Bootleg Friday: Talking Heads, 1977

Talking Heads seem to be in the air these days. Whether in their obvious influence in bands like Vampire Weekend, or David Byrne’s continuing influence as both musician and thinker, their legacy continues to resonate even more powerfully with the passing of time.

It seems weird to me now, but the first time I ever heard “Take Me To The River” was via the Talking Heads version, not Al Green’s. Talking Heads were a staple of mine as a kid. As a band with lots of MTV exposure in the channel’s early years, songs like “Burning Down The House” were lingua franca anyone who grew up in the early 80's.

For me, they were a band whose pleasures were to be more fully explored and discovered. Speaking In Tongues and Stop Making Sense gave way to Talking Heads ’77 and Remain In Light, two albums that I still cherish, and were a gateway into a further exploration of CBGB alumni like Television, Blondie, Richard Hell & The Voidoids and more. (I was already a Ramones fan.) Sure they were art-damaged (usually not my thing at all), but I always loved the tremendous sense of humor in their music, as well as some of the best bass playing I’ve ever heard, courtesy of Tina Weymouth.

Today’s Bootleg Friday is a selection of six songs recorded in San Francisco in December of 1977. Of special note is “The Big Country,” my favorite Talking Heads song, and one of the most incisive and brilliant pieces of American alienation I’ve encountered; it's a commentary on the American heartland before anyone had invented the distinction "red state."

I see the shapes,
I remember from maps.
I see the shoreline.
I see the whitecaps.
A baseball diamond, nice weather down there.
I see the school and the houses where the kids are.
Places to park by the factries and buildings.
Restaunts and bar for later in the evening.
Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas.
And I have learned how these things work together.
I see the parkway that passes through them all.
And I have learned how to look at these things and I say,

(chorus)

I wouldnt live there if you paid me.
I couldnt live like that, no siree!
I couldnt do the things the way those people do.
I couldnt live there if you paid me to.

I guess its healthy, I guess the air is clean.
I guess those people have fun with their neighbors and friends.
Look at that kitchen and all of that food.
Look at them eat it guess it tastes real good.

They grow it in the farmlands
And they take it to the stores
They put it in the car trunk
And they bring it back home
And I say ...

(chorus)

I say, I wouldnt live there if you paid me.
I couldnt live like that, no siree!
I couldnt do the things the way those people do.
I wouldnt live there if you paid me to.

Im tired of looking out the windows of the airplane
Im tired of travelling, I want to be somewhere.
Its not even worth talking
About those people down there.

Download: "Uh Oh Love Comes To Town" 12/3/77, San Francisco, CA
Download: "The Big Country" 12/3/77, San Francisco, CA
Download: "New Feeling" 12/3/77, San Francisco, CA
Download: "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" 12/3/77, San Francisco, CA
Download: "Psycho Killer" 12/3/77, San Francisco, CA
Download: "No Compassion" 12/3/77, San Francisco, CA

A Music Fan And Label Executive Writes In

A friend and contributor writes:

For the sake of full disclosure, I’ll get this first part right out of the away. I’ve worked for a record label in one way or the other since 1996. Amazingly, like mostly everyone left on the label side, I survived major label regime shake-ups, company consolidations, near-deranged executives stomping around expensive hallways with a false and exaggerated sense of self that would make Dick Cheney look like Mahatma Gandhi. And that was just in my first year as an Assistant.

In the 13 years that followed, I've watched the label business get shrunk to its core. To say that it’s a shadow of its former self is an understatement that can only be totally understood if you experienced major label life at the height of their power. As survivors (a badge not worn with honor, but more with a sense of numb mystification), we now spend our time taking bets on which major retail chain will be the next to go out of business. We do this mainly because betting on week 1 album Soundscan numbers lost its luster about a half decade ago. But I’m not here to talk about all that doom and gloom. There’s already enough of that to go around.

Feeling a little nostalgic, I’m here to reminisce about that magical time a decade ago when I spent most of my waking hours in my studio apartment glued to my computer downloading songs from Napster. On a 56K dial-up modem no less. Looking back it now, that moment in time had the same impact on me as my first CD purchase years before it. The album was Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Figuring out how to get the wrapping off the blister pack…popping the disc in CD player and listening to the album for the first time in its entirety. I sat on an orange bean bag on the marble floor of our basement unable to move. And not because I was stoned, although that would have made it even better, but because the SOUND was so awe inspiring. And much like everyone else, I started re-buying the key album titles in my collection to try and re-capture that same moment. Over and over.

The Napster experience took it one step further. I now had access to everything. Dylan outtakes I’d only seen at Bleecker Records on expensive Italian bootlegs. They were now mine for the taking. All of them. Right away. Even on some studio recordings, it never occurred to me that the SOUND was many generations removed and that the files themselves were shitty compressed versions of their former selves. I didn’t care. And neither did anyone else outside of the hardcore sound geeks. Convenience trumped it all. And of course, this was in pre-iPod world.

In its own way, the infancy period of Napster was like going to a NYC strip club in the pre-Giuliani years and finding out that you COULD have sex in the champagne room if you could afford it. And not only could you afford it, you didn’t even have to be a Wall Street guy or a ball player. You actually walked out with the stripper’s real digits. And she returned your call! Silly analogies aside, in the years that followed, we now know that we (the record music biz) did everything mostly wrong. The list is too long and too painful to go over although for me, #1 with a bullet is still the RIAA’s idea of an attack campaign that essentially justified suing its own consumer base. Decision makers actually sat in a room, looked at each other and went “that’s a great idea!” And unbelievably so, some people even bought into it. A well-known manager (you won’t figure out who), once told me “The RIAA is doing a great job, they’re teaching kids a valuable lesson, because their parents aren’t telling them that what they’re doing is outright stealing.” My response back? “Hey do you know what kids in College dorms do if they have extra money? They buy a 500 gig drive. And fill it with content. Then another kid down the hall buys another external hard drive and they TRADE them…They don’t seem so scared to me…Maybe they’re scared anyone in their right mind would price a shitty album at $18.98 for 2 good songs. I mean shit; buy 5 of those suckers and you can get 40,000 songs in a box…for free!” The manager looked at me as if I’d just stolen his merch rights. But returning to the topic at hand, the actual reason for this missive isn’t actually so much about what we did wrong (and continue to do wrong) but about something else that indirectly ties into this mess we’ve found ourselves in for a decade now-- the death march of the album. Actually, forget about the march. It’s already buried. And believe me, I’m one to talk first hand; I own about 6,000 of them. CD’s that is.

