When my bandmates and I visited Boston on a scouting trip back in the early '80s, we stopped in at a little club in Brookline to see a band called the Martells. It was brighter and friendlier than the other clubs we visited, and people were dancing instead of just standing around trying to look cool. The place was called the Tam. I asked the singer of the band if Boston was a good town for music. "Great scene," he said, "but it's a bitch to make any money." We moved here anyway, and my band Loose Ties ended up playing the Tam many times, including our official "goodbye" show in the late '80s. We will be remembering the Tam in story and song this Thursday Oct 9 at the Brookline Library, 361 Washingston St., Brookline. The evening will feature the Memphis Rockabilly Band, Jay Feinstein of Push Push, and I'll read the 'Tam' scene from my novel Next Big Thing, and be joined some Loose Ties friends for some vintage Tam music. Hope you can be there!
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
The Lost Art of ... Great Album Sides
I was recently in Newbury
Comics' Harvard Square location and I was stunned to see that half the
music bins are now devoted to … vinyl LPs! And not vintage, used LPs from the
'60s and '70s, but new vinyl records. I still have a turntable, and I kept all my
favorite LPs from childhood and college, but I haven't bought a record since the '80s. But with the new vinyl renaissance comes
the return of a lost art form: the great album side.
CDs can cram 75 minutes of music
into an uninterrupted flow, and iPods and computers can play on indefinitely.
But LPs top out at about 25 minutes per side, so a ten song album has 2 track
ones, 2 closing numbers, in effect 2 entirely different programs of music.
Sometimes Side 1 is great but Side 2 sucks, sometimes vice versa (and only
rarely are both sides of any album truly great). Here are a dozen of my picks
for classic album sides. Feel free to argue and add your own!
The
Doors, The Doors (side 1)
1.
Break On Through (to the Other Side)
2.
Soul Kitchen
3.
The Crystal Ship
4.
Twentieth Century Fox
5.
Alabama Song
6.
Light My Fire
The Doors are mostly remembered for Jim Morrison's visionary, shamanistic excesses, but they wouldn't have meant shit if it weren't for the tight, hooky band behind him. It was guitarist Robby Krieger who wrote their break-through single, and keyboardist Ray Manzarek who supplied the musical hooks. Side 1 of The Doors is five killer originals, and a cover of a Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill art song from the 1920s that somehow fits right in. And, oh yeah, for a debut album by an unknown band fresh out of film school, Morrison sounds astoundingly confident.
Steve
Forbert, Alive on Arrival (side 1)
1.
Goin' Down to Laurel
2.
Steve Forbert's Midsummer Night's Toast
3.
Thinkin'
4.
What Kinda Guy?
5.
It Isn't Gonna Be That Way
Van
Morrison, Moondance (side 1)
1.
And It Stoned Me
2.
Moondance
3.
Crazy Love
4.
Caravan
5.
Into the Mystic
I warned my first college girlfriend
that if I ever showed up with Moondance under
my arm she'd know I meant business. I did, and I did, and we did. I'm sure we
weren't the first, or the last. Four of Van's best songs, in a row, perfectly
sung and played and produced. Make-out music with a hint of spiritual yearning.
So glad it wasn't Saturday Night Fever!
Rolling
Stones, Exile on Main Street (side 4)
1.
All Down the Line
2.
Stop Breaking Down
3.
Shine a Light
4.
Soul Survivor
Pretty much everything the Stones do
better than any other band on one concise LP side. "All Down the
Line" is a classic uptempo rocker with great Mick Taylor slide guitar and
killer r&b horn lines. "Stop Breaking Down" is the blues they
grew up on, fed back through the prism of a decade's worth of decadence. "Shine
a Light" is a back alley gospel hymn with great morning-after lyrics and
church organ courtesy of Billy Preston. "Soul Survivor" is pure
Jagger growl and Richards rhythm. Nobody does it better.
George
Harrison and Friends, The Concert for
Bangladesh (side 5)
1.
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
2.
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry
3.
Blowin' in the Wind
4.
Mr. Tambourine Man
5.
Just Like a Woman
Led
Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II (side 2)
1.
Heartbreaker
2.
Living Loving Maid
3.
Ramble On
4.
Moby Dick
5.
Bring It On Home
As heavy as heavy metal, as bluesy as the blues, but with pop/rock hooks and folk/Celtic underpinnings, Led Zeppelin II cut like a laser, and was a sonic quantum leap beyond any blues rock that had existed up to that point. "Heartbreaker" is pure testosterone, with an actual guitar solo - everybody else shuts the fuck up and listens to Jimmy play. "Maid" is as hooky as anything on AM radio. "Ramble On" has tender folky verses that hint at the Stairway yet to come, and "Moby Dick" and "Bring It On Home" are classic riff rock. Zeppelin moved forward, in many directions, after this, but they never rocked harder.
The
Who, Live at Leeds (side 1)
1.
Young Man Blues
2.
Substitute
3.
Summertime Blues
4.
Shakin' All Over
Elton
John, Madman Across the Water (side
1)
1.
Tiny Dancer
2.
Levon
3.
Razor Face
4.
Madman Across the Water
AM radio in the '60s was a haven for
2 minute, 30 second hook-driven hits. But by the early '70s, some longer, more
complex records were getting through. Both "Tiny Dancer" and
"Levon" were major hit singles featuring rich, beautifully recorded
piano and lush orchestrations, and "Dancer" doesn't even hit the
chorus until 2 minutes into the song. Add the title track's impressionistic
strings and guitar harmonics, not to mention Elton's best singing, and you get
one of the most impressive sides of progressive piano pop ever recorded.
