The Soul Shack

Them Changes

2008-04-04T21:02:00.002+02:00

I've been doing the Soul Shack for a while now. But as I suspected and announced the blog covered much more than just Soul music. One artist in particular got a bit more attention relatively speaking. I'm a huge Bruce Springsteen fan as many of the regular reader may have noticed by now. So more than just once in every great while a post on the Boss crept into the Shack. Time to give them a place of their own I figured.

Recently I started collecting 45s of songs covered by Springsteen. One of the main attractions to Springsteen for me is how his work covers much of R&R's rich history. In covers alone the man has done over a thousand songs ranging from Buddy Holly to Pearl Jam. In recent years he's been digging even further into the roots of American music. So I've decided to start Boss Tracks where I'll review every new find and where I'll continue the Bosscast I've been doing for the past few months.

I hope to meet you there!

The Bruce Springsteen Bosscast, April 2008; Boogie Chillun

2008-03-29T22:57:00.003+01:00

The Bosscast has moved to the all new Boss Tracks. I'll meet all you saints and sinners there for a regular dose of the Boss!

Let's Spend The Night Together

2008-03-22T08:59:00.007+01:00

Sometimes you come across a Soul record that makes you frown. Much like R&R, Soul music often delivers best on the very edge of good taste. Some of Soul's greatest records are very dubious in that respect indeed. Are the records of Barry White still good taste, despite their candle lit pornographic aura, sure enough they are! But its a fine line. And sometimes the finest talents in Soul trip over that line. One of those rather embarrassing yet strangely entertaining examples is Joe Simon's cover of "Let's Spend The Night Together". The track is buried on Joe Simon's 1976 album "Today". The record that would definitely take Joe Simon into the Disco age. Before that Joe Simon had been one of the great Southern Soul singers. His version of "Chocking Kind" is still the definitive rendition of that song, no matter how many Joss Stones you throw at that sucker. His Gamble & Huff produced albums are bonified Soul classics out of period where Disco still meant putting a bow tie on the Funk. But shortly after those Philly productions things started to go downhill for the like of Joe Simon, maybe even Soul in general. Philly Soul evolved into Disco, a lawyer designed genre that according to George Clinton of Funkadelic fame was trying to fax it in. Countrified Soul shouters like Simon simply couldn't adapt.

Popular myth has it that Punk destroyed Rock. I think that premises is false. Punk revived some of R&R's core values. If there's anything that "destroyed" Rock, as far as it was ever really tore down, it was Disco, F.M. Radio and mega multi million sales. F.M. Radio, which was at first a vessel for R&R, soon became predictable and overly formatted. As multi million dollar enterprises they seem to have one objective, not to offend and push as much meaningless drivel as they could. Disco suited the job just perfectly. It had none of the grits and gravy either R&R or Southern Soul had. Hell even Motown would soon prove to be too raw for the new radio formats. For the longest while F.M. wouldn't get more risky than the Eagles or Bony M. Acts like the Stones and Joe Simon suffered. But where the Stones cleverly adapted with discofied Rock as "Miss You", Simon was left stumbling through the studio with Bob Clearmountain at the production wheel. Though Clearmountain has a good reputation for producing and mixing good and solid R&R albums in a period when they were a dying breed, even he couldn't help a Soul shouter like Simon find his groove. "Today" is marred by the same problems may of the Soul albums seem to have in that era, a sense of detachment. Not quite Soul, not quite Disco and not quite the Quiet Storm that would soon come yet. On "Stay" we hear an artists clinging on to Country Soul while trying to make Disco, trying to remain true to himself while trying to blend into a crowd where he suddenly looks like the ugly duckling.

The result of that strain is unfortunately an uncomfortable piece of cheese. Maybe if F.M. radio and the record business would have had the guts to invest in tail end sales as well artists like Joe Simon would have survived into the next decade. The backlash at Disco might not have been so great and might not have taken down Soul in its demise. Maybe it would have given Joe Simon enough breathing space to produce truly great records. In theory his version of "Let's Spend The Night Together" should have kicked David Bowie's ass. Unfortunately the practice of the second half of the seventies was different. Over the course of just a few years the music industry, Soul and R&R turned into an embarrassing mess. Sometimes it seems Soul never truly recovered.

"Let's Spend The Night Together" - Joe Simon

Platter's That Matter; WAR!

2008-03-09T13:15:00.011+01:00

Producer Norman Whitfield is of such notoriety that one could argue that he is an artist in his own right. Although his songs were sung by others, although Gladys Knight, the Temptations and Edwin Starr scored his hits for him, his sound was so recognizable, so distinct, that you're able to pick a Whitfield production out of the thousands. The Edwin Starr single "WAR" might be his biggest triumph. Recorded and released in 1970 it is still the biggest selling protest song of all time, one of the few to hit that much coveted #1 spot on the Billboard charts. Though not the first song to deal with the war in Vietnam, few songs dealt with it so poignantly and blunt as "WAR". It is one of the few occasions where a song spawned a popular phrase; "War, what is it good for" is engraved in our collective conscious and lives a life of its own outside of the smash 45.

Whitfield had been Motown long before the labels main money makers Holland-Dozier-Holland would leave the fold over contractual disputes. Almost single handedly Whitfield would fill the gap that the golden trio left and change the face of Motown. Although Whitfield started with material that fit the label's clean teen image like a glove he would exploit the lessened grip Berry Gordy had on Motown's musical division to the max. Together with Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye Norman would give Motown a decidedly more edgy image while Gordy was busy producing movies. The Temptations would be Whitfield's main showcase. As such they were the first to record the classic single that is subject of this post. The song was part of Norman's ground breaking "Psychedelic Shack" album. The title song of that album was filled with implicit references to the hippie movement and conscious expanding drugs. Yet when Norman discussed releasing War with the Temps, the explicit nature of that song proved to be a bridge to far for the group. Being too outspoken in America, with its strong patriotic (almost nationalistic) environment, could costs recording artists their career. The Temps had just broken into the exclusive club circuit and weren't about to put all that on the line. Gordy with his eyes fixed on the green might have had some to do with the Temps decision to decline as well. Next to the Supremes, the Temps were Motown's flagship. He wasn't about to compromise them.

The single was then given to Edwin Starr. Although Star had scored a few hits, he wasn't quite the money machine the Temps were. Putting his career on the line wasn't as big a gamble, Starr had more to win than to loose. Starr would later recall in an interview "It was a message record, an opinion record, and stepped beyond being sheer entertainment. It could become a smash record, and that was fine, but if it went the other way, it could kill the career of whoever the artist was." The gamble paid of. With Edwin's mighty pipes and his ruff and gruff delivery "WAR" struck a very powerful chord at the time. By 1970 the Vietnam war had escalated and the draft was looming over many young men's lives. As a conflict it was unclear what America was doing there in the first place. Though the song's lyrics may seem a little hokey and to straight forward at times lines like "war, has shattered, Many a young mans dreams, