|
|
|
| [Current] | ||
| Reads: | ||
 |
 |
 |
| Listens: | ||
 |
 |
 |
| [Archival] | |||||||||
|
I've swiped one paragraph from the original, because...well, he just nailed it:
It's pretty fine, even with alla that "when one" stuff.
Somehow, I sort of lost track of the tail end of yesterday.First it was the housework. The picking up and depositing of stuff so as to make the place look presentable for assorted guests. Then the vacuuming that followed. As my wheezing machine kept increasing in pitch, that Dyson guy's velvet British accent echoed in my head "...never loses suction".
This of course was all going on as the first snowfall of the season was winding down. I don't mind shoveling and snowblowing, but I'm ain't about ta do it twice in one day. Around one in the afternoon the flake drop finally ceased. First, out to the garage to move all of the crap that has been encasing that poor snowblower for the past seven months. Then ten minutes of begging, pleading and foul language as we try to get the (only one year old) snowblower started. Funny thing, if that danged kill switch is in the wrong position, she just won't start.
Damned safety 'features'.
A giant cloud of blue smoke and Mr. Husqvarna roars to life.
One pass down to the road and back up and stepson #2 is waving at me. Apparently, only one side of the beast is doing anything useful. A quick trip back to the garage confirms that one of the shear pins has, well, sheared.
Damned safety 'features'.
So we replace the pin and I'm back off to hurling rocks, leaves and snow at my neighbor's Grange Hall (it's a long story, ask me about it some time).
With the snow cleared, it's time for a shower.
The rest of the evening is a blur of conspicuous food consumption, bad NFL football, beer slurping, waiting what seemed like ten hours for stepson #1's friends to arrive for post-dinner Olympic beer slurping, more conspicuous food consumption, and two hours of The Apprentice. The evening was topped off by watching my mother, all 70-something years of playing a round of some card game called 'bullshit' with the now-drunk college kids. That was enough for me...I went to bed.
This morning I was just plain tired out. Obviously, too much activity the day before. I didn't even drink very much so I couldn't use that as an excuse. Oh well, just gettin' old I guess.
The now-hungover college kids got up to make a giant brunch (I gotta hand it to them, back in my day brunch woulda been cancelled!). After round three of conspicuous food consumption, the kids cleaned up and went off to deal with the rest of their Friday.
I, still being too tired to march up to the third floor for a new music selection, pawed through a couple of the CD piles on top of the piano. Explosions In The Sky is a sort of Godspeed You Black Emperor if Godspeed came from Austin, Texas. Sorta bombastic, sorta pensive. I popped that sucker in and hung out on the couch with the dog while finishing up the book Live What You Love: Notes from an Unusual Life.
If you were hanging around this space last Friday, you would have seen three Blogcritics attempt to calmly report on their past and current relationships to Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run. The release of the 30th Anniversary edition has DJ Radiohead and myself somewhat bowled over. Heck, the DJ was so floored that he temporarily lost his ability to speak in complete sentences!Over the weekend we had some time to muse on the extra content of the box set. That is, the DVD documentary on the making of Born To Run, "Wings For Wheels", and the stunning concert video DVD "Live at the Hammersmith Odeon, 1975".
Read on, as we make one last attempt to quell the madness in our souls.
My thanks to both Lisa McKay and DJ Radiohead for hurling themselves at this task with such verve and passion.
Hammersmith Odeon, London '75
Paid the cost to be the boss (Palladium 1976/N.Y.C.). Pièce de Résistance (Capital Theatre 1978/Paasaic, NJ). Live at the Agora Ballroom (Cleveland, OH). Live at Alpine Valley. Fire on the Fingertips.
Bruce Springsteen bootleg records. Yes, back in that shadowy past we all 'stole' from Bruce. So desperate for live material, we just could not help ourselves. After reading so many articles about those legendary live performances, a person just felt empty.
Yes, that was me. Right up to The River tour, I was an E-Street concert virgin. It was so frustrating. The closest I came to attending a show was on the Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour. Springsteen was coming to the Augusta Civic Center (central Maine) but I couldn't go due to some kinda family activity conflict, like...my brother-in-law was flying in from Cleveland for a visit and he'd just had a vasectomy. Ouch. Gees, what a pathetic (and now I suppose, funny) excuse to miss a concert! Turns out that the show just added to the lore: four hours, Bruce and Clarence running through the arena and playing up in the balcony. Then there's the (perhaps apocryphal) story of the band taking the stage at a local bar, the Luna Base II, for a post-concert blowout. Y'know, you miss this stuff when you're seventeen and it feels like the world has just ended.