The album experience in a pre-Napster world was a wonderful place indeed. Transformational works from Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, Public Enemy, Cash, Aretha, Miles, The Stones, Elton John, Nirvana changed the world. The list is long. But guess what…that world is now D.E.D. Finito. Over. Done. Will it come back? Maybe one day…but not anytime soon.

The album world has been a replaced by the record companies biggest fear—a world completely dominated by singles where the Digital Soundscan chart has literally replaced the Billboard Top 200 album chart as the chart to pay attention to. It’s probably the only chart left that actually has labels “oohing and ahhing” on Wednesday mornings when Flo-Rida or Eminem shatters a new digital single sales record. These #’s (400, 500, 600 thousand units sold) is precisely what the ALBUM chart used to be. Except for one minor detail…instead of building an $8, $10, or even $12 per unit business, we’re now surviving on a .60 cent per unit model.

10 years since the beginnings of Napster, the album has turned into the type of dead animal that you seeing rotting on the side of the road. It’s the type of cadaver that you want to slow the car down for just to get a good look at the corpse. What’s replaced it? A never-ending series of playlists - the modern day version of cassette mixtapes. And you know what; I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve found closure. Because at the end of the day, I’ve come to realize that I LOVE the idea of singles. And not necessarily singles per se, but individual, stand alone tracks. I don’t need ALL of Give ‘Em Enough Rope by The Clash. No really, I don’t. And I love the idea of p. Songs that you wouldn’t have DREAMT of putting side by side can now peacefully co-exist. And nobody has to know. And because the worldwide domination of the iPod has made music more insular than ever, we have no problem lining up artists and songs that really have no place being on the same set list so to speak, let along in the same iPod!

In a pre Napster world, no one would have dared to play certain songs out loud from fear of being made fun of or possibly humiliated. But now, it doesn’t matter. The idea of being ironic by including song X next to Y in your computer or digital player is no longer an issue. If anything, it’s become practical. The shame is gone. Because as it turns out…you actually LIKED those songs! You can now breathe easier and let go of that repressed feeling of “what would so and so think of me if they actually knew I was listening to a Loverboy song?”

Think I’m kidding? Check this out. Among the playlists I’ve created, I have one that I particularly love called AOR AND OTHER?! It includes 72 songs (some with commonality, some not) including tracks from April Wine, Visage(!), Asia, Plastic Bertrand (because time has been kind to “Ca Plane Pour Moi”, turns out it’s actually minor pop punk gem), Red Rider (“Lunatic Fringe”), Shooting Star (a mid-west minor league band who had 1 radio hit with “Hang On For Your Life”), Frida (from Abba) old Saxon, Genesis’ “Paperlate” (great pop song), R.E.O. Speedwagon (if Daughtry wrote a song like “Time for Me To Fly” people would shit themselves with excitement), Survivor (pre-“Eye Of The Tiger”) and the list goes on and on. Not to sound like Bill Clinton but let me just be perfectly clear about this…I find zero irony in any of these songs. I wouldn’t make devil horns to any of them. Not even to the colossal live version of “2 Minutes To Midnight”—as near to a Pop song as Maiden will ever get.

So what the fuck is my point? These songs make me feel good. Together, they create some type of retarded schizophrenic panoramic collection that no Razor & Tie compilation could have cooked up (love those too btw, so no diss here). Some of these songs could easily exist on a Kansas City classic rock station or on L.A.’s Jack FM. Some are just here because they’re insta memories. Wait, “No One Like You” from the Scorpions just came on.

Do I miss the album? Every once in a while. But not as much as I thought as I would. My modern-day version of the album has morphed into something different. It’s been replaced by digital bootlegs of outtakes/live albums and B-sides that I’ve amassed over the years. Those too have also been turned into variety of playlists or folders containing deeper playlists. Music, much like life itself has morphed into an A.D.D. blog-tastic type world where attention spans are rolled in 90 second sound bites. And trust me when I tell you that music networks (or what’s left of them) do research on this type of thing. It’s a proven fact. Because they’re not even so much competing with each other anymore, they’re competing with YouTube. And here again, that’s why playlists have become what they are. No one pays attention to anything anymore. We’re so completely messaged and devoid of patience that by compiling dozens and sometimes hundreds of songs into one continuous running order, we have the option to quickly skim through all of them. Just like we skim through a radio stations on a car stereo.

I should be bummed that my business has turned into the quagmire that it’s in, but who’s got the time? Not when I can make another New Wave Of British Heavy Metal playlist!

A Definition Of Soul

Ray Charles, 1968:

"Soul is a force that can light up a room. The force radiates from a sense of selfhood, a sense of knowing where you've been and what it means. Soul is a way of life - but it's always the hard way."

Live Blog Coverage Of Live Nation/Ticketmaster Hearings

The Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger hearings took place in Washington D.C. today. Here's some good live blogging from the Wall Street Journal.

Here's Bill Wyman's live take in his blog, Hitsville.

However this goes down, it will have an immense impact on the future on both the live and recorded music business.

Benjy Ferree Live At The Bellhouse

I have an affinity for artists like Benjy Ferree - the ones who can't be contained within one genre, who don't quite fit in anywhere. Ferree's new album, Come Back To The Five And Dime, Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee is a good one, an amalgalm of rock, blues, soul, with a little T. Rex thrown in for good measure. But the kind of music he plays is not quite fashionable, and at his show at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn this past Friday night, he saw the barriers in front of him in connecting to an audience, and was a little shaken - and at his best, a bit defiant.

