It happens every single year, just when the nominees are named for induction into the so-called Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I get really pissed.
Don’t get me started.
Oh well, I already am.
First of all, the whole idea of a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has always struck me as absurd, antithetical to the whole basis of the genre. This musical form was real rebellion at a time when this land was waking up from the slumber of the post WWII Eisenhower years.
You think Public Enemy was raucous and in your face, fuhgeddaboutit?
The Coasters singing “Young Blood,” now that was sinful stuff. (So what that it was written by a couple of J-Boys in the Brill Building.)
I saw her standin’ on the corner/ A yellow ribbon in her hair/ I couldn’t stop myself from shoutin’ / Look a-there Look a-there/ Look a-there Look a-there/ Young blood, young blood, young blood/ I can’t get you out of my mind
If that wasn’t an oldie, the FCC probably wouldn’t let it on the air today.
Lady Gaga = outrageous. Uh, I don’t think so.
You ever heard Wanda Jackson’s “Let’s Have A Party.”
I never kissed a bear/ I never kissed a goose/ But I can shake a chicken/ In the middle of the room/ Let’s have a party/ Ooh, let’s have a party/ Oh, send it to the store, let’s buy some more/ Let’s have a party tonight
In the context of the staid times, these early rock & roll wonders are but two of many examples of real rebellion.
My point is that memorializing all this stuff in a building makes no sense. This music still lives and breathes and is accessible, be it on youtube or somewhere else on the dub dub dub. Or by plunking a needle down at some vinyl. This isn’t baseball where we’ll never get to see Ty Cobb again, except on scratchy old film. This is music that is still vibrant.
Not to be confused with the Rock & Roll Hall of Sham, Sam the Sham’s “Wooly Bully” is no less rockin’ today than when it was released.
I’m not going to start picking nits over what the criteria should be for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. There shouldn’t be one. Period. Not even for the Founding Fathers, Elvis, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, Fats and Chuck. And certainly not for . . . oh . . . I can’t even start to list the injustices.
As for the building, filled with Lennon/ McCartney lyric sheets, Hendrix guitars and Joplin’s empty Southern Comfort fifths, well . . . uh . . . I dunno. If people need to go somewhere like that to bring back the memories, I guess it’s not a bad thing. Cleveland does need an attraction downtown now that LeBron’s skipped town, and the Browns, Cavs and Indians suck.
I finally visited it years after it opened. And found myself in this one section that was just a bunch of listening stations, where you can pull up all sorts of obscure tunes along with the fabled oldies but goodies. As for a mannequin wearing a Lonely Hearts Club Band uni used on the actual album cover . . . BFD!
Okay enough. I’m gonna go pull out the Doo Wop box and chill.
I’m still not quite sure how Aussie professor/ musicologist/ deejay Roger Taylor tracked me down. Let’s simply say it’s one of the “benefits” of the cybergalactic era.
Anyway he had me on his public radio show last night to discuss my visit to the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival, Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix. As if I were some sort of expert???
That page is a little confusing. The “Listen Live” button is to hear whatever the current show is playing. Underneath is the archived show on which I appear. My portion starts at :49. You can slide the bar over to that point, should you choose. Though Roger plays some interesting stuff.
Not being part of the TV critic’s cognoscenti, I’ve only seen the one premier episode like the rest of the world.
So the first question — and a legit one at that — is whether it’s fair to judge this much hyped HBO prohibition-era gangster saga, based on that single episode?
Probably not.
Since when has a single such sampling stopped somebody with an opinion and Word Press in this contemporary age of instant gratification, instant response, instant judgement?
Considering myself an observer of some discernment, I shall refrain totally damning “Boardwalk Empire” solely on the basis of its lame inaugural episode. But I’ll tell ya, I know “The Sopranos.” I know “Only in America.” I know “The Godfather Saga.” I know “The Wire.” So far, even with Mahatma Martin Scorcese in the director’s chair, “Boardwalk Empire” you couldn’t shine those other series’ shoes.
And it’s obvious from the star maker machinery that’s been in place, from the PR anschluss heralding the recreation in exactitude of the era’s Atlantic City boardwalk on a Brooklyn back lot, that HBO is looking for a redux of “Deadwood,” the return of Paulie Walnuts and Omar Little combined.
