Well I'm just average, common too I'm just like him, the same as you I'm everybody's brother 'n son I ain't different from anyone - Bob Dylan, "I Shall Be Free No. 10"
You all know what to do. Go vote...and even listen to a little of Mr. Zimmerman—that uniquely American voice which pretty much drills down to the marrow of who we are every time it sounds—to give you a little additional motivation. I know it always helps me.
(And a question. Does Bob Dylan ever get true credit for being as funny as he is? Seriously, if there has been a funnier songwriter over the last half-century or so, I'm really not sure who he is. This song is a pretty solid example of that).
There are some experiences that cannot be fully understood unless one has actually engaged in or partaken of them. Having children is perhaps the most obvious. Being on a sports team that was completely in synch. Being part of the cast of a play. Being in a band that clicks. There is an indefinable yet undeniable mystery to the existence of chemistry in some groups of people devoted to a common goal which are inexplicable and yet absolutely indisputable to anyone who's actually experienced them.
I have only seen maybe one example better than this clip. Here's Sting and Stewart Copeland, famous bandmates and antagonists in The Police, playing together for the first time in 24 years. And Copeland is trying to explain that there's this one place in this one song that it's absolutely imperative they play a certain way. And Sting has no idea what he's talking about, and Copeland can't nail it down specifically—the drummer knows precisely what he's talking about, he just can't remember where it is exactly, or even, really, what it is.
And then they play the song. And when that indefinable bit comes up Sting knows instantly. And possibly even more incredible: Copeland knows that Sting knows the very moment Sting knows.
You can see it in the video—Copeland is already smiling, pointing at the singer, knowing that Sting has recognized the bit as soon as they started playing it, before Sting even says anything.
I've watched this exchange a dozen times over the past decade and the level of musical understanding between these two guys who haven't played together in 24 years never ceases to blow my damn mind.
Sting is a great writer, a great singer, and a great bass player who has created some great material as a solo artist. But The Police had a 5-year recording career, during which they released five albums. He's had a 34 year—and counting—career as a solo artist, during which he's released at least 13 studio albums. So the Police account for a mere 8% of his recording career, and he's released nearly three times as many solo albums as he did when he was with the Police. And yet to this day, Police songs make up between 33% and 50% of pretty much any of his setlists this century—and that's even including tours when he's got a new album to push, when there'll be an unusually heavy emphasis on new material.
Statistically, that's clearly out of whack. And yet obviously it makes all the sense in the world. Because the Police songs aren't just the crowd faves—although they are—they're also (subjectively, of course) the best stuff. And that's because, as an unusually insightful critic once more or less wrote:
If a great artist like John Fogerty or Neil Young or Sting writes a song and brings it to ten different bands, it’s going to sound recognizably the same yet very different, depending upon whether the drummer is Al Jackson or Ringo Starr or Keith Moon or Steve Gadd or Bernard Purdie or Dave Grohl or Carter Beauford. And if that great artist has been writing songs for that same drummer for ten years, well, that drummer is going to be part of the song the artist hears in his head as he’s first writing, before he ever brings it to the studio. John Lennon may not—couldn’t possibly—have known what Ringo was going to play on “Come Together,” but the sound of Ringo’s drums, the feel he was going to bring, if not the exact pattern, was already in John’s mind, already ingrained in his DNA.
Sting cannot have known what Stewart Copeland or Andy Summers was going to play on any given song he brought in—they were too unpredictable, in the very best sense, as musicians, with such individualistic voices, that there was simply no way to imagine ahead of time what parts they might come up with, other than to know they'd be great and characteristic and different from anything they or anyone else had quite done before.
(Seriously, there's no other guitarist in the world who would have listened to "Every Breath You Take," which has the same chord progression as "Stand by Me," and thought, "Right, you know what would go well here? A bunch of arpeggiated add9 chords, voiced in a way that's somewhat reminiscent of Bartok's string quartets." And yet Summers did and it's his guitar part that's very nearly every bit as memorable as Sting's wonderfully disturbing lyric.)