The drought may have ended for me 1980 but a legitimate live recording did not surface until the 1986 release of Live 1975-1985. Finally, some early concert recordings to allow the fans to revisit the pure joy of an E-Street show.
Now, with this 30th anniversary release, we have video proof of what the E-Street band was capable of back when Born To Run first exploded onto the scene. The legend of Springsteen's early band was well-deserved. From the sparse and emotional "Thunder Road" to the stretched-out "Kitty's Back" to the eruption of "She's The One" to the exhausting "Detroit Medley", that band took everything that was right (and righteous!) about rock & roll and pushed it to the extreme. Watching this concert is just way, way too much fun.
Wings For Wheels
This look at the making of Born To Run illustrates just how much pressure Bruce put on himself (and those around him) to be great. Aside from the pure fan voyeurism of witnessing things like Bruce conducting a Spanish-influenced alternate introduction to "Jungleland" or seeing Miami Steve smirk at the problem of spending six months on one song ("Born To Run", the single), what becomes apparent is this: everyone involved with this project began to get the idea that something very special was going on. Looking back at it now, Bruce confirms that the record is about friendship. To this day he appears to be grateful for the effort and dedication that his friends brought to bear.
What with all of the cynicism attached to the music industry these days, it was incredibly refreshing to watch so many people give their all for the sake of friendship and music.
Hats off to producer, director and editor Thom Zimmy. Fantastic stuff.
One more goodie: the documentary DVD contains three live tunes from a show played at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, 1973. A full band "Spirit In The Night", Bruce at the piano. An acoustic "Wild Billy's Circus Story". And last but certainly not least, a rockin' "Thundercrack". I wonder if back in 1973, Springsteen had any idea of what awaited him just a few years down the road.
It was a lot of fun reading Mark and Lisa's thoughts on Born to Run. I think one of the things I enjoyed the most is realizing how similar and yet how different our response and experience with this amazing album is.
I am probably going to get booed down by the two of them but I am apparently the baby of this discussion. I was not in college or grad school when Born to Run was released in 1975. I was in diapers. I was 2-years old (I am ducking as I type that). The Springsteen I grew up with was the Springsteen of Born in the U.S.A..
I discovered Born to Run at about the same age as Mark and Lisa did...college. I think that is no small part of the reason the responses of the three of us were so similar. The universal themes we discussed in Part 1 of this review are timeless and so is the album. The reason Bruce Springsteen still packs auditoriums and sells albums today is not nostalgia. He was thinking long haul from the word go. He wrote about important things at an early age and he never stopped. Incidentally, Born in the U.S.A. is now more than 20 years old. I listened to it today and while there are some very good songs on that album I am convinced it does not have the same life as Born to Run.
So let's talk about those extras...
It has been a bit of a frustrating time to be a music fan. The state of music today is so bad labels have been reduced to re-issuing great albums of the past in 'Deluxe' editions in order to generate some sales. The pisser in this equation is trying to find a way to get people who already bought the album once to buy it again while at the same time attracting folks who passed on the album the first time (or perhaps were in diapers at the time of its initial release). Plenty of these sets fail to deliver the kind of bonus material that will motivate fans to be gouged twice.
Born to Run is not one of them.
I do not mean to give short shrift to the Wings for Wheels documentary but the real treasure in this set is the Live at the Hammersmith-Odeon DVD. This is one of the very few vintage films of Bruce and the boys (back when it was just the boys) and it is stunning.
Springsteen did an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" program in which he made mention of the band having a great group of songs to choose from each night when they were only three albums into their career. He is dead on! The set list is nearly perfect. The performances are inspired and inspiring. "Thunder Road" is not as rocking but it is every bit as dramatic here. "Lost in the Flood" is a show stopper and "She's the One" sounds even more like the Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley homage here than it does on the album the band were promoting that night. This performance is a rare treat. This is the sound of a band still on the rise in terms of their commercial appeal but reaching their peak as a live band and armed with an arsenal of songs with very few peers (and they were only three albums into their career!).
Watching these young Turks and hearing them perform at this level makes you incredibly thankful someone remembered to record this night in 1975. It makes you jealous of the ones who were in the room this night in 1975.
It makes you wish there was more of this band from this period but that passes quickly because this night and this DVD and this album are more than enough.
