I lost track of the Rascals with Freedom Suite. Which was big and political and didn’t end up on my shelf. But I listened to it last night while cooking and jeez. There is this:
Aretha Franklin died last year. A movie shot in 1972 with some tech problems and edited to everyone’s satisfaction but her’s in 2015, was shelved in 2015 for reasons never explained. The movie wasn’t released until she passed.
Now it’s out. I guess there could be questions about that, about Aretha’s preferences, she’s the star, but the fact is that the movie made from these oddly stranded film clips from 47 years ago, film shot on 16mm supposedly for network TV, is awesome.
Mainly because of Aretha’s performance, which is mind-boggling, but also because of the view our filmmakers got of life inside a Black church in LA in that moment when one of pop’s biggest stars went back to her origins. Sort of, but plenty enough.
The vibe is powerful. It counts for a lot. This supposed network special is anything but what you might expect. It is raw, real, awkward, and totally winning, thanks to the collective spirit of the choir, the church and especially Aretha, who seems unhappy every moment she isn’t singing, which then seems unimportant every moment she sings.
My friend
Sean H. has been bugging me for months to feature Bloodstone’s “Natural High”
as the SotW. I’ve been trying to
persuade him to write it up himself as a guest contributor, but he hasn’t.
Well a few weeks ago the song came up on one of my playlists and it occurred to me that I really like it! So here you go Sean – this one’s for you.
“Natural High” is the perfect mid-‘70s soul ballad. What does that mean? It has sweet, falsetto vocals and harmonies,
and a sexy, slow jam backing. It also
has a short, simple, but jazzy guitar solo about 2:30 in. It reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973.
Demonstrating his impeccably good taste, Quentin Tarantino selected it for a scene in his blaxploitation influenced film Jackie Brown.
Bloodstone entered the blaxploitation
field themselves in 1975 through a self-financed film that they cast themselves
in — Train Ride to Hollywood. Check out the zany trailer.
Greta Van Fleet is a band out of
Michigan that can’t seem to escape comparisons to Led Zeppelin. That should make them very popular with the
legions of Zep fans.
They have a pretty slight discography – so far consisting of two Eps released in 2017 and their late 2018, full-length debut, Anthem of the Peaceful Army.
So, what’s all the fuss about? Take a listen to today’s SotW, “Anthem.”
“Anthem” focuses on acoustic guitar
(Supertramp’s “Give a Little?), electric slide guitar and percussion, leaving
the “heavy” aside. It’s catchy! The lyrics are sweet but their “peace and
love” hippie idealism may be just a
little too hokey. The song climaxes with
the final chorus:
And every glow
In the twilight knows
That the world is only what the world is made of
Just you and me
Can agree to disagree
That the world is only what the
world is made of
I find myself on the fence regarding
this group. I like their approach but
find the vocals a little too
screechy. But none other than Robert
Plant has given GVF his blessing. In an
interview with Australia’s Network Ten, Plant said the band “are Led Zeppelin
1” and also described frontman Josh
Kiszka as “a beautiful little singer.”
That’s a pretty high endorsement from someone that isn’t normally quick
to hand out compliments.
The enigmatic Scott Walker died on
Friday, March 22nd, although the news was not released until this
week. Walker, who achieved more fame and
fortune in the UK than here at home in the US, cultivated a 40-year career in three distinct phases.
The first was with his band, The Walker Brothers. They were sort of a mid-‘60s version of a boy band and had a couple of hits here and in the UK. “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” is a classic that often draws comparisons to the hits of the Righteous Brothers.
Starting in 1967, Walker released four
solo albums, creatively titled Scott,
Scott 2, Scott 3, and Scott 4. In this period, Walker moved toward a more
crooning style of music featuring a mix of originals and covers – frequently
favoring songs written by Jacques Brel.
“Jackie” was the lead track from Scott 2. It was written by Brel and was released as a single in late 1967.
Lyrics that referenced “authentic
queers and phony virgins,” bordellos, whiskey, and opium, especially in ’67,
made clear that Walker’s teen idol days were behind him.
Later, in the ‘90s, Walker moved even
farther out of the mainstream and recorded works that would most aptly be
described as avant-garde. This became increasingly evident with each
album, culminating with his final release, Bish
Bosch (2012).
A wonderful documentary of Walker’s
career – Scott Walker – 30th
Century Man – was released in 2006.
It is available for rent on YouTube, Google Play and Amazon Prime. It is worth checking out.
David Bowie was the executive producer
of the documentary. He often professed
his admiration for Walker. Influence on
Bowie’s more experimental recordings such
as his final release, Blackstar, can
be traced directly back to Walker – musically and the vocal style of their
similarly matched baritone voices.
She was here at the Ogden Theater on Sunday night. I went to see her. It’s not an easy trip. Boulder to Denver is a snap, but Denver is a weird mix of elegant street scenes and aggressive street psychos. I come from NY, so I think I know my street people, but in NY I get them. Out here, I’m on uneven ground.
Liz played a greatest hits set in front of a terrific band that was both more rocking than the originals but just as airy in the arrangements. The terrific guitar player was understated, but on the few occasions he solo’ed he ripped the cover off.
Which brings us to the one new song of the night. I go to live shows because there are differences with the records, and on this night, in addition to having a better band than played on Exile in Guyville and Whip-smart, Phair played a new song that hasn’t been recorded, called God Loves Baseball.
Like most baseball songs it’s too sentimental and this doesn’t rock at all, but I agree. And I think I like god less than Liz and baseball more. Here’s a clip, though this was far from the high point of the show, even though it was kind of nice.
So Mötley Cruë made the movie of their story, and it’s on Netflix. It’s called The Dirt, and it is about the band’s life told through the voices of its members.
This is standard modern narrative. You have a narrator or narrators who know more than the characters, and who know where the story ends up, cracking wise while moving the story along quickly. And, if you like naked women, eye poppingly.
I spent all of watching The Dirt wishing I was sitting in my TV room with Steve Moyer, not because he admired the Cruë, but because he loved tales of rock ‘n’ roll life, and this is definitely that. I’m ambivalent. The scenes of debauchery are debauched, but are mostly offensive because the premise seems skewed. What is misogyny is played for the cutes. The naked ladies are jokes, at least until the lady leaves, at which point love is lost. Boo hoo, and boys are sad.
This isn’t a sophisticated look at the way the world works, but the movie feels like a somewhat accurate look at the adolescent rock life, and the way it changes with rehab and maturity. It way underplays the tunes, which you would think a movie produced by the band would try to promote. But they’re all sober now, and maybe better understand their weird moment in rock history.
Steve, how do you feel about this one? I watched the whole thing, even though Vince Neil looked like Wayne or Garth from Wayne’s World (I forget which one), which bothered me a lot. You may not have.
No link to a Cruë song. I never paid attention to them, but I did watch their movie. Weird.
Can we all agree on one thing – that
there is too much gun violence in the world today. Muslim extremists killing “infidels,” racists
going into churches, synagogues and
mosques to kill worshipers, and just plain crazies shooting people at schools,
workplaces and concerts!
Enough is enough. “People, I just want to say, you
know, can we all JUST get along?”
Today’s SotW was written about a very
early school shooting that occurred 40 years ago, on January 29, 1979. On that day, a 16-year-old girl named Brenda
Ann Spencer opened fire on the children arriving for the day’s lessons at the Cleveland Elementary
School in the Lake Murray section of San Diego.
Two men (the school principal and a custodian) were killed. Eight children and one adult were injured.
In a telephone interview, a reporter
with The Evening Tribune asked
Spencer why she did it. She responded, “I
just don’t like Mondays… this livens up the day.”
Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers, of the Irish band The Boomtown Rats, used this awful backstory to write the song “I Don’t Like Mondays.”
“… Mondays” was a #1 hit in the UK but only
managed to reach #73 here in the US – though it did receive quite a bit of
airplay in the US on college campuses and alternative rock radio.
The piano
based composition renders it a perfect vehicle to be taken up by Tori
Amos, as she did on her 2001 covers album, Strange
Little Girls.
After 40 years, what have we
learned? Mass shootings seem to happen
more and more frequently each year. “People,
I just want to say, you know, can we all JUST get along?”
I generally don’t have much respect for
the Grammys. They have a long history of
picking one-hit-wonders for Best New Artist (Starland Vocal Band, Milli
Vanilli) and awarding Album of the Year to iconic artists long after they
released their best work (Dylan, Clapton, Bonnie Raitt). Not to be too cynical, I must admit there
have also been some very good choices in both of those categories that have
made amends for their boo-boos.
Last month, the 2019 award for Album of the Year went to Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves, a great choice. Two songs from the album, “Butterflies” and “Space Cowboy”, also won Grammys – for Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Song.
Musgraves has the rare quality of
mainstream popularity with a bit of rebel mixed in. While primarily a conventional country
artist, she bucks the stereotypical demographic
of country music fans with her open position supporting LGBT rights and a
fondness for booze (she and her band drink a tequila shot before each show), weed
and the occasional psychedelic (she openly admits that she wrote “Mother” on
acid and has taken mushrooms).
This is an image she cultivated since
the release of her first album Same
Trailer Different Park (2013) that included the song “Follow Your Arrow”
with the lyrics:
Make
lots of noise
Kiss lots of boys
Or kiss lots of girls
If that’s something you’re into
When the straight and narrow
Gets a little too straight
Roll up the joint, or don’t
Just follow your arrow
Today’s SotW is “Slow Burn,” the opening track from Golden Hour.
Regarding “Slow Burn,” Musgraves told Rolling Stone:
“It’s an idea I can apply to a lot of different areas of my
life,” she says, taking a break from editing a new video. “I want to be here
for a long time doing what I love, and I don’t feel I need to try to be the
biggest I can be, the quickest. And I even thought of a good drink that you sip
on for a long time. Or a slow burn of a relationship that starts with a little
bit of a spark and doesn’t burn out too quick.”
There’s something about the arrangement of this song that reminds me of “Casimir Pulaski Day” from Sufjan Steven’s Illinois which in turn reminded me of Neil Young’s “Old Man” (maybe it’s the banjos).
Dig in to Golden Hour and the rest of Musgraves’ catalog. You won’t regret it.
