The sequel to “This is Spinal Tap” is not as good as the original.
It happens.
There’s only one “Godfather 2.”
Only one “Astral Weeks.”
Only one “Guernica.”
That settled, next question: Should there have been a sequel?
After all, the original is a masterwork. It essentially invented the category of Mockumentaries. It is hilarious, and nails the big rock scene. It holds up four decades on.
Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner are all quick witted, very clever improvisers with a reverence for rock & roll along with affection for its and foibles. So too their brilliant supporting cast. The original (and the sequel) are love letters to the music and culture that sustained my generation.
It was all there. Crank it to 11. Stonehenge. They’ve taken on new meanings in pop culture vernacular. Read the rest of this entry »
Screen door slams/ Mary’s dress sways/ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
It is the opening line of the opening tune of Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 masterwork of an album, “Born To Run.”
A collection of eight short stories no less relevant and seminal than Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” or Joyce’s “Dubliners.”
“Thunder Road.”
My firm belief — subjective of course, not an absolute — it’s the singular greatest teen rock & roll anthem.*
*For Dylan, it’s “A Teenager in Love.” Like I said, subjective.
Which, because rock & roll at its essence is the chronicling of teen angst, a time to begin figuring things out, a longing to escape, a fantasy of hitting the road for new life changing adventure, a meeting THE ONE, a get out of jail card for preternatural high school loneliness, means the song is the great rock anthem.
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely/ Hey that’s me and I want you only
I was thirty when the album and song were released, remember exactly where I heard it for the first time. At my next door neighbor Johnny C’s apartment in the Triangle.
I recall that the spare less than orchestrated opening of the album version gave clearance for the resonant lyrical poesy to hit me like a shot to the solar plexus. Read the rest of this entry »
As I was taking care of errands, motoring about the other afternoon, it was a poetic spring day.
Sunny. Short sleeve warm. Not too humid.
And, oh my, that sky.
Azure to infinity.
Lazy billowy Cumulus. Layered. Textured.
The sort of visual, like the Pacific at Big Sur, the verdancy of Cherokee in full bloom, or an August field of tall sunflowers in the Périgord which causes you to stop and marvel at the beauty of Spaceship Earth at rest in its natural state.
And figuratively.
I’m at the stage of life that while savoring the day, I had successfully completed two of my triad of medical appointments last week. Not that many over the norm for an octogenarian. Good news at both. Blessings. All that’s left is annual eye checkup. Easy peasy.
So, it would have psychologically been a boffo day even were Mark Weinberg on the telly huffin’ and puffin’ about some rotation hovering over my condo.* Read the rest of this entry »
In the nature of rock & roll acknowledgment, it is a mistake, an egregious omission of the highest order.
A travesty.
For those like me obsessed with such matters, it is difficult to swallow. Thus, I hardly give a glance to the annual induction announcement from the institution that ostensibly is the chronicler of excellence in the genre.
I choose to ignore.
Until I can’t.
Yesterday, while putzing around my hacienda, I pulled Time Loves A Hero off the shelf.
As I was taking care of my tasks, bouncing around with a boogie beat to the syncopated rhythms, mesmerized as always with the masterful musicianship, smiling bemusedly at the astute clever lyrics, listening in wonder at the truly unique eclectic stylings, that cloud hovered.
As I am wont to do, I thought, even uttered out loud with disgust, LITTLE FEAT IS NOT IN THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME!
How can this possibly be?
How can this iconic band, comfortably in the conversation contemplating the best outfits of the Rock Era, have slipped through the cracks?
The R&RHoF inductee list is full of charlatans, unworthies. So many, to name but a few would be an injustice.
Back when, you know, in the day, there would be more than occasional Saturdays that arrived without evening plans.
So, they began at the record store.
Karma.
ear x-Tacy.
Looking for somebody to flirt with.
Knowing some similar music obsessives would be there to chat up, maybe with knowledge of where that night’s action was.
Thumbing through the racks you’d thumbed through oh so many times before. Pulling out albums you hadn’t chosen in the past, giving them one more consideration.
How many times did I pull out the Velvet Underground Nico album, the one with the Warhol banana on the cover? A lot. Never bought it. A hole in my resumé I suppose.
Before leaving I’d always have two, three, four under my arm. If one’s good, ya know, more is better.
Soon enough, maybe even that night if no intriguing destination was to be learned of, I’d sit down to listen, hopefully savor.
Paying attention with total focus. Unless of course there’d be knock at the door. A pal dropping by, maybe with a new Moody Blues release, “I had to hear.” Probably toting some exotic herbal repast.
Anyway, often an album would get glossed over. I’d just give a quick glancing listen and if it didn’t immediately grab me, put it on the shelf. Read the rest of this entry »
How it is an integral part of the most immersive of art forms.
And there are two specific instances where movies allowed me to rediscover what are easily two of my favorite Doo Wop songs ever.
Both original artists and both are one hit wonders. Though in one case, the elegiac tune has been covered any number of times through to the now.
My favorite doo wop tune of ever is “I Love You” by the Volumes.
Oh the harmonic swoops and swirls of teen longing.
The group is from my birthtown Detroit. Though I didn’t learn of that connection until years later.
The song was released in ’62.
My remembrance is that I only heard it once, maybe twice during my high school years.
It faded into some nook and cranny of my mind.
At a point in the 70s surely, I recall a record store somewhere along the Frankfort Ave corridor. The owner prided himself on how many hundreds of oldies he had taped. Packed on reel to reel, if I remember correctly.
During a visit, somehow the Volumes tune came to mind. I hadn’t heard in who knows when, around the time of release for sure. When he found and played it, chills froze me.
I want to say literally, but not really. Figuratively, oh yeah.