Fronting a five piece band, Ferree was opening for Tim Fite, a fact that a semi-heckler would not quit reminding Ferree of for most of his set. Ferree's strongest asset is his voice, a wonderfully versatile instrument capable of rock and soul assertion as well as delicate subtlety. And when he played the strongest songs from his new album, such as "Fear," that voice was used to great effect.

But for too much of the set, Ferree seemed distracted - in his own head, the worst place for a performer to be. Playing for a typically reserved indie rock crowd, Ferree seemed unsure of how to connect. Ironically, it was the Tim Fite fan/heckler that finally freed Ferree from the tyranny of his own mind and prodded him to play his best music of the night.

Ferree is clearly a talented artist, but if he's going to have a chance to succeed, he's going to have to extend himself much further. There's an exuberance within Ferree - he plays for love - that was not quite on display on Friday night. The guy is soulful, but he plays in a genre that isn't completely comfortable with the unfettered, sometimes messy emotions that soul conjures. Once Ferree summons the courage to put himself completely out there, it's quite possible that this already fine artist will become something far more than fine.

Bootleg Friday: Dusty Springfield At the BBC

Whether you like Amy Winehouse, Adele or Duffy; if you're a fan of the British female soul singer, then all roads lead back to Dusty Springfield.

Springfield, like the R&B besotted Brits of her generation, sang her versions of American soul with love and enormous respect. What she brought to it was a pop sensibility informed by her very catholic tastes - everything from Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart and Cole Porter to Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller. The woman knew great music, and it came out in both her song selection and in the American acts that she promoted in England. In 1965, she hosted the first Motown TV show in England, and decades later, many Motown greats credited her with helping their music grow in popularity in the UK.

Her greatest and most beloved work, Dusty in Memphis, recorded with Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin, is one of the greatest white soul albums of all time, an album of remarkable and lasting emotional resonance. If it sounds effortless, it wasn't. Surrounded by the producers, singers and musicians who were responsible for some of the greatest soul music ever, she was clearly intimidated. Suffering from what Jerry Wexler called, "a giant inferiority complex," she had to record her vocals in New York, away from the musicians.

But that is another story. Today, on Bootleg Friday, her exquisite taste is revealed here in the songs she selected for her performances on the BBC. Revel in that voice.

Download: Tossin' And Turnin'
Download: I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
Download: Little By Little
Download: Uptight (Everything Is Alright)
Download: You Don't Have To Say You Love Me
Download: Good Lovin'
Download: To Love Somebody
Download: Son Of A Preacher Man
Download: (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher

Melinda Doolittle's Soulless Soul

I don’t watch American Idol, but unsurprisingly, the times I’ve watched it, I’ve loathed it. Listening to the singers, even the ones with good technical voices, butcher some great songs – it’s just excruciating. Nor can I get into it on a post-modern “it’s so bad, it’s good” level. I get no joy laughing at the self-deluded contestants – I just end up feeling icky and uncomfortable. Even the amongst the singers who possess technically strong voices, I find no emotion conveyed in their singing except for perhaps their own banal ambition to win.

I write this because I’ve spent the past week or so listening to Melinda Doolittle’s new album, Coming Back To You. Doolittle was a controversial runner up on American Idol a couple of seasons ago. Simon Cowell thought the result was unfair and that Doolittle should have won instead of Jordin Sparks. I can’t say that she deserved to win, as I didn’t watch the show. But if Coming Back To You is any indication, Doolittle will soon be consigned to the dustbin where most Idol performers languish, soon to be forgotten, except perhaps as the answer to a trivia question, or a contestant on a future reality TV show.

Doolittle has a strong voice, but it signifies nothing except that she’s got a gift that she doesn’t really know how to use. Her singing exists solely to convey itself, rather than the emotional truths that a great vocalist communicates. Her voice swoops, dives and competently executes the classic gospel influenced inflections, but it has the all the warmth and inspiration of a deodorant commercial. The songs – all covers – float by harmlessly and pointlessly. And on the two Robert Johnson covers, “Dust My Broom” and “Walkin’ Blues,” Doolittle drains the songs of their sexuality and dread – their authentic humanity – making them fit for perhaps a turn singing them to Oscar the Grouch when she makes a promo appearance on Sesame Street.

Melinda Doolittle may be a soul singer in the context of a genre, but in reality, she is anything but a soul singer. Safe, banal and harmless are all adjectives that disappear when truly soulful music is present.

Dust My Broom - Melinda Doolit...

Bruce's Journal

Bruce Springsteen's Super Bowl journal says everything that needs to be said. (From BruceSpringsteen.net)

SUPER BOWL JOURNAL

I
Six Air Force Thunderbirds have just roared overhead at what felt like inches above our backstage area, giving myself and the entire E Street Band a brush cut. With 20 minutes to go, I'm sitting in my trailer trying to decide what boots to wear. I've got a nice pair of cowboy boots my feet look really good in, but I'm concerned about their stability. Two days ago we rehearsed in full rain on the field and the stage became as slick as an ice pond. It was almost impossible to stand on. It was so slick I crashed into Mike Colucci, our cameraman, coming off my knee slide, his camera the only thing that kept me from launching out onto the soggy turf. When Jerry the umpire in "Glory Days" did his bit, he came running out, couldn't stop himself and executed one of the most painfully perfect "man slips on a banana peel" falls I've ever seen. This sent Steve, myself and the entire band into one of the biggest stress-induced laughters of our lives that lasted all the way back to our trailers. (A few Advil and Jerry was okay.)

I better go with the combat boots I always carry. The round toes will give me better braking power than the pointy-toed cowboy boots when I hit the deck. I stuff my boots with two innersoles to make them as fitted as possible, zip them up snuggly around my ankles, stomp around in my trailer a bit and feel pretty grounded. Fifteen minutes…oh, by the way, I'm somewhat nervous. It's not the usual pre-show jitters, not "butterflies," it's not wardrobe malfunction anticipation anxiety, I'm talking about five minutes to beach landing, "Right Stuff" "Lord Don't Let Me Screw the Pooch in Front of 100 Million People" one of the biggest television audiences since dinosaurs first screwed on earth kind of semi-terror. It only lasts for a minute…I check my hair, spray it with something that turns it into concrete and I'm out the door.

