noise the column – Brooklyn Bugle

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Music, Opinion

We All Know the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame Blows. Can We Try to do Something About It?

December 17, 2014

Listen, there is very goddamn little need to add my churning, gasping puffs of breath to the howl of outrage over the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. First of all, there are a lot more important things to wax indignant about; secondly, saying the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame is full of shit is like saying the rents in NYC are too damn high, or that Dick Cheney is a war criminal, or that buffalo chicken doesn’t belong on a slice of pizza, or that Sting, the Shabbos Goy of Reggae, is a tool: it is so obvious that it no longer needs stating.

Sting: Shabbos Goy

Breaking News! The Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame is full of shit! In other Breaking News, water is wet, the New York Yankees threw the 2014 season to make a billion dollars carting around the horny corpse of Derek Jeter, and Jim J Bullock is gay!

(Nevertheless, we add parenthetically…The following artists are NOT in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame: Roxy Music, the New York Dolls, the Smiths, the Carpenters, Cheap Trick, the B52s, Joe Cocker, ELO, Joy Division, the Monkees, Sonic Youth, the MC5, and most horrifically – in my opinion – Kraftwerk, who ARE ONLY THE SECOND MOST INFLUENTIAL BAND OF ALL TIME. Let me also gurgle that in 2015, the Hall is presenting Ringo Starr with the Award for Musical Excellence – THAT’S NOT A TYPO. Presenting Ringo Starr with an Award for Musical Excellence is a little like presenting Dave Grohl with an Award for Public Reclusiveness.)

But rather than CONTINUE the dialogue regarding how truly ridiculous and corrupt the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame is, instead I would like to suggest A CALL TO ACTION. This is pretty straightforward:

FIRST. I call on all my acquaintances/associates who are voting members of the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame to resign, and do so publicly.

I’ll be honest – I don’t know WHICH of my friends are voters, but I am goddamn sure I know a few. This isn’t like the Student Council at Great Neck South, where you earnestly convince yourself that your Voice of Dissent will surely make a difference. Friends, your intelligence, perception, and knowledge of musical history mean NOTHING within the overall context of the CLOWN COLLEGE that is the Hall of Fame. This is a BULLSHIT organization and YOU KNOW IT, and WHOEVER YOU ARE, I GUARANTEE, I mean I one-hundred perfuckingcent GURANFUCKINGTEE that the STATEMENT YOU WILL MAKE BY RESIGNING AS A VOTING MEMBER WILL MAKE MORE OF A DIFFERENCE THAN WHATEVER IMPACT YOU CAN MAKE BY STAYING. Let me repeat (because I LOVE repeating myself, even more than I love those donuts they used to have at Stan’s Donuts in Westwood that had an entire peanut butter cup INSIDE the donut): The MC5, the Dolls, Sonic Youth, and Kraftwerk are NOT in the fucking Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. How can you LEGITIMIZE being part of such an asinine group?

Stan’s Donuts in Westwood. Proof of God, both merciful and cruel.

You CAN’T. Period…unless they are employing you and/or giving you health insurance. It’s damn hard to get a job and it’s hard to get health insurance. Shit, if you were a friend of mine and The Josef Mengele Memorial Institute For the Creative Exploitation of Twins was giving you health insurance, I would probably give you a pass, especially if they gave you Dental.

Secondly, I call on people I know of intelligence, taste, and influence to band together to form a RIVAL Hall of Fame that can TRULY honor the creative innovators, business pioneers, and commercial dynamos of pop and rock history. Of course, you don’t have to CALL it the Hall of Fame, we’ll think of another suitable name.

This time, I will name names, and suggest some people of influence and intelligence, all of whom are well aware of the intricacies, magical achievements, and beautiful dark alleys of rock and pop history, and who would be ideal to start this thing: Danny Goldberg, Chris Morris, Steve Hochman, Tim Page, Michael Alago, Nik Cohn, Hugo Burnham, Ira Robbins, Merle Ginsberg, Evan Davies, Martin Atkins, Steve Wynn, Steve Lillywhite, Doug Herzog, John Rubelli, Karen Glauber, Jim Testa, Seth Swirsky, Leyla Turkan, Sally Timms, Paul Sanchez, Perry Watts-Russell, Janet Billig, Mitch Easter, Ben Sandmel, Binky Phillips, Karen Schoemer, Jack Rabid, Carol Kaye, Moby, Martha Quinn, Matthew Kaplan, Roy Traikin, THIS IS ALL JUST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, but DAMN, wouldn’t you trust THESE PEOPLE to help honor the great men and women who helped make rock’n’roll the defining meme of our generation?

And I sincerely doubt ANY of these people would sit around making up awards for the E Street Band or putting Hall & Oates in the Hall of Fame BEFORE the MC5 or the Dolls. Rock’n’Pop is a beautiful and meaningful story with powerful repercussions in so many aspects of our lives; the people who built this business and made this art form deserve to be commemorated in a legitimate way.

So do something, people, or stop fucking complaining.

A slice at Benny Tudino’s in Hoboken. Quite honestly, the only food worth dying for.

And I’ll underline this (since I love repeating myself more than I love the pizza at Benny Tudino’s, but less than I love Hawkwind): IF YOU ARE A VOTING MEMBER OF THE ROCK’N’ROLL HALL OF FAME, RESIGN. RESIGN NOW. Make a statement that their BULLSHIT is, well, bullshit.

Godfather of Slocore OUT.

From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Music, News, Opinion

Derwood Andrews, and the sound of a post-punk, post-blues Catcus Acid Milkshake

December 16, 2014

Let’s put it this way: If TONE POET, VOL. II was a new album by Beck, it would almost certainly be a serious contender for the Grammy for Album of the Year; if it was by, say, Bob Dylan, it would be the certain winner. If Tone Poet, Vol. II was a new soundtrack to a Coen Brothers film curated by T Bone Burnett, it would be a much-talked about evocation of 21^stCentury Blues; and if it was a new release by, oh, Mark Lannegan, post-grungers all over this great land would be getting stoned and telling their friends it was the best album of the year.

Bob Derwood Andrews, 21st Century Ambient Blues Hero.

But Tone Poet, Vol. II is the extraordinary new album by a relatively little know artist named Derwood Andrews. This deeply sensuous and luscious exploration of ambient blues and Americana is rootsy, meditative, and utterly magical to listen to; if you have ever pressed your ear against an acoustic guitar and just heard it ringing, if you’ve ever just wanted to live within the sound of an open tuned steel guitar, if you ever wanted to hear the sound of Clarksdale meeting the sound of Joshua Tree (with a very, very heavy dose of surround-sound hydrophonic/acidphonics), you will love this album. Tone Poet, Vol. II is an album for people who love the SOUND of the guitar, by which I mean the deep, rich, natural ambience and harmonic of a beautiful, open-tuned instrument; it’s also an amazing exploration into old American forms, made dreamlike yet tactile, new, and resonant to the heart.

Derwood Andrews is an English ex-pat living in the California desert, and he exists in that strange, sometimes frustrating netherworld between cult artist, undeserved obscurity, and intentional mystery. I will admit that I know a lot about his work between 1977 and 1981, and relatively little about what he’s done since then. However, what he recorded between ’77 and ’81 contains great power and magic, so I’ll devote a few words to it:

Generation X (Derwood Andrews 2nd from Right)

Bob Derwood Andrews was the guitarist for Generation X, and plays on their first two (essential) albums (their self-titled debut and the sensational, deep, and much overlooked Valley of the Dolls). After leaving the band in 1980, Andrews and Generation X drummer Mark Laff went on to form the band Empire and record one truly remarkable record. That album, Expensive Sound, is very goddamn close to being a classic, and Empire may be one of the best “single album” bands of all time (i.e., bands that only lasted long enough to make one album — I generally rate Empire right up there with Young Marble Giants and the Rich Kids). Expensive Sound is a deeply personal take on punk, turning the shout of punk into an intimate bedroom murmur; it presents a series of deep confessions over hushed riffs and loaded spaces, and it is like no other album of it’s time. On one hand, it summons the bittersweet sepia whispers of the Go Betweens or Big Star, on the other hand it anticipates the highly personal riff, rip, and confess style of Nirvana (it is highly speculated that Kurt Cobain was greatly influenced by Empire).

