Led Zeppelin has been hot in recent months. The40th anniversary of the release of Physical Graffiti in February seems to be spark that lit the fire. Just about every magazine and blog that covers rock music has featured them recently.
Today’s SotW is from the Zep related band Detective who recorded two albums for their Swan Song label. The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1st edition) said those recordings were “Credible but uneventful late-Seventies hard rock from a band led by ex-Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye.”
The brevity of the review says a lot about the group’s (lack of) critical acceptance when their recordings were on the shelves. They were quickly dismissed as nothing more than a Led Zep wannabe band. But occasionally things (wine, music) improve with the passage of time.
“Grim Reaper” is from Detectives’ self-titled debut.
The muscular drums and the tight pants vocals by Michael Des Barres, could easily pass off this cut as a Led Zep outtake. I like it!
Enjoy… until next week.
BTW, today is Record Store Day. Take a nostalgic trip to your favorite local bricks and mortar record store and see if you can’t find something to add to your collection.
Lately I’ve been listening to Blake Mills’ second album, Heigh Ho (released September 2014), on heavy rotation.
Mills is a hot new guitar slinger, vocalist, songwriter and producer. He’s an “in demand” musician that has worked with a who’s who of popular artists. He’s toured with Jenny Lewis, Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams and Jackson Browne. He’s recorded with Weezer and Kid Rock. He’s produced albums for Conor Oberst and Alabama Shakes. He’s also worked with Beck, Norah Jones and Band of Horses. And he’s only 28 years old!
Producer Rick Rubin holds him in high regard and was quoted saying “Blake’s musicality is limitless. He happens to be a breathtaking guitar player; but his real talent lies in what he chooses to play and how.”
I might make the same comment but with a slight twist. I think his real talent lies in what he chooses NOT to play.
Take, for instance, today’s SotW – “If I’m Unworthy.”
Mills and his bandmates – Don Was on bass and drummer Jim Keltner – approach this song with a minimalist arrangement. Less is more. It’s all the empty spaces they leave that make the music so compelling. But then, about 2:25 into the song, things get noisier with a fuzzy, reverb drenched guitar solo that builds into a George Harrison sounding slide solo, then abruptly stops.
In an article in Premier Guitar Mills explained “I wanted the basic tacks, those live performances, to have a lot of space in them, so sometimes we would whittle down and simplify, but there weren’t a lot of ‘parts’ to begin with.”
Eric Clapton heard the slide guitar part Mills contributed to Natalie Maines’ cover of The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.”
He searched out the player and when he discovered it was Mills he invited him to play at his annual Crossroads benefit concert. Later, in a Rolling Stone interview with David Fricke, Clapton called Mills “the last guitarist I heard that I thought was phenomenal.”
It can’t be denied that the Climax Blues Band was basically a “one hit wonder” with their #3 “Couldn’t Get It Right” in 1977. I know, they had another “hit” that reached #12 in 1981, but I don’t even know how “I Love You” goes.
But this limited chart success belies how good this band really was. I always enjoyed the two albums that preceded their hit – FM Live (1974) and Stamp Album (1975). FM Live was taped from a concert that was broadcast live on WNEW in New York, the first FM station I listened to as a teenager. In fact, the album cover shows a receiver tuned to 102.7, NEW’s frequency.
There are live versions all over YouTube so I’ll share the version of “I Am Constant” from Stamp Album.
By the time this album came out, the British band had moved on from their bluesy roots (though they kept the reference in their name) and was performing songs more like their contemporaries, The Doobie Brothers and Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
“I Am Constant” relies on steady shuffle beat, tight harmonies and a nicely placed sax solo. The lyrics are a straightforward statement of loyalty and integrity.
When I started writing the SotW many years ago, my goal was to share some songs that I love with a few like-minded friends. I wanted to select songs that my readers might not be familiar with (thus the tag line – Ignored Obscured Restored) and describe them in such a way that might cause you to enjoy them as much as I do.
Sometimes it goes the other way too. Over the years many of you have commented back to me and suggested songs that I should listen to (or listen to again, in a different light). That is very rewarding.
Today’s SotW was inspired by an article that I read in Mojo (255, February 2015) where producer/musician Don Was described one of his favorite albums, jazz sax great Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil. He describes the title song with such passion that I had to download a copy and check it out.