Joni
Mitchell, Blue (side 2)
1.
California
2.
This Flight Tonight
3.
River
4.
A Case of You
5.
The Last Time I Saw Richard
Any album side that features "River"
followed by "A Case of You" followed by "The Last Time I Saw
Richard" wins, hands down, any confessional-singer-songwriter-poet
competition you can dream up. Joni's singing here is boundless,
the playing sparse and impressionistic, and the writing is perfect. Any guy
who's having problems with his girlfriend should listen to this album a hundred
times in a row.
Humble
Pie, Town and Country (side 2)
1.
Every Mother's Son
2.
Heartbeat
3.
Only You Can See
4.
Silver Tongue
5.
Home and Away
I'm not a huge fan of either Steve Marriot's Small Faces work, or his late-Humble Pie blues shouter incarnation, and I'm also not a slavish devotee of Peter Frampton's '70s solo albums. BUT, for the short time they joined forces in Humble Pie, they made some stellar music together and seemed to both bring out the out the best in each other and cancel out each other's faults. Town and Country is largely acoustic-guitar based, but features some great Frampton guitar work, and some of Steve's best singing (and vice versa). The song are melodic but still have an edge, and their cover of Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat" is a #1 single that never was. (Note the 1st 2 Humble Pie LPs were released together in the States as the 2-LP set Lost and Found. Get it.)
David
Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy
Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (side
2)
1.
Lady Stardust
2.
Star
3.
Hang on to Yourself
4.
Ziggy Stardust
5.
Suffragette City
6.
Rock and Roll Suicide
This album, in both defining glam
and transcending it, lifted Bowie right past 'rock star' to 'object of
worship.' Side 2's song cycle, about a Hendrix-esque guitar hero too divine to
live, showcases Bowie's ability to create a character and a world and all the
emotions therein - the definition of theater. He's also unbound by pop music's
usual rules - try tracking the chords and structure of 'Rock and Roll Suicide'
once it really gets going. It might be 'wrong' rule-wise, but it's absolutely
right.
The
Beatles, Abbey Road (side 2)
1.
Here Comes the Sun
2.
Because
3.
You Never Give Me Your Money
4.
Sun King
5.
Mean Mr. Mustard
6.
Polythene Pam
7.
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
8.
Golden Slumbers
9.
Carry That Weight
10.
The End
11.
Her Majesty
Okay, this album side was conceived of as an album side -
individually the songs aren't that strong (with the exception of "Here
Comes the Sun," which remains perfectly charming some forty years later),
but it's the flow between the songs that makes this a work of art, and the climaxes
(the reprise of "You Never Give Me Your Money" in "Carry That
Weight," the drum solo and guitar jam leading to "The End") are
as effective as anything recorded in the rock era.
OK, that's my dozen. Long live the
album side!
Monday, March 24, 2014
PETE SEEGER (and me)
In
1991 I was a recovering rock musician and only just discovering that folk music,
like the kind we used to sing around the campfire at summer camp, still existed.
I got invited to a weekend conference/retreat by something called the People's Music Network. When I called for more information - where do you stay, how do
you get there - the person who answered the phone was Sonny Ochs, sister of the
guy who wrote "Draft Dodger Rag," one of the songs my camp counselors
all sang. I decided to go. When I got there I discovered that another PMN
member was the guy who wrote "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" - Pete
Seeger.
I have
stayed involved with the People's Music Network ever since, and got to see Pete
once or twice a year at PMN gatherings, not just onstage (changing the last line
of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to 'why can't you and I' to make it
more inclusive) but in workshops of maybe a dozen people sitting in a circle hearing
him talk about how to structure a set (always follow a challenging, potentially
divisive song with a one that will unite people) and having him listen and
comment on other people's songs. And, maybe most importantly, I got to see the
way Pete - arguably the most influential American folksinger of the twentieth
century - was always one of the group, stacking chairs and sweeping the mess
hall floor with the rest of us. Pretty humbling and eye-opening to witness,
especially for a former future rock star like me.
As
I've learned more about folk music, it's been amazing to realize the scope of
Pete Seeger's career (from The Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie, to the
Weavers, to being blacklisted, to singing at Barack Obama's inauguration) and
his contributions to what we know as folk music - composing, adapting,
discovering and/or popularizing songs from "Michael Row the Boat
Ashore" to "We Shall Overcome" to "Wimoweh" to "Rainbow
Race." And all the while, never forgetting the people who sweep up the
concert hall after the crowd has gone home.
This
Saturday evening March 29 I'll be performing at the People's Voice Cafe in New
York City, along with Pat Lamanna and Mara Levine & Caroline Cutroneo, and
we'll be closing the evening with Pete's song "Where Have All the Flowers
Gone," the first song of his I ever learned, at summer camp. My camp
didn't know it was a Pete Seeger song, they just thought it was a folk song.
Exactly.
The
next afternoon March 30 Mara and I will singing, along with Loretta Hagen, at
the St. John's Gallery in Easton, PA, near where I went to camp. When we do "Where
Have All the Flowers Gone" I'm sure some camp friends will join in.
Thanks, Pete.
Then on Saturday April 5 I'll sing it one more time, with Dean Stevens, as the Nameless Coffeehouse in Cambridge, MA celebrates Pete's life and music. Many of Boston's finest folksingers will be there, and I'm honored to be among them. Thanks again, Pete, for everything.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)