has played in Clapton’s band. Here’s the song:
Nice, right?
Lefsetz’s glowing piece doesn’t stay glowing, because he discovered that if he wanted to hear the rest of the album he would have to buy a CD, and who does that (apart from Moyer)?
And he’s right. No album on Spotify. I subscribe to Google Music, and the album isn’t there either. This seems so backward!
But I wonder if Lefsetz gets the position of artists like Williams (and Iris Dement, too, who has a new album out only available as CD or downloaded files–for the same price). They have toured long and hard and in support of deep and solid bodies of work. Their audience is old, like me, and the chance of them having a big airplay hit that racks up Spotify plays are pretty small.
The business is in transition, and it kind of makes sense to me for artists like this to hold onto the old model, not stream right away, and see if they can make a go getting the physical media fetishists to pay real cash for their CDs.
They’ll have plenty of time to collect the tiny residuals checks from the streaming services later.
At dinner the other night, my friend Walker talked about this guy, whose piano playing was an influence on Theophilus Beckford, the Jamaican piano player who was a reggae pioneer. I’d heard the story of r and b radio in New Orleans drifting over to the Islands, and helping germinate ska’s syncopation, but didn’t have a name to put on it.
Another story on Gordon’s Wikepedia page is about Sam Phillips selling the master of Gordon’s tune Booted to both RPM records and Chess records. Both labels released it as a single, and the RPM version went to No. 1 on the R and B chart. Afterwards, RPM and Chess made a deal. RPM kept Gordon, while Chess signed Howlin’ Wolf.
My friend Vincent posted this on Facebook recently. Vincent is the French horn player in this band. Sun Ra, of course, is one of the greats. And Billy Strayhorn’s tune Take the A Train is one of the greats.
Betty Davis takes her Davis name after being married to Miles Davis.
Miles was a jzzz giant who married this firebrand of a singer/songwriter, who earned her own niche in the music historical with a gorgeous sexual funk.
This one’s a mild, somewhat sentimental example, but they’re all worth a listen.
The various incarnations of the Moody Blues are legendary. They started as a R&B band, hit the charts and evolved into a progressive band who made hits. No bad choices, there.
When I was in high school I could be an asshole. My friends could be assholes, too. We hated this song, which seemed like the ultimate in cheese. That is errant and random emotional expression without a regulator.
But children should not always be believed.
I spent yesterday in the car, driving many hundreds of miles, sometimes listening to my phone, and sometimes tuning in the radio. Sometime in mid afternoon, this giant hit came up.
It was a giant hit because of the melody and the Pips, but it is also a fabulously complex statement of ambiguous love and, ultimately, devotion. With awesome hooks and smart lyrics. Wow.
Iggy Pop and Josh Homme have an album coming out in a couple of weeks. Here’s another song from it. I think it sounds great, and I’m not sure I’ll ever play it again. But I’m sure I won’t mind if I hear it again.
