The Famous Final Scene

So. The great Bob Seger may have played his final concert ever the other night. 

It's weird to see Seger relegated to the AOR arena-rock dinosaur category by people who've listened to music made since 1990; sometimes it feels like the only ones who give ol' Bob his due are the ones who loved him in the 70s and 80s and have pretty much stopped listening to anything since. And it's jarring, because he was so big—in the late 70s, he was more commercially successful than Bruce Springsteen, despite really only breaking through because (the younger) Springsteen paved the way.

But Seger is an authentic artist and a true believer; he was already making records when the Beatles were putting out Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he wrote one of the all-time great anti-war songs, "2+2=?" (which is an absolute banger), and his first authentic hit, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" came out in 1969. He was a local star who time and again almost seemed like he might hit the big time without ever actually doing so. Until the kid from New Jersey sent the record labels looking for the Next New Dylan™ and lo and behold Capitol discovered they had a real live peer already signed to their roster. Live Bullet set the stage and Night Moves blew the damn thing wide open.

And why not? As Dave Marsh wrote, only Springsteen and Jackson Browne could write as well as Seger, but Seger could obviously sing rings around them both. Which is no slight on either of them: Bob Seger can sing rings around all but a tiny handful of white rock and roll singers ever. As Bruce Springsteen himself said recently, "Really great singers, people who have a really great instrument, like...Bob Seger has a great instrument."

(It turns out that Seger himself doesn't entirely disagree; he's got a nickname for his own voice, and that nickname is "The Mountain" and it's completely and totally warranted.)

Ironically, that long-ago chart success and that amazing voice may have actually served to ultimately obscure just how excellent a writer Bob Seger is. In fact, I think Bob Seger may be the most underrated great writer ever. There are a number of reasons for that. In part, I suspect his midwestern roots didn’t allow him to seriously discuss his writing, the way Springsteen or Browne did theirs. (In this way, he reminds me, oddly, of The Replacements.)

He wasn’t nearly as prolific as Springsteen—again, that's not a slight, since there have been very few artists ever who were as prolific as Springsteen was for the first few decades of his recording career—nor as obviously erudite as Browne. And unlike those guys Seger almost always had at least a few covers per LP, which I suspect had a psychological effect on the listeners and their view of the artist.

And when you heard Seger sing a song, the very first thing you noticed wasn't the guitar or the drums or the arrangement or the lyrics: it was that amazing voice.

Finally, his final few songs to really capture the public's attention were the likes of the absolutely terrible "Shakedown," one of his worst songs ever, and which naturally therefore went to #1. Then there was "Like a Rock," which was turned into a commercial at the exact time that things like "selling out" were a topic among passionate rock fans. And finally, there was "Old Time Rock and Roll," which he co-wrote but didn't take a songwriting credit for, meaning he wasn't able to stop it from being used for...well, everything, including more terrible commercials.

(And then he took years off to hang out with his family, and disappearing from the public eye at that point in time certainly wasn't the best move from a critical point of view.)

All of which means that while Bob Seger was ginormous in the late 70s and early 80s, he's basically unknown by younger listeners, unless they know him as the guy who sang that cheesy reactionary "Old Time Rock and Roll" that's been used to hawk burgers and such. Which is a shame, because he should be viewed as a rock and roll Willie Nelson or Muddy Waters or something: an artist who once upon a time was one of the very greatest ever, whose best work absolutely stands the test of time.

 "Feel Like a Number" perfectly captures how powerless and faceless one can feel in modern society. "Night Moves" is a remarkably powerful yet unsentimental look back at the freedom and naivete of youth. "Turn the Page" allows the listener to actually sympathize with how difficult being a traveling musician can be, while not denying the benefits. "Rock and Roll Never Forgets" pulls off the difficult feat of paying tribute to the music itself while not sentimentalizing it and yet managing to be a great example of its power. "Against the Wind" is a simply devastating look back at the roads not taken, and which really probably should have been. And there are a dozen other examples just as good.

But as I said, it seems as though he's perhaps done with that, and if anyone's earned the right to retire, it's Bob Seger. He created some of the greatest American rock and roll songs and albums ever—Night Moves and Stranger in Town are both nearly flawless—and he seems to have always stayed true to himself.

So. So long, Bob, and thanks for all the fish. Here's hoping the afterparty is everything you could ever want.

