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.
I cannot remember how long ago my mate Steve Gibson burned a disc of the Eagles of Death Metal for me. I know I played it, but the disc got lost in a pile, and the band never really made my playlist, though they were always hanging around the periphery of my listening and consciousness.
There was “Them Crooked Vultures,” which featured Josh Homme whom Steve Moyer discovered several years back, and from then, it seemed everywhere I looked, Homme, the guitar player, was featured.
Still, though I thought of them kind of like James Joyce’s Ulysses, a book I know I should read someday, but a book I am keeping on my to do list so I always will have something to fall back on should I run out of things to do, you know?
Of course, over the past months, the band has had sad interactions with first the shootout in the Bacalat in Paris, and then oddly, the San Bernardino connection because of the song below, San Berdoo Bunburn.
Which is kind of extra sad as the more I get to know the band, the less they would want to be associated with much of anything aside from their irreverant–and funny–rock’n’roll chops and words.
This song came to me by way of my Biletones mate Bill Alberti, as we are now looking to put the tune on our setlist. (One thing is for sure: I now follow the Eagles on Spotify.)
I did look through several versions of the song, and though I prefer live, it is really hard to hear the words on the recordings on YouTube. So, I went with this video which peppers the screen with the occasional lyric.
Lawr, you inspired me. I swear I’ll get that Graveyard concert review written one of these days, but for now, this.
Been way into a “new” band called Witchcraft (Swedish, of course – where the hell else would any good new music come from?). Was introduced to them by a guy who auditioned for guitar in our new band, Hard Rocks!, but we ended up taking someone else. This guy told me I needed the consensus Witchcraft masterpiece Legend and, boy, he was correct.
Just so happens they put out a new album Nucleus, in January and I snapped it up. Nucleus is LONG. I’m guessing it plays for almost an hour. And it takes some time to sink in. You aren’t gonna shuffle this and stumble upon Shake It Off. I’d say three or four BEGINNING TO END plays to be fair.
But geez, it’s a monster. My favorite (kind of obsessed with it lately) is a 14-minute little ditty that matches even Zep’s Levee for heavy (bonus rhyme), I think it’s about some guy losing his mind and is called Breakdown. I can’t even find it on youtube. Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t sit here listening to the whole thing if I put it up anyway.
I’ll give you this one instead, the first single (really, single that’s being played where?). More poppy, with some Jethro Tull flute and a lyric line about the economy. Not even sure what to think of that.
I’m kind of afraid to go to that new The Witch movie.
I didn’t mean to dwell on this, but I happened to put the Hot Licks’ great album Striking It Rich—which came as a die cut fold out, that opened like a matchbook—on tonight and was reminded of more great Dan Hicks songs.
Here are two, tracks one and three, that I feel compelled to share. Great songs, clever arrangements, ace (but not showy) solos, all the homely appeal of a ukulele band, with all the jazz chords and standout performances.