I catch sight of Patti smiling. She's been my rock all week. I put my arm around her and away we go. They take us by golf cart to a holding tunnel right off the field. The problem is there are a thousand people there, tv cameras, media of all kinds and general chaos. Suddenly, hundreds of people rush by us in a column shouting, cheering…our fans! And tonight also our stage builders. These are "the volunteers". They've been here for two weeks on their own dime in a field day after day, putting together and pulling apart pieces of our stage over and over again, theoretically achieving military precision. Now it's for real. I hope they've got it down because as we're escorted onto the field, lights in the stadium fully up, the banshee wail of 70,000 screaming football fanatics rising in our ears, there's nothing there. Nothing…no sound, no lights, no instruments, no stage, nothing but brightly lit unwelcoming green turf. Suddenly an army of ants come from all sides of what seems like nowhere. Each rolling a piece of our lifeline, our earth onto the field. The cavalry has arrived. What takes us on a concert day 8 hours to do is done in five minutes. Unbelieveable. Everything in our world is there…we hope. We gather a few feet off the stage, form a circle of hands, I say a few words drowned out by the crowd and it's smiles all around. I've been in a lot of high stakes situations like this, though not exactly like this, with these people before. It's stressful, but our band is made for it…and it's about to begin…so happy warriors we bound up onto the stage.

II
The NFL stage manager gives me the three minute sign…two minutes…one…there's a guy jumping up and down on sections of the stage to get them to sit evenly on the grass field…30 seconds…they're still testing all the speakers and equipment…that's cutting it close! The lights in the stadium go down. The crowd erupts and Max's drumbeat opens "10th Avenue." I feel a white light silhouette Clarence and I for a moment. I hear Roy's piano. I give "C"'s hand a pat. I'm on the move tossing my guitar in a high arc for Kevin, my guitar tech, to catch and it's…"ladies and gentlemen, for the next 12 minutes we will be bringing the righteous and mighty power of the E Street Band into your beautiful home. So…step back from the guacamole dip. Put the chicken fingers down! And turn the TV ALL the way up!" Because, of course, there is just ONE thing I've got to know: "IS THERE ANYBODY ALIVE OUT THERE?!"

All I know is if you were standing next to me, you would be. I feel like I've just taken a syringe of adrenalin straight to the heart. Before we came out, I had two major concerns. One, something might go wrong beyond my control. That completely disappeared before we hit the stage. Tonight our fate is in the hands of many, so no sense for useless worry. Two, I was worried that I would find myself 'out' of myself and not in the moment. My old friend Peter Wolf once said 'the strangest thing you can do on stage is think about what you're doing." This is true. To observe oneself from afar while struggling to bring the moment to life is an unpleasant experience. I've had it more than once. It's an existential problem. Unfortunately, right in my wheel house. It doesn't mean it's going to be a bad show. It may be a great one. It just means it might take time, something we don't have much of tonight. When that happens, I do anything to break it. Tear up the set list, call an audible, make a mistake, anything to get "IN." That's what you get paid for, TO BE HERE NOW! The power, potential and volume of your present-ness is a basic rock and roll promise. It's the essential element that holds the attention of your audience, that gives force, shape and authority to the evening's events. And however you get there on any given night, that's the road you take. "IS THERE ANYBODY ALIVE IN HERE?!"…there better be.

I'm on top of the piano (good old boots). I'm down. One…two…three, knee drop in front of the microphone and I'm bending back almost flat on the stage. I close my eyes for a moment and when I open them, I see nothing but blue night sky. No band, no crowd, no stadium. I hear and feel all of it in the form of a great siren like din surrounding me but with my back nearly flat against the stage I see nothing but beautiful night sky with a halo of a thousand stadium suns at its edges. I take several deep breaths and a calm comes over me. I feel myself deeply and happily "IN."

Since the inception of our band it was our ambition to play for everyone. We've achieved a lot but we haven't achieved that. Our audience remains tribal…that is predominantly white. On occasion, the Inaugural Concert, during a political campaign, touring through Africa in '88, particularly in Cleveland with President Obama, I looked out and sang "Promised Land" to the audience I intended it for, young people, old people, black, white, brown, cutting across religious and class lines. That's who I'm singing to today. Today we play for everyone. I pull myself upright with the mike stand back into the world, this world, my world, the one with everybody in it and the stadium, the crowd, my band, my best friends, my wife come rushing into view and it's "teardrops on the city…"

III
During "Tenth Avenue" I tell the story of my band…and other things "when the change was made uptown"…. It goes rushing by, then the knee slide. Too much adrenalin, a late drop, too much speed, here I come Mike…BOOM! And I'm onto his camera, the lens implanted into my chest with one leg off the stage. I use his camera to push myself back up and…say it, say it, say it, say it…BLAM! BORN TO RUN…my story…Something bright and hot blows up behind me. I heard there were fireworks. I never saw any. Just the ones going off in my head. I'm out of breath. I try to slow it down. That ain't gonna happen. I already hear the crowd singing the last eight bars of "Born to Run" oh, oh, oh, oh…then it's straight into "Working on a Dream"…your story…and mine I hope. Steve is on my right, Patti on my left. I catch a smile and the wonderful choir, The Joyce Garrett Singers, that backed me in Washington during the Inaugural concert is behind us. I turn to see their faces and listen to the sound of their voices…"working on a dream". Done. Moments later, we're ripping straight into "Glory Days"…the end of the story. A last party steeped in merry fatalism and some laughs with my old pal, Steve. Jerry the Ump doesn't fall on his ass tonight. He just throws the yellow penalty flag for the precious 40 seconds we've gone overtime…home stretch. Everyone is out front now forming that great line. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the horns raising their instruments high, my guitar is wheeling around my neck and on the seventh beat, I'm going to Disneyland. I'm already someplace a lot farther and more fun than that. I look around, we're alive, it's over, we link arms and take a bow as the stage comes apart beneath our feet. It's chaos again all the way back to the trailer. A toast…our families, friends, Jon, George, Brendan, Barbara, with Don Mischer, Ricky Kirshner, Glenn Weiss, Charles Coplin, and Dick Ebersol, the great team that put it altogether and the end of a good football game.