Think in terms of bridges burned
Think of seasons that must end
See the rivers rise and fall
They will rise and fall again
Everything must have an end
Like an ocean to a shore
Like a river to a stream
Like a river to a stream
It's the famous final scene

And how you tried to make it work
Did you really think it could
How you tried to make it last
Did you really think it would
Like a guest who stayed too long
Now it's finally time to leave
Yes, it's finally time to leave
Take it calmly and serene
It's the famous final scene 

It's been coming on so long
You were just the last to know
It's been a long time since you've smiled
Seems like oh so long ago
Now the stage has all been set
And the nights are growing cold
Soon the winter will be here
And there's no one warm to hold 

Now the lines have all been read
And you knew them all by heart
Now you move toward the door
Here it comes the hardest part
Try the handle of the road
Feeling different feeling strange
This can never be arranged
As the light fades from the screen
From the famous final scene

Twist and Shout

I used to work with a guy who had pretty good musical taste if a bit narrow perhaps: he seemed to mainly like stuff from the 60s and 70s and although we didn't talk a ton about music, I don't recall him ever mentioning anything more recent than those fine decades. But he was a Bob Dylan fanatic, so there's that.

But he did once mention, approvingly, another colleague's remark that the Who were unquestionably the greatest rock and roll band ever, with the reasoning being that the Rolling Stones were a blues/R&B band, and the Beatles were, by their own admission, a pop group. Meaning of The Big Three of British bands of the 1960s, only The Who were really a rock band.

Which I think is a fine illustration of the proverb "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Yes. It's true, the Beatles—especially, I think, John Lennon—called themselves a pop group. As was the custom of the day. (Along with wearing an onion on your belt.)

"When I was a Beatle, I thought we were the best fucking group in the god-damned world. And believing that is what made us what we were... whether we call it the best rock 'n roll group or the best pop group or whatever."

Well, there 'tis. Even John Lennon himself called the Beatles a pop band.

Then again, Pete Townshend referred to The Who as a pop band writing and playing pop music:

For six years on our pub and club circuit we had first supported, and later played alongside, some extraordinarily talented bands. Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers were so authentic an R&B band that it was hard to believe they weren’t American. The Hollies, Searchers, Kinks and Pirates changed the face of British pop, not to mention The Beatles or Stones. The 1964 Searchers’ hit ‘Needles and Pins’ created the jangling guitar sound later picked up by The Byrds. The Kinks had brought Eastern sounds to British pop as early as 1965 with the hypnotically beautiful ‘See My Friend’. And there were dozens of other transformative influences all around us.

and

What had happened to The Who’s blues roots? Had we ever really had any? Did John and Keith feel a strong connection to blues and jazz? Was Roger only interested in the kind of hard R&B that provided a foil for his own masculine angst? Though we enjoyed our recording sessions, The Who seemed to be turning to solipsism for inspiration. My songs were pop curios about subjects as wide-ranging as soft pornography and masturbation, gender-identity crises, the way we misunderstood the isolating factors of mental illness, and – by now well-established – teenage-identity crises and low self-esteem issues.

and

The Who had worked ceaselessly for almost four years. We had enjoyed a number of hit singles. I had delved deeply into my personal history and produced a new kind of song that seemed like shallow pop on the surface, but below could be full of dark psychosis or ironic menace. I had become adept at connecting pop songs together in strings. Still, The Who needed a large collection of such songs if we were to rise in the music business at a time when the audience was expanding its collective consciousness, and the album was taking over from the pop single.

and

My songs for Tommy still had the function of pop singles: to reflect and release, prefigure and inspire, entertain and engage. But that vein – of promoting singles apart from a whole album – had been thoroughly mined by the time we released Tommy. Change was necessary for us, which of course meant taking a lot of criticism on the chin. If the naïve, workmanlike songs I wrote immediately before Tommy had been hits I might never have felt the need to try something else. I might have kept my operatic ambitions private. There’s nothing I admire more than a collection of straightforward songs, linked in mood and theme only by a common, unspecific artistic thesis.

and

In this surge of hope and optimism, The Who set out to articulate the joy and rage of a generation struggling for life and freedom. That had been our job. And most of the time we pulled it off. First we had done this with pop singles, later with dramatic and epic modes, extended musical forms that served as vehicles for social, psychological and spiritual self-examination for the rock ’n’ roll generation.

Even Mick Jagger and Keith Richards referred to the Rolling Stones writing and recording pop songs:

I knew ["Sympathy for the Devil"] was a good song. You just have this feeling. It had its poetic beginning, and then it had historic references and then philosophical jottings and so on. It’s all very well to write that in verse, but to make it into a pop song is something different.

and

I like the song ["Wild Horses"]. It’s an example of a pop song. Taking this cliché “wild horses,” which is awful, really, but making it work without sounding like a cliché when you’re doing it.

But those are simply the opinions of the artists in question and who are they to be considered experts?