Was starts by describing Elvin Jones “wild, unabashed drumming” and Herbie Hancock “playing these amazing chords” on the keys. But he hooked me with these words:
Then on top of Elvin and Herbie – who are like ying and yang – you’ve got Wayne, whose soloing sounds like he’s riding two horses. What struck me about his saxophone was that it was conversational. I pictured him walking down the street boxing and you can hear a few left jabs and then a flurry of punches and a strong right. Sometimes you can hear him drop back and dodge a punch and it’s like he’s talking the whole time and what he was saying to me was: ‘Don’t let this adversity get you down. Be courageous and confident’.
Wow, using that boxing metaphor to describe a solo performance is exciting and wonderful!
Thanks, Don, for turning me onto this great tune by describing it so vividly and passionately.
A few weeks ago my friend Ray C. sent me an email with a link to a website and said “This is an old friend in Minneapolis, who was one of the charter members of the MN Music Hall of Fame. Thought you’d like a listen.”
The link directed me to the homepage for Willie Murphy, whom I’d never heard of. I watched/listened to the videos Murphy posted and they were very good. So I started to poke around the internet to educate myself about him.
It turns out he’s most famous for his collaboration with folk/blues legend “Spider” John Koerner on an album they released in 1969 called Running, Jumping, Standing Still. (His second greatest “claim to fame” is that he produced and performed on Bonnie Raitt’s 1971 debut album.)
Today I’ll offer two SotW from Running, Jumping Standing Still. The first is “I Ain’t Blue.”
Despite its title, it is a blues number that was covered by Raitt on the above mentioned album.
The next song is “Magazine Lady.”
It’s a rollicking, jug band, folk song with Murphy’s saloon, honkytonk piano adding a lot of personality to the groove. The lyrics put it on the list with “Pictures of Lily”, “She Bop” and “Turning Japanese” as songs about… well you can figure it out.
But I don’t mean to sell Murphy short by highlighting his associations with Koerner and Raitt. After all, he was one of only three charter inductees into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame – the others being Dylan and Prince. (Not bad company.)
He has also performed onstage with Wilson Pickett, Muddy Waters, James Brown, WAR, John Lee Hooker, Neville Brothers, Etta James, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker and backed the likes of Dr. John and countless others.
I learned today that Michael Brown, the initial creative force behind The Left Banke, has passed away at the young age of 65. The post below was originally published by me on April 24, 2010.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Women have been the inspiration of love songs for as long as there’s been music. In rock music, Pattie Boyd must hold the record as the most important subject of love songs. As the wife to both George Harrison and later Eric Clapton, she is credited as the inspiration for Harrison’s “Something”, “For You Blue” and “Isn’t It a Pity”, as well as Clapton’s “Layla”, “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Wonderful Tonight”. Not a bad collection of songs.
Some would argue the next most important woman in pop songs is Renee Fladen. Renee Fladen? Who the hell is Renee Fladen? She happens to be the inspiration of today’s songs of the week, the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee” and “Pretty Ballerina”. Both were top 40 hits in the mid 60s in the genre that became known as Baroque pop or “Baroque and Roll”. (A third song, “She May Call You Up Tonight” was also written about Renee.) But back to Renee.
In an article I found on the internet, writer Tom Simon tells the story like this:
Violinist Harry Lookofsky owned a small storefront recording studio in New York City that he called World United Studios. In 1965, he gave a set of keys to his 16-year-old son, Mike Brown [real name: Mike Lookofsky], who helped out by cleaning up and occasionally sitting in as a session pianist. Mike began bringing in his teenage friends who tinkered with drums, guitars, amplifiers, the Steinway piano, and anything else they might find. Except for Mike, who had a background in classical piano, none of them were top musicians. But they could sing, especially one guy named Steve Martin.
By 1966 they started to call themselves the Left Banke. In addition to Mike and Steve, they included Rick Brand on lead guitar, Tom Finn on bass, and drummer George Cameron. Finn brought his girlfriend to the studio one day when the group had assembled for a practice session. She was a 5′ 6″ teenager with platinum blond hair. Mike Brown was infatuated with her the instant he saw her. Her name was Renee Fladen.