Additionally, around the same time, Andrews helped make another extraordinary album. In 1980, Andrews and Laff collaborated with Sham 69’s Jimmy Pursey to record Pursey’s first solo album, the sadly overlooked and rather wonderful Imagination Camouflage. Solid yet artistic, Imagination Camouflage album combines the bite of Valley of the Dolls with the sandy, sad depth of Expensive Sound, but with a bit of PiL and Peter Gabriel hanging over the proceedings. I have long advocated that Valley of the Dolls, Expensive Sound, and Imagination Camouflage need to be viewed as a rare and extraordinary trilogy, the sound of Andrews and Laff trying to wrestle a new kind of artistry out of punk that blends classic ‘70s britrock dynamics with a deeply emotional mindset that anticipated both Grunge and Emo. Fucking remarkable work, and this “lost” trilogy really deserves its’ own column (maybe at another time, when I am not so distracted by the continuing horror of those ads for Sting’s Lost Sailboat or Trouble Down At The Mill or whatever the fuck that atrocity is called). But anyway…

I sadly didn’t keep track of what Derwood Andrews did after the early-ish ‘80s, other than I knew he moved to the Southwest, and he played a one-off reunion gig with Generation X in London in 1993. I am quite damn sure that there was a lot of wonderful work that I missed, but I am catching up with the story again in 2014, with the amazing Tone Poet, Vol. II.

Deeply modern, deeply old, this is a motherfucker resonator of an album. Tone Poet, Vol. II is full of songs that are so lightly but perfectly sketched they feel almost as if Andrews just transcribed them out of the desert air; this is complimented by a Lanois-esqe attention to depth of sound that is absolutely mega-sensuous, like a cactus milkshake poured slowly over a crossroads where the devil and the hi-def meet. The landscape is completed by a frisson of ultra-simple synths effectively swooping in every now and then and occasionally goosing the rhythm. Unlike the more tightly-wound, Beck-esque Tone Poet, Vol. I, Vol. II is pure Ry Cooder-in-a-planetarium National Guitar opium blues; in fact, if you ever wished that Ry Cooder, Chris Whitley, and Daniel Lanois made an album together while chewing on about a dozen Benadryl, then this is the album for you (and you can listen to excerpts and/or buy Tone Poet, Vol. II here).

Like Scott Walker and Sunn O))) in their Everest-high and Marianas Trench-low Soused album, Andrews is finding an effective new vocabulary for traditional American melodies and musical/lyrical topics; the slow, sighing, echoing, whisper-in-the-ear blues of Andrews recalls scratchy old 78s, sassy medicine show whistles, lonesome yodelers and lonely twelve-bar bar bands, but it sounds naked, rich, and fresh. More than anything else, Tone Poet, Vol. II is just gorgeous to listen to, and wraps around you like a thick, slightly scratchy, sleepy blanket.

I’ll add one more thing. Very recently, Billy Idol told me that he would happily reunite with Generation X. Whereas I am not advocating that (as much as I’d like to see it), it would be fascinating to hear Idol, a vastly underrated and sensitive melodicist and lyricist, bring his penchant for big-screen prom-night pop into the mushroom-laced abandoned drive-in in the desert world of Derwood Andrews. Both artists are exponents of different caricatures of the American Musical Dream, and it would be very interesting to hear what they would make together.

From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, History, Opinion

Darius Rucker, Race, and Turning a Moment in Time into a True Movement

December 15, 2014

I understand that Darius Rucker is on the pants-end of a social media ass-kicking because he sang “White Christmas” at the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting, in the midst of a night of protest and outrage over the non-indictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choke-hold death of Eric Garner.

http://youtu.be/Gv0jE8fYrWM

I will admit that the rough lines of the story don’t look especially good. But I want to say this:

There is not a single white American who has ANY idea what it is like to spend FOUR SECONDS as a black man in America. Repeat: if you are white, all your wisdom, empathy, indignation, and activism does not qualify you to be an ANT standing in the SHADOW of the CHALK OUTLINE of the actual experience of being BLACK IN AMERICA.

So unless you are an African American, and SPECIFICALLY an African American descendent of a slave, do not even freaking open your gob.

I knew Darius Rucker, and YOU, no matter HOW full of IRE you are about Eric Garner or Michael Brown or ANY of the horrors inflicted by white America on people of color, ARE NO DARIUS RUCKER. He is the real fucking deal and he shall NOT be crucified because of his success within the halls of white America. Darius was born and raised on the low-end of socio-economic spectrum in the U. S. of Inequality, and just because he fought his way out and achieved great successes on stage in front of (almost entirely) white audiences and made a hefty living off of the white man’s dollar DOESN’T mean that he HASN’T been made aware, constantly, in ways noxious and obscene, of his race. I have seen it with my own fucking eyes; I have seen this princely, talented man be gruesomely harassed and harangued because of the color of his skin, I have seen dull, thick white manatees wave rebel flags in his face and I have seen him refused service, all because he dared to be a black man in a white man’s world. So as far as I am fucking concerned, Darius Rucker can get on stage at the Chabad Telethon and sing “Mysterious Coon” (very cool old medicine show blues recording) and he would be ABOVE even ONE whispered syllable of criticism by ANY white man, because NO white man knows DICK about what it is to be a black man in America, even what it is to be a RICH SUCCESSFUL BLACK MAN IN AMERICA.

A moment from the Chabad Telethon.

Secondly, there’s a lot of chatter out there about how all the recent (and remarkable) protests of the police murders of young black men somehow represents the emergence of a “new” civil rights movement in America. Nice thought, but…

As valuable as these protests are, as acutely necessary as the awareness of these crimes are, as wondrous as it is to see young people actually CARING about something other than Iggy Fucking Azalea and The Desolation of Flipping Smaug, I STRONGLY feel the following:

Until the voices of dissent and protest, young and old, can LINK the crimes of police and grand juries with voting rights, grotesque inequalities in available public education, and access to health care and social services for the poor and non-white, this ain’t a “New” civil rights movement. Absolutely, as it stands it is indeed some long over-due noise about an important cause, and it might be the ROOT of something, but it NEEDS to coalesce into something more: AT THIS VERY MOMENT, as I type these words, operatives of the Republican Party, LOADED with money and organized tighter than a Steely Dan rhythm section, are planning ways to keep POOR PEOPLE and BLACK PEOPLE and other outcasts from “their” version of the American Dream AWAY from the polls in the next Presidential election in 2016.

FIGURE OUT A WAY TO LINK TODAY’S OUTRAGE OVER THE MURDERS OF ERIC GARNER, MICHAEL BROWN, TRAYVON MARTIN, et al with the plot to keep the blacks and the poor from voting in 2016; figure out a way to link it with the CHASM between public education available to the inner city poor and private education available to the scions of the white and wealthy; figure out a way to CHANNEL that outrage into creating reasonable options for healthcare and social services amongst America’s disenfranchised, and THEN you can call it a “New” Civil Rights Movement.

Seriously, let’s start here: All you people at those beautiful and moving Die-Ins? STAY STRONG, STAY ORGANIZED, GET MORE ORGANIZED, AND GO TO STATES WHERE POOR VOTERS AND VOTERS OF COLOR NEED THEIR RIGHTS PROTECTED AT THE POLLS. Because the next Presidential election is going to be decided based on YOUR ability to stand in the way of the Republicans very well-constructed plans to keep America’s disenfranchised OUT of the election booth. Make plans NOW to use your new desire to “make a difference” and your ability to use social media to organize and GET YOUR ASSES TO THOSE STATES WHERE THE BLACK AND POOR ARE GOING TO BE STOPPED FROM VOTING.

THEN you can lay a legitimate claim to being part of a new Civil Rights movement.