No, I think the only thing that matters is the factual record. Which is to say, watch this live performance from the Beatles' first U.S. tour:

There they are, a pop band covering a pop song...but there is no way to listen to John Lennon's vocals and say that they're anything other than rock and roll. And that's before you even talk about the way Ringo is bashing the kit—25 years before the grunge explosion, there's Ringo showing Dave Grohl and the rest the proper way to play the ride cymbal (which is to crash it relentlessly, apparently).

Pop group. Please.

(Not that there's anything wrong with being a pop group.)

singer-songwriter-bandleader at the Hall of Fame

If you've spent any time here at Reason to Believe, then you know I love me some Bruce Springsteen. But this clip—and we'll see how long it stays up (I've got the under on three more days)—throws some stuff into stark relief.

The thing about Prince and Springsteen is that they were essentially doing the same job: they were both singer-songwriter-guitarist-bandleaders. So Prince was from the midwest and Bruce from New Jersey. And Prince was nearly a decade younger. But they were both voracious listeners with many, perhaps most, of the same touchstones in common. And they both praised each other publicly. Sure, their music tended to sound very different from each other's—with a few arguable exceptions (I've long been convinced "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" was not only the greatest song Springsteen never but should have covered but that it was Prince's nod to the Boss)—but then R.E.M. and the Replacements were both brilliant alternative rock bands in the early 80s and no one would have mistaken one for the other.

So the difference between how good at it Bruce was at the bandleading part of the gig (best in the world...except for one guy) and Prince was (#1 in the world) is amazing. 'cuz Springsteen was like an absolutely outstanding college basketball team going up against the Chicago Bulls during Michael Jordan's glory days. There's simply no competition, really. Springsteen was and is fantastic. Prince was simply on another level. I prefer Springsteen's writing, and his shows are spine-tingling. But Prince, man...

But speaking of his writing, this clip gives an idea, I think, of just how amazing he was: at his Hall induction, he didn't play "1999," "Little Red Corvette," "Purple Rain," "Raspberry Beret" or "Cream" or "Diamonds and Pearls" or "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" or, oh yes, "When Doves Cry." Because he only had room for three songs and there were so many others to choose from. I mean...what in the hell? Who had such a catalog that he could afford to not play "When Doves Cry," perhaps the single greatest single of the entire 1980s—a damn good decade for singles—or his signature song, "Purple Rain."

We shall not look upon his like again.

Trouble Boys

I am just about finished with Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, Bob Mehr's exhaustively comprehensive account of the seminal Minneapolis band that some of us think, despite total lack of commercial success during their lifespan from 1981-91, may have been the greatest American band ever to live. Scott and I have written fairly extensively about our love for the Replacements, and in fact it was Scott who first introduced me to the band. The bastard.

For someone like me whose love of the band cannot truly be expressed in words, I honestly never want the bio to end. Because I know we'll likely never see something this expansive written about the Replacements ever again, and because once I'm done, it will be one more reminder that the band is done as well. And will have lived and died (and briefly reunited recently before going away again) without ever achieving the commercial success they so clearly deserved. Even though it was that very success that terrified them to the point of hitting the self-destruct button on their careers so often they practically wrote the instruction manual on how to do it.

The book is an exhilarating ride all the way through, at times hilarious, awe-inspiring, infuriating, mortifying and horrifically decadent. And sometimes all at once. Mehr's research and ability to actually get inside the troubled heads of Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars and the tragic Bob Stinson may be the most impressive thing about what he's done.

As I've been reading Trouble Boys it once more dawned on me why the Mats meant to so much to me and continue to be so embedded in my DNA, and why it's different than, say, listening to other favorites like Bruce Springsteen or R.E.M.

We listen to devotedly Bruce Springsteen to be inspired and moved, to believe in the glory of rock-n-roll as a force, though good times and bad, that keeps us moving towards something bigger.

We listen to R.E.M. because it makes us part of something, a club for people who are in on this amazing secret and even though we were never ever the cool ones, the fact that we are part of this club is the coolest thing of all.

But we listen to the Replacements not for coolness or glory, but because when we do, we finally get this sense that someone, somewhere out there—even though they have no damn idea who the hell we are—gets us.

Thanks for that, boys. You can color me impressed.

Michelangelo

Many many years ago, surely just following the dawn of all time, Scott and I were driving one night and heading...somewhere. Who knows? We were both in college at the time and home on some break or another.

Scott popped in a cassette tape (I told you this was before the dawn of time) and on came Buddy Holly, singing and playing (I think I remember) "Everyday."

Anyway, Scott nearly yelled this to me, with the utmost of urgency:

"Do you have any idea how great he was? Any idea?"

I did. I still do.

Anyway. Greatness. It's a funny thing (or so I hear). Because even though you know it's there, sometimes we still have to be reminded. I music, we're reminded by a friend practically screaming to us to sit up and take notice of how great something is. Or maybe we get reminded by reading a review, or by reading about the artist in question.

