Van and Bob sitting on a hill with the Parthenon in the background, singing a Van Morrison song (that isn’t One Irish Rover) with acoustic guitar (Van) and harmonica (Bob).
Followed by One Irish Rover, both playing guitars, singing harmonies. Simple, but excellent nonetheless. With Van playing guitar quite nicely and hypnotically, kind of perfect. You probably don’t want less, and you certainly don’t want more.
There’s more after that, excellent Van, but the songs on the hillside are what got me here. Icons, maybe showing off, but simply.
My old friend Dot skipped the debate tonight to see ZZ Top in Scottsdale, in Arizona.
Good choice, I said, but then I started thinking about ZZ Tops’ biggest hit and the video that dominated MTV for a while and thought it provided some commentary for the current political situation, which involves a lot of lies, a discombobulated narrative, bullying and, we hope at the end of day, some women’s liberation. Even if we don’t ever see Hillary kiss Bill again.
As you might expect, the signifiers are a mixed bag. Just vote.
A design studio named Dorothy has released a survey of alt-rock music based on the schematic design of a transistor radio that came out in 1954, the year Bill Haley released Rock Around the Clock.
That’s a detail from a much larger image over to the left.
I’m not sure about the information included in the diagram. I mean why do the Ramones lead to Mink Deville lead to Talking Heads.
Why is Elvis Costello in smaller type than the Specials?
Why aren’t the White Stripes next to the Black Keys?
There are many of these questions, which seem to be answered rather randomly. That said, there is a broader logic as to time and place and style, and it’s good fun browsing using the magnification tool. h/t Herrick Goldman.
In one of the most humble acts in human history, Sonny Rollins interrupted his lucrative career as a jazz saxophonist in order to hone his craft more fully. Even though he was already well established in the jazz circles – having played with luminaries such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, and recorded more than 20 albums – in 1959, at the tender age of 29, he nevertheless decided he needed to drop out of the scene and woodshed in order to take his game to the next level. He spent the next three years in relative seclusion, practicing his playing under New York’s Williamsburg Bridge for most of each day, in all kinds of weather and through all four seasons.
In April 2015, Rollins told the New York Times:
“The problem was that I had no place to practice. My neighbor on Grand Street was the drummer Frankie Dunlop, and his wife was pregnant. The horn I’m playing, it’s loud. I felt really guilty. One day I was on Delancey Street, and I walked up the steps to the Williamsburg Bridge and came to this big expanse. Nobody was there, and it was beautiful.”
He returned in 1962 with his album titled The Bridge. Today’s SotW is the title song from that album.
In an article from the AV Club, Joseph Heller describes the beauty of the piece:
Like a runaway daydream, “The Bridge” is both frenetic and meditative, the sound of a scattered mind exulting in its own agility. Hall and Rollins trade solos like sparring tides; the rhythm section of bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Ben Riley lock into a fleet, liquid-tempo syncopation. But rather than trying to hop on the bandwagon of free-jazz abstraction, the Rollins composition reflects a very real set of coordinates in emotional space-time: when he stood below that bridge, day after day for months on end, pouring out his soul. What it must have been like to be a random passerby during those years, hearing the song’s embryonic skronk slowly coagulate into a masterpiece.
Hamilton’s thesis is that the Stones were so adept at embracing and mirroring the black music they loved, that they eventually came to represent a new white authenticity that was embraced by white blues and metal bands that knew little or nothing about the Stones’ roots.
I’m not sure what this means in the book’s larger picture, it is an excerpt of course, but without looking at the argument’s validity as regards the whole history of rock ‘n’ roll, this little slice of story feels kind of genuine. Like, yeah, that may be true, though he have maybe set up something of a straw man argument, too. Still feels like useful analysis.
But Hamilton draws in a lot of historical sources to tell this story, and it’s fascinating to read quotes in the black newspapers of 1964 praising the Stones, while the mainstream white press rips them down. And his description of the musical opening of Gimme Shelter is exact and thrilling, like the music itself.
It’s curious that the Margo Jefferson quote from earlier in the piece comes from 1973, which was also a germination point for Death, who we posted about here last week. It’s possible that this book will shed some light on the way rock ‘n’ roll evolved musically and as a business in a racial context.
Ron Howard is a master cinematic storyteller, for sure, but not someone with much interest in complexity or ambiguity. Which can be good for storytelling, but for me usually comes up wanting. I like the messy, the complicated, the things that make you say oh.
I was curious about this picture, but would have let it slide, or ride, but friends invited me and my daughter wanted to go. So we went to Greenwich Village for some fine wood-fired brick oven Neapolitan pizza and Ron Howard’s joint, plus the promise of the whole Beatles at Shea Stadium film, remastered visually and auditorily using all the modern tricks.