And leave Darius Rucker alone. He is the real fucking deal. However, Darius, if you’re reading this, I recommend the following: GET SOME OF YOUR WHITE COUNTRY SUPERSTAR FRIENDS TO HELP PROTECT THE VOTING RIGHTS OF ALL AMERICANS IN 2016.

And Sting is a tool.

From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Music, Opinion

The Ten Greatest Guitar Riffs of All Time, Revealed!

December 11, 2014

There is a delicious squabble going on in the webbernet: Kinks’ guitarist Dave Davies is appropriately livid that his brother Ray has recently taken credit for the earth-changing guitar sound Dave devised for “Your Really Got Me.” Now, Dave doesn’t contend that Ray more-or-less wrote the riff; he just is alarmed that Ray is taking credit for the sound, which was as significant an element of this stunning scene-change as the riff itself.

Dave Davies

Any follower of the Kinks (especially one cognizant of the mercurial and frequently downright-unpleasant behavior of Ray Davies) is barely surprised by this most recent kerfuffle. Without a doubt, Dave’s story is the one to be believed. In July 1964, when Dave stuttered and distorted the bar-chord that Bo Diddley had fiddled with a decade or so earlier, he literally invented an entirely new avenue for rock music; it is one of the fundamental moments in the history of the guitar.

In any event, the whole thing got me to thinking about riffs. I have been a serious fucking acolyte and proselytizer for the Church of the Riff pretty much since the day I first heard “You Really Got Me.” Riffs are the crosses the rock’n’roll Christ was nailed to, the stone upon which the rock’n’roll church was built. Riffs are the raised print on the calling card of rock. Me likee riffs long time.

Jesus (artist’s interpretation). Somehow, he has worked his way into this discussion.

And no, I don’t consider “Louie Louie” the Baby Jesus of all riffs; in its’ first incarnations, the “Louie Louie” riff is a fiddle-thin piano plink transcribed to guitar; admirable in composition, but pale in execution, especially when held up to the Kinks sonic farts to come. For all intents and purposes, the riff era begins in June of 1964, when Dave slugs out those hefty F-G’s.

And by “riffs,” I am talking about something fairly specific: a sequence of bar chords played on the guitar in a repetitive fashion, with a significant element of the song introduced or sung over the chord sequence. For instance, “Can’t Explain” by the Who is (what I call) a riff; the (nearly as arresting) “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain is not (great part, but too much single-note diddling and not enough bar chords). Likewise, the extraordinary, branding arpeggios that inaugurate “Don’t Fear The Reaper” isn’t (for the purposes of this discussion) a riff, but the slug-like bolts of armor that open BÖC’s “Godzilla” most certainly is. And anything keyboard-driven is not up for consideration, which eliminates worthy riffs like “Tin Soldier” by the Small Faces or “Open Your Eyes” by the Nazz.

Got it?

So I thought I would take the time to list my favorite riffs. Yeah. These are more or less in order. Yeah.

Jailbreak Thin Lizzy

There is so much to say about Thin Lizzy — they almost literally invented the modern day rock ballad, their influence on U2 (and all modern posture rock) is incalculable, along with Springsteen they showed their was a middle ground between proletariat crowd-rabble rousing and sensitive and credible songwriting, and Phil Lynott is one of the great rock stars of all time – but I often just prefer to think of them as the writers of the greatest riff in rock history. It’s “Can’t Explain” re-written by Free, it’s “Gloria” running for a subway, it’s a big chunk of rubbery tuna gulping for breath between slabs of mayonnaise, it is almost dream-like in it’s weird mixture of gigantic and intimate, it is the riff’s riff.

I Need You The Kinks

After the success of You Really Got Me, the Kinks tried a lot of variations on the slurring bar-chord thing, each a little better than the one before. This is the apotheosis; it’s as if the Kinks saw into the future they had created, and just let the beast loose, predicting the feedback howl of The Creation or Hendrix, the punk aggression of the Stooges or Pistols, and the junkyard repetition of Suicide or krautrock.

Cities on Flame With Rock’n’Roll Blue Öyster Cült

Yes, I know it’s a re-write of Sabbath’s “The Wizard,” but it’s a superior re-write, dammit, reducing the somewhat frantic jumble of the Sabbath original into a menacing slur that sounds like an eight-story Golem trashing the car-part yards that one used to find near Shea Stadium. True, it almost disqualifies itself due to its’ single note-to-bar chord ratio, but those first three chords just announce the Fall of Man as well as anything ever recorded, so this has to get on the list.

Grim Reaper Detective

Let’s say someone gave Led Zeppelin an IV-drip full of pure Costa Rican coffee beans, then told them to spit out a riff based on the “Odessa stairs” sequence in the movie Battleship Potemkin, with the further instruction to make it sound like “You Really Got Me” played sideways by someone describing the Running of the Bulls, and you have this strange, aggressive, gorgeous riff. I also believe this is the only riff here that’s from an out-of-print and non-streamed record, and that’s a goddamn shame. I will further note that if you grew up on Long Island in the 1970s, you knew this as the song in the Speaks commercial.

I Want You The Troggs

Clearly, just a re-write of the “Wild Thing” riff that had made the Troggs famous, but because they’re, well, the Troggs, they couldn’t help but make it dumber, fiercer, and more threatening (and did I mention dumber?); this is the sound of a bully stealing the meds from a school for children with downs’ syndrome and then burning the place down, and then going to fuck his girlfriend, who looks a lot like Juliette Lewis after she drank a lot of cough syrup.

AC/DC, who are not on this list, for reasons explained immediately to the left of this picture.

Now is probably a good time to answer a question you are most surely asking: Why is there no Sabbath or AC/DC on the list? AC/DC aren’t here for the same reason you don’t put John Entwistle on a best bassists’ list or Pet Sounds on a best albums list: their presence is so obvious that to include them would just humble, obfuscate, clog, and complicate the completion of the entire project. For instance, you could inarguably include at least three AC/DC riffs in the top ten – “Highway to Hell,” “Sin City,” and “TNT” — and could make a good case for including four, five, six, or seven; so if one is going to functionally complete a list like this, you have to do it without AC/DC. Let’s just call them Lords of the Riff, and be done with it. As for Black Sabbath, I’ll be frank: What Sabbath did (and to a degree, invented, though the Move, also from Birmingham, seems to have dabbled with it first) was pretty freaking amazing, but their brethren and offspring actually improved on it; the stoner and doom metal movement that emerged in the late ‘80s and beyond took the Coyote Crawl of Sabbath’s slabber and turned it into Cerebus Slobbering through the sludge of Hades; basically, you can pick up any CD by Fu Manchu, Weedeater, Wo Fat, Electric Wizard, Orange Goblin, and many, many more, and you’ll see that they’ve basically bettered Sabbath at their own game.

Now, back to the list.

Roadrunner Jonathan Richman

A lot of great riffs are re-interpretations of earlier classic riffs; “Roadrunner” was a taming of the Velvets’ world-ending and feral “Sister Ray,” but they replaced the drug beast howl of “Sister Ray” with a clarity and krautrock motorik discipline, and even an overlay of Fabs/Big Star sensitivity. It’s one of the great stompy-fisty riffs of all time, “Autobahn” transcribed by the Dave Clark 5.

Farmer John The Premieres

It’s curious that this riff appears nowhere in Don and Dewey’s original version of “Farmer John” (a wonderful, but riff-less, dose of amphetamine r’n’b via the Everlys); I would love to know how the Premieres came up with this, and why they attached it to this song (anyone who wants to contribute some thoughts/theories, please do so). It’s a slightly more elaborate, more syncopated, and less drunken variation of “Louie Louie,” and Neil Young did a kickass version, too, in which he underlined the proto-Sabbath slur of the riff by filling it with volume and morphine.

Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult

BÖC have the honor of being the only band represented on this list twice. A profoundly influential riff – along with a pile of Sabbath riffs, this piece alone virtually sired Stoner metal — BÖC have strapped a standard Sabbath slur to the back of a twelve-ton slug and created a perfect personification, via guitar, of the Lizard God honored in the lyrics.

Sweet Jane The Velvet Underground

Stately, patient, majestic, instantly embracing, not so much a swagger as a confident, straight-backed march to the table that’s been waiting for you at the hippest club in the city. Would love to know where this came from; an earlier memorable VU riff, “There She Goes Again,” was appropriated lock, stock, and barrel from Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike,” but I can find no source for this.

Making Time The Creation

An angry, arty, chunky interpretation of what the Who, the Small Faces, and the Move were doing, only the Creation do it perfectly. There’s something decidedly odd about the chord selection, making me think that perhaps it was composed backwards. It’s a shame Hendrix never covered this; there’s a deeply beautiful drunk on a tightrope snarl here that he would have nailed.

From the Web

Life

Johnny Depp, Evan Dando, LSD, and Me

December 9, 2014

Another damn true story.

Evan Dando and Johnny Depp were standing in the door of my office.

It was early 1993. I was working for Atlantic Records, and I was a relatively new A&R person at the label. My office was on the 8th floor of a 9-story building on Sunset Boulevard just west of Doheny, at the bend where Beverly Hills becomes Sunset Boulevard. The building occupies about a quarter of the block and says CITY NATIONAL BANK on it in big letters. The bone-colored, slightly cocky structure has a very “It’s 1960!” feel to it, and I used to amuse myself by pretending that Milburn Drysdale and Miss Hathaway worked at the bank downstairs. Then, as now, I am easily amused.

9229 Sunset Boulevard.

One evening I was doing some late work sorting receipts (or maybe I was just watching Sportscenter). I was fairly certain I was the only person left on the 8th floor. The sky was turning deep blue ripped with orange and the asymmetrical circus of the Sunset Strip was cracking open outside my window.

The two gentleman in the doorway, scruffy and puffy and beautiful and happy-shabby and looking both deflated and inflated, like two balloons at the end of a very long party, were leaning a little against each other and a little against an invisible lamppost. They were either very tired or very distorted or both.

Evan was pretty hot at the moment. The Lemonheads’ “It’s A Shame About Ray” album had become a big college radio hit. Evan was a fairly frequent presence at the Los Angeles office; his A&R person was based there (the wonderful, kind, and courageous Tom Carolan, who was a great inspiration in my own travels at Atlantic), and a lot of people in the L.A. office had taken particular interest in breaking the Lemonheads. Evan was alternately sweet and charming and nearly catatonic; he functioned as if his brain was a flash card, and you never knew if you were going to get the blank side or the side with the writing on it. We had some small prior relationship (an earlier band of his had once opened up for my group, Hugo Largo), and often he treated me like an old friend. Other times, however, he looked at me as if I was a complete stranger.

Tonight, he was sweet and smiley. He introduced his friend John, and asked if they could bum some Marlboros and listen to some music. I was known as being one of the few people in the office who smoked (inter-office tobacco consumption was still legal at this time, even in Los Angeles).

Evan Dando and Johnny Depp, around the time this story takes place.

So they sat in the big chairs on the other side of my desk, took long, lazy, cinematic puffs on the reds, and we listened to Stereolab. The two of them had a very peculiar look on their faces, like Cheshire Cats on a raft in a candy-colored sea; they grinned, boldly and childishly, a little bit lost and little bit found. They looked like two children who had pooped in each other’s pants.

After a short while of amiable staring and perfectly successful non-conversation, Evan informed me that he and Johnny were in the middle of an acid trip. This news came as no surprise to me, and there was something deliciously matter-of-fact about the whole situation.

After two cigarettes each, sucked down to the filter, Johnny and Evan politely nodded goodbye with a duck of a chin and a half wave, and they were off.

Now would be a rather excellent time to mention that 9229 Sunset Boulevard was, at that very moment, undergoing extensive renovation on the 8th and 9th floors. A scaffold surrounded the entire building.

I resumed sorting receipts and/or watching Sportscenter. About four or five minutes after John and Evan left, I heard a peculiar noise from outside. It sounded a bit like squirrels inside the walls of your house, or someone doing Foley work for a movie chase scene.

I looked up from my desk, just in time to see Evan Dando and Johnny Depp dart past me – on the outside of the building – running laps around 9229 Sunset on the (very) exposed scaffolding that surrounded the 8th floor. Their dash was accompanied by peals of almost infant laughter. I quickly ascertained that Evan and John had gained access to the scaffolding from an open window somewhere on the floor, and were now racing around the building recklessly, 108 feet or so above Sunset Boulevard.

Around the third time the pair looped around the building, I calmly assessed the situation and how it affected me, Tim Sommer.

1) One of the label’s biggest young artists and a rising Hollywood star were tripping on acid and racing around the building. Clearly, their untimely and rather spectacular death was an imminent possibility. 2) I was very likely the only person on the floor, and the only person who knew this was happening. 3) Since, unlike Dando and Depp, I was not higher than Sly Stone at a Soft Boys Convention, I was very likely the only “responsible” adult on site. 4) However, the likelihood of me getting out on the scaffold to try to stop this tremendously fun-looking but potentially catastrophic event was slim, and would likely only complicate the situation and perhaps add to the possibility for disaster. 5) The headline-grabbing and gruesome defenestration of these famous young people would almost certainly reflect very badly on me, The Responsible and Sober Adult on the Scene, and I suspected my career as an A&R person would tumble to the pavement with the young superstars.

I poked my head into the hallway, and called out “Hello? Anyone there?” a few times. Once I confirmed that I was, indeed, the only one on the floor, and therefore the only person who knew that Tim Sommer was the only person who knew that Evan Dando and Johnny Depp were running exterior laps around the building, I made a most logical decision.

The Canyon Store in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. It figures only incidentally in this remarkable, psychedelic, and decadent tale.

I got into the elevator, rode down to the garage, drove eight minutes to my little house behind the Canyon Store in Laurel Canyon, and turned on the TV to await the breaking news of the death of Johnny Depp and Evan Dando in a bizarre accident.

When no such news was announced, I picked up the phone, called a friend – I think it was Bobbi Gale, a publicist who knew Evan well — and said, “The strangest thing just happened.”

One more thing: I’ll always remember something Johnny Depp said before he left my office: “Chandrakiriti explains that emptiness is the absence of inherent existence; it is the absence of any form of existence that is grounded in its own reality. Emptiness is the view that because nothing exists independently of other things, it has no nature of its own, and everything is therefore empty, and emptiness is the true nature of reality.”

Wait, that last part didn’t happen. He didn’t say that. But I wish he did.

From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Life, Music, News, Opinion

The Dark Night Of Dave Grohl: A Cautionary Tale

December 3, 2014

It had been a long night. Damn, it had been a long week.

The Pepsi machine in the stairwell of the Super 8 motel outside of Dothan, Alabama refused to take Dave Grohl’s dollar. He smoothed out the bill and fed it into the slot a third, fourth, and fifth time. No luck. On another occasion, he would have given the machine a good whack with his Converse; but he just didn’t have it in him tonight. He crumpled to the floor, back against the machine, and wadded up the dollar and threw it into a corner.

That night, he had made a surprise appearance at a meeting for Dollar General Employees of The Gulf Coast. He had seen an online ad trumpeting “Dollar General’s Tribute to HR,” so he had showed up at the George Wallace Memorial Convention Center, drumsticks in hand, ready to join the band for a version of the Bad Brains’ “The Big Takeover.” But it turned out that the “HR” stood for Human Resources, and there wasn’t even a band there (just a DJ, playing “Captain of My Heart” and “The Logical Song,” over and over). Grohl ended up standing in the parking lot in front a bunch of heavy-set women humming songs by the Wipers, a situation that seemed to antagonize the locals.

Madame.

It was his third surprise guest appearance of the week; on Friday night, he had sat in with the band at Jefferson Davis Middle School in Frankfort, Kentucky when they played a medley of Wings’ songs for the 8^th Grade Academic Awards Presentation; and on Saturday, he had been in Clearwater, Florida, to guest-drum with Kansas on TBN’s We Love God’s Country Best of Christian Music ’14 show starring John Davidson and Newly Re-Born Madame.

But tonight had not gone as planned. Not only had he been misled by the Dollar General Event, not only had the soda machine rejected his dollar, but the Mitsubishi Mirage he had rented did not have Satellite Radio, a cashier at the Sonic had ridiculed his lack of a chin, and most significantly, U2 had performed that very night in Times Square with Bruce Springsteen and Chris Martin, and NO ONE HAD INVITED HIM.

How could such a thing have happened, he wondered, cradling his head in his hands, his sneakers sticking to the Mountain Dew stained floor. You can’t have something like that without me!

Grohl had been a part of every single moderately-visible all-star guest opportunity since the night in Spring, 2002 when he had joined Steve Morse, Captain Sensible, Leonard Phillips and Jim “Dandy” Magnum to run through a couple of Dickies songs at a Salute to the Cocoanut T-Zer. Anytime and anywhere a reasonably recognizable punk rock semi-icon was needed, he had been there (of course, there was the time in 2008 he had missed the chance to sit in with Foghat at the 5-Cherries All-Slots Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, but that’s only because Bobby Rondinelli had a CB radio in his van and heard about the gig first).

But he was a NATURAL to sit in with U2! That was a NO-BRAINER! And he HADN’T EVEN BEEN CALLED!

Soon, there were hot tears running down Grohl’s face. He wrapped his arms around his knees, and tucked his head so low to the concrete that his newly dyed locks brushed some discarded Parliament Menthol butts that had been left near the vending machines. He cried so hard he began to feel faint.

Suddenly, he became aware of a strange, chilled mist in the air; it felt like when you turn the air conditioning in your car too high on a rainy day. He raised his head. There was a peculiar brightness to the sky; it soon became so bright that he had to shade his eyes. The vapor and the change in the air began to coalesce in one location, just a few feet in front of where Grohl sat, and about six feet off the ground. The only thing Grohl could think was that it was like when the Good Witch appears in the Wizard of Oz.

Soon, the cool fog began to take a human form. Grohl recognized the phantasm instantly.

“Kurt…Kurt, is that you?”
“OF COURSE it’s me. Who did you think it was? Lonesome Dave from Foghat?”
“Funny you should mention that, because I was just thinking –“
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
“Oh…okay.”
“Dave…You need to chill out, man. Take a little break. You are everywhere. I mean you’re more over-exposed than MC Hammer.”
“MC Hammer?”
“I’ve been dead for 20 years, remember? My cultural references are a little, uh, stale.

“Yesssir, Hammertime, Hammertime, alllrigh, that’s funny.”

These last words were spoken by a new specter, pale, fuzzy, and green, that had appeared alongside Kurt.

H.R.

“HR? is that you?!?” said Grohl.

It was indeed HR from the Bad Brains.

“Yesssir, that’s me, I am HR, yassssir.”
“But you’re not dead,” Grohl sputtered.
“No, nosir, I am not. I am just really really high. Thought I had a gig in town. Was very confused.”

“BUT ANYWAY,” the Kurt poltergeist interrupted, “Listen, man, you don’t need to be the Official Party Guest of rock’n’roll. I mean, you’re a perfectly good musician. I like your stuff. I mean, I liked it more when they were Husker Dü songs, but all in all, you do a pretty good job. You can just lay back a bit. You don’t need a TV show. You don’t need to back every 14-year-old country muppet at every country awards show. You literally don’t prove a thing by proving you’re good enough to play with, oh, I don’t know, Zac Brown. I mean, Zac Brown, for the love of the baby Jesus?!? You played with ME. What more do you need to prove? I mean, you played with ME, you played with Kurt Fucking Cobain. You were MY drummer. Go ahead and make your nice little REO Green Day records, go right ahead, but you were ALREADY part of the greatest show on earth. I mean, go right ahead and sit in with Mission of Burma every now and then, but you have totally taken this thing too far. Is the world a better freaking place because you played with P Diddy or Juliette Lewis?!? Just freaking relax. I mean, you’ve done really, really well for the guy who replaced Dale Crover. Plus you’re STILL doing better than Dave Pirner.”

Kurt’s took a long draw from HR’s joint.

“Dave…Dave, are you paying attention? Seriously, man, you’re like the thing that fucking wouldn’t leave. Were you like the middle child, or something? WHY do you need so much attention? You’d think being Nirfuckingvana’s drummer, and having a few hit records on your own, would be enough. But here you are showing up on every freaking talk show that’ll have you, it’s sort of like the way Mason Reese was in the 1970s. Except he never played with Nirvana, so he had an excuse. Dave? DAVE?!?”

But Dave Grohl wasn’t listening. He was just finishing writing a text.

“Good to see you, Kurt, real good, man,” Grohl spat out, distracted. “It’s all good, it’s all good, y’see. No more problems. I just got a text – G.E. Smith wants me to sing lead in a tribute to Desmond Child and Rouge, TONIGHT, on the Chabad Telethon, so I am OFF to Los Angeles. That’s right – ME, fronting Desmond Child and Rouge. I am back in action, baby!”

Kurt began to fade back into the ether.

“See, it’s like this, brother Kurt… I’ll be everywhere—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a moshpit full of people who can’t tell Nickelback from Fugazi, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a ‘70s rocker and a camera pointed in his or her direction, I’ll be there…Wherever there’s an awards show and some country pop artist singing some song written by some team of hacks, I’ll be in the back bashin’ at the cymbals…Anytime there’s a billionaire rapper or hack movie star lookin’ for some credibility by having a famous rock’n’roller collaboratin’ with ’em, I’ll be there… An’ anywhere there’s a network exec looking for someone who middle America thinks stands for rock’n’roll—why, I’ll be there, too. See you soon, HR, and happy trails, Kurt – I gotta make a plane to Los Angeles. ‘West Side Pow Wow’ won’t learn itself.”

From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Music, Opinion

Re-Assessing The Legacy of The Clash…or Not.

December 2, 2014

Kill Yr Idols, Part II (of Many). Let’s take a look at the Clash. If you came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s and defined yourself as a follower of new music, the Clash were a central band in your worldview. The Clash were so central, in fact, that one rarely stops long enough to make any sort of reasonable assessment of their recorded legacy. This has been even more difficult since the too-early death of Joe Strummer 12 years ago.

Likewise, The (truly) monument-like achievement that is London Calling tends to HANG over the (relatively short) career of the Clash like Andre the Giant at a birthday party: If Andre the Giant showed up, chances are people won’t notice that the cake and the punch weren’t very good.

The author was at the show pictured on the front sleeve of this album. Good for him.

In fact, London Calling is such a remarkable achievement that it makes us overlook how singular it is within the Clash’s catalog, and I guess that’s what I want to address. Arguably, it’s their only non-mediocre album; inarguably, it’s their only truly great one. To put that into perspective, even Generation X put out two great albums, and the Damned and the Stranglers each have four inarguably great records; the Clash’s most significant artistic competition, Stiff Little Fingers, put out four first-rate records, all worthy of multiple cursory and detailed listens, during the same years the Clash were active. Now, I’m not saying that any of these bands are better than the Clash: London Calling is one of the greatest and healthiest (in terms of concept and realization) albums ever made, and that counts for a lot. It is just that we have to examine this possibility that it’s the only really good Clash album – and how does that impact their legacy?

The Clash began as the result of a fairly simple premise: Dr Feelgood plus Mott the Hoople divided by Woody Guthrie. Their first album (and when I refer to their first album, I am talking about the initial UK release, not the American re-releases), is hollow sounding and rife with thin sloganeering. A small handful of great songs (“Janie Jones,” “Garageland,” “Remote Control”) are surrounded by hastily-assembled collections of riffs and catchphrases; and a catchphrase + a riff does not necessarily add up to a decent song, as evidenced by “48 Hours,” “Protex Blue,” even “White Riot.” I would say this was a one-off problem, possibly a result of going into the studio too early and too eagerly, except for the fact that the band fell into the exact same habit again and again during their career (most notably on Sandinista!, but on Give Em Enough Rope, too). It also suffers from unsatisfying one-dimensional production – the Jam, for instance, got a lot more mileage out of equally thin material on their first and second albums, merely by having (far) better production (important note: the American version of the first album is far superior, due to the addition of some of the Clash’s best and most unique material: “Jail Guitar Doors,” “Clash City Rockers,” “Complete Control,” and “White Man in Hammersmith Palais” — if we were to count the American re-boots of the first Clash album as “true” albums, this would likely be a different story).

