Coming Attractions: Soul Power

I'm sort of looking forward to this:

Sun City: The Best Of The 1984-85 Benefit Singles

I watched the Michael Jackson memorial show on Tuesday and was pleasantly surprised with how well it came off. The tributes were heartfelt and authentic, and the musical performances, for the most part, worked. It did him justice, unlike the disaster that was the B.E.T. Awards the Sunday following his death.

Unsurprisingly, the show ended with some of the schmaltz that Michael loved, namely, “We Are The World,” a song whose ickiness has grown exponentially for me as I’ve encountered it over the years. Whether it’s the trite and solipsistic lyrics (as Jackson Browne said, “That’s the problem with North America – we think we ARE the world”), or the mushy arrangement, the song has always occurred for me like the experience of eating Sweet N’ Low right out of the packet – so sweet I want to wretch.

Most of the singers on the project were at or near their pop pinnacle in the winter of 1985, and many of them – Kim Carnes, Huey Lewis, Al Jarreau, Jeffrey Osbourne, Kenny Rogers and Kenny Loggins – were bland MOR fare at best. Neither the song or the assemblage of talent has worn well over time, even though seeing Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan singing on the same song will always hold a thrill for me.

Contrast that with the best of the 1984-1985 “benefit” songs, Artists United Against Apartheid’s “Sun City,” created by Little Steven Van Zandt, who at the time, had just recently left the E Street Band, just prior to Springsteen and the band embarking on the immensely successful and lucrative phenomenon that was the Born In The U.S.A. tour.

Van Zandt, producer Arthur and journalist Danny Schecter assembled greatest collection of rock, rap and soul artists ever on one single. The Lineup: Miles Davis, Bruce Springsteen, Kool DJ Herc, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Ruben Blades, Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, Ringo Starr, Pete Townshend, Lou Reed, Run DMC, Peter Gabriel, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Darlene Love, Bobby Womack, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, Jackson Browne, U2, George Clinton, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Bonnie Raitt, Hall & Oates, Jimmy Cliff, Big Youth, Michael Monroe, Peter Garrett, Ron Carter, Ray Barretto, Gil-Scott Heron, Nona Hendryx, Pat Benatar, and Joey Ramone.

It was an incredible lineup then – and in retrospect, it seems even more incredible. Most of the artists, in direct contrast to the ones on "We Are The World," have gained in stature nearly a quarter century after the recording. Back then, as I wasn’t familiar with many of the artists on the record, it didn’t seem like a big deal. But thinking about it now - Lou Reed and Miles Davis and Springsteen and Joey Ramone and Bobby Womack and Melle Mel and David Ruffin on the same single? Jesus!

And to Van Zandt’s eternal credit, he structured the song so that the rappers would have their own indelible contribution to the song. Remember, “Sun City” was recorded and released prior to rap’s explosion to national prominence with Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way,” which was released in the summer of 1986. The rap section that opens the song leads perfectly into the first chorus – in retrospect, the song is perhaps rap-rock’s greatest moment.

The song was tough and defiant – capturing the best of rock's rebellious spirit . It was independent minded, clear in its intent to bring down Apartheid and wasn’t afraid to point fingers at home, namely at President Reagan’s “constructive engagement” policy with Pretoria.

Incredible song, eclectic lineup, a powerful and crystal clear message – and relative to “We Are The World” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas” – a commercial dud. “Sun City” peaked at #38 on the Billboard Top 40, as many radio stations wouldn’t play the song due to its explicit criticism of Reagan, its tough minded sound, and most likely, the inclusion of so many rappers, which in 1985, top 40 radio had no use for.

More importantly, “Sun City” raised over a million dollars and significantly raised awareness of the scourge of Apartheid. In 1986, Congress passed sanctions against South Africa, overriding a veto from President Reagan. In 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and in 1994, he was elected president of South Africa.

"We Are The World" may have been the pop hit, but "Sun City" was by far the better song. Given that the song itself, with Apartheid gone, is now superflous, it's even further testament that the record holds up so wonderfully, in groove, spirit and soul.

The Ecstasy Of Michael Jackson

I’ve struggled the last few days with how to address the death of Michael Jackson. I wasn’t particularly moved or surprised when I heard the news – the sadness in the Michael Jackson story has been slowly playing out for the past 25 years. On first hearing of his death, my thoughts were that this was, unfortunately, a somewhat unsurprising and pathetic conclusion to his story.

Michael Jackson was always someone who I admired from afar, but could never relate to, unlike all of my musical heroes. Even during the Thriller era, before the disfiguring plastic surgeries, the off-putting crotch grabbing, the accusations of pedophilia and the draining of joy from his music, he seemed almost like an alien to me; an insanely talented star whose gifts for singing, melody, songwriting and especially dancing were phenomenal, but who seemed as though he had been dropped in from another planet. (It always made sense to me that he identified so intensely with E.T.) The fact that he was the first black artist to be recognized as the biggest artist in the world meant little to me - it was a reach for me to view him the same heroic context with which I view Jackie Robinson or Muhammad Ali. But I’m a white boy. (King Of Pop? Why on earth would anyone want to be the King Of Pop?)

Of course, he was a genius. He was touched at birth – his parents knew it, his brothers and sisters knew it, and he knew it. And he busted his ass to develop himself as an artist. As a boy playing on the chitlin' circuit with the Jackson 5 before they signed to Motown, Michael keenly observed the soul stars of the day, soaking them all up and absorbing the best of their music and routines. Years after the fact, Jackson could describe Sam & Dave’s show at the Apollo – how they danced, what they wore – as though he had seen it the day before. With every great artist he encountered, no matter the medium or genre, the young Michael would pester them with questions – How did they get their sound? How did they prepare themselves to perform? How did they do what they did? It was the behavior of a master continually in the inquiry of his own work. He wasn't just blessed with talent. He worked harder than everyone else, too.

ec⋅sta⋅sy   /ˈɛkstəsi/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ek-stuh-see] Show Use ecstasy in a Sentence –noun, plural -sies. 1. rapturous delight. 2. an overpowering emotion or exaltation; a state of sudden, intense feeling. 3. the frenzy of poetic inspiration. 4. mental transport or rapture from the contemplation of divine things.

To be in ecstasy is to be out of oneself. It’s a concept and experience that Michael Jackson, during his golden age, was obsessed with. It informed the best of his music and it was a mystery that he sought answers for. When interviewed upon Thriller's release in late 1982 by writer (and soul maven) Gerri Hershey, he inquired of Hershey if she knew how to get the famous footage of James Brown performing at the T.A.M.I. show in 1964. “He gets so out of himself,” Michael said worshipfully of James. “There are things I need to know about how I do what I do.”

Michael had a lot of reasons why he wanted to get out of himself. He had a father who beat and terrorized him and his family. His family depended on him for their livelihood for as long as he could remember. He had no childhood. As an idol, millions wanted a piece of him (“Being mobbed hurts,” he once exclaimed), and it’s likely he had no idea who he could trust. Most people terrified him. When he looked in the mirror, he clearly saw much he did not like.

But in the best of his music – most of Off The Wall and Thriller, and his early hits with the Jackson 5, all of that baggage was transformed, and it became a non-entity. The joy of his music and performance carried him out of the pain of his identity and what you saw and heard was a master singer and showman, filled with self-assuredness, confidence and power. The reason why he became so enormous is that he provided that same ecstasy through his music – the experience of being out of oneself – for millions, regardless of boundaries of race, nationality, age or any other consideration.

Somewhere along the line – my sense it was sometime in 1984, when his hair caught on fire at a shoot for Pepsi and the Jackson’s Victory Tour became far less than the triumph it was designed to be – Michael’s access to that ecstasy diminished. His music turned inward – filled with empty bragging (“Bad”), paeans to his own victimhood (“Leave Me Alone,” “They Don’t Care About Us,” “Childhood”), or expressions of an unseemly anger (“Scream,” the closing video segment of "Black & White"). The music stopped being communal – instead, it simply reflected Jackson’s increasing isolation and his distance from reality.

Instead of getting out of himself through his music, Michael tried to do it through changing his face, recreating his childhood by vicariously experiencing it through sleepovers with children, and of course, drugs. Naturally, it didn’t work. He thought he was Peter Pan, and maybe he thought with enough record sales, money and adulation, he really could be Peter Pan. Not seeing that that was an impossibility is what killed him.

Michael Jackson’s ecstasy became present for me while at a party on Saturday night. There were about 100 or so people there, milling about, and “Billie Jean” came on. The room lit up. People started dancing and smiling at each other. Everyone’s self-consciousness melted away; everyone sang those lyrics, whether they experienced them the first time around or not. For five minutes, people got caught up in each other, the beauty of the others around them, the joy of music, an experience of what’s possible for humanity, with all of our flaws, to create. It was then that his death hit me for real. And I was flooded with sadness and compassion for him. For what he gave to the world, he deserved better than what he got.

But as sad as his story may be, it is the ecstasy of his greatest music and performances that will endure. That ecstasy is present somewhere around the world at practically every moment - on dance floors and cars and bedrooms on every continent. That's Michael Jackson's true legacy - and the only one that really matters.

Bootleg Friday: Ray Charles, 1976

For this week’s Bootleg Friday, I’m going back to a Founding Father, Brother Ray.

I didn’t grow up listening to Ray Charles; I only started getting into him during my early 20's. But he was always there – on radio and TV and in the ether, with that voice that was always immediately recognizable no matter what song he was singing, or where you heard it. He's one of those artists that people who don't follow or even care much about music can identify him as the artist within four bars of his vocal. That voice, much like Sinatra's, is part of the fabric of America.

When I was 10, I got a compilation of Rolling Stone interviews, and while I quickly memorized the John Lennon and Pete Townshend interviews, I remember not really being able to get into Ray’s interview. I’m not even sure I read the whole interview for years. He gave what seemed to me to be defensive answers. He didn’t want to share everything. When the interviewer (Ben Fong-Torres) inquired about Ray’s experience in therapy, Charles blew it off, saying that he spent most of the time talking to the Doctor about how the Doctor’s life was going. Of course, I now understand the reasons for that “defensiveness” I perceived - born dirt poor, losing his sight at 7, orphaned at 15, on his own from then on. A scuffling musician, a target for other musicians and unscrupulous promoters to take advantage of, a heroin addiction and much more. He intimately knew the blues he sang - and he also knew to be careful about how much he gave away.

But as I got into his music – via the great early 90's Atlantic/Rhino box set, The Birth Of Soul, and then the epochal Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music – I came to realize that to interview Ray Charles was, in a way, a futile gesture. What you needed to know about him was in the music. It was there that the tools and defenses he used to survive a world he had known as hard and cold were no longer necessary, and he could shine without impediment, conjuring a range and depth of human emotion in his own singular way.

I can’t help but think that when I listen to this show, recorded in Stutgart, Germany in 1976. It’s a towering performance, especially the opening track, “How Long Has This Been Going On,” a song about discovering infidelity. Charles conveys more than just the hurt of being betrayed; he sings in the voice of a man discovering his own blindness, and now with sight, knows what a fool he has been. And sometimes, it seems like he sings the song with a very wry smile on his face.

Download: "How Long Has This Been Going On" 9/28/76, Stutgart, Germany
Download: "Feel So Bad" 9/28/76, Stutgart, Germany
Download: "Am I Blue" 9/28/76, Stutgart, Germany
Download: "I Can't Stop Loving You" 9/28/76, Stutgart, Germany
Download: "Country Road" 9/28/76, Stutgart, Germany
Download: "How Much I Can" 9/28/76, Stutgart, Germany
Download: "What'd I Say" 9/28/76, Stutgart, Germany

Bootleg Friday: Dr. John & The Meters, 1973

After spending time with the wonderful new Allen Toussaint album, it only seems fitting that today’s Bootleg Friday be a wonderful 1973 Dr. John show, backed by the Meters, with who he had just recorded Right Place, Wrong Time. The sound leaves something to be desired, but put that aside and let yourself be washed away by the grooves contained within.

Download: Dr. John and the Meters, 3/5/73, Chalmette, LA

The Masterful Allen Toussaint & The Bright Mississippi

“Stately” is an adjective I rarely use to describe an album, but it fits Allen Toussaint’s new album, The Bright Mississippi, like a glove. The Bright Mississippi is a special album, demanding multiple listens to truly get the tapestry of American music – Ellington inspired jazz, r&b, Creole, ragtime – that it weaves with such effortless cool. It’s an album that contains the full experience that is life – its joys, sorrows, delights and hardships. That is to say, it's an album with soul.

Toussaint, of course, is an American Treasure; one of the masters of American R&B, a songwriter and producer who has worked with the likes of Dr. John, The Meters, Labelle, Elvis Costello, Solomon Burke, the Band and dozens of other greats. American R&B (and therefore, American music) is practically inconceivable without him.

But The Bright Mississippi is Toussaint’s first recorded foray into jazz, and with Joe Henry producing, and an all-star cast including guitarist Marc Ribot, clarinetist Don Byron, and saxophonist Joshua Redman providing loving support, Toussaint takes on some of the most treasured standards in jazz history, with complete aplomb. It’s the sound of masters playing for love, and out of complete respect for both the music and for one another.

There are too many sublime moments on the album to mention, but Toussaint’s version of “West End Blues” merits special notice. Toussaint’s piano runs almost inspire laughter with their ease and grace. Toussaint plays with the melody masterfully, like he's Michael Jordan taking over a game, and he then passes it off to Ribot and then Redman who play impossibly gorgeous solos – every single note perfect, with not one wasted.

This will be one of the best albums of the year – go out and get it. It’s not only that they don’t make albums like this anymore – it’s that no one before has ever made one quite like this.

West End Blues - Allen Toussai...

Buy The Bright Mississippi at the Amazon Mp3 store

Little Moments

I think we as people sometimes like to attach grandiose reasons to justify our love of a musician or band, when instead, our love is often kindled by smaller, more private and inscrutable moments of reverie. They're little moments of falling in love with the way a singer phrase a certain line, or a great guitar, piano or sax solo, or the way the horns swell in a very specific point in a song, and because they are so private, so unique to each individual, the importance of such moments to a music listener are unfortunately unheralded.

I've been going through something exactly like that over the past couple of days with David Bowie's "Ashes To Ashes." I'm a Bowie fan, but I'm not a fanatic like a lot of people. You could give me three or four Bowie albums to listen to (Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Station To Station, Scary Monsters) for the rest of my life, and that would probably be enough Bowie for me. I get his vast influence and I have an inordinate amount of respect for him - but for whatever reason, he's not an essential artist for me. (And given that he's the defacto artist for every bar in the E. Village and Lower East Side, I've heard him enough for a lifetime.)

But I've had "Ashes To Ashes" on repeat, just because of the way Bowie phrases the line, "I've never done good things/I've never done bad things/I never did anything out of the blue" at 1:56 in the song. It's a sublime piece of phrasing; it's very Lennon-esque, and the regret that permeates the line floors me every single time I hear it. It's the sound of a man who knows his time is coming to an end, is seeing the whole of his life flash before him and realizes his own foolishness in not living the way he truly wanted. It's an immensely soulful line - perhaps the most soulful line of his entire career, a career where Bowie has sometimes labored to find soulful moments.

I've listened to the whole song a dozen times or so over the past 72 hours, waiting excitedly for that line to emerge. I've also fast-forwarded through the song just to get to that line and sing it as loud as possible. And it's had me listen to a lot of Bowie for the first time in years, as I try to find similar moments of musical ecstasy.

Ashes To Ashes - David Bowie

The Country Honk Soul Of Justin Townes Earle

For me not to post for six weeks is what I would, charitably speaking, call a slump. I’ve been working on several pieces, including a long piece on my ambivalence and, on occasion, my downright disappointment with the new Springsteen tour. I also have been writing a piece about American Idol, as I actually watched a few episodes this season, and found myself fascinated, if also a bit revolted. Mainly though, I’ve been way too much of a perfectionist, which doesn’t work. Writers write, and bloggers blog.

But like most slumps, it’s sometimes something small that gets you out of it, like the way a cheap hit can get a ballplayer in a groove. Tonight, I've been listening to the Justin Townes Earle album, Midnight At The Movies, for the first few times. I’ve been completely charmed by Earle’s fluency with seminal American music forms; country, folk, bluegrass and a little bit of Dixieland, all imbued with a punk spirit, a welcome dollup of subtlety and a whole lotta of love. The album seems modest, but there's an ambition that purrs at the very heart of the whole thing.

The son of Steve Earle and with a middle name given to him in honor of Townes Van Zandt, Midnight At The Movies is Earle’s second album, and it’s a huge leap forward for him. It would be easy to say that the sound of the album is retro, but that would be wrong. Instead, it’s a sound out of time, like the dance band for a bar on the Texas/Oklahoma border on a Saturday night circa 1947. It swings in all the right places, is warm when it counts, and possesses a very timely sense of humor.

In addition to his folk, country and bluegrass influences, Earle clearly grew up on punk rock, and from it he extracts the freedom to simply be who he wants to be, damn the conventions. He makes the Replacements “Can’t Hardly Wait” sound as though he wrote it himself – subbing melancholy for Westerberg’s grit, and with mandolins and fiddle that shimmer, it’s a beautifully resonant arrangement.

“What I Mean To You” is the album’s high point. With some gentle pedal steel and a rhythm section straight out of a Dixieland combo, it’s such a good song that you can easily imagine Louis Armstrong singing it. Earle is already such a strong lyricist that he can create vivid imagery with only a few words, and the longing and ache that’s at the heart of the song is so delightful as to be almost astonishing. Earle’s singing is there to support the song rather than call attention to itself; fortunately, his somewhat craggy tenor conveys every emotion that they lyrics may have left out.

This is great American music that’s deserving of your attention and an audience. And it’s got soul. I recommend it highly.

Download: "What I Mean To You"

Download Midnight At The Movies From Amazon