But Sting did know, down in his bones, that whatever they were, Copeland's drum parts would be great and characteristic and different from anything they or anyone else had quite done before. And because they were in a band together, and Copeland was not "merely" a [crazy talented] hired gun, he could and would then fight for those drums parts. And unlike the absolutely brilliant drummers Sting would later work with—titans such as Omar Hakim, Manu Katché, Andy Newmark, Vinnie Colaiuta and Josh Freese, among others—Sting couldn't simply fire Copeland. Because in the context of the band, they were equals, more or less. So Copeland got to have a say in how the song ultimately sounded. [And you can see how this pains Sting, when he has to negotiate on the existence of flams. Flams, of all things!] So it's not a coincidence that such a high percentage of the songs that they worked on together went on to make up the shortlist of his all-time classics. Because that's how chemistry works. Sometimes it explodes, and sometimes that's exactly the most optimal result.
Imagine you're Bruce Springsteen. Just for a moment, imagine that.
You've written "New York City Serenade." You've written "Jungleland." You’ve written "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "Wreck on the Highway" and "Reason to Believe" and "My Hometown" and "Valentine’s Day." You’ve written "My Beautiful Reward" and you’ve written "My City of Ruins." You’ve written "Matamoros Banks" and "Devil's Arcade."
You've written some of the greatest album closers in the history of rock and roll. And not just because you're one of the greatest writers in the history of rock and roll—although you are—but because you not only understand the importance of sequencing, but are also a master of it.
And yet somehow, after all those—or perhaps because of them—years later you are still capable of writing "Moonlight Motel."
And then…you sit on it for five years. You just leave it in the can.
Because you're Bruce Springsteen.
If you're any other artist, you rush the thing out. Maybe you don't even wait for the rest of the album. You shove the song in the world's face and you scream, "Lookit! Lookit! Look what I can do! Look what I did!"
But you're Bruce Springsteen. So you don't do that. You just...wait. Until you've done a bunch of other stuff and you feel like the time is right to finish up this project and you do and it's a damn masterpiece.
And not of course it is. It's not a given.
There are a lot of truly great artists—absolute titans—who peaked and never again came close to being that great again. In fact, perhaps only Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash have ever come close to doing what Bruce Springsteen has done this century, which is to continue to write and record and release albums which can stand shoulder to shoulder with their very finest work—their very finest work being fine indeed: masterpieces, in fact.
The [mainly younger] guy who once wrote things like:
My father's house shines hard and bright
It stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned
and
You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above
and
Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
and
It was a small town bank
It was a mess
Well, I had a gun
You know the rest
and
They prosecuted some poor sucker in these United States
For teaching that man descended from the apes
They coulda settled that case without a fuss or fight
If they’d seen me chasin’ you, sugar, through the jungle last night
and
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re dyin’ now
The hands that built this country we’re always trying to keep down
and
If pa’s eyes were windows into a world so deadly and true
Ma, you couldn’t stop me from looking but you kept me from crawlin’ through
and
41 shots—and we’ll take that ride
Across this bloody river to the other side
41 shots—my boots caked in mud
We’re baptized in these waters and in each other’s blood
and
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Until you spend half your life just covering up
and
As I lift my groceries into my car
I turn back for a moment and catch a smile
That blows this whole fucking place apart
and
Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see
Trying to learn to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be
And after all this time, to find we're just like all the rest
can still—can now—write a verse like this:
Now the pool's filled with empty, eight-foot deep
Got dandelions growin' up through the cracks in the concrete
Chain-link fence half-rusted away
Got a sign, says, "Children, be careful how you play"
Your lipstick taste and your whispered secret promised I'd never tell
A half-drunk beer and your breath in my ear
At the Moonlight Motel
Obviously, as always, context matters. Coming from one of the most popular American musicians ever, after a long career, delivered in a weathered voice, makes it all the more powerful. But this would be a great song if it were written by some one-hit-wonder.