(Forecasting the beautiful diversity of the London Calling album, on “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” the Clash begin a song about feeling like an outsider at a reggae show with a reference to the Pretty Things)

Now, album two, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, sounds AMAZING. The guitars roar and glow and twinkle and hum like well-built, well-tuned punk rock machines; they are recorded and assembled with a Boston-like precision though not with a precise Boston-like result; producer Sandy Pearlman never gets enough credit for making one of the most explosive yet sensible rock records ever recorded. But once again,with some too-few exceptions (“All the Young Punks,” “Stay Free”), on Give ‘Em Enough Rope the Clash seem to think coming up with a good tag line and a good riff is enough. I mean, I can play “Guns on the Roof” or “Tommy Gun” over and over again because they sound so good, but really, they are barely songs.

Then we have London Calling. London Calling is, well, everything: it sounds old and new and rough and polished and poppy and intimate and British and American, and for a brief moment in time, every aspect of the Clash’s potential is harnessed into a rail car rolling over the landscape of rock history. There’s never been an album quite like it – it combines the raw, literate wit and reflection of Mott the Hoople with the low-ceilinged pub-rattle of the Feelgoods with the cinematic big-picture glow of the Who and the roots sensibility of the Stones or Pretty Things. Although it doesn’t touch on any Beatles’ studio or song forms, with that one exception it is perhaps the most 360-degree picture of rock history ever recorded in one place. London Calling is so good that we tend to overlook the fact that (with the exception of a few moments on Combat Rock, a couple of songs from the pre-London Calling Cost of Living EP, and the pile of first-rate singles that fell between the first and second albums), there’s almost nothing else like it in the Clash catalog.

I acknowledge that there’s a certain cult around Sandinista!, but can I just state that I don’t get it? I mean, at all? The album sounds under-rehearsed (to the point of being spontaneous), over-recorded (i.e., many of the songs are as “written” as demos you hum into a tape recorder on the subway, but given full studio treatment), and so suffused with a pea-soup like fog of weed haze as to make the music virtually indecipherable to anyone who wasn’t in the studio at that time of recording. “Lightning Strikes,” “Charlie Don’t Surf,” and “Ivan Meets G.I. Joe” are literally just titles, stretched out in unsatisfying ways into full songs; although some of the dub experiments threaten to work, they are ultimately pale failures; and the quasi-pop stuff – like “Hitsville U.K.,” “The Call Up,” and “The Magnificent 7” – are minor zirconia, at best, made shiny by their stupefying surroundings. Which isn’t to say it’s all bad: there’s slightly over one side of grade-A-ish material here (“The Street Parade,” “Something About England,” “Lose This Skin,” “Somebody Got Murdered,” “Police On My Back” – and please note that two of those aren’t even written by the Clash), but even this is dulled by the hazy production, which is simultaneously overwrought yet incomplete.

Finally, there’s Combat Rock. A pretty good record, but not a great one, and I could easily name a dozen punk-ish albums from the same era that are as good or better (for instance, every one of the four studio albums Stiff Little Fingers released between 1979 and 1983 are notably better). It does, however, pick up on some of the same musical and lyrical memes explored on London Calling (i.e., America, cars, and cities), and there’s a pretty strong indication that the band were finding their way back home again; which is to say, another London Calling was probably in them, if they hadn’t defenestrated (nevertheless, when is the last time you even thought of songs like “Red Angel Dragnet” or “Atom Tan”?).

And let’s not even discuss Cut The Crap, other than to say “file alongside Squeeze by the Velvet Underground.”

So…we have an interesting situation here. The Clash made one album of shattering beauty, completeness, power, passion, and conceptual originality. They were also a devastating live band, and consistently so: Strummer’s strained-vein passion, spitting out the news with his eyes screwed tight, really did honor his initial mission to re-cast Woody Guthrie for the punk era; this was complimented, rather brilliantly, by Mick Jones’ trad-rock stadium theatrics, leaps, kicks, and slashes, and Paul Simonon’s earnest, Dee Dee Ramone as handsome-simian passion. I never saw the Clash play a bad show, and I saw about a dozen of them; each one of these contained the kernel of legend, each was full of color and acrobatics and sweat and joy; they were also one of those bands that was just as fierce and hot in soundcheck (I saw two or three of those), which is to say, they just loved being the Clash.

And ultimately, these two staggeringly important elements – the almost incomparable live performances, and one album of such energy, purity and creativity that it deserves a place in the collection of every person who has ever listened to rock music, regardless of whether they are an expert, faddist, snob, or novice – makes it not only possible but essential to overlook a very flawed catalog.

From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Music, News, Opinion
Sonic Youth, Tim Sommer, and Kill Yr Idols
December 1, 2014
Kill your idols is a potent phrase. It is also extremely reasonable and important spiritual and artistic (though not literal) advice. In the 1980s, ’90s, and beyond, in its’ truncated “Kill Yr Idols” form, it also became a powerful pop meme, to be seen on lunchboxes, t-shirts, bathroom walls, record sleeves, and as many etceteras as there as ets in the cet. I don’t recall “Kill Yr Idols” being a commonly repeated phrase, until it appeared as the title of a Sonic Youth song in 1983.
That Sonic Youth song was about me.
So I take a little credit for the expansion of this meme, a story I shall share imminently.

But first, some words from The Diamond Sutra, in which the Buddha offers advice about the perfection of emptiness to his elder student, Subhuti:
“Subhuti, that mind is everywhere equally. Because it is neither high nor low, it is called the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind. The fruit of the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind is realized through the practice of all wholesome actions in the spirit of nonself, non-person, non-living being, and non-life span. Subhuti, what are called wholesome actions are in fact not wholesome actions. That is why they are called wholesome actions…”
Which is another way of saying Kill Yr Idols. Because, to paraphrase another line from the Diamond Sutra, 1) the Beatles are, 2) the Beatles are not all that and a bag of chips, and therefore 3) the Beatles are. But anyway:
In 1982, I was living in a peculiar studio duplex on Thompson Street with my great friend, Kevin Hogan. Kevin was (and is) a beautiful actor. He is suitable for all parts calling for a middle-aged man of almost feline handsomeness. I was also writing, avidly and aggressively, about avid and aggressive rock music for a number of national and international music publications. I had been doing that since I was 16 (in 1982 I was 20).
Robert Christgau, mentor of the author, nemesis of Thurston Moore
One of the publications I wrote for was the Village Voice. Robert Christgau, who ran the pop/rock section of the paper, was not only a legendary music journalist but also a brilliant, astute, and patient editor who took great time to mentor me. Then, as now, I have nothing but really positive things to say about Christgau.
Simultaneously, I was forming a close relationship with Thurston Moore. I had taken a fierce and early interest in Thurston’s then-new band, Sonic Youth; I thought their feral, foaming, spiky, joyous, raucous, abrupt, grinning, slashing performances, usually in front of a dozen or so people in cellars in the far East Village, were amongst the most visceral and honest manifestation of pure rock’n’roll I had ever seen. I wrote about them every chance I got. Thurston and I were also playing together in (one of the many incarnations of) Even Worse, Jack Rabid’s quasi-legendary and/or pseudo-legendary New York punk rock band. My time in Even Worse (I was in the band from June ’82 to January ’84, Thurston for about ten months or so beginning in June ’82) is an entirely separate yarn, and although it is a wonderful and tragic-comic tale, it would only serve to unnecessarily complicate the story I am trying to tell here, so let’s pretend I never even mentioned it, okay?
I will, however, add that I was hanging out with Thurston a lot: going to shows with him, occasionally hiring him to transcribe interview tapes for me, and visiting him at Rockefeller Center, where he was selling Dove Bars off of a cart.
Anyway, Thurston had some kind of issue with Christgau; to be frank, I don’t quite recall where or how this began, but it led to Thurston being quite agitated that I had a good relationship with Christgau (not that we discussed this a lot; however, I do recall long conversations about a band Thurston and I wanted to start that was to be called Glue, dedicated solely to playing the riff to SSD’s “Glue” over and over for forty minutes).