Of course, usually, we just need to listen to be reminded of greatness.

Like here.


Emmylou Harris is not one of the greatest female singers/musicians to ever live; she is one of the greatest singer/musicians to ever live, period.

And I don't think she's ever been better than this (relatively) late career track (it comes from her spectacular Red Dirt Girl album in 2000). Listen to what is at work here. To Emmylou's voice, sad and breathy and distant, aided by some subtle orchestration and a couple of simple chords and not much else, Listen to the way she so lovingly sings his name, "Michelangelo," at the conclusion of every verse, extending it out just a nanosecond longer for emphasis. Listen to those haunted, mournful wails she offers following each bridge. As if what she is seeing and what she is feeling is simply too beautiful to be described in words.

Borrowing melodically somewhat from Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne, " "Michelangelo" sweeps us into a series of Emmylou's dreams, where the grand master visits her in a variety of different shapes and forms, all of which lead to questions from her about what they both have seen, heard and touched. This is a love letter from one great artist to another, delivered in hushed, melancholy tones that never once ceases to be stunning.

Did you suffer at the end, would there be no on to remember?
Did you banish all the old ghosts with the terms of your surrender?
And could you hear me calling out your name?
Well I guess that I will never know...
Michelangelo.

Last night I dreamed about you,
I dreamed that you were weeping.
And the dreams poured down like diamonds
For a love beyond all keeping.
And you caught them one by one,
In a million silk bandannas I gave you long ago...
Michelangelo.

Greatness abounds with Emmylous Harris, and all we need to be reminded of this is to simply listen to her at her best. With a truckful of musical talent, a voice that descended from heaven and a gift for tasteful, tactful understatement that few artists have ever had, Emmylou has it all. "Michelangelo" shows why.

Long may she reign.

Jumpin' Jack Flash

The great Dangerous Minds recently posted this live rendition of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones, complete with the transcript of Mick Jagger's revised lyrics:

“Yah Awa bo anna craw fah huh cay
Anna ho alamo in a try ray
Buh ah ray ah now yeah and fad is a gay
Oh ray now, a jumpin jay flay sa gas gas gah.
Ah wa lay bah a toodleh beedeh hay.
Ah wa sko wid a strap rahda craws ma bah.
Bahda oh ray now en fad is a gay.
Buh oh ray now jumpin jah flah sa da ga ga geh”

Yeah, that looks pretty accurate.

I have a friend with absolutely outstanding musical taste—no surprise, really, given that our taste in music overlaps heavily (if not perfectly: he actively dislikes virtually all Bruce Springsteen's music, even as he thinks the guy himself seems pretty cool if more than a little overhyped). But the thing that really seems to baffle my pal is why I think the Stones suck so badly live. I don't really understand why he doesn't get it—I don't understand why anyone with working ears would ever claim they were even good live, much less great, when to my ears it's simply undeniable that they suck suck suckety suck live —but because I am by nature a people pleaser, I shall explain.

Simply compare and contrast that live version up there with this, the original recording:

That's why.

The live version wouldn't even get an honorable mention at a junior high talent show—more likely they'd get the hook. The original version, on the other hand, has never been bettered in the history of recorded pop music—not by Elvis, not by the Beatles, not by Dylan, not by Springsteen. The massive gap between the two is where the snark, the disappointment, the anger is created.

R.E.M.'s secret weapon

is not, in fact, Mike Mills. (Nor, for that matter, is it Mick Mills.) Because a secret weapon isn't a secret weapon if everyone knows about it, and certainly by the time of Monster, at least, if not long before, everyone who was anything like an R.E.M. fan knew just how great Mills was (and is!) and how vital his contributions were to the band. Which meant it was no secret.

But you and I, we've been through that. And since if you're on this site, you know just who R.E.M.'s real secret weapon was.

(What an odd, odd choice of song, incidentally, for their induction, given how large and varied their catalog was. Iconoclasts to the end.)

((Also too: he wrote the music to and played the piano on the original recording of this.))

I mean, come on.

Peggy Sue (Again)

I know Scott has already posted about the great Buddy Holly on this 55th anniversary of his death, but, well, this just killed me. Not the performance of "Peggy Sue" - I mean, it's perfect. But no, the intro he gets in this 1957 clip of his appearance on the Arthur Murray Dance Party is just priceless. With all the Patrician haught one can imagine:

"Now no matter what you think of rock-n-roll, I think you have to keep a nice open mind about what the young people go for. Otherwise the youngsters won't feel that you understand them." 

Oh sell it, sister!!!

Man, was he great, huh? Wow.