And the only thing that could be even better than all this?
Is that he says he's going into the studio with the E Street Band soon for a new album.
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.)
I have a confession to make, one I've never told anyone, even co-blogger DT: I never liked "Bastards of Young" all that much.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I liked it okay. Of course I did: it was the Replacements. But on the magnificent Tim, I lumped it in with the likes of "Lay It Down, Clown" and "Dose of Thunder" rather than with, say, "Little Mascara," "Here Comes a Regular" and of course "Left of the Dial." But there was something about it I just found always threw me off a bit.
It was DT, of all things, who got me to come around to it, but pointing out the brilliance of Paul Westerberg's lyrics, something I hadn't paid a lot of attention to on this one. And brilliant they unquestionably are.
God, what a mess, on the ladder of success Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young The daughters and the sons
Clean your baby womb, trash that baby boom Elvis in the ground, there'll ain't no beer tonight Income tax deduction, what a hell of a function It beats pickin' cotton or waitin' to be forgotten
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young Now the daughters and the sons
Unwillingness to claim us, ya got no war to name us
The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest And visit their graves on holidays at best The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please If it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young Daughters and the sons
Take it, it's yours
There's so much there. First of all—and I'm not being facetious here—that in 1985 Westerberg made sure to include both males and females there in the chorus was unusually woke. But beyond that, the deftness of the lyrics was, even by Westerberg's standards, remarkable. The LP's "Kiss Me on the Bus" had already proved that if post-punk had a Cole Porter it was, against all odds, this high school dropout turned janitor turned college rock icon. But the lyrics here, for all their caustic incisiveness, never came within a lightyear of mere cleverness for cleverness's sake. There's a wounded heart on the sleeve quality to them that's undeniable, starting with the very first line:
God, what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
As if it weren't already obvious just how self-referential this was, the next two lines make that abundantly clear:
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled
It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten
And it holds out little hope that things will get better, as a later slogan (correctly, generally) put it:
The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please
(Although perhaps that's not entirely true, or perhaps Westerberg himself thought he was painting too bleak a picture, as the song ends with the repeated exhortation to "take it, it's yours.")
Once you become aware of these lines, the song can never again be viewed as just another of their rave-ups, a chance for genius but untameable guitarist Bob Stinson to wreak his glorious havoc.
(Also, take note of the quiet yet oddly powerful discordant sound right after "die to please"—perhaps a guitar pick scraping one of the wound strings?)
But it was only a few days ago, listening to the live Inconcerated set that came with the Dead Man's Pop boxset that I realized what it was that had originally thrown me off for so long. It was the mathematical imbalance of almost the entire song.
The song opens with two bars of solo guitar before the rhythm section bashes into play. The entire band (well, theoretically—Bob Stinson apparently only played the [amazing] solos on the record, all of which he recorded in a single afternoon) then plays for five more measures before slipping into the first verse.
The first verse itself is made up of two 7-bar phrases, for a total (obviously) of 14 measures. Get that? This isn't a 12-bar blues nor is it a standard 8-bar pop song format. Although it generally uses the same chords in blues, albeit just with standard major (and one minor) chords and not the dominant seventh chords typical of the blues, it's clearly not a blues, as it doesn't follow the standard blues changes anywhere.
It feels more or less like a typical pop formula, except by going with 7 rather than 8 measures per section, it throws the listener off, by setting up expectations which are then tossed aside, as the next section is suddenly rushed into, rather than gliding in right on time, as with the overwhelming majority of pop songs.
But then there's the chorus, which has 12 measures and not the standard 8, nor the now semi-expected 7. So once again, we're off-balance.
We then go into the bridge, a staple of pop music, and here they give it 4 bars. A nice round number, except that as the bridge is often called (especially by Brits such as the Beatles) "the middle eight" it's, once again, a very much not normal length.