(This is “Glue” by SS Decontrol; pretty great riff, huh?)
In mid-1983, Sonic Youth recorded and released a song called “Kill Yr Idols,” first issued as a 12-inch single, not too long after their (honestly) incendiary and essential album, Confusion Is Sex. The first thing I noticed about “Kill Yr Idols” was that it had something you could call a concrete riff; in fact, the riff was such a sharp, chopped, and slashing object that it immediately announced that Sonic Youth’s future was going to be something distinct from its’ past. The beautiful, hoarse, woozy bursts of bristles and wonks that filled Confusion, sounding like a sharp-nailed ferret attacking a box of Brillo steel wool pads, contained virtually nothing to prepare us for the almost AC/DC-ish old-school riff that inaugurated “Kill Yr Idols.”
The second thing I noticed – in fact, I think it had to be pointed out to me, because I was so swept away by the magnificently rockist riff that had announced the song and the “new” Sonic Youth – was the opening lyric:
I don’t know why
You wanna impress Christgau
Ahhhh Let that shit die
And find out the new goal
And that was unmistakably about me. And I am goddamn proud of that.
Regardless of Thurston’s somewhat purposeless attack on one of the most supportive, literate, and intelligently provocative music journalists I’ve ever met, 30-plus years later, Kill Yr Idols remains exquisitely sharp advice. By lovingly investigating the fact that not one of our favorite artists’ achieves perfection, by demolishing the myth of infallibility (even amongst our most sacred cows), we can truly appreciate the native and acquired genius of these artists; for instance, the Beatles are an amalgamation of imperfections, rendered with invention and sweat; no person seeking perfection would have the courage to create something as startling as The White Album, or London Calling, or White Light White Heat, or Pet Sounds, or Pink Flag, or Soused. These works are all acts of extreme courage, which is to say each of these masterpieces, full of distortion and majesty, are about human and artistic flaws, rendered with energy, passion, and creativity; in fact, the very definition of creativity is seeking perfection by taking imperfect roads. When you believe in the god-like infallibility of the artists you love, you virtually demand that they deny the human qualities and the potential for exploration (brilliance is often the result of error) that leads to groundbreaking events and “genius.”
Kill Yr Idols. Or at the very least, recognize that not only is no one infallible, everything in life is suffused with impermanence; and impermanence not only makes all life possible (imagine a river that does not run, a blade of grass that does not grow, a sun that neither rises nor sets), impermanence, which is to say the quality of variation of influence and skill and the willingness to err, makes all great art possible.
“Then the World-Honored One spoke this verse:
Someone who looks for me in form
or seeks me in sound
is on a mistaken path
and cannot see the Tathagata.”
From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Music, News, Opinion
The Kinks: The Beatles of Outsiders
November 21, 2014
Do you know what a “Familiar” is? A Familiar is an object or entity that appears in varying guises to assist you or accompany you on your travels.
We likely all have artists or bands that are our Familiars, even if we’ve never quite identified them like that. These are artists who “follow” us through every stage of life, whose work we continually turn to for inspiration, comfort, and distraction.
These Familiars generally won’t be someone hugely obvious, because there has to be something about them that belong just to us. At the same time, they can’t be so obscure, because the Familiar also has to be a device by which we find friends and like-minded tribe members. For instance, the ubiquity of the Beatles precludes them having that kind of “special” attachment to our inner life and self-definition. Likewise, the Familiar must be an artist who has stood the test of time; there are certain artists who may have flared briefly as obsessions, and who served as utile social conduits, but later seemed irrelevant. For instance, I may have been deeply attached to Elvis Costello when I was 15 and 16 and virtually obsessed with the Jam when I was 16 to18, but the work of neither artist seemed to carry much power with me as I moved on in life.
Since the age of 13 or so, the Kinks have been my Familiar.
Strangely, I wouldn’t say they were my favorite band – that would probably be the Damned, or Neu!, or the Stranglers, or the Who, or Hawkwind. But they have been the band that has always been with me; they have a song, a creative period, an album, for every stage of my life. They are the doorframe I measured my height alongside.
The Kinks likely became my Familiar because I believe that they were The Beatles For Outsiders (for a certain age group, that is; this notion really only applies to listeners who came of age between, say, 1970 and 1980). To be The Beatles For Outsiders, you had to be popular enough to form a clique, but underground enough to form a cult; also, you had to generate enough pop memes to promote relatively easy proselytization, but have enough musical quirks to be a beautiful secret to share. And you had to carry with you some aura of sexual mystery or ambiguity (in the 1970s, before punk became an “easy” totem to distinguish separation from the mainstream, flaunting some degree of ambiguity about your sexual associations was an extremely utile way to announce that you were not like everybody else).
In the Beatles for Outsiders category, really only Bowie was in the same league as the Kinks. And the Kinks were a group, so they won, by default.
My own first awareness of the Kinks probably came from one or two sources: at some point I saw a deliciously sloppy, almost shambolic appearance on a TV show that seemed so absolutely antithetical to the precise mewling we usually saw on network TV that it was a virtual call to arms. And at another time, not to far removed from this TV exposure, I heard “You Really Got Me,” and it was immediately one of those handful of songs that seemed to have always been there, always waiting for you; do you know what I am talking about? There are a few, very few songs, that when you hear them for the first time, they seem to speak to some need in you, seem to announce “There is something in this song that personifies a crucial and lasting aspect of your creative and cultural identity.” It is almost as if these songs represent transmigrated memes from a previous life. I can name very, very few of these “instant” friends: The Velvets’ “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Hallogallo” by Neu!, and the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me.”
These first entry points – the absolutely adorable brutality and shocking simplicity of “You Really Got Me” and the dissolute, dirty, honking TV performance — made me instantly seek out everything I could find about the Kinks. The somewhat spotty early albums and the harder-to-find mid-period records didn’t quite do the trick, so I ended up playing three albums over and over and over again: Kinks Kronikles, which remains perhaps the greatest band compilation album of all time; Lola Vs. Powerman; and the newly-released Sleepwalker. Now, Kronikles works – really works – because it was not at all shy of including oddities, and in the late ‘60s and very early 1970s, the Kinks’ oddities – unreleased tracks like “Berkeley Mews,” B-sides like “Polly,” “She’s Got Everything,” and “Susannah’s Still Alive” — were superb, a complete career unto themselves. As for the Lola Vs. Powerman album, it was (and is) in many ways the Kinks’ most complete album, and virtually alone amongst the Kinks’ catalog, it could be played unapologetically to mainstream-loving friends you wanted to convert without needing any explanation regarding the British political and cultural memes that saturated so much of the Kinks work. And Sleepwalker was solid, full of crisp FM sounds, Kinks-branded riffs, and just a touch of textual weirdness. Personally, I think it’s the last great Kinks album, and it’s still one of my favorites.

As time goes on – and it has been a desperately long time since then, a child born on the day Sleepwalker was released would be nearly 38 now – my appreciation for the Kinks has evolved: For instance, today my favorite Kinks’ albums are the deeply blue and earth-toned Muswell Hillbillies and the sad painted-smile British music hall-via-New Orleans sighs of Everybody’s In Showbiz. But the Kinks are still very much my Familiar. They’ve aged with me as no other band has, and I always return to them, again and again, unearthing new treasures and finding a song that seems to be speak to me, even as “me” has changed and changed.
Why was I inspired to write this, now? Well, obviously, there’s a fiftieth anniversary mishegas, and some controversy about whether Ray and Dave and Mick can bury their long-honed hatchets long enough to tour; but I have virtually zero interest in seeing a renascent Kinks; my memories of raucous, spitting, leaping, surprising shows at the Palladium in the 1970s is plenty enough for me. But there are two new releases worthy of note: The Essential Kinks is very worthwhile 2-disc compilation, and even if it omits the quirks of Kronikles, it’s probably the best inclusive career retrospective out there, especially keeping in mind that getting the early hits and the mid-60s heart-scratchers and the highlights of the ‘70s concept albums plus the best of the late ‘70s/’80s “mainstream” period ALL ON ONE RECORD is virtually impossible; but The Essential Kinks does a pretty good job assembling an overview for a band whose creative/cultural diversity (not to mention competing label association) has so far created a situation that largely defies reliable compilation. Oh, and it’s also good to hear some first-rate mastering on this stuff (though, to be frank, the Ray Davies-production style of the mid/late ‘60s and early 1970s was so high-end unfriendly as to almost make good mastering a negative). WOW this sounds like a REAL record review!

The other new Kinks-related release worthy of note is Dave Davies’ delicious, sensitive, rousing, and surprising new album, Rippin’ Up Time. These days, Dave seems to do the slice-of-life observation thing better than Ray does; when you add to this the fact that with age, Dave’s voice, once notably higher in range than Ray’s, has dropped into precisely Ray’s classic wheelhouse (at times he sounds exactly like Ray, and that’s never happened before), and then bring in the fact that Dave has an acute ear for song-arrangement that seems to hearken back to the Kinks’ Face To Face/Something Else/Village Green peaks, what you have here is the album you wish Ray would make. Now, add to this the fact that Dave Davies has a willingness to experiment musically and go on emotional and creative limbs that Ray hasn’t dared to go on in nearly forty years, and you have a small treasure of an album with Rippin’ Up Time, which threatens, in places, to become a much larger treasure.
The simplest way to end an article would be to write “God Save the Kinks.” But that’s implied, isn’t it? The Kinks, along with, perhaps, R.E.M. – are the bands of my life, the logo stickers on my permanent school-locker. So let me just conclude by saying “Sting is a tool.”
From the Web

Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Music, News, Opinion
Pink Floyd End their Story in a Wondrous Way (Especially if you like Umma Gumma)
November 20, 2014
What a beautiful way to end a legendary lifespan.
These days, fewer and fewer bands – and virtually no legacy acts – are willing to say “This is where the story ends.” Even fewer can end their lifespan with a ringing valediction and validation, something that simultaneously underlines an act’s most distinct gifts yet adds something of true and lasting value to the catalog.
(I mean, did anyone even care that something calling itself The Who released a new song eight weeks ago? Did Binky even care?!?)
The Endless River, the fifteenth and final studio album from Pink Floyd, is a classic Pink Floyd album – especially if your idea of Pink Floyd is David Gilmour’s Benadryl slides and cough-syrup glides, and the empty-museum instrumental explorations of Umma Gumma and Meddle – while adding something new and even challenging to the catalog. The album also asks the question: what if Floyd had gone straight from 1972 to 2014, quickly stopping in 1976 to pick up some of the hash-lump musical memes that made the post-Syd Floyd so, well, luscious?
The Endless River exists, quite positively, on a number of different levels: it is, without a doubt, a beautiful monument to Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright, who died 6 years ago; most of the tracks on The Endless River are based around sketches and performances Wright recorded in the early/mid 1990s, around the time of the sessions for The Division Bell. It is also an affirmation that the best-remembered Floyd – which is to say the shifting, sighing, sliding, soaring, shimmering, spacious sound of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here — belonged to Gilmour and Wright, who effortlessly evoke that sound here. Next, the new Floyd album firmly asserts that the wholly progressive and adamantly non-commercial head-band that Floyd became after Syd left but before the mega-sales of Dark Side — that is, the group that produced deeply personal and artful soundtracks for both the neurotic and peaceful mind — was still very much alive a generation later, and could be summoned at will. Finally but perhaps most significantly, it is a graceful, elegiac monument to Pink Floyd, space rockers, head-rockers, and masters of plaintive and compelling shifting-sands-under-a-pale-moon rock.

With only one song featuring a complete and traditional vocal (that’s the track immediately above, and you’ll see/hear it’s very goddamn good), The Endless River is loaded with canyon-deep/borealis-high instrumentals, flowing seamlessly and gorgeously in and out of each other. Vibrating and sighing, trembling and lifting, the album occasionally slips into great pronouncements of almost Elgar-like melodicism and adamant late-night FM rhythms; but it mostly lives in the land of slow-shifting sands of mood, tone, and texture. The Endless River is almost certainly the most FIRM and avid statement from the post-Waters Floyd that Gilmour/Wright/Mason had a RIGHT to have a Floyd without Waters. This album is beautifully, adamantly, and firmly Pink Floyd.
Gilmour, Mason, and Wright (with help from producers Phil Manzanera and Youth) do this by sitting themselves firmly in the headspace Floyd created in the late 1960s and early 1970s. If you love the Floyd that made Meddle – an album that sounds brilliant shuffled with this one – Umma Gumma, and Atom Heart Mother, you will probably dig this very much. It’s the same band, clearly. If you can imagine that band – the Floyd that existed, say, between ’69’s Umma Gumma and ‘72’s Obscured By Clouds – re-emerging forty years later and applying some of wind-swept sonics and gentle slides from Floyd’s later, more commercial work, The Endless River would be the result.
The very best thing Pink Floyd have had to offer in the 45 years since Syd left was the idea of texture. The elegiac, sighing, spacious, looping, and continuous landscape of The Endless River, full of nods to earth and science and even pop, is Pink Floyd, far more than the bitter, snapping polemics of Roger Waters was ever Pink Floyd.
(May I also add that when I used the word “polemics” in the last paragraph, it was just a Hail Mary? I mean, it looked and sounded and felt like it would be the right word to use there, but to be frank, I wasn’t entirely on solid ground in terms of the definition. But then I looked it up, and BOOM goes the dynamite! Jon Matlack strikes out the side! It was the perfect word. )
Roger Waters. The word “polemics” is to him what peanut butter is to chocolate.
The Endless River not only asserts the idea that this drive on the Lunar Coast Highway was the Floyd sound, but also that it belonged to Wright and Gilmour. Ohhhh, the listener thinks, this is Pink Floyd…Bells…chimes…12-string guitars crisp and heavenly…enough space in the landscape that you could drive a car through the mix, but a thousand and eight star-like elements shimmering below, around, and above, insuring that the compass still points to true north and no one is getting too lost in the desert… Stately, patient, at times adamant and processional, full of the peculiar texture of ebow’d acoustic guitar and the warm, familiar tones of church organs and rising and falling synth pads… radio noise and whirring, breathing choppers and harmonics (now is a good time to mention that fans of Porcupine Tree, Album Leaf, and Radio Massacre International, not to mention old beards who listen to Tangerine Dream or Vangelis, are going to love love love this album)…guitars sligh and slide and almost threaten to bite, but just hand you a shoulder pillow….
1970’s left-hander Jon Matlack. For some reason, he has worked his way into a column about Pink Floyd. The World of Words is a vibrant and surprising land.
And it not all a trip to an acid-and-merlot laced day spa; the album contains at least one near-classic Floyd track – “Allons-y,” which sounds like “Run Like Hell” played by a group of monks on opium while listening to Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, which is to say it sounds a lot like “Echoes” from Pink Floyd’s 1971 album, Meddle.
The Endless River is a lovely, strong album, distinctive but as wonderfully familiar as a favorite old over-sized sweater found in the back of a drawer.
It reminds us that once upon a time, headphones were worn, and as the early evening of a late fall afternoon wrapped around our suburban bedrooms, we retreated into a land of rich strange highways; and a lifetime later, Pink Floyd are still reminding us that they were, are, and always will be the Kings of that road.
From the Web

Older Posts
Newer Posts