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January 31, 2010

The Klieg Light Club: When great artists go from "true to form" to "true to formula"

Recently I posted about keeping it simple in 2010. Let's chalk this one up as a sequel to that post. This time it's about keeping it real in 2010. 

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Have you seen the movie Precious?  

Yes? [collective exhaling, wide-eyed looks and shaking of the heads]

No?  Well then, you must see this movie. It is a harrowing story about the human will and the extreme, extremely extreme, challenges it can endure. The movie has been much talked about in the media and on blogs. In a flick filled with shocking moments, one of the most shocking is the performance of Mariah Carey.

Everyone knows who Mariah Carey is, right?  Yes, of course we do. She is known as a self-indulgent, high-maintenance, look-at-me, glamour-puss.  In Precious she played a run-of-the-mill social worker.  For the role, Carey stripped off her Diva persona and played the ugly duckling. In her own words:

"I had to lose all vanity," Carey said. "I had to change my demeanor, my inside, layers of who I am, to become that woman."

Oh my, Mariah. Oh, my.  Where to start...?  Let's start with the "layers of who I am" part of that statement. How crazy is this shit?  She really believes she has these "layers".  Is this a bad case of the stardom flu or is she serious. My guess is that she thinks she is serious. My guess is that she thinks that people don't understand that she is a real person underneath it all. My guess is that she thinks that moonbeams and winged unicorns shoot from her ass every-time she farts.

The ironic thing here is that Mariah thinks that she is acting in this movie when, in actuality, it may be her most real performance yet. As I sat in the theatre watching this, I thought to myself, "damn, she seems normal...why doesn't she come off this way all the time"?  Forget the no make-up haggard appearance, it was her likability that got me. Why does she chose (yes, choose) to come off so damn self-important and narcissistic in the press?  

She is caught in the crossfire of the klieg lights. She was a earnest singer with pipes that dominated the charts.  Now she is a indulgent Diva with performances that overwhelm the gossip rags.  Just like so many artists, be they actors or musicians, Mariah lost her essence. 

How many others has this happened to? Countless. Here is one that comes to mind:

Rod Stewart: Wow. Rod used to be a rocker.  He had swagger. He had rough edges. He had the last laugh. Now he is a laughingstock. Has there ever been a career that has experienced such a downward spiral. Seriously. He started out with Long John Baldry, fronted the Jeff Beck Group (brilliantly), led the almighty Faces, absolutely nailed five out of his first six solo albums (Smiler being the lone dud), and then... what the fuck happened? He became a star, that's what happened. Klieg lights...everywhere.

After "A Night on the Town" he started to fall apart. All of his rough edges became polished and glossy and he fell into the glits and glam of the '70's slipstream. He went pop chart and disco with "Footloose & Fancy Free" and "Blondes Have More Fun".  He became fodder for urban legends involving blow-jobs and stomach pumping.  He limped into the '80's with infrequent blips on the charts with songs hearkening back to days of yore. He rekindled old flames with live albums of old hits. And now...now he sells albums of covers songs to baby boomers, who, like Rod, think that almost is good enough. Yuck. 

The Good (the very good)

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The Bad

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The Ugly

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I feel dirty after that last video. I need to go play "Gasoline Alley" front to back right now to restore my faith in the gravel-throated goodness that once was Rod Stewart. 

Who else belongs in the Klieg Lights Club?
  • Elton John (the earliest stuff was so damn earnest)
  • Robbie Robertson (stop with the Indian albums and the movie producing and put out the classic you know you have in you..please!)
  • Stephen Stills (so much talent + so much meandering = coulda, shoulda, woulda)
  • Mick Jagger (solo stuff specifically)
  • Aerosmith (Dude looks like a train-wreck...)
  • Gregg Allman (he lost his way when he lost Duane...Allman and Woman?  Check out that link...WTF is that album cover all about!?! Come on?! That never would have happened it Duane was still alive).
On the flip-side, there are those who have stayed true to the course.  A sampling of the many that are in the Real Deal club: 
  • John Fogerty
  • Tom Petty
  • Levon Helm
  • Bruce Springsteen 
  • Tom Waits
  • Roger McGuinn
  • Keith Richards (solo albums and guest-star appearances seal the deal)
  • Neil Young (They King of Them All Y'All...in fact, he may deserve his own club)
What do you think about those lists. Agree?  You have any additions to either one? 

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Filed under  //   Bruce Springsteen   Elton John   Gregg Allman   John Fogerty   Keith Richards   Klieg Lights Club   Levon Helm   Mick Jagger   Music   neil young   Real Deal Club   riffs   Robbie Robertson   Rod Stewart   Roger McGuinn   Stephen Stills   Tom Petty   Tom Waits  
Posted by Judd 

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January 25, 2010

Sympathy for the Devil: Keith Richards is going Cold Turkey

Now, he's had to kick habits here and there over the years.  As Keef says, "four days of climbing walls ain't bad...it's the price of and education". But...can you image what over fifty years worth of super human wear and tear will bring when the almighty cluck of this cold turkey hits!?!

Now I know why Haiti had that earthquake! Pat Robertson was right!  That earthquake was the direct result of a muscle spasm-ed leg kick from Keef when he was sweating out the 60's on a bare mattress in a cold dark room.

Sympathy for the devil, indeed. That poor bastard doesn't have a chance in hell while Keef's on the mend...

Keith Richard Gives Up the Booze (The Sun)

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Filed under  //   Booze   Keith Richards   Pills   Powders  
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January 24, 2010

B.B. King out Ya-Ya's the Stones: Why he sings the blues...because he can, dammit!

In December of 2009, the Stones put out a 40th anniversary box set of "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out". In the deluxe versions, the sets from opening acts Ike & Tina Turner and B.B. King were included.  If you need the low-down on the original "Ya-Ya's" set...I envy you. You are in for a treat, and, quite possibly, a life-changer.  Where to start to find out about it?  Start with Lester Bang's bow-down review of the original set from 1969. 

If you are a Ya-Ya's fan like me, the deluxe set was a must buy. The remastered Stones tracks are worth the price alone.  But...the real-deal, bow-down, shuck and jive toe tappers in this box set come from B.B. King. 

The B.B. tracks are comprised of five smoking hot scene stealers. This is raw blues power.  The performance is full-tilt from the horns to the rhythm section to the two stars of the show: Lucille and B.B.'s boom box vocals. 

Buckle up and have a listen to one of those tracks that I have uploaded for you: "Why I Sing the Blues"

Lucille jump starts the track and the rhythm sections churns out a bedrock backbeat. B.B. belts out the lyrics in his tenor horn howl (you know that B.B. never sings and plays at the same time, right?). 

At 1:58 in song, B.B. takes Lucille for a spin and rips off a solo sprint for over a minute. At the 3:30 mark, B.B. heads for the wings (this was the last song of the set before the encore). This is when the band takes over and lays down a stone groove...how fucking tight can one rhythm section be?!?

B.B., ever the crowd pleaser, comes out for a quick 30 seconds of guitar picking before the band pulls the emergency break and stops that groove dead in it's tracks (if only instruments had airbags). 

But enough hot air from me...go ahead, hit play.

  
(download)

p.s. I love the way B.B.'s guitar sounds like a horn. More and more, as he gets on in age and style in his playing...I think Keith Richards plays like B.B.'s horn-ified guitar sound. To see/hear what I mean, check out the Scorsese docco, "Shine a LIght" (short clip below).  Keith is honking his guitar like a chuck-riff saxo-trumpet. 

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Filed under  //   B.B. King   Blues   Keith Richards   Lester Bangs   Music   Riffs   Rolling Stones   Tune Treats  
Posted by Judd 

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December 9, 2009

Flipping Vinyl: A Lunch Hour Look in to London's Vintage Vinyl Bins

                 
Click here to download:
flipping-vinyl-a-lunch-hour-look-in-to-london-s-vintage-vinyl-bins-jcfohwnecChsoImGnIFh.zip (8122 KB)

Lunch breaks aren't just for eating...unless you use them to gobble up the best of London's vintage vinyl.

I have recently discovered that there are almost one dozen vintage vinyl shops near my office in London. I work off of Oxford Street, near Soho. I went for a stroll the other day and realised that I was smack dab in the middle of my London Record Shop Search map (find it here)!

This is dangerous for many reasons. In the next few months I see three things happening as a result of my lunch break discovery...I will get skinnier, my wallet will get lighter and my vinyl collection will get much fatter. The other problem I see is that I will have to come up with excuses as to why my lunch hour has turned into a lunch hours.

Damn the problems!  I have mass vinyl at my fingertips! 

I am going to use this post as a photo album for my lunchtime vinyl hunt exploits. The album will keep updating as I send pics frm my iphone (via the PicPosterous app).  I'll update the comments so that you can see when new vinyl haunts have been properly hunted.

To kick things off, let me tell you a bit about what I saw today:

The first shop I stopped in was"On the Beat".  This shop has been alive and owned by the same guy for 31+ years!  He not only had the coolest old vinyl, but he was playing great tunes...RL Burnside was blaring out from the shop into the streets when I approached the shop. He had all kinds of old Melody Maker, Creem, Rolling Stone original copies hanging on the wall; tons of artifacts and souvenirs, framed, autographed pictures; many racks of obscure, bootleg and special release vinyl.  

I need more time in this shop. Too much to take in just thirty minutes. I found a gem here though: an original pressing of Bob Dylan & The Band's, "Basement Tapes".  There'll be good rocking  at my place tonight for sure.

The second shop I stopped in was "JB's Records".  JB's was a bit smaller, certainly did not lack in volume of cool vinyl.  The shop itself has been there for almost 30 years; the current owner has had it for the last ten.

Here I picked up two classics from two fave acts:

  • Booker  T. & The MGs: "Green Onions"
  • Keith Richards: "Talk is Cheap" (first solo album)

Stay tuned for more vinyl bin flipping fun...

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Filed under  //   Bob Dylan   Booker T. & MGs   Keith Richards   London   Lunch   Music   pics   RL Burnside   The Band   vintage   Vinyl  
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November 22, 2009

Stolen Melodies, Copped Riffs and Royalty Robberies: What do T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry & Keith Richards Have in Common? (The RIff)

My wife is nowhere near the music fan that I am. She does not know (or care to know) a fraction of what I do about the songs and the story behind them are concerned. She does, though, have quite an ear for music. 

She regularly surprises me when she will say, "hey, this sounds exactly like such-and-such". She asked me one time, "don't these people get mad when someone else plays their song and claims it as their own"? 

Oh, boy. That is a can of worms I'm not sure I want to open up?! On second thought, why the hell not...

The history of recorded music is full of various stories about stolen melodies, copped riffs and royalty robberies. Some of the stories are legendary:

John Fogerty was sued (unsuccessfully) by his old CCR label, Fantasy Records, for sounding too much like himself! Fantasy said that "Old Man Down the Road" sounded too much like "Run Through the Jungle" and that Fogerty was plagiarising himself. What a joke. Fogerty had to go to court to defend his style. Hear for yourselves:

In an even more maddening example, Neil Young was sued by Geffen Records for not sound like himself enough.  How can anyone say this about Ol' Neil?!  They way the man shifts musical directions, you'd think the moon is controlling him as it does the tides (I love Neil for this reason). When Neil put out "Everybody's Rockin", Geffen sued him for making "uncharacteristic and uncommercial records". Ok, ok, maybe "Ol' '80's Cantankerous Neil" wasn't trying to break new ground with this one, but to be sued by his label...?  Here is a little ditty from that album:

And then there is this story about the Aussie band, Men at Work, that is making the headline news.  You all remember their 80's hit, "Land Down Under", right? How could you not remember that jaunty, lilting, flute melody in it?  Larrikin Music Publishing managing director, Norm Lurie, remembers it to...from his childhood. Larrikin is now suing Men At Work for back & future royalties on the song. They claim the flute part comes from the refrain of an old Aussie children's song, the "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree".  

Check out this link to see/hear the similarities between the two. When done watching, please proceed to vomit in your lap. This lawsuit is a joke, too. Post Script: I lived in in Sydney for five years...Vegamite sandwiches are good.

Crazy stories, hunh? Can you imagine if the guy that wrote "Happy Birthday" had it copyrighted!?! We'd all be in court!

There are many, many, MANY other examples like this.  Sadly, most of them are about money. What I want to do is celebrate influence.  A few months ago I wrote a post about artists wearing their influences on their sleeves.This may be a quasi-Part II to that one. In that post I quoted two people: 

Neil Young: "It's all one song". (read here for the story behind that quote)
Hunter S. Thompson: "I've been plagiarising all my life.  Its called learning". 

And that is exactly what it is, isn't it...learning. You like/listen to someone. They have an impact on you. You are influenced by them. You take on some of the characteristics in your own playing. You develop your own sound from this. Is this stealing or is this influence?

Case in point: where would we be without T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry and Keith Richards?  My guess is the insane asylum from having to listen to Pat Boone for a decade longer than we should have.

Let's have some good ol' music fun with influence using these three R&R behemoths.  

T-Bone Walker was an early pioneer (in the truest sense of the word) with the electric guitar sound. Once he plugged it in, he made that fiddle squeal and sing out like no one had ever heard before.  Surely that would influence young hot-shot guitarists; and it did. Hendrix stated that T-Bone was a big influence. Even more importantly, Chuck Berry sites T-Bone as one of his two biggest influences (Louis Jordan being the other). We all know Chuck's sound, right?  Yes, but was it really Chuck's in the first place?  Listen to this T-Bone cut, "T-Bone Boogie", that predates any Chuck recordings:

"WOW", right? Chuck has bitched and moaned for years about how he got robbed by people stealing his sound. Most famously, he sued the Beach Boys for stealing the riff from "Sweet Little Sixteen" and won (check out this cool site called, "Sounds Just Like" for a Berry/Beach Boys comparison).  Yeah, Chuck, I guess you were influenced by T-Bone. Have a listen to one of Berry's Great 28, "Bye, Bye Johnny". Sound a little like, "T-Bone Boogie"? Hell, yes.

Now we all know that there are a lot of "Chuck's children out there playin' his licks" (thanks for that lyric, Bob Seeger), none more famously than Keith Richards. Keith is an unabashed Chuck disciple. Keith has said that all he wanted to do when he started out playing was, "to sound like Chuck Berry". Chuck's riffs are found all throughout Keef's playing with the Stones and with his solo band, the X-Pensive Winos.  Here is a track off his first solo album, "Talk is Cheap". Listen for those Chuck riffs like they "were ringing a bell". Also, Johnny Johnson, Chuck's long-time pianist is on this track pounding out on the 88's. 

There are way too many Chuck/Keef stories to talk about here.  You should watch the most excellent movie, "Hail, Hail Rock & Roll" to get a feel for the relationship Master and Pupil had.  Here is a clip of the two Gunslingers "learning" how to play "Carol". 

There you have it: influence in all it's rock and roll glory. It is cool to listen to those three songs in succession to see how that guitar riff has evolved. Can you think of any other great cascading riff lineage?
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Bonus Cut:
While we're at it, here is one last example: the Bo Diddley Beat. Bo's Beat was the new sliced-bread and may never be topped. Here is an early Bo classic and a song by the Allman Brothers from the same name: 

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Filed under  //   Allman Brothers   Bo Diddley   Bow-Down Post   Chuck Berry   Happy Birthday   Hunter S. Thompson   influence   John Fogerty   Keith Richards   lawsuits   Men At Work   Music   neil young   record labels   riffs   Rock and Roll   royalties   T-Bone Walker  
Posted by Judd 

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July 15, 2009

Ancient Gonzo Wisdom (not the same thing as an "Ancient Chinese Secret")

 


One of my favourite bits of Gonzo Wisdom is: "Everybody fumbles...its the recovery that matters".  I think about it every time I screw something up.  I take a step back and think about what I did and how I learned from my mistake and then I go bat-out-of-hell like into the pile to find the ball. 

You are familiar with the book on Hunter S. Thompson's wisdom, aren't you?  You would be if you read my previous post on it.  If you habven't done that, go ahead and take 5 minutes to do so...

...OK.  You done?  Good.  You need to understand that to then grasp what comes next.  Another book out out by Anita Thompson (HST's widow) has hit the shelves.  "Ancient Gonzo Wisdom" just arrived on my Sydney doorstep today (I actually heard the thud of it hitting the porch). I had been waiting for this sucker for sometime now.  It is not the same as a new work from The Man himself, but alas we have no choice but consider this the next best thing. 

Here is a product description on the book:

Bristling with inspired observations and wild anecdotes, this first collection offers a unique insight into the voice and mind of the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson, as recorded in the pages ofPlayboy, The Paris Review, Esquire, and elsewhere.

Fearless and unsparing, the interviews detail some of the most storied episodes of Thompson’s life: a savage beating at the hands of the Hells Angels, talking football with Nixon on the 1972 Campaign Trail (“the only time in 20 years of listening to the treacherous bastard that I knew he wasn’t lying”), and his unlikely run for sheriff of Aspen. Elsewhere, passionate tirades about journalism, culture, guns, drugs, and the law showcase Thompson’s voice at its fiercest.

 

Arranged chronologically, and prefaced with Anita Thompson’s moving account of her husband’s last years, the interviews present Hunter in all his fractured brilliance and provide an exceptional portrait of his times.

There are a number of people who have come out with books since his death.  What I like about this one and the Gonzo Way is that they are him...his own words.  What else I like is that it is arranged by someone (Anita) who cares about him, the man...not just Raoul Duke or Lono. 

NPR also ran an excerpt form an interview with the Good Doctor about his "Hell's Angels" experience. Have at it.  Here is the link:

 

 


I am assuming that by now you have cracked a beer or poured yourself a tall cool Cuba Libre (with plenty of ice).  I have (both).  Let's take a look a hidden gem of a video of Keith Richards being interviewed by HST.  

Yes you read that right.  Keef Richards interviewed by Hunter S. Thompson.  Two of the Lords of Karma's own henchmen on the job. 

I remember watching this when I was in colle ge (one of the few things i fully remember from that time and pla ce).  Two of my heroes, two juggernauts of individualism and True Grit both trading barbs.  The interview is a bow-down event...but, my imagination explodes with possibilities about what the hell went on between this pairing in Hunter's Kitchen post interview.  I feel light-headed just dreaming about it. 

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p.s. you got the "Ancient Chinese Secret" joke, right?


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Filed under  //   Books   Gonzo   HST   Keith Richards  
Posted from Balmain, Australia
Posted by Judd 

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