The movie is a gas. The camera is up close on the Beatles and their fans through the 28 Days Later rush of Beatlemania, during the charge of concerts around the globe, and headlong up to the show at Shea Stadium. These guys, when they were young, ambitious and full of energy, were terrific cutups. And then it stays up close through the despair that followed the exhaustion that came after, when cutups transformed into turnoffs.
As I had expected, I felt as if I’d seen most of this footage before, but all of it was delightful, looked fantastic, and there are some revelations (for me anyway):
Early footage of some English shows in 1963 are fantastic and transforming. This wasn’t just a group of clever songwriters and melody makers, with winning personalities, but a hard rocking band. Ringo pounds on his kit, and the Beatles deliver with equal and transformative energy. Great songs, but also tight and terrific arrangements and wickedly and aggressively good playing.
McCartney, mostly, and Lennon, too, from old interviews, talk about their songwriting, and the need to hew to a schedule to put out a new single every three months, and an album every six months. The studio footage and tales, plus the clips from all the live shows they’re doing, and movies they’re making, really dial up the grueling nature of it all.
At one point Lennon talks about how silly the lyrics are in those early albums, really just placeholders while they worked on the music. Which seems like a throwaway, since so many are so clever and perfect to the form, until, later, he and McCartney talk about the personal content that John weaves into the lyrics of Help!, a song that to me has always seemed a novelty tied to the movie of the same name. But of course not!
I always forget what a cutup George was, even when I consider the hilarity of his film producing career. I mean, Withnail and I? This movie confirms he’s funny and serious, too.
I assume there will be a follow up, a sequel. Maybe Blue Jay Way: The Studio Years, but more likely Strawberry Fields Forever: The Studio Years, which will go further into the making of the last five elpees. That will no doubt be an equal treat. But the takeaway here is that the Beatles were really great, in a way that has no match, and we would be fools to forget about even a part of that greatness.
Ron Howard’s movie is a crowd pleaser, and lives up to that not modest ambition. Go and enjoy.
New to me. Detroit youths in 1971 decide to play rock rather than funk. Maybe they took some cues from the Stooges. They say Alice Cooper was a big influence. In 1975 Clive Davis funded recording sessions which yielded seven songs, but he insisted they change their name. They refused and he walked away.
In 1976 the band released a 45 with two songs in an edition of 500 copies.
Life was lived, and moved on. Fast forward 20 years, the children of members of Death form a band playing Death’s songs. They sign with Drag City and the record is finally released. The band reforms, though on original member has passed, and they record a new album and tour. A film is made about them.
One of the greatest albums you probably never heard is Inspiration Information by Shuggie Otis. If you’re a fan of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and the great Stevie Wonder albums of the 70s (Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, Songs in the Key of Life, whew!) you must listen to Inspiration Information. You will love it.
Shuggie is the son of R&B pioneer Johnny Otis who was sometimes called the Godfather of R&B because of his Zelig like appearances in the careers and recordings of most of the giants of the genre.
Shuggie is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his prowess on guitar. That led him to work with Al Kooper on Kooper Session (another album worth searching out) that was the follow up to the original Super Session with Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield, and Frank Zappa on Hot Rats as a 16 year old.
His second solo album – Freedom Flight (1971) – contained the great “Strawberry Flight 23” that was covered by the Brothers Johnson in 1977 and ran up the Billboard Hot 100 all the way to #5, #1 on the Soul charts.
Inspiration Information was released in 1974. Like Stevie Wonder of that era, Otis adopted a DIY ethic and played almost every instrument on the record himself. Musically, the album was a bit ahead of its time with the use of a Rhythm King analog drum machine. The overall effect is to station him as the missing link between Hendrix (or maybe Sly Stone) and Prince.
The title song was released as a single but only touched #56 on the R&B charts and never scared the pop charts. The album sales were poor too, so Epic dropped Otis who went dark for most of the next 40 years.
Blonde on Blonde is so my favorite Dylan album, and it is one of those discs I have really been trying to tear apart lately, focusing on the instrumentation and production, particularly the rhythm section so I can think about how I approach playing the bass.
Dylan always had the killer side musicians for his recordings, which always seemed like fun experimentation in the evolution of the artist’s songs.
Al Kooper, Joe South, Robbie Robertson, and The Band–who at the time were still The Hawks–all played behind Dylan from Highway 61 and into Blonde on Blonde, so for the New York sessions of the album (Kenny Buttrey played for the Nashville sessions), Bobby Gregg took to the kit. Gregg had been a member of The Hawks during a time when Levon Helm was ex-expatriated from The Band.
Gregg is a killer, keeping time, popping his snare, and driving the whole affair and his work on the in your face Mostly You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine) really shows just that. Not there are not other cuts on the disc that display that same elegant push within the pocket. This is just a lesser known cut.
It is really good, though. (BTW, this vid is a remix overseen by the great Mick Ronson).