So much so, that the series teases us in the opener with the quickest of cameos by Michael K. Williams, the actor who played the beguiling Omar in “The Wire.” He’s sitting in an ante room, awaiting an audience with Nucky Thompson, the centerpiece crime kingpin of the series, played inappropriately by the eminently talented but woefully miscast Steve Buscemi. Williams’ character here — called cleverly Chalky White — has a single line which has absolutely no resonance with anything else in the episode.
As for Buscemi? Carl Showalter in “Fargo?” Absolutely. Donny Kerabatsos in “The Big Lebowski?” Of course. But a powerful, duplicitous, bootlegging but upstanding citizen of Atlantic City around which an entire series is being fashioned? Uh, I don’t think so. At least, not yet.
And that’s just one of the flaws that plagued the premiere. Hokey, trite dialog is another. Also, trying too hard for period authenticity to the point where the sets looked like some curio.
To me, the characters almost to a man and woman seemed one-dimensional caricatures from the start.
Then there’s the pseudo-hipness, best exemplified by a Corleonesqueish scene where bad stuff is going contemporaneously with a vaudeville comedian’s show, in which he’s regaling an audience with “my wife is so dumb” jokes.
Have I given up entirely on “Boardwalk Empire?”
Probably not. I’m sure I’ll watch another episode or two, hoping it gets a hum going.
The premiere was a colossal disappointment, if you ask me.
Only the most obsessive of pop musicologists probably even know who Tom Dowd was. You know who you are, the guys and gals who pour over album liner notes, who want to know the name of all the musicians, to see where and when an album was recorded, who crave the arcane minutiae of the songs that touched your souls.
If you’ve listened to rock or jazz or soul or rock & roll (It’s a different genre from just plain “rock,” but that’s another tome for another time.) since, oh, the 1950s, your life has been touched, possibly changed, by Tom Dowd.
Setting aside for a moment that he essentially invented 8 track recording. And the 8 track recorder. Or that, as a nuclear physics student at CCNY and Columbia, he was pulled out of school to join the army during WWII, during which stint he worked on the Manhattan Project.
Yes, that Manhattan Project. The one where they developed the atom bomb.
But his main everlasting contribution to popular culture came from behind the recording board as engineer on way too many songs to even try to list.
His first: “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked A Cake.”
The list includes Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife.”
And “Layla.”
The artists Dowd worked with include Ray Charles, The Drifters, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Aretha Franklin, Cream, Allman Brothers Band, Charlie Parker, Booker T & the MGs, Charles Mingus, Ruth Brown, etc, etc, etc.
Get the picture? The dude was there, man. And he’s one of the main reasons why so much of that tuneage is so important to us.
“What’d I Say” — Oh yeah, he was the engineer.
Anyhow, it’s all set out in this great 2003 documentary. Which film I first heard about, what, a year ago, five years ago? Who knows? What I do know is that I forgot about it.
Until my piano teacher Chris Bizianes mentioned it a couple of lessons ago, and happened to have a copy of the DVD, given to him by a friend. Which he lent me and I took home and immediately watched.
Those interviewed include Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, the Atlantic records guys he worked with, Eric Clapton and Greg Allman. There’s a great face to face with Dowd and Ray Charles.
In Barry Levinson’s flick “Diner,” there’s this exchange.
Shrevie (Daniel Stern): Ok, now ask me what’s on the flip side.
Beth (Ellen Barkin): Why?
Shrevie: Just, just ask me what’s on the flip side, OK?
Beth: What is on the flip side?
Shrevie: Hey, Hey, Hey, 1958. Specialty Records.
[Beth nods blankly]
Shrevie: See? You don’t ask me things like that, do you? No! You never ask me what’s on the flip side.
Beth: No! Because I don’t give a shit. Shrevie, who cares about what’s on the flip side about the record?
Shrevie: I do! Every one of my records means something! The label, the producer, the year it was made. Who was copying whose style… who’s expanding on that, don’t you understand? When I listen to my records they take me back to certain points in my life, OK? Just don’t touch my records, ever! You! The first time I met you? Modell’s sister’s high school graduation party, right? 1955. And Ain’t That A Shame was playing when I walked into the door!
I’m a Shrevie. Which is why this documentary — “Tom Dowd & The Language of Music” is the kind of stuff I live for.
Even if you’re not a Shrevie, this documentary will give you a new, fresh perspective on the recording of American music in the last half century.