IV
The theory of relativity holds. On stage your exhilaration is in direct proportion to the void you're dancing over. A gig I always looked a little askance at and was a little wary of turned out to have surprising emotional power and resonance for me and my band. It was a high point, a marker of some sort and went up with the biggest shows of our work life. The NFL threw us an anniversary party the likes of which we'd never throw for ourselves (we're too fussy) with fireworks and everything! In the middle of their football game, they let us hammer out a little part of our story. I love playing long and hard but it was the 35 years in 12 minutes…that was the trick. You start here, you end there, that's it. That's the time you've got to give it everything you have…12 minutes…give or take a few seconds. The Super Bowl is going to help me sell a few new records, that's what I wanted because I want people to hear where we are today. It'll probably put a few extra fannies in the seats and that's fine. We live high around here and I like to do good business for my record company and concert promoters. But what it's really about is my band remains one of the mightiest in the land and I want you to know it, we want to show you…because we can.

By 3 am, I am back home, everyone in the house fast asleep and tucked in bed. I am sitting in the yard over an open fire, staring up again into that black night sky, my ears still ringing…"Oh yeah, it's alright."

February, 2009

Bootleg Friday: The Replacements, 1987

When I was a kid, I expected and waited for the Replacements to get huge. They didn’t. Even though it’s twenty plus years later, there’s still a part of me that thinks/expects/hopes/prays that someday, maybe just around the corner, justice will prevail, and it will happen.

Maybe someone will write a blockbuster movie about growing up in the 80’s and will use their music as the basis for it – the sound of sensitivity, snark and punk/soul all wrapped into one. I figure that there has to be someone who is a great writer in their prime, who, back in the day, was sustained by Let It Be, Tim and Pleased To Meet Me. Their catalog sales will explode and they will finally get the full measure of their due as one of the best, if not the best, American bands of the 80's.

Today’s Bootleg Friday is a selection of songs from the Replacements show at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit, on November 12, 1987. Touring behind the great Pleased To Meet Me, the music is a combination of punk insouciance and soul conviction. And the Prince cover (from Sign Of The Times, which had just been released) displays Replacements leader Paul Westerberg’s great taste to full effect. It’s shambolic and highly moving – just like the band.

Download: “I.O.U.” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Never Mind” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Hold My Life” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Can’t Hardly Wait” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Little Mascara” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Nightclub Jitters” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Sweet Soul Music (Arthur Conley)” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “20th Century Boy (T. Rex)” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (Prince)” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Unsatisfied” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “I Will Dare” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI
Download: “Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)” 11/12/87, Detroit, MI

Some Worthy Reading

A couple of good reads for you today.

I had the pleasure of listening to "Jonesey's Jukebox," ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones's show on Indie 103.1 in L.A. a few times while in Los Angeles over the course of the past five years. His show was for me, what radio should be all about; locally oriented and highly personalized with wit and great taste to spare. The L.A. Times has a piece about him today.

I was sent a link to this piece from the literary review N + 1. It's about a mix tape for Britney Spears - an explanation of the songs and how they might make a difference for her. I found it to be a great post.

A Fake Lefsetz Letter On Springsteen And Bonnaroo

I wrote this, not Bob Lefsetz. But given all his absurd Springsteen bashing, I figured I'd give him a break and write his next piece for him.

I promised myself I wouldn't write about Springsteen anymore for a while, but did you see that he's now playing Bonnaroo? Can you say DESPERATE?

Bruce doesn't sell tickets like he used to, and touring behind an album THAT NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE ABOUT, now he's going to play to a bunch of HIPPIES? Bruce doesn't even do drugs! I guess because his own audience just doesn't care like it used to, he and Landau think they have to find a new audience. Don't they know that the typical Bonnaroo fan doesn't CARE ABOUT HIM AND ARE JUST THERE TO SEE PHISH?! Oh sure, there will be a few curiosity seekers, coming to see what the "legend" is all about. But they don't want SCHTICK! The Bonnaroo audience only cares if you can PLAY, and while the band could play when I first saw them in 1974, they haven't played like that in YEARS! They don't care about knee slides at Bonarroo - they want PASSION, not empty GESTURES! This is sad. Are legends so craven, their lives so empty without the crowd that they'll stoop to play in front of anyone?

And speaking of craven, while I respect the empire Coran Capshaw has built, this is a textbook example of IGNORING WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WANTS! Bonnaroo was built on jam band principles - people who can play and improvise. The Bonnaroo fan HATES big stars. The BEASTIE BOYS??? Can you even NAME ONE SONG they've done since "Sabotage?" And don't tell me about how influential Paul's Boutique is! Can you sing one song from it? THEY'RE DONE! And then they're trying to get the Pitchfork crowd too, with a slew of indie bands that NO ONE is going to remember five, let alone ten years from now. Is EVERYTHING just about following the dollar instead of staying true to your principles??? Is it just about REELING IN BIG NAMES so you'll have a great day of publicity??? Is there any INTEGRITY anymore?

This crap writes itself. Oy.

New Orleans Picture Gallery

Here are some photos from last month's trip to New Orleans:

Guitarist at Commander's Palace - Three piece jazz band would come to each table to take requests. I asked for "All Of Me." They did it well.
I took this photo from a trolley car at around noon on New Year's Day.

Bathroom at the Louisiana Music Factory. Dexter Gordon on top of Jackie Wilson next to the toilet paper. Perfect.
An abandoned house in the Lower Ninth Ward. The empty lot surrounding it contained other homes, pre-Katrina.
Little Freddie King at D.B.A.
Gospel Brunch at the House Of Blues.

Gumbo, Jambalaya and a shrimp Po Boy at Mother's.

The Muffaletta at Central Grocery

Raw Oysters at the Oyster Bar in the French Quarter after seeing the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Ridiculous brunch at Commander's Palace: Pecan pancake, duck confit and a poached egg with hollandaise. I, unfortunately, didn't have the courage to order this out of fear that I would have a coronary on the spot

Ladies getting on stage to dance during Kermit Ruffin's set at the Blue Nile.