Prodded by the greatly underrated drumming of Chris Mars, Bob Stinson then rips into one of his signature solos. But even here, even with the band member most notoriously resistant to trying new things, the solo takes up 11 measures: not 7, not 4, not 12.
Then we're back for the final verse. And the first two lines take up the by-now expected 7 measures, but the last two take up a normally normal but to us by now abnormal 8 measures. Usually that would be unremarkable, but by this time the listener has almost started to become accustomed to the unbalanced nature of the number of bars, so it feels like time is stretched uncomfortably, the tension rising almost but not quite imperceptibly.
Then we're into the chorus, which should be 12 measures, going by the form the first two times it was played. But this time it's an almost expectedly askew 11 measures and not 12...the first time through. This time the chorus is repeated, albeit sans lyrics, and this time it's only 10 measures, not 12 or 11, thus kneecapping even our already abbreviated chorus unexpectedly.
And then the outro comes smashing into our faces out of nowhere, an almost musical equivalent of the visual spectacle of the Who destroying their instruments.
Almost everything about the song is aslant, a musical representation of the scarred, twisted world the lyrics depict. Not bad for a band of drunken clowns, as they were often viewed (including sometimes, sadly, by the band themselves).
Altogether, it's an astonishing recording of an astonishing composition, and rock-solid proof all by itself of why so many think they were one of the greatest American bands ever, as well as a terribly sad example of why they should have been so much better known, and how much they could have accomplished had they not been so insistent upon shooting themselves in both feet every time a decent opportunity came their way.
First, that when Leo Sayer, he of the mid-70s smash hit "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," first entered the biz, he decided going with a sad clown look was a good idea.
(It was not.)
The second is that he's the one who wrote and recorded the absolutely kickass but only dimly remembered "Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)," which answers the never asked question "would it be good if Bob Dylan got drunk and recorded a song on the spur of the moment with The Faces trying to do a Steeler's Wheel impression?"
In a business which has never suffered a shortage of jackasses, there are few more notable than Robbie Robertson, even when accounting for his tremendous (if tremendously overstated) talented.
But this is pretty damn awesome. The transition from the Kingdom of Bahrain to Nepal is spine-tingling. And getting Ringo was a bit of musical genius.
I was never exactly an Eddie Money fan. I was a suburban white boy growing up in the northeast in the late 70s and early 80s, so of course I knew and liked a handful of his songs; that's just how it was. But to call myself a fan wouldn't just be a stretch, it'd be inaccurate.
Still, it amused me when he scored an MTV hit in the early days. This not terribly telegenic and definitely not smooth and polished rocker, nothing like Michael Jackson or Duran Duran, was on nearly as often, thanks to his "Shakin'" video. And if I didn't especially want to watch it, much less listen to it, well, it still made me smile.
But I've always thought he did have one true shining moment of real rock and roll greatness. His breakthrough hit "Two Tickets to Paradise" is good. It's not great but it's good, maybe even very good. The drums, by the fabulous Gary Mallaber, are fantastic, the percussion's great, and the guitar solo is ever so sweet. But the lyrics to the verses are jejune and the chorus simplistic.
But the music during the verses is great. And if the music during the chorus is just okay, well, that all gets washed away during the B-section, the "waiting so long" part, which seems as simplistic as the chorus and yet somehow taps into something incredibly primal and eternal, thanks to the combination of the sentiment, the melody and the instrumental backing, along with Money's vocal delivery, which sells the underlying emotion perfectly. If I were to ever capture a moment that well, I'd be a very happy artist indeed.
I love Bruce Springsteen. Anyone who is unfortunate to know me in real life knows this about me. Anyone who's spent any time at all on this site also likely picked up on it. (Although maybe they've been lucky enough to only real co-blogger pal Dan's posts on the same topic.) My reasons for this love are obvious: he's one of the greatest writers and performers in the history of rock and roll, with a range that's massively overlooked by those who only know him casually.
He's also overrated as a bandleader.