If springtime is the season of rejuvenation and frolic; fall heralds recommitment and refocus, a time that takes the measure of man.
Labor Day, summer’s traditional end, marks the kickoff of what has evolved as America’s favorite pastime.
How and why the nation turned its wandering eyes from the bucolic pastures of baseball to the thunder of headgears and the grandeur of script Ohio that define football is a semester’s course unto itself. Suffice it to say the changeover occurred sometime after Joe Willie wrenched the pigskin planet off its axis in Super Bowl III, but way before ESPN greenlighted Brett Favre’s life into a daily soap opera.
Football is now the deal.
And this autumn, in this city, in this commonwealth, there are cultural considerations that make the season just over the horizon the most fascinating ever. Perhaps even a portent of significant social change.
The state’s three major football schools have new coaches. By odds-defying coincidence, the triad of new leaders are men of color.
Willie Taggert at Western Kentucky and Joker Phillips at UK are alums who now lead the charges of their alma maters. Their stories are worthy.
But nothing like that of Charlie Strong, tapped to lead Louisville’s Cardinals out of the football wasteland, where it has been deposited by a coaching fraud who turned a national contender with talent and Heisman-quality leadership into an also ran.
How Strong traveled the circuitous, impediment-laden byways from the rural burg of Batesville, Arkansas to the University of Louisville is not epic in the Homerian sense. But it is poetic nonetheless, a fable of fortitude and forbearance, how what is good and right can eventually prevail despite pitfalls.
When Charlie Strong was born and raised a half century ago in Batesville, Arkansas, hard on the edge of the Ozarks in “Deliverance” country, it was a town of 5,000. It is less than twice that now. Yet it’s still produced its share of favorite sports sons. Like NASCAR’s Mark Martin, a contemporary of Louisville’s coach. Former major leaguer Rick Monday was born there. So too, Ryan Mallett, now the quarterback for former U of L coach Bobby Petrino at Arkansas.
As it turns out, football wasn’t Strong’s favorite endeavor as a kid.
“I loved baseball. Centerfield. But when I was old enough I had to work in the summers. At my uncle’s service station. So I switched to a winter sport.”
It is that work ethic — taking care of basic business first — that has guided Strong along his career arc.
Quarterback Adam Froman explained to SI.com’s Andy Staples that it’s not difficult to follow when you see Strong jogging before sun up and lifting. “He’ll get in there in the weight room, and just put 315 [pounds] on the bar and start repping it out.”
Defensive tackle Gregg Scruggs: “He works hard. He makes us work hard.”
Charlie Strong’s resumé proves it makes a difference.
Perhaps the most impressive of stats is this. According to Strong’s bio at the University of Florida website, in 64 of 92 games when he was defensive coordinator, the Gators tallied points off turnovers. In 70% of the games, Strong’s defense scored. Stunning.
Which acumen is why he’s coached in 21 bowl games, including 14 played in January. Then there are those two national titles while directing the Florida defense. In 2009’s title battle, the Gators held the highest scoring offense in college football history to 14 points, a mere fifty points under Oklahoma’s per game average.
Charlie Strong’s leadership capabilities have been on display for years.
While preparing for that BCS title match against the Sooners, Florida mentor Urban Meyer told the press, “Do I think Charlie Strong would be a great head coach? No question about it. Do I think he’s deserving? No question about it.”
A decade ago, while coaching at South Carolina, Lou Holtz told the Columbia (S.C.) State: “Charlie Strong should be a head coach. He’s anxious to be, and he and I have talked about how you get a head coach’s job. I know we’re going to lose him eventually.”
Years before that, while at Notre Dame, Holtz recognized Strong’s potential and became a mentor, giving the then position coach a binder and advising him to fill it with ideas how to lead his own team. Then to take it on interviews to prove he was ready.
The problem, well documented and oft discussed, is that those interviews rarely came. When they did, many — nay, most — were a sham.
Charlie Strong is black. Strike one.
Victoria Strong, Charlie’s wife, is white. Strike two. Strike three.
Sad to say, but true.
Strong has spoken frankly of an interview he had with a school he knew already had secretly hired another coach, but needed to feign diversity.
But Strong carried on, never whining. Yet never afraid to publicly discuss the reality of discrimination. He told the Orlando Sentinel in 2009, he’d heard too many times to gloss over them the murmurings why, despite his credentials, he was being passed over.