Kermit Ruffin

Kermit Ruffin

Robin Kinchun at House of Blues. Started off slowly, but she got good as the evening progressed.

Rainy night in New Orleans.

Behind the counter at Mother's.

Artwork by Robert Tannen, a great New Orleans artist who grew up in Coney Island, and moved to New Orleans in the 50's.

Dancing in the street.

Staff at Cafe Du Monde taking a break.
Ridiculously good baked oysters with Parmesean cheese at Acme.

Bruce Springsteen, The Super Bowl And A Healthy Dollup Of Corn

Bruce Springsteen’s 13 minute set (they went over by one minute) last night at the Super Bowl halftime show was a lot of fun. Bruce and the band looked like they were having a great time, and true to his word, the mini-set showcased the feeling of the final 15 minutes of a Springsteen show – fun, communal, exultant, and occasionally, very corny and silly.

That corniness has been a part of the band’s legend since before there was a legend of the E Street Band. Bruce has feigned heart attacks on stage, staged wrestling matches with bears, had conversations with aliens, spoken to God, and has had his mother admonish him on stage so he’d play one more encore. As Greil Marcus wrote in 1980, “At his finest, Springsteen can get away with almost anything, stuff that coming from anyone else would seem hopelessly corny and contrived – and that he can come up with stuff to get away with that most rockers since Little Richard would be embarrassed even to have thought of.”

Certainly, Springsteen stole many of those moves from the early rock and soul tradition. One thinks of James Brown shucking off cape after cape, leaving the stage only to come back to drive the audience further into ecstasy. Bruce has acknowledged these debts in interviews, and they are as crucial a piece of understanding his performances as any.

It is this portion of Springsteen’s artistic and performance persona that turns off a lot of smart people to his music. Bruce got mainly great reviews from last night’s set, but some predictable pans came in from writers like the utterly awful Jim DeRogatis, and from the New York Times. (And I'm sure we'll soon get another anti-Bruce missive from the awesomely tiresome Bob Lefsetz shortly.) What writers like these miss is that Springsteen (especially when he’s with the E Street Band) views a good part of his job to be an entertainer. And to a lot of people who love rock, and especially the denizens of post-Velvet Underground music, entertainer is a dirty word, redolent of inauthenticity, insufficiently artistic. (Can you imagine what Jeff Tweedy or Thom Yorke would do if you called them entertainers?)

But Bruce Springsteen is much smarter than these guys. Because he knows that a show is a SHOW – that when one is on stage, it’s inauthentic not to recognize that there is a stage. Punk and post-punk bands seek to eradicate the boundaries between audience and performer by pretending (emphasis on pretense) that there’s no difference between them. Springsteen recognizes that there’s a difference between the performer and audience, but he creates an emotional connection over the course of the night that reaffirms the common humanity of every single person in the building on that night – for the band and the audience. It's that affirmation of a common humanity - its joys, struggles, pain, fun, heartbreak and possibility - that makes a great Springsteen show so transcendent. And it’s what makes him so much wiser than the mistaken and misguided spokesmen for authenticity and cool who criticize him for his soulful, and sometimes corny heat.

Bootleg Friday: Sam & Dave, 1967

There are two kinds of improvisation in music. One kind is self-conscious. It is improvisation for improvisations sake (countless jam bands). Then there is the kind of improvisation that exists because the performers can't be contained within the known limits of a song. The songs from this Sam & Dave show in Stockholm, 1967, are examples of the latter. The greatest of all soul duos take some of their best known songs and recreate them - slow them down, expand them, inject subtle changes in tempo and feeling and make them overwhelming.

Stax's Spring 1967 tour of Europe was one of their greatest triumphs. Greeted with a love and an un-ambivalent respect that they could not receive in America, they responded by delivering shows that forty years after the fact, remain legend. The four songs contained here are a small example of the fire they brought to the stage every night. Both Michael Jackson, who used to watch them in the wings at the Apollo, when the young Jackson 5 was playing the chitlin circuit, and Bruce Springsteen, who went to see them in the 70's, both said they stole liberally from Sam & Dave's show. Mediocre artists borrow, great artists...

Download: "You Got Me Hummin'" - 5/2/67, Stockholm, Sweden
Download: "Soothe Me" - 5/2/67, Stockholm, Sweden
Download: "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" - 5/2/67, Stockholm, Sweden
Download: "Hold On, I'm Coming!" - 5/2/67, Stockholm, Sweden

A Perfect Hour In Preservation Hall

Earlier this month, I was in New Orleans, and while there, I went to Preservation Hall to see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It was an experience I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.

Preservation Hall itself, located in the French Quarter, is the rawest, funkiest space I’ve ever been in. The building that houses the venue is over two centuries old, and judging from the looks of the interior and exterior, very little, if any work has been done to it.

I walked in, and took a place in the back of the tiny room. There were about 30 seats inside, and the rest was standing room only, taking in probably another 75. The room was dimly lit, in a warm amber hue that only enhanced the feeling of being out of time. Some large and gothic paintings of musicians hung from the walls. There was no bar and the packed crowd, mainly tourists, milled about in an expectant air.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band formed in 1963, and its membership is a floating one. Countless jazz musicians have played under its name. Its original members could lay claim to playing with Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and Buddy Bolden. For twenty-five years, they’ve toured around the world as ambassadors of New Orleans Jazz – the essence and root of the music itself.

When the band came on (six-pieces on that night: trumpet, clarinet, sax, piano, bass and drums) and plowed into the first song, “His Eye On The Sparrow,” I experienced as pure a feeling of joy as I’ve ever experienced in music. I felt like I was in the same room that jazz was born in, and even though I knew intellectually that it wasn’t true, I experienced it as such.

The music was immensely celebratory, defiantly so, for in each note of the music was the blues, and with it, an acknowledgment of the travails and disappointments of life. The crowd grinned, danced and sang. And they listened. They really listened. The applause that followed each solo was in direct proportion to the skill with which the solo was played. I’m used to the New York music business style listening, which usually consists of, “Is this happening? Is this cool? Will other people like this?” This listening was something entirely different, much purer, a communion with the essence of one of music’s main functions; the celebration of being alive.