The group had begun recording songs, and Harry was particularly impressed with Steve Martin’s voice. Mike wrote a song about Renee. Although there was never anything between the two, Mike was fascinated by her and pictured himself standing at the corner of Hampton and Falmouth Avenues in Brooklyn with Renee, beneath the “One Way” sign. In his fantasy, he was telling her to walk away.
Harry played all the string parts on the Left Banke record Walk Away Renee. With Mike on the harpsichord and Steve Martin’s strong vocal performance, the song was a good one with a different type of sound to it. It came to be known as baroque rock, a style of music that included songs such as the Yardbirds’ For Your Love.
Harry took the song to ten different record companies before Smash Records picked it up. It entered the pop charts in the Fall of 1966 and remained there for ten weeks, peaking at number five. Early the next year the Left Banke followed up with another song written by Mike Brown called Pretty Ballerina, and it reached number fifteen…
As for Renee, she moved to Boston with her family shortly after the Left Banke recorded Walk Away Renee, and no one in the group ever saw her again.
Well, the last sentence may not be entirely true. In 2003, rock journalist Dawn Eden claimed to identify a San Francisco Bay Area classical singer and vocal teacher, Renee Fladen-Kamm as the long lost “Walk Away Renee.” Fladen-Kamm was also in a medieval English music ensemble called The Sherwood Consort. But she isn’t talking, so no one can confirm that she is in fact the Left Banke’s Renee.
In the 70s, Brown went on to form the Stories of “Brother Louie” fame, though Brown didn’t write the then controversial song about a white guy dating a black woman. A different Brown (Errol) wrote it.
Courtney Barnett is an Australian musician with a penchant for clever lyrics and a deadpan, Lou Reed like, vocal style. Her song “Avant Gardener” was on my list of top cuts in 2014 and is today’s SotW.
The song actually came out on a 2013 EP called How to Carve a Carrot into a Rose, but I didn’t discover it until last year.
Pitchfork named it the “Best New Track” of 2013 and describes it like this:
“Avant Gardener” tells the story of a girl dragging her underemployed ass out of bed late on a Monday morning to try her hand at gardening– at which point she suffers a panic attack.
The scene unfolds like a dream: “Halfway down High Street, Andy looks ambivalent/ He’s probably wondering what I’m doing getting in an ambulance,” Barnett sings, her voice drifting through the lines in sweet speak-sing. “The paramedic thinks I’m clever ’cause I play guitar/ I think she’s clever ’cause she stops people dying.” They’re both right. Later, the song’s poor narrator struggles to get a good pull on her asthma inhaler. “I was never good at smoking bongs,” she confesses.
I think it was an asthma attack (she’s in a garden!), not a panic attack — thus the need for the inhaler — but close enough.
I’m pretty sure it’s Barnett that plays those angular guitar fills that sound like fingernails on a chalkboard (which is good in this setting). And just to make me like her a little bit extra, she plays left-handed.
As a music lover and record collector, I’m always interested in checking out the CDs and albums other people have in their homes. You know what I mean. Just like people who read; they always peruse the bookshelves when they visit someone’s home.
I’ve often thought that it would be especially interesting to browse the collections of celebrities, especially rock stars. What unusual gems were they listening to and influenced by?
I recently read an essay by Jeff Gold who runs the website Recordmecca that tells the tale of Jimi Hendrix’s record collection. Gold knows what he’s talking about – he acquired, at auction, part of the collection (the rest is on display in Seattle’s Experience Music Project Museum).