Of one particular position at a southern school he didn’t get, he said, “Everybody always said I didn’t get that job because my wife is white.”
To the credit of Tom Jurich, who hired Strong without needing to see that binder, it wasn’t a hindrance at all. Nor has it been for this community which the coach says “has embraced us (he and family) and taken us in.”
The reactions of fans have been almost unanimously positive.
“He’s everything you want in a head coach,” says one local businessman, who purchased one of the new boxes at Papa John’s but asked not to be named. “His football IQ is off the chart. He’s the real deal. He’s going to be very successful.”
Long time fan and alum, Dr. George Nichols: “We will be a success within three years. I’ve heard Strong speak twice. Very impressive.”
Truth. Charlie Strong is already a success.
In the classroom. He has not one but two Masters degrees.
On the field. He has been lauded as the country’s best defensive coordinator.
Naturally, he expects and has asked a lot of the Cardinals. “He works us hard every single day,” says defensive end Malcolm Mitchell. Yet there is respect. “I love this coach,” adds Mitchell.
But this stalwart man’s moment has arrived. At half past three on the first Saturday of September, with hip hop blaring from the PA and cheerleaders tumbling and fans screaming, head coach Charlie Strong will at last stride onto his own turf.
“I enjoy being captain of the ship. But it means there’s a job to do.”
Thus head coach Charlie Strong will savor the moment but be focused. Knowing he will have traveled the longest route through the most detours to the stadium, he will be ready.
Oh ain’t it lonely/ When you’re livin’ with a gun/ Well you can’t slow down and you can’t turn ’round?/ And you can’t trust anyone
And that’s just for openers.
You just sit there like a butterfly/ And you’re all encased in glass/ You’re so fragile you just may break/ And you don’t know who to ask
What I still can’t figure out is why Morrison sings it in such a strained falsetto that’s, frankly, offputting? Why three songs in this haunting masterpiece of an album, the ever confusing and intransigent artist chooses a voice not his?
Is he standing aloof from the pain conveyed by the lyrics? This album was recorded in ’74. Morrison, exhausted, had recently completed one of his most heralded concert tours. He was divorced from Janet Planet, the object of his adoration on “Tupelo Honey.” He had a new love in tow as he headed from the States back to Ireland for a holiday.
The pain of transition is palpable in many of these songs. But nothing like this one. It stands alone. He is keeping his distance it seems, but must share to shed the grief.
And that voice on that song is the reason it took me so long to trust this album. I bought it years, nay decades, after its release when I knew I needed to fill up my Morrison section of my music collection. I’d put it on the box, trying to listen. But, soon enough, each time I’d grab the newspaper or eat a bowl of cereal and lose my attention.
It always happened with this song, this wrenching falsetto. So I put the album on the shelf, left it there and moved on.
At some point, my pal Moop moved back from Rochester and one day when we were riffing on “Astral Weeks,” my favorite album, he told me he liked “Veedon Fleece” better. I didn’t understand. Left it on the shelf.
Then a few weeks ago, Joe Henry mentioned the album in a FB post. Hmmmm, I said to myself, this piece of music needs to be reconsidered. So I put it on the box in my car. That’s where I can concentrate on the song with only the distraction of driving in the way.
Now I know.
“Bulbs” is the album’s rocker. The above truncated version from a German TV show gives a sense.
It is as inscrutable as most of the tunes on the album.
“You Don’t Pull No Punches But You Don’t Push The River” is the album’s cresting point. Morrison starts with childhood, a constant thread in Morrison’s songbook.
When you were a child, you were a tomboy/ Gimme soul satisfaction/ Way back in shady lane/ Do you remember darlin’?
And hikes to his search for serenity, for his holy grail — the Veedon Fleece.
This is a deeply personal album, full of fear and despair, searching, and in the end, finding some hope and succor. Of his great works of artistry, it’s probably Van Morrison’s least understood, least accepted and least listened to. I now understand it’s worth the work to find its veins and feel the flow.
And thus the human saxophone scats and pushes and fights his way to a transcendent place where few are willing to venture. Where, if they do, they’ll find William Blake and the Eternals/ Oh standin’ with the Sisters of Mercy/ Looking for the Veedon Fleece, yeah.
It happens every single year, just when the nominees are named for induction into the so-called Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I get really pissed.
