Photos, Tout Songs, Obituaries, Name That Tune? OK, enough.
Let’s get back to what we really do best: uncover/present killer songs, past, present, and even some future.
I know there are those who dismiss Pearl Jam, but I think such critics are elitists.
Pearl Jam cranks, and probably wear the tough mantle–especially with the death of Kurt Cobain and demise of Nirvana–as the band from the grunge/Seattle environ.
There are a bunch of other great bands that did evolve from that scene (I am at least thinking Soundgarden) but when push comes to shove, Pearl Jam kick it, song-wise, songwriting-wise, and musicianship-wise.
I present, then, the following, among my favorite from the band’s catalog.
It does seem Eddie Vedder’s voice is not quite so powerful as it was 20 years ago, but the rest of the band certainly smokes. And, Mike McCready again shows that when push comes to shove, a great guitar player cranking through a Marshall stack via a Telecaster is probably the best sounding “axe” confluence there is.
My friend sent me a link to an article about Blondie that included this photo from 1980. Reminds me of a cross between that picture of the original Baseball Hall of Fame inductees all sitting together you’ve seen a million times before and that Ellen selfie of the stars from last year’s Oscars.
I think you’ll get the name of this one, easy. But who does it sound like? And who recorded it and when?
Well, that didn’t rustle up much action. This was a b-side by a group with a very special baseball pedigree, working in a style definitely not their own. Click to find out who! Continue reading →
“The Perry Boys had snuck up behind me and one of them had hit me over the head with a specially sharpened Levi belt buckle, leaving me lying on the concrete in a halo of my own blood. They probably would have kicked me into a coma if it wasn’t for my PVC-clad friend Denise Shaw, who stood over six feet tall in heels and dressed like a fetish model. She saw the incident and rushed over to fight off my attackers with her handbag.”
The Perry Boys were kids from the Council Houses, who hated the punks. Mark E. Smith wrote a song for the Fall about them:
It accompanies a not-so-fun story about the death of Williamsburg Brooklyn that seems to be trading in the same weary cliches it is bemoaning (do something man!), but I had to share. (click for the large version). Photo is by Tod Seelie, who has many other excellent photos accompanying the story.
The date is in 1975. The band formed the previous year. The sound is crap. The video is noisy, which is bad. But it’s great nonetheless. Even though it isn’t entirely pleasurable. But who comes here for pleasure?
Arturo Vega was the band’s supporting artist, who created the iconic and immortal Ramones crest.
Others know more than me about this clip, but to me it seems amazing that they had it all together already. This was the sound they pitched for the rest of their lives, there at the beginning, almost whole.
According to this story, Gary Glitter made $450,000 in 2012 from royalties for his songs, the most famous of which is Rock and Roll Part 2.
The problem is that Glitter was convicted for his massive child-porn collection in the 90s, did his time and then spent a number of years dodging the police in Southeast Asia, while apparently living the life of a sex tourist. All the while funded by the licensing fees paid by sports arenas and television and movies and commercial for the use of his songs.
He was arrested again in 2006 in Vietnam for molesting pre-teen girls, and after conviction and sentencing to three years in prison the NFL banned the playing of his songs at their stadiums. Some other teams did, too, but enough were still playing the tunes in 2012 to pay him that big score.
Glitter was recently convicted of child sexual abuse of three girls as young as 10 years old, crimes that dated back to his days as a rocker in the 70s and 80s, and was sentenced this week to 17 years in prison.
It’s hard to associate the glories of Rock And Roll Part 2 with the evil that Glitter has done in his life, until you follow the money. Then it all becomes very clear.
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.”