Here’s a list of some of Jimi’s discs:
Robert Johnson “King of the Delta Blues Singers”
Muddy Waters “The Real Folk Blues”
John Lee Hooker “Drifting Blues”
Wes Montgomery “A Day In The Life”
The Roland Kirk Quartet “Rip, Rig and Panic”
Ravi Shankar “India’s Master Musician” and “Portrait of a Genius”
The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Electric Ladyland”
The Dream “Get Dreamy”
Howlin Wolf “The Howlin’ Wolf Album” and “Moanin’ In The Moonlight”
Bob Dylan “Greatest Hits” and “Highway 61 Revisited”
Elmore James “Memorial Album”
James Brown “Showtime”
Clara Ward “Gospel Concert”
Acker Bilk “Lansdowne Folio”
The Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”
Various “Chicago The Blues Today” and “American Folk Blues Festival ‘66”
Bill Cosby “Revenge
Lots of blues, some jazz, rock, R&B and gospel. No surprises here. But Get Dreamy by The Dream? Now that’s something that arouses my curiosity. Here’s what Gold says about the album:
The rarest album in the bunch was “Get Dreamy” by The Dream, a 1967 LP by a Norwegian psychedelic quartet. This album featured what has to be the earliest ever Hendrix tribute, their song “Hey Jimi” (Hendrix’s debut single, “Hey Joe” was first released in December 1966.) This copy was inscribed to Jimi by Dream guitarist (and later celebrated ECM jazz guitarist) Terje Rypdal, who wrote “With all the respect we can give a fellow musician, we wrote “Hey Jimi” as a tribute to you. We hope you like it and enjoy the rest of the LP too. On behalf of the Dream, Terje Rypdal.” In 2005 I googled “Terje Rypdal” and “Jimi Hendrix” and found an interview where Rypdal mentions sending a copy of the album to Hendrix through a friend of a girlfriend of Jimi’s, but never being sure it got to him. I found an email address for his manager and sent him a message that the album had indeed found it’s way to Jimi, and got a message back that Terje was thrilled to know that Jimi had received it—and letting me know that if I ever wanted to sell it, “mail us first !!!!!” However, this one’s not going anywhere!
So let’s get to it! Today’s SotW is “Hey Jimi” by The Dream.
Most of you that read this weekly missive are music nerds, so you’re probably already aware that this week marks the 40th anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s classic double album Physical Graffiti.
The story of Physical Graffiti really starts in earnest in January 1974 when the band assembled at Headly Grange (the Grange), a dank 18th century English estate where the band had recorded albums starting with Led Zeppelin III, to work on some new tracks. By March they had tapes of eight very strong songs that would become enduring classics in the Zeppelin catalog. Those rough mixes were for:
• Custard Pie
• In My Time of Dying
• Trampled Under Foot
• Kashmir
• In the Light
• The Wanton Song
• Sick Again
• And today’s SotW, Ten Years Gone
When the mixes for these songs were finished over the summer, there was too much music to fit on a single album, but the band couldn’t stomach the idea of dropping any of them. So they decided to release a double album and filled it out with seven leftovers from recordings dating back as far as 1970.
But let’s get back to “Ten Years Gone.”
It has been well documented that Robert Plant’s lyric was inspired by the memory of a 10 year past relationship he had with the younger sister of the woman he was then married to.
In a 2010 article in Classic Rock magazine, the great rock critic Barney Hoskyns wrote:
The song’s feel suggests a less dramatic ‘Kashmir’, with another airy dose of mysticism in the lyrics: “Then as it was, then again it will be/And though the course may change sometimes/Rivers always reach the sea…” Personally I love Plant’s hippie-dippiness because it’s shot through with empathy and compassion: give me his flowery poetics over the flip worldliness of a Mick Jagger any day.
Old wounds are keenly felt in the song’s hoarse middle-eight outpouring of “Do you ever remember me, baby/Did it feel so good…”
And the music is in my favorite Led Zep style – you know, those songs like “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” where they start out with gently picked acoustic guitar then go all dinosaur stomp, loud hard rock.
In a Rolling Stone article called “50 Artists’ Favorite Playlists”, producer Rick Rubin described “Ten Years Gone” as “A deep, reflective piece with hypnotic, interweaving riffs. Light and dark, shadow and glare. It sounds like nature coming through the speakers.” That about covers it.
Jimmy Page’s guitar riff was too good to pass up, so 2Pac sampled it for 1997’s “Life’s So Hard.”
One of my favorite songs of 2014 was by King Tuff (aka Kyle Thomas) hailing from Vermont by way of LA. His style of music has been described as “garage-glam.”
Today’s SotW, the title song from the album Black Moon Spell, shows that label is spot on.
The song sounds like it was recorded by the illegitimate son of Marc Bolan (T-Rex) and Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick). It has great big hooks and fuzzy guitar amplified through Marshall Stacks. This is serious party music. It doesn’t hurt that fellow grunge/psych/rocker Ty Segall viciously pounds the drums.
The lyrics conjure up some weird, ominous voodoo yarn.
I feel a sickness in your heart
Cuz you drank my witch’s brew
You were doomed right from the start
And you know I feel it too