That's right. I said it. And I stand by it.
And I can defend my argument very easily—by simply posting this recently released clip of a Prince concert from back in 1982, when The Purple One was all of 24 years old.
Look. Bruce Springsteen was and is a phenomenal performer and bandleader. But this guy...this was simply another level. He watched Elvis and James Brown and Jimi Hendrix and Kiss and, yes, Bruce Springsteen and he mixed them up and then he did it all better. He's not only a better singer and guitarist and, yes, dancer than Springsteen, that band is tighter than the E Street Band could ever hope to be.
Which isn't to say I like Prince better, 'cuz I don't. I love much of his music and like even more. But he rarely hits the way Springsteen does. But you have to give credit where it's due, and by 1982 this lil dude was due pretty much all the credit there was, and he only got better from there.
The Crickets. The Beatles. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Led Zeppelin. The Ramones. P-Funk. The Smiths. R.E.M. Nirvana. Radiohead. There have been an awful lot of great bands.
This is not one of them. But only because it wasn't a real band—it was a solo artist with as good a backing band as has ever existed. If had been a real band? The core of Pete Townshend on vocals and rhythm guitar, Dave Gilmour on lead, Pino Palladino on bass and Simon Phillips on drums...well, the mind reels at what they could have created.
Incidentally, in case you were wondering, yes, this is maybe the most perfect drum performance ever, when it comes to the combination of staggering technique, brilliant inventiveness, off-the-chart energy and yet remarkable taste and restraint, including (at 3:44) the single greatest use of the double bass drums ever.
Terrible editing, of course. Hey, it was the 80s.
[ETA: ...huh. Turns out I wrote about this four years ago, and said pretty much the same thing, although I used a different version of what I think is the exact same performance.]
I don't know, exactly, what determines if a song works to its full desired effect. It's a highly subjective thing, right? One person gets choked up hearing Bruce Springsteen's "Backstreets," another can be moved to outward emotion by Kansas' "Dust in the Wind." Two wildly divergent forms of music, but each capable of triggering something in the individual listener.
So I don't know the exact formula; it's likely that no one does. But I will say this. When two young sisters write a song honoring a musical legend, and then perform that song in front of that musical legend, and that musical legend is moved to tears by that performance? Yeah, I think that is a good definition of success. Of a song that has reached its desired effect.
Case in point. Here is what I am talking about.
I'll be honest, I had never heard of this sister duo, called First Aid Kit and born, like them, in Sweden. Not until it was suggested I watch this video. But Lord am I glad I checked this out. The Soderberg sisters—Johanna is the older one, she's on the left singing harmony and taking lead on the bridge, and her younger sister Klara is on the right, playing guitar and singing lead—are each in their early 20s during this (I think) 2015 performance, and they are admittedly singing in front of one of their idols. Yet they show the poise of hard-boiled musical veterans, flawlessly delivering a song that is just unceasingly tender and lovely.
Much like the Everly Brothers of a different era, or the Carter family or the Jacksons or even the Osmonds, there is something about siblings singing together that, when done right, reaches an ethereal level that is nearly impossible to top. It's organic, embedded in marrow and plasma and intertwined in the DNA, and Johanna and Klara just put it on full display here. Johanna introduces the very meaning of the song with crystal perfection, and offers a bit of meta commentary on First Aid Kit while she does it, "We were so inspired (by the music of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons) that we wrote this song, which is about the joy and the magic of singing with someone you love."
Beautiful.
As for the magnificent Emmylou? Well, her reaction pretty much says it all. From the warm double kiss she blows to them at the outset, to the tiny wistful smile we see on her face as she focuses so intently on the song, to the tears she wipes from her eyes when the song inevitably overtakes her, that reaction is just priceless.
Oh, and the guy sitting next to her seems to appreciate it too. And he's only the freaking King of Sweden. But no pressure, ladies.
I'll be your Emmylou And I'll be your June You'll be my Gram And Johnny too And I'm not asking that much of you Just sing, little darling, sing with me
I'm not sure I recall a time when I didn't love Glen Campbell's music: "Rhinestone Cowboy" was probably the first song of his I really knew, or maybe "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"? Later, of course, "Galveston" and, most of all, "Wichita Lineman" became favorites. And as a music-obsessed teenager, I knew that he was a hotshot session guitarist before he became a country-pop superstar. But I never actually heard any of his playing. Thanks to YouTube, that sort of research became easier by a magnitude of precisely 28949. And yet, for quite a while, video evidence of Campbell's chops were in short supply. Fortunately, not anymore.
This might not have seemed like an obvious example at first glance: it's Campbell's lovely take on the John Hartford classic, later covered by Elvis during his late 60s resurgence. Except he skips the second verse in order to rip off a solo in its place. And what a solo! How good is it? Well, just look at the legends sitting around, laughing at how ridiculously good it is, and under that kind of pressure: Willie Nelson, Roy Clark, Chet damn Atkins and is that Waylon Jennings shown briefly?
Campbell gives a laughing nod to the greatness assembled around him at the end...and yet his face as he's playing seems to indicate he knows he's got this puppy in the bag, as indeed he damn well does. Check out Clark studying Campbell's playing: when a player of his greatness pays that close attention, you know something serious is happening. As indeed it damn well was. The way Willie's head shoots up when Glen says he's about to play a solo? Willie doesn't react that quickly to something unless it's damn worthy.
I just saw this clip today for the first time and was gobsmacked...all over again.
Some wag once described "Left of the Dial" thusly:
I just sat there, listening to this song I’ve heard a hundred times, thinking once more, this is rock and roll. Everything about it just screams This Is Rock and Roll and All That Is Good About It. If an alien landed and wanted to know what rock and roll is, I do believe this is the song I’d play.
15 years after I wrote that I'm watching this clip and thinking, yeah—I don't often get things that right, but on this one, I surely did.
Oh, and then let's just toss in "Alex Chilton," a serious contender for Greatest Power Pop Song Ever, as a digestif because we're the damn Replacements and that's the kind of thing we can do so why the hell not.
It was 29 years ago today that I “woke up” (not that I’d
slept much at all) around 5 am after what would be my last college all-nighter.
It was a pretty wild party held in my soon-to-be ex-college apartment, and the
reason for it was fairly obvious—today (Sunday, May 20, 1990) was Graduation
Day at the University of Connecticut.
Sleep just wasn’t happening for me; for the dozen or so
bodies strewn around the apartment it seemed to come fine and easy, but my body
wasn’t having any of it. So fully dressed, I grabbed my car keys and quietly
headed out.
It was such a surreal feeling to wander outside into the light
morning rain, unsure of where to go for the next few hours, knowing that so
much of my life had led to this day and this brand new chapter was about to
commence.
So I hopped into my ’79 Oldsmobile and just drove, out
through those small, bucolic rural towns that dot eastern Connecticut, hoping
to maybe outrun the rain and find a sunrise on this last day of my college life.
I eventually drove to the top of a hill on an empty road in one of those little
towns and, after driving for a half-hour or so, pulled over and got out of my
car. I was heading east and I looked out and there it was—just a faint hint of
the sun coming up.
I sat on the hood of my car and watched the faint pink and
orange sky, thinking about what came next and admitting to myself I didn’t have
a damn clue. I sat there for 10-15 minutes, lost in the stillness of it all,
alone and feeling so very far away not only from home, but from everything and
everyone I knew.
I thought about what came next, both literally and
figuratively. I had a cap and gown to iron, I had friends to meet for breakfast
one last time, I had parents to meet and other friends to gather with as we
made our way to venerable old Memorial Stadium for the ceremony. I had hours
ahead of me waiting for my name to be called with thousands of other graduates. I had lunch with the family and
then the slog of moving out of my apartment over the next day or two and
heading back home to live, at least for a little while.
And beyond that, I had a career to think about. I had an
interview at a newspaper for a free-lance reporting position two days later,
and thus would begin what I hoped would be a successful career in journalism. It
was all in front of me, just as that tiny glint of sunrise was.
The sheer silence of that moment ended abruptly when a
raindrop hit the hood of my car, then another and then within seconds a steady
rain was falling and the sunrise up ahead was fading. It was time to go. I hopped
back in the driver’s seat, turned around and drove off.
Soon I would be surrounded by people I loved and whose company I enjoyed, so
this alone time was welcome. Still, I’d had enough of the quiet and had such
little sleep I needed something to keep my brain occupied and my eyes open, so
I turned on the car stereo to the rock-n-roll station it was already tuned to.
Amazingly, this song came on. One of my favorite songs delivered
by perhaps my all-time favorite band. I nodded along to the music and I headed back,
back through that long, grey rain, back to campus, back to reality, away from
the sunrise and straight into what—beyond this long-awaited day—would be a
great unknown of a future.
According to the redoubtable Cover Me, Harry Chapin was distressed with the original recording of "Cats in the Cradle," feeling it was far too fast. It's a funny story in hindsight, given how popular it became, and how lasting an impact the song has had.
But then you listen to his daughter's version and it seems ol' Harry might have been onto something.
The younger Chapin had serious musical training, and it shows, as she toys with the melody here and there but never strays far from the oh so well known basis. And the recording is emotionally devastating: the original had more than enough pathos, but it's impossible not to listen and think about the fact that she's singing this song about a distant father which was written by her own father who died when she was just 10.
In which the Rolling Stones simultaneously write the great (or at least a great) lost girl group song from the 60s and one of the greatest Darkness on the Edge of Town outtakes Bruce Springsteen never wrote or recorded.
Am I wrong? Of course I'm not. That would have fit beautifully on The Promise. The chorus obviously—the repeated word (in this case "baby") are practically as much a Springsteen hallmark as cars and girls—and, of course, it's a basic I-V-IV construction, with an added vi in the chorus, the exact kind of structure Springsteen consciously stripped down to on Darkness and to which he's largely stuck ever since.
And now I am amazed I never ever heard this before today. This version, that is.
It's very, very difficult to imagine two voices going more perfectly together. When Cass comes in for the first harmony, that may be what it sounds like to hear music for the first time. No, I do not overstate.
Magical.
(And how cool to see they were doing their own version of Rock the Vote back there in those Nixon days of 1972?)
How, in this post-post-postmodern world do you make a good video for your fine song? With a shot for shot remake of the worst video ever, of course.
I have very mixed feelings about this remix culture society we find ourselves in, where memes are so prevalent and truly great works of art are often first introduced to and best known by younger viewers/readers/listeners by the snide (and often very funny) jokes made out of them and at their expense. On the one hand, I love the way the internet has granted so many artists the tools and audiences to enable them to create in a way they likely never would have a few decades earlier. On the other hand, I don't think it comes without a cost.
Oh J Mascis. Is there any song you cannot make your own, no matter how strongly identified the original is with its creator?
It is a well-known truism that cover albums tend to be a sign of artistic stagnation. There are exceptions, of course, but not many.
I don't care: I'd be delighted with a new cover album every month, just J running down whatever song catches his fancy, his laconic drawl accompanied by his lacerating guitar. Do me like that, J. Do me just like that.
We've done a lot of writing on this blog about the 1980s, that whirring blur of pastel, excess and rationalization. We talked a lot about the good, not too much about the bad and quite a bit about the cheesy. And you know what? Just as the 1970s weren't all about shag carpeting, bell bottoms, leisure suits and whatever the hell this is, the 1980s were so much more than just a sockless Don Johnson or a feckless Oliver North. Or cocaine.