The sixty-minute show passed blissfully, the crowd hollering the verses and choruses of “Shake That Thing” with love and reverence. My own personal history of music flashed before my eyes, and the world of ephemera disappeared; for a little while, I felt enveloped in the real thing, and the real thing only. It was cleansing. It was perfect. My girl and I walked out of the hall after the 60 minute set, grinned at each other, and barely said a word, except to ask each other where we should eat.

Download: "His Eye Is On The Sparrow"
Download: "Shake That Thing"

Bruce And The Super Bowl

I never thought Bruce Springsteen would play the Super Bowl. Too obvious. Too gross. Too much of what represents everything wrong with America. And then when he announced that he and E Street Band would play it, I got psyched.

Here's a great piece from Sports Illustrated about the conflict many Springsteen fans feel about him performing at the halftime show. Very worthy reading.

Review: Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream

Sometimes, I think, it’s got to be hard to be Bruce Springsteen. Even as he nears 60, there are many, many great expectations placed upon his music. While Dylan fans never know what to expect and are thrilled when Bob releases an album good enough to put his 80’s output further in the rearview mirror, hard-core Bruce fans expect something that is more than just good – at our core, we still hope and expect that he’ll deliver his best music yet. Not Born To Run II mind you (although I’m sure there are some fans who’d be thrilled with that), but something that powerfully and intensely illuminates and deepens our own lives and experiences – like a combination of The River and Tunnel Of Love. And Springsteen has been so remarkably consistent throughout his career, with such an incredible body of work that it almost seems unfair to judge him against his past, but fair or not, that’s how the great ones are judged.

I’ve been trying to write a review of his new album, Working On A Dream, for the past week. But I have found myself confounded by it. On one level, it contains some of the most beautiful music he’s ever made, grand and orchestral, with swirling string sections, stately melodies and symphonic pop that goes in directions that Bruce has never quite gone before. But on another level, at least half the songs feel somewhat hollow at their core. The resonance of Springsteen’s greatest music – where the song hits you right where you live, in the most authentic part of your being, well, in that context, the tank is running low here. Somehow, Bruce Springsteen, an artist who has made his career subverting form for content, has made a record that uses form to disguise the fact that most of his new songs aren’t great.

You can hear what’s wrong with Working On A Dream on “Outlaw Pete,” an Ennio Morricone influenced tall tale that isn’t funny enough to be taken satirically, nor is it affecting enough to be taken seriously as an epic. The music soars at moments, but it never fully lifts off. It’s stuck in some sort of weird middle ground, and at 8 minutes, it goes on for about four minutes longer than necessary. It’s all very interesting – interesting and a little cerebral as opposed to viscerally powerful the way great Springsteen music is. “Queen of the Supermarket” is another interesting song – Bruce being enraptured by the sensuality of the truly super market, and falling in love with the cashier. It occurs as a clichéd parody until the last verse, when Bruce drops an F-bomb that brings it all back to reality, and you end up wondering whether the whole song is brilliant – or just a very interesting songwriting device by a master writer. If you have to ask…

“My Lucky Day,” “This Life,” “Good Eye,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” "Surprise, Surprise," “What Love Can Do,” “Life Itself…” none of these songs are bad. Hell, If Tom Petty wrote “My Lucky Day,” it’d be heralded as a classic. There are lovely melodies, exuberant choruses, plaintive sentiment…and it just doesn’t doesn’t work at Springsteen’s usual level.

Only on two songs, “Kingdom Of Days” and “The Last Carnival,” does Springsteen hit the levels we're accustomed to. “Kingdom Of Days” is a soaring mid-tempo reverie of a love and life that is made more resonant by the consciousness of its finiteness. The towering melody, lovingly detailed lyrics and especially the gorgeously romantic instrumental bridge are the sound of peace, gratitude and acceptance – it’s as though Springsteen has finally arrived in the spot he wrote about in "Born To Run;" where he's gotten to that place he's wanted to go, and is walking in the sun.

“The Last Carnival,” a meditation on the death of founding E Street Band organist Danny Federici, is an out and out Springsteen classic. Over a simple guitar riff, gorgeous background vocals that sound like they’re out of a Simon & Garfunkel song, and lyrics that recreate the circus life of “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” from The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle, the song is a tear-jerking elegy to a fallen comrade that transcends mere sentimentality. It’s a sublime love song.

Musically, the album showcases Springsteen’s love and exploration of the sound of the white pop/rock of his adolescence. The Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Byrds, the Righteous Brothers and Roy Orbison are all present and accounted for. It's a sound that works well, but the lushness and prettiness of the sonic template doesn't always feel a match for Springsteen's grittiness. Where Springsteen's soul sound always feels like can extension of the man himself, these pop sounds occur more like a coat he's trying on temporarily.

Working On A Dream is a good album. Sometimes it is very good. But Bruce Springsteen is capable of making a better one. Perhaps that is harsh. I consider it a compliment. When no one expects greatness from Bruce Springsteen anymore, he’ll truly be finished.

A Happy 74th To Elvis Presley!

Had he lived, Elvis Presley would be 74 years old today. He has long since passed into the realm of myth - a Rorschach test upon which people project their thoughts, opinions, desires, feelings, resentments and dismissals about almost any conceivable topic: Music, America, race, culture, materialism, decline and a few hundred subjects.

I've never cared much about any of that. The fact is that Elvis was a sublime singer and a singular presence as a performer and instigator of a cultural movement whose repercussions we continue to live with today. It's a common canard that Elvis won his acclaim because he was white and some of his other contemporaries (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc.) were black, and that he was just derivative of them. But Elvis Presley released his first singles in 1954, before Chuck Berry and Little Richard ever released a record. (And Elvis was more charismatic than Chuck, and prettier and more versatile than Richard.) He could sing anything - rock, country, r&b, gospel - and when he was at his best, during the 50's and his late 60's comeback, he wove together those various strands of American music to create something mythic in scope, a force which resounded all over the world.