One who has for all the bounty I’ve enjoyed in life been somewhat desperate of soul. An outlaw of sorts once upon a time.
Just as a descriptor, it is a sonorous word, with which I’ve been fascinated.
It’s use in two totally different tunes is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a long while. Years actually.
But, I’ve been somewhat of a missing person, if you will a desaparecido — another play on that term — when it has come to actually sitting down at the keyboard and doing what I am at this moment.
Because the reasons for putting it off are how closely I relate to some of the lyrics.
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?/ Come down from your fences, open the gate/ It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you/ You better let somebody love you/ (Let somebody love you)/ You better let somebody love you before it’s too late
So, yeah, the otherwise insufferable* Don Henley and partner Glenn Frey’s lyrics cut through like a machete.
(* Why do I use that adjective to describe the obviously talented and successful Henley. Two reasons. One, the Eagles have been famous for not liking each other for decades, taking separate limos from hotel to venue. Rubs me the wrong way. But, his arrogance caught me from the get go. The first time I heard the band, they opened for Yes at Louisville Gardens. As was often the case, much of the crowd was milling about before the headliner, not really listening. At some juncture, Henley, annoyed at the inattention, brayed into his mic, “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you know who we are? We’re the Eagles!”)
Still it’s a great damn song, a bracing use of imagery. Best rendered by the incomparable Linda Ronstadt, who stole the tune.
Damn, Linda, shred me apart why don’t ya?
* * * * *
Then, there’s Guy Clark with a totally different tale, also a brilliant use of the imagery.
About his relationship with an old man.
About how life evolves with its inevitable conclusion.
I know nothing about playing Moon and Forty-two.
But I look in the mirror and I’m pushing 80, an old man.
Conscious that not too far off that sumbitch is comin’.
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
Out of respect, I have been reluctant to engage artists of note on the few occasions through the decades when I’ve been in their presence.
(The exception to the rule. I could not not engage Allen Toussaint when our paths crossed in a hotel lobby. With him, there was a connection. His album producer Joe Henry is an acquaintance.)
So I kept a distance as usual in the mid 90s with Paul Simon. He was standing about ten feet away at JazzFest’s Congo Square stage with Edie Brickell one early Thursday afternoon.
It was in the period not long after the release of “Rhythm of the Saints,” which album had been a significant comfort a couple of years earlier during my lengthy recovery after being hit by a car while jogging.
The album infused by Simon’s fascination and emergence with African and Brazilian music was recorded with a majority of the musicians from those countries. It is filled with lilting melody lines and harmonies, gentle but insistent rhythms, and as always Simon’s ever-present lyrical elusiveness and undercurrent of melancholy.
One example of his poetic brilliance from “Further to Fly”:
There may come a time/ When I will lose you/ Lose you as I lose my light/ Days falling backward into velvet night/ The open palm of desire/ Wants everything/ It wants everything/ It wants soil as soft as summer/ And the strength to push like spring
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
It is the sense of the place.
More so than the righteous music I’ve heard there on several trips down.
The Delta. Birthplace of the Blues. Which of course begat the rock & roll I love so much.
Two images from my first visit more than a quarter century gone still resonate.
A desolate crossroad of two gravel/ dirt roads with fields of scrubby early season cotton plants to the horizon in every direction. The lone highway marker, a rusted tilting pole, the sign reading Joe Noe Road.
Not far away, off Highway 61, in the middle of proverbial nowhere, a siding of 50-60 rusting rail cars, abandoned.
The Delta, ever bleak, haunts, it’s mysteries lurk. Land of cotton. Seemingly forgotten, yet daily interactions say old times there not.
The goal of that first trip with pals was a blues festival in Greenville, where BB King was to play, his first visit back to perform in a long while.
Along with way, we found Charlie Patton’s grave site, saw the cabin said to be where Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation, stood alone in the middle of road in front of the Hollywood in Robinsonville, one of the places where Robert Johnson “is from.” Read the rest of this entry »
I’m a lifelong rock & roller. I love JazzFest. Here’s my latest report.
But first a quick explanation why this is so late. And thanks to those loyal readers who have actually reached out and wondered what’s up and where is it? Stuff happens. Strange week. Car tsouris. Reacclimatizing to Ohio Valley sludge and the allergies it petri dishes. Gettin’ my daily grove back after overindulgence in New Orleans. Etc, etc. It’s been a Larry David kind of week.
But here goes:
It permeates as it were mist rising from the reeds under a full moon in Atchafalaya Swamp.
Fragrant as magnolia swelter.
Foreboding as the gators and snakes that lurk in the bayou.
Mysterious as cricket and dragonfly crackles from the mossy vines.
Mystical as a summer night in the swamp ever is.
Phantom mosquitos hover.
Atmospheric. Melancholy.
Of all the acts I heard during the opening weekend of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2024, none came close to cutting through like Dylan LeBlanc. Read the rest of this entry »
I am a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
Derby parties. Derby concerts. I’ve been to a few.
When the two merge it can be really special.
The Derby Eve Jam used to be a big thing. May still be, don’t pay as much attention as I used to.
The first I remember from back in he day is Canned Heat at Louisville Downs. Also saw Emmylou Harris there, with some original Crickets in her band. Allman Brothers at Freedom Hall. Dwight Yoakum, I believe.
The lede shall not be buried.
Screen door slams/ Mary’s dress sways/ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Triple entendre, that.
In the nature of rock & roll acknowledgment, it is a mistake, an egregious omission of the highest order.
One song.
Back when, you know, in the day, there would be more than occasional Saturdays that arrived without evening plans.
I am a desperado.
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
I’m a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.
I’m a lifelong rock & roller. I love JazzFest. Here’s my latest report.
I am a rock & roll lifer. I got stories, lots of stories. Here’s another.