For God's sake both decades had some music...tons of music, really...that ranks as some of the greatest ever made. The 70s has all of those legendary Stevie Wonder records, the very best of the Who and maybe even the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen's two greatest records, Bob Dylan's second greatest, plus this. And this. And this!!!
Meanwhile, the 80s has not just Prince and Michael Jackson (and BTW also...PRINCE AND MICHAEL JACKSON!!!), but how about Madonna? And U2 and R.E.M? And the Replacements and the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. and Living Colour and, come to think about it, the very very best of the Police? Yeah, the 1980s had it going on with its musics.
Which brings me to this one-hit...er...I guess two-hit wonder that most anyone who existed as a sentient human being over the age of 12 in 1983 became pretty familiar with. This song. The video of which, yes, has all that goofy and grandiose 1980s plastic mayhem and kitsch for which so many of us still remember the decade:
There's so much to love here. Let's start with the song. This is a terrific song that Scandal and Patty Smyth have created. Scott and I have spent much time in this space praising the glory of the well-executed pop song, and all of those elements that go into good pop. The catchiness, first and foremost. The hooks that make you say, "Yes!" Striking just the right balance of being not too heavy yet memorable and lasting enough to remain fresh after multiple listenings. I think those are the key ingredients, right? Catchiness, the right hooks and staying power? Isn't that what separated something like this from something like (ugh!) this?
Anyway, "Goodbye To You" has that pop essence, and it has the chops to leave behind a pop song that while it might sound a little dated 37 years later, it still makes a great listen. That classic 4/4 drum/bass beat that opens it (not unlike plenty of other terrific pop tunes, like "We Got The Beat" or "Dancing in the Dark.") A melody that never waivers and delivers both memorable verses and then one whallop of a chorus. And then, when we're not even expecting it, we get another indelible hook on the bridge ("And my heart...and my heart...and my heart...and my heart can't stand the strain.") "Goodbye To You" never dives too deep, but it also never lets up from start to finish. And I love that.
And then there is Patty Smyth, who kinda bounces into the frame a few seconds in (and seriously, I love how it takes her 15 seconds to show up. For whatever reason) and then just takes ahold of your collar and really doesn't let go. Her voice is not exactly classic female pop. Very little vibrato and no tricks at all, rather she has a touch of gravel and growl as she belts it out with all she's got. She lends just the right amount of emotion and fire where she needs to (the way she spits out the word "YOU!" on each chorus, the sweet, vulnerable retreat she makes at the start of the bridge). But her voice is one of control and steadiness, and she lends an edge to an otherwise very simple (if listenable and engaging) beat.
And in the video, I think it's pretty safe to say you literally can't take your eyes off of her. While her bandmates are decked out in menswear that seems to have been purchased from a catalog called, Man, Didn't the 80s Rock?, Patty is in her own world here. She is a bright red blur, bopping her little Long Island heart out in her red dress and heels, hardly ever cracking a smile but throwing us a gaze that goes right through the camera. The video is at times hilarious, with its sudden stop-action freezes in all sorts of weird times, but again, Patty doesn't care. She trades diva for dervish, and exists to sing the song with all she's got, and that's just what she does, dammit. She's not quite the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl. She's more the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl's older sister who you can't take your eyes off of and you don't dare screw with her. Bless her for that.
Just one little morsel of what the 1980s offered us. But such a good one. It really is.
I'm just like him, the same as you
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I don't know, exactly, what determines if a song works to its full desired effect. It's a highly subjective thing, right? One person gets choked up hearing Bruce Springsteen's "Backstreets," another can be moved to outward emotion by Kansas' "Dust in the Wind." Two wildly divergent forms of music, but each capable of triggering something in the individual listener.
It was 29 years ago today that I “woke up” (not that I’d
slept much at all) around 5 am after what would be my last college all-nighter.
It was a pretty wild party held in my soon-to-be ex-college apartment, and the
reason for it was fairly obvious—today (Sunday, May 20, 1990) was Graduation
Day at the University of Connecticut.