Unfortunately, his music, like much early rock, gets far less respect and acclaim than it deserves; it’s been subsumed by the myth. To many, the songs sound like quaint period pieces. I think they are still stunning. “Hound Dog” remains explosive. “Mystery Train,” “Baby Let’s Play House,” “Milkcow Blues Boogie,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Trying To Get To You,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Jailhouse Rock” continue to provide joy, delight, and a far greater sense of risk, danger and sex than the most rebellious punk band you can find.

Happy birthday Elvis! For my money, you are still, and will always be, the King.

Buy Elvis Presley at Amazon (No record collection should exist without The Sun Sessions, his Greatest Hits, or the NBC-TV Special!)

Download: Bruce Springsteen "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" 8/27/85, Toronto, ON (A very great version preceded by Springsteen talking about what Elvis meant to him - both as possibility and warning.)

New Orleans: Soul City

I spent a few days last week in New Orleans. I had been there once before, but only for a one night business trip, so last week my first real opportunity to spend a significant amount of time there and get to know the city.

I fell in love.

New Orleans, for those of you who haven’t been there, is the most European of American cities. The French Quarter, especially, resembles the old centers of so many European cities. The languid pace, the wonderful food, the public drinking, the music everywhere – it is certainly the most anti-Puritanical city in the U.S. And given that it’s in the American South, there is also an element of a somewhat tacky American shopping plaza (especially so when 75,000 college football fans are in town for the Sugar Bowl). It’s a mixture of the wonderful and horrible – some of the best hospitality, people, food and music one can imagine, and some of the most glaring decay I’ve ever seen. I experienced a lot of the wonderful and only saw a tiny bit of the horrible, from the safety of a van touring the city. I was a tourist, and while I sought out as much of a “native” experience as possible, I certainly didn’t see how 70% of New Orleans truly lives.

New Orleans is an elemental city – it runs on food, drink, sex, music, art, history and the celebration of pleasure -the good time in the face of struggle, without the pretenses of fashion or trends. It is not looking for the next big thing. There is a distinct lack of irony in New Orleans, or at least the sort of deadening post-modern irony that suffuses so much of modern art and music. It is a city that is all about the expression of authentic feeling and engagement: of joy and wonder, of sorrow and grief. Yes, there is plenty of cool, but it’s a city that defines as cool as willing to let yourself go, rather than taking on a studied and jaded affectedness.

As a lover of the music that was born in New Orleans and emerged from it, I felt at home the whole time I was there. There are a few places in the world where my soul feels like it belongs: New York City, Montauk, Italy and now, New Orleans.

I’ll be writing about some of the music and sights I saw last week over the next couple of weeks.

Ed Rivadavia On Ron Asheton Of The Stooges

Ron Asheton, guitarist for the Stooges, died sometime at the beginning of the year. Ed Rivadavia, music executive for the RCA Music Group and writer for AMG, contributes the following:

The passing of guitarist Ron Asheton due to an apparent heart-attack in his Ann Arbor, Michigan home, some time during the start of 2009 (an official coroner’s report is still pending as of this writing), robbed the world of rock and roll of perhaps its ultimate punk rock guitar icon. The amazing thing is that, were it not for The Stooges’ unlikely reunion in the early ‘00s, Asheton’s death would probably have elicited only the scarcest and briefest obits beyond the ultra-specialized rock press – the likes of which would have made the recent en masse Ramones deaths seem like widely covered, major events. Ironically, I suppose even the worst-case scenario would be somewhat fitting, in the end, for a musician whose limited technical ability essentially defines what punk rock – in the most enduring definition of the oft-abused, and stylistically spread-thin term – is all about.

And in my opinion, no song exemplifies that genre’s pure, D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) spirit better than The Stooges’ original recording of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” on their eponymous 1969 debut album.

Sure, the Ramones (one of my all-time favorite bands), the Sex Pistols, and any number of other major and obscure punk, pre- and post-punk bands have produced songs that were arguably just as timeless over the years (The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” for example, being one of several worthy precursors), but I don’t think anything quite compares with Ron Asheton’s raw, uncivilized, and obviously untutored down-picked barre chords on “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” as complemented by that brilliantly droning open E-String. Unless it is Ron’s notably uncomplicated guitar solo, launched a few minutes later, which likewise stumbles (literally, it sounds like Asheton is stumbling along, trying to get the notes right) upon a supernatural ‘feel’ that music only seems capable of achieving in its most spontaneous and unrehearsed form.

The word ‘primitive’ always springs to mind when I think of that riff, solo, and song, and I mean that as a compliment because, curiously, it never sounded as great when bolstered with extra speed and adrenalin by the countless bands that later covered it; nor even the older Ron himself, on those oft-times transcendental Stooges reunion shows of the mid-‘00s. (Being a traditionalist music snob, I’m usually dismissive on principle of such belated reunions, even when most all of the original members are involved, but I’ll be the first to admit that I was powerless to resist the sheer brilliance of a reconvened Iggy Pop, Asheton brothers, and bassist Mike Watt.) Ron may have been a far better guitar player – technically speaking – by the time he was brought out of forced retirement for those new millennium tours; but his improved chops were simply no match for the poor playing and unadulterated spirit (emphasis on ‘adult’) captured by that long-gone, stoned-out teenager, and his fellow delinquent band members: Iggy Stooge, drummer Scott ‘Rock Action’ Asheton, and long-deceased bassist Dave Alexander.

No, “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is pretty close to untouchable where primal, non-conformist, and positively unique rock and roll statements are concerned.

And even though first impressions of this song will almost inevitably result from Iggy’s sublimely twisted lyrics (a topic we’ll save for discussion in another written appreciation, hopefully still many years in the future), for me it will always be Ron’s guitar work that holds the secret of its dark, elusive magic. As with all of Ron Asheton’s few but crucial contributions to the long thread of rock and roll history, this one will undoubtedly be eclipsed by Iggy’s blinding presence, but there are far worse fates than that, and ultimately who cares?

Immortality, by any measure of scale, still means ‘forever.’