Well, I can't speak to the extras on this set, because I'm adhering to the rule we have in our house that you don't go out and buy yourself stuff this close to Christmas. And that's okay with me - I'm perfectly willing to wait another month to dig in, but my appetite is certainly whetted by everything I've heard about the Hammersmith footage - I can't wait to see that!
Mark, you spoke about the whole friendship angle that was apparent in the documentary footage. You certainly still get the feeling, watching them perform together now, that friendship is a key ingredient in the long-term success of the band, especially considering that everyone has side projects and 'outside lives'. One of the things I've long admired about Springsteen is the fact that he seems to have managed to survive mega-stardom without falling victim to too many of its trappings. He could have just as easily self-destructed in that spotlight glare or collapsed under the weight of his own mythology, but he seems to have succeeded in living his life with as much normalcy as possible under the circumstances, not a small thing in my opinion.
Hearing DJ talk about getting into Springsteen when he was in college, some sixteen years after Born to Run (if I'm calculating correctly), really does speak to the timelessness and universality of this music. The audiences that you find at a Springsteen show today run the gamut from the original fans who are now in their 50s and are showing up with kids and grandkids in tow, to young people in their late 'teens and early 20s. It's a pretty eclectic mix, and the shows are as powerful as they ever were, although perhaps in a slightly different way, as even the Boss yields a point or two to middle age. What I've taken away from this conversation that we've had is that there is some music that transcends time and place because it touches those parts of the human spirit that we all recognize, and speaks to the things that we often can't articulate but that we all yearn for - that's the music that's destined to live forever.
This is a special Friday Morning Listen in more ways than one. Normally my thoughts and words swirl around that first recording injested at the start of the weekend. This week though, I've invited a couple of guests to celebrate the 30th Anniversary re-release of Bruce Springsteen's iconic album Born To Run. Though we are all quite different people, our ties to this monumental record draw us together. And yes, I did listen to Born To Run on the way to work this morning....and yesterday and the day before that and...OK, every morning this week!Please allow Blogcritics Lisa McKay and DJ Radiohead and myself to expose the madness in our souls.
Well, Mark, you got the ball rolling on Tuesday when you described Born to Run as "a nearly perfect record." I agree with that description, and now here I am faced with the challenge of explaining why. Where do I even start?
This is probably the album I've listened to more times than anything else in my collection. I've never grown tired of it. I put it aside, sometimes for months at a time, but it eventually makes its way back into the rotation, and it always sounds fresh instead of nostalgic, unusual for an album that old. I think that for me, part of the impact of this album has to do with the timing of its release. I don't know what you guys were doing thirty years ago, but 1975 was a really huge year in my life. Specifically, between the end of May and the beginning of September of that year, I graduated from college, got married, and started grad school. It was quite literally the year I entered full-fledged adulthood, with all of the simultaneous terror and exhilaration that entails. This was the music that accompanied the transition, so to call it meaningful would be an understatement; Springsteen has, over the course of his life, written the soundtrack to my own. I said earlier that it always sounds fresh; I think that what I meant to say is that in spite of its high familiarity quotient, it never fails to evoke in me the same set of emotions. My favorite venue for listening to this album is my car, with the volume cranked way up.
This is one of those rare albums that never puts a foot wrong. There's no filler here, no tracks to skip over, no sense that you're listening to an emerging artist whose best work may be yet to come. His talent is already in full bloom here, and if he'd never written another song, this would still be one of the best records ever made, because Born to Run contains some of the finest songwriting of Springsteen's (or anyone's) career. From the first track, with Mary dancing across the porch to the radio, to the last, with that barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge, this record is rich with the visual imagery that recalls growing up in working class America, replete with cars, sex and young people looking to escape the dead end destiny of their elders. While none of that was particularly new to rock and roll, Springsteen infused all of it with a much larger theme &mdash the idea that redemption was always a possibility, that the flame of hope was always flickering somewhere and would burn again if only we could find the love that would keep it alive. Not even the small-time loser who narrates "Meeting Across the River" has lost that hope, even if it's just the unrealistic promise of one last chance.
The music itself became bigger on this album, as Springsteen developed his reputation as a teller of stories that were larger than life yet recognizably familiar. These aren't songs as much as they are part of a larger mythology, one that Springsteen would retell over and over in the years to follow. The quiet despair and intimacy of "Meeting Across the River" gives way to the huge sound of "Jungleland", which is the kind of music that leaves you wet and wrung out when it's over, but at the same time renewed. It's a huge canvas, but if you stand close to it and look, you can see the faces of everyone in the painting in sharp detail. His genius has always been in taking those large, overarching themes and bringing them into focus at the personal level. The stories are intimate and universal at the same time; they are both pure rock and roll (with all of its cultural connotations) and human history as we know it, and that's the genius of this album.
What do you say about a 30-year old album that has reached legendary status? Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Born to Run has more than a little to do with that. Born to Run is the rock on which the Gospel of Springsteen is built. Fans might like other Springsteen albums better but no one can deny how important this album was to his career and is to his legacy.
A lot of Springsteen-ologists have waxed poetic about the virtues of this album and done so in a manner that would put my tiny tribute to shame (our own Lisa McKay, for instance). I am not going to spend time trying to convince anyone that the album is great. It is. That discussion was laid to rest decades ago. Instead, I want to talk about why this album moves me.
Born to Run is teenagers and youth. The youth of today might not be listening to Orbison anymore but they have not changed that much. Cars are still independence. Dreams are still big. Life is still dramatic and adventures epic. Every decision is filtered first through the emotional lens. Love still feels like a matter of life and death. Patience is no virtue because every moment is filled with potential and the possibility. Defining moments or breaking points are a heartbeat away.
They are not exactly kids, the characters in these eight songs. They are young and mostly inexperienced. They still have the hopes and dreams of the young but now they are old enough and experienced enough to see pitfalls and obstacles between them and those dreams. The invincibility of youth is still in tact but it is beginning to fray at the edges. Desperation is setting in.
Every note in every song tells us these kids believe they think this might be their last chance for salvation. The music and the vocals match the intensity and drama of the lyrics. The desperation is palpable. Some of these people are going to find redemption and glory and freedom and all the things their dreams are made of. Most of them will not. That realization is just beginning to take shape in their minds. These eight songs play like eight scenes from a movie or eight scenes from eight different movies. There are characters and scenes and actions and dialogue. Some of today's directors might do well to include some of those things in their movies! What better way to capture the drama in the songs than turning the songs into dramas themselves?
Not every song on the album deals with themes of teenage rebellion, youthful hopes and fears, or escape and freedom. Those themes permeate the album because of Springsteen's vocals. The youth and vitality in his voice is undeniable. There are moments when it sounds like he is trying to sound wise beyond his years and experience. He almost pulls it off but cannot quite escape the youthful exuberance in his soul. The earnestness makes the album all the more endearing.
The last verse of "Born to Run" might be my favorite moment on the album lyrically, sonically, musically, and spiritually. The song opens with such a bang you would think it impossible for there to be any room for it to climb the ladder. It defies explanation. When that part of the song plays I just have to stop what I am doing and listen. It might not be particularly chique to say "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run" are my favorite songs on the album, but they are. These songs are classics because they really do matter and are nearly perfect. I love them and understand why people who have seen Springsteen in concert dozens of times never tire of hearing them.
This re-mastered CD is a revelation. It would be cliché to say it alone is worth the price of admission but I feel comfortable saying that here because without the album no one would care about the rest of the goodies. The music on the first pressing was solid. The sound on the re-issue is better (a lot better). The CD almost delivers the sonic punch one imagines Springsteen was aiming for when he recorded it. It is disappointing Super Audio CD seems to have stiffed in the market place. Short of DSD re-mastering, this is probably as good as this album will ever sound.
I leave you with one final thought: I still do not know what a "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" is. My whole life I have never known. I still don't.
There are some pieces of music that have been a part of me for so long that it's difficult to remember life before them. I mean, I know that I existed before Born To Run but somehow...it just doesn't seem possible.
As both Lisa McKay and DJ Radiohead have so eloquently illustrated, this record had (and still has) impact. The stories. The narrative. The music. It all fits together so seamlessly that, were it not for the differing tempos and rhythms used, you might perceive the album as one extended song.
Born To Run came into my life a few years after its initial release. It went into heavy rotation toward the end of my high school career (1979) and into ultra-heavy rotation in college. Those stories of hope and escape coupled with the cathartic explosiveness of the music quelled my fears. Fears of the future. Who knows what I thought I was escaping from, but I was deathly afraid of what lie ahead. Born To Run gave me a sense of comaraderie with this great and anonymous mass of searching humanity.
Plus it just plain rocked. Hard.
I listen now and have to agree that it does seem fresh today. Let's face it, despite the album's high level of past radio play, familiarity cannot dull the absolute uniqueness of the record's sound.
But what about nostalgia. C'mon, you knew I'd bring that up. There are many reasons I love this album, not the least of which is that there are so many memoir-bits firmly glued to the songs: The emotional releases felt during past concerts. Car rides with an old buddy, windows rolled down and stereo too loud. Long nights hanging out with friends sharing music and building attachments that felt like forever. The slow fade of a dying relationship. New love almost too intense to bear. A hot summer night. A hot summer night with beer.
All of these thoughts (and more) flash through me as Born To Run plays. There's not a dead spot on the album. "Thunder Road" is my favorite? No, they're all my favorite. In the middle of "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" I just can't imagine anything better...until "Night". And on and on.
Born To Run, the song, is the obvious emotional heart of the album. Blistering in its intensity, its aural cinema has no equal in rock. For me, the first and last cuts provide comforting bookends. What amazes me are my reactions. I don't know how many times I've listened to this but when the piano gives way to Bruce's first words..."The Screen Door Slams", my eyes well with tears. Every single time. When those big guitar chords explode after "Tonight In Jungleland"...the hair spikes on my neck and arms.
Oh yes, it is the perfect record.
A note on sonics. At first I wasn't so jazzed about the prospect of a remastering job, since this record was never really what you'd call 'audiophile'. But I was pleasantly surprised to hear how much the noise floor has been dropped, bringing forth all sorts of detail and shading. There are horn ports, guitar licks, strings and vocal bits that I guarantee you have not heard before (unless you've got a good vinyl copy, that is).
Please note that part two of this special edition will follow early next week. There, the authors will respond a bit more the the text above. This will be followed by some thoughts on the extra goodies packed into the 30th Born To Run box, namely the documentary DVD Wings For Wheels: The Making of Born to Run and the stupendous live concert DVD recorded live at the Hammersmith Odeon, 1975.
Oh yea baby, the 30th anniversary re-release of Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run comes out today. Remastered audio. A making-of documentary DVD. A never before seen concert DVD from 1975. I can hardly stand it.To me, Born To Run is a nearly perfect record. From the building passion of "Thunder Road" to cinematic beauty of "Jungleland". This evening, I'll be rippin' this package open and just about bathing in it.
For those so inclined, Bruce will be guesting later today on Terry Gross' radio show Fresh Air.
For a preview of the Wings for Wheels DVD material, check out the podcasts at Feedburner.
In a few days, after the smoke has cleared, please check out the special edition of The Friday Morning Listen, where me and a couple of Blogcritic special guests will turn up the volume to reveal the madness in our souls.
So begins Liane Hansen's interview with pop singer-songwriter John Mayer.
You might think that this is yet another attempt to get Mayer-haters forehead veins to throb extra hard this morning. It's not. If you haven't been paying attention (or maybe have a life, and are unconcerned with such things) there's been a little back 'n forth going on concerning Mayer. It all started with Blogcritics own DJ Radiohead's excellent tribute podcast to the late Elliott Smith. I made the mistake of admitting that I don't 'get' Smith and would instead prefer to listen to John Mayer.
Hoooboy, much snarling ensued. Then the One Big Happy podcast tosses a small can 'o gas onto the fire. Please, somebody reach for the fire extinguisher!
Does it have to be this way? Heck, I don't know. Why we like or dislike things is a fairly mysterious process. I tend to have emotional reactions to music. I hear it, my cells all start pulling in one (or another) direction and I immediately know. Just this morning I switched on the Sirius and tuned in to the all-Springsteen channel "The Bridge". They played his live version of Jimmy Cliff's "Trapped". For whatever reason, the chorus of that song just gets to me. I literally well up as the chorus swells. Why?
I have no idea.
So I've listened to the Elliott Smith tribute five times. I can sense the author's passion for the music...music that just does not speak to me. One thing I can say about it is that I tend to not respond to male voices that are soft, whispy and (supposedly) melancholy. I say 'supposedly' because my emotional reaction to the texture of the voice is to draw away and completely miss the emotion that I take is is supposed to be there. Obviously, it's just me because just two days ago, I listened to Petra Haden and Bill Frisell. The first tune "Satellite" really caught my ear. Yea, it was written by Elliott Smith.
The irony of the Mayer interview is that he goes on to say that because he's not a good rocker he couldn't ever see releasing a record like that. I don't know what that Mayer Trio record is going to sound like but from what I've read it's a move (or an attempted move) away from 'smooth'.
So did I have an emotional reaction to the music on this record. Sure I did. I immediately liked the way Mayer layered electric arpeggios on top of the acoustic guitar strumming. I was a little surprised at this because I'd read so much negative bluster about the guy. So much that I figured that there was nothing there. Yet I bought the album because I liked the vibe of "Neon" (the main riff remined me of a pop version of jazz bass-torturer Charlie Hunter) and Mayer's unpretentious attitude in that interview. That was enough for me.
If you remove the traditional anchor element, the bass, from the jazz trio, an interesting thing happens. By necessity, the other players must move to fill in that role. The responsibility for the bottom end becomes fluid, shifting from musician to musician as inspiration strikes.Take the case of recordings like Undercurrent by Bill Evans and Jim Hall. The lack of bass allowed both Hall and Evans to add low-end lines and phrases exactly where they made sense, unencumbered by the 'normal' roles of their instruments.
Trumpeter Enrico Rava's latest release, Tati, makes great use of that sort of 'role transposition'. The bottom line duality mostly occurs between pianist Stefano Bollani and drummer Paul Motian. This definitely plays to Motian's strength: that of an extremely sensitive and melodic drummer. His ability to imply a song's basic architecture with a minimum number of strokes is perfectly complemented by Bollani's delicate and gorgeous phrasings.
All of this leaves Rava with a great deal of interesting space in which to fit his warm horn lines. Space is the key word here. Not only does Rava take great care to play just what is needed (and no more...a trait he shares with Miles), he also give his sidemen great latitude. This gives the compositions time to develop, breaking most of them away from the head/solos/head model.
The selections on Tati reveal quite a lot about the leader's musical history. The opening interpretation of Gershwin's "The Man I Love" wrings every last drop of romance out of the notes. In a nod to Rava's free jazz years, there's a nice "Cornettology", full of plenty of tumbling unison play. Paul Motian brings three selections to the table as well. The closing "Gang of 5" is a perfect example of what this trio is all about: melody. Though not without its angularities, the melodies remain romantic and warm. Bollani shows that he can write as well as play on his own "Casa Di Bambola". Somehow he manages to traverse both ends of the keyboard without turning things into a chops-fest.
I continue to be impressed with Enrico Rava 'modern' concept. It's as though you can hear all of Rava's past musical experiences (including the European free jazz movement) reduced and intensified. Best of all, his rapport with Bollani is just stunning, making me look forward to their future together.
A View From The Chair
I did something a couple of nights ago that I haven't done in about eleven months: I went up to my listening room and ingested a pile of records. Yes, records. Vinyl. Black circles. Albums. Use any description you like.
For a bunch of reasons...work, moving to a new house, getting a new dog, cognitive dissonance and the presence of one or the other stepkid at various points, I just have not been able to carve out enough 'me-time' to make it back to the listening chair.
Much of that has changed recently so I've allowed myself to wade back into the world of used vinyl exploration. The list below was purchased at a new record shop over in Brattleboro, Vermont. In The Moment records has a fine selection of jazz albums. In fact, I had to restrain myself as I like to buy only as many records as can be dealt with in one listening session.
Vive la vinyl!
Pierre Dorge Quartet - Ballad Round The Left Corner
This was a near-total crapshoot. I've never heard of guitarist Dorge, but the names Billy Hart (drums) and John Tchicai (soprano and alto sax) were familiar. This is mostly straight ahead jazz with a fair bit of angularity. Dorge's playing goes from the ethereal to way out there. He has a Jim Hall-type tone, but even less electric. Gorgeously recorded, it sounds like just a couple of mics. It sounds like you're right there in the room.
Paul Motian Quintet - Jack Of Clubs
A huge find. Drummer Motian employed two saxes (Joe Lovano, Jim Pepper), bassist Ed Schuller and Bill Frisell (before he was really Bill Frisell, if ya know what I mean). OK, that's not quite right about Frisell. He does use a volume pedal to get that attackless sound. But there's no distortion and not much in the way of those mile-long tones. Still, you can hear where he was headed. Lovano and Pepper kill on this disc. Leader Motian ties it all together with interesting compositions and supremely melodic drumming.
Power Tools - Strange Meeting
Now this is where Bill Frisell was headed. With Melvin Gibbs on bass and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, Strange Meeting sounds like the jazz equivalent of a rock power trio.
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Kabalaba, Live at Montreaux Jazz Festival
With guest Muhal Richard Abrams on piano, this is the Art Ensemble at their polyrhythmic, squeekalicious best.
Keith Jarrett - Bop-be
The time will come when architects and engineers will be summoned to my house to shore up the floor beneath my Keith Jarrett collection. Not yet though. The latest addition is a sealed copy of Bop-Be, a session covering the music of Jarrett, Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman and Alec Wilder. The cast includes Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Contains some inspired play (as you would expect from this group) and some incredibly annoying Jarrett whining.
Buddy Emmons - Steel Guitar Jazz
A jazz quartet plus steel guitar as lead instrument. This might sound like a novelty record but instead it's Emmons playing his heart out on a program of standards and originals (the opening "Bluemmons" is killer). Very cool to hear the steel guitar trading fours with the sax. The unison playing on Sonny Rollins "Oleo" is just nuts.
A bonus with this last record (and one of many reasons why used record shopping is so much fun) is the old record sleeve. One side contains a bunch of ads for artists of the day: Brook Benton, Smothers Brothers, Lesley Gore, Johnny Mathis, Mitchel Trio and Sarah Vaughn. The other side has three ads for various portable Mercury record players. Yep, mono and stereo phonographs, some of which ran on flashlight batteries. Precursors to the iPod? Sort of. Anyway, the ad copy is great: "Mercury Full Throated Fully Transistorized Portable Phonographs".
Oooh, fully throated!
What do Neil Diamond, System of a Down, the Beastie Boys and The Dixie Chicks have in common?Rick Rubin.
Yes, that bearded and mysterious, spiritual, meditating, record producer-type guy. I don't know what kind of audio voodoo he's able to conjure but, let's face it, his work speaks for itself. From the Beastie Boys to Run D.M.C to Rage Against The Machine to Johnny Cash...a diverse roster of artists, all made to shine through Rubin's magic. Unlike a producer like, say, Jeff Lynne, who seems to impart his unique aural stamp on things, Rubin is able to hear the essence of the performer and that is brought out front.
Does this apply to the International Noise Conspiracy? Though I have no reason to doubt it, my answer is: I don't know. See, I've never heard this band up until now. But I'm willing to take a little leap of faith here based on Rubin's stellar track record.
The raw and chunky opening riff of "Black Mask" will give you a good idea of where these guys are headed. Snarling, hard-edged guitar, aggressive drumming and solid, hyperactive bass. Vocalist Dennis Lyxzen's slightly slurry delivery brings to mind Jagger, if Jagger was from Sweden.
Looking for a label for all of this is, well...with elements of good old 70's hard rock, early & 'modern' punk and even a bit of alternative rock (gees, I hate that term), it's not easy. How about "RockThat'llMakeYouTurnUpYourCarStereoTooLoud". Hey, that's what happened to me!
There are a few textural factors that make Armed Love such a kick to listen to. First is the use of undeniably catchy rhythms. From the slamming and relentless opening of "Black Mask" to the driving bassline of "Let's Make History" to the amped up "Iko Iko" rhythm of the title track to the jumpy octaves of "A Small Demand" to the second-line-on-too-much-caffeine drumming on "This Side Of Heaven"....it's the kind of stuff that makes a person want to be bobbin' the head, pounding the wheel and playing air drums.
The second "sound gem" here is the heavy use of organ. Benmont Tench (Tom Petty) and the legendary Billy Preston weave their magic all over the place, bringing in a sort of classic Geils/Elvis Costello & the Attractions/Joe Jackson vibe. The latter reference stands out in particular when bassist Inge Johansson is given space to really instigate. Definitely shades of Graham Maby.
A few years go, 'modern rock' really was making me feel old. I should have had a little faith or at least remembered that these things run in cycles. I should have also remembered that there are some folks out there with 'big ears'. Folks who know (and are still out to prove) that rock isn't dead.
But...Neil Diamond??!
Are old & favorite records "security blankets"?On my way home last night I caught a bit of yet another tasty episode of The Front Porch on my local public radio station. It was all about bands from New Hampshire. Sadly, I arrived home about three minutes into the show and had to miss the rest (thank gawd for podcasting though...I'll get the rest this weekend). During the show's intro host Shay Zeller wondered about why it is that we tend to become disinterested in new music, resorting to listening to the same few recordings over and over again:
Yea, most people do just stop. I had the opportunity about a year ago to interview John Medeski (Medeski, Martin & Wood) and we sort of got on to that topic. I said that people get out of school, become adults and just stop listening. His reply? "That's why this country is fucked!". Much laugher ensued.
Seriously though, there are all sorts of valid reasons for revisiting old favorites. I do it often, though my hunger for new music (of which there seems to be an unending flow) never abates. I always find it interesting when folks proclaim how much they hate music from the past ("Ah, I burned out on that.", etc.) Sure, I maybe listened to, say, Dark Side Of The Moon a few too many times (whatever 'too many' means), but that doesn't mean that I'll never listen to it again.
So this morning I stood in front of the rack, jaw a'slack, trying to pick out something that had a lot of miles on it....and Aerosmith's Toys In The Attic fit the bill.
Now of course this album is 'road tested' in more ways than one. "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion" have been played a bazillion times on the radio. Still, I don't ever tire or the record. Me and the girlfriend blasted it in high school, I annoyed people with it in college, I annoyed neighbors with it in my first apartment after graduation. And, as I'm sure you would expect, there are tons of memories attached to it: the time I actually had tickets to see Aerosmith at the Augusta Civic Center (they cancelled), the time that the principal at our high school threatened to shut down a dance if the band played "Big Ten Inch Record" (they played it anyway).
And then there's the music. No amount of supposed 'overplay' can get me tired of the tangled & angular guitar solos during "Walk This Way", the slurry opening to "Adam's Apple", the adrenaline rush of the title track and yea, the goofy stomp of "Big Ten Inch Record".
So maybe these things are security blankets. Maybe my real name is Linus.
Anybody else have any well-worn records that they just can't bear to part with? I just bet ya do.
No harm was meant by last week's remark. I was just being honest...you can't fault me for that. It was this: I'd rather listen to John Mayer than Elliott Smith.So there, I've said it again. Not to illustrate that I've got not indie cred. That I apparently have no taste in music. Not even to piss off the legions of Smith fans. No, that is not the point.
The point...is that this stuff is completely and utterly subjective. Further, there are really no objective measures for the 'goodness' of the music we love (sorry, Duke Ellington). Do I like Springsteen's "She's The One" over, say "Billy Don't Be A Hero"? Without a doubt. Is one 'better' than the other? I don't think there's an answer. I also don't care that there isn't one.
I bring all of this up because Neil Young has always struck me as one of those love-him-or-hate-him kind of artists. His shaky voice either resonates with you (count me in there) or annoys you. Elliott Smith seems to be such an artist as well. He was a genius. He was boring. Not much middle ground there.
As for Neil Young and my early listening years, I came fairly late in his game. The first record was Rust Never Sleeps. From there I worked my way backwards. Then the 80's hit and I had to hang on for musical life. From the 'normal' (Comes A Time) to the experimental (Trans), Young has been one thing: sincere. Sometimes, painfully so.
Prairie Wind does not divert from that course, from the pain of losing a loved one to political hypocrisy and cynicism to questions of the nature of God - there's not a lot of veneer coating anything here.
This is more evident on "Falling Off The Face Of The Earth", during which Young professes his love with a chorus falsetto so brittle and wobbly that you just know he meant it.
A lot of Prairie Wind's instrumentation leans toward the usual folk/country vein but, as always, there are a few surprises. "Far From Home", an ode to life in rural Canada, mixes in a swaggering horn section, making it seem a little like Neil Young and the Asbury Jukes. The horns resurface on the title track as well. Sure, Young has used horns before ("This Note's For You") but they're torqued up a bit by their mixture with an acoustic-only backing.
"Far From Home" leads into the not particularly surprising, but highly romantic and sentimental "Only A Dream". I'm mostly not a 'lyrics guy', but this chorus got to me:
Prairie Wind ends with a trio of songs that leave me a little worried about the old guy. "This Old Guitar" takes a gentle look at a physical object that's been a true friend throughout the years. "He Was The King" is a country stomper paying tribute to Elvis (complete with swelling horns and female backup-type singers). The record ends with "When God Made Me", which tosses a lot of pointed questions God's way. I guess what's worrying me is that Neil's doing an awful lot of looking back. Maybe we all do this more and more as we get on in years (and I suppose if I'd had to deal with things like a brain aneurysm, I'd be looking back a little too), so perhaps I shouldn't worry...but Neil Young's been through a lot and I'm afraid it's starting to show.
Overall, I'd say that this record fits in nicely with his older albums like Harvest and Comes A Time. Think of it as a companion record to Harvest Moon. Maybe not hugely different, but definitely worth checking out.
Neil Young. Elliott Smith. John Mayer. You can play a game of "which of these artists doesn't belong", or you can remember that it's a big world out there...and we're not likely to agree on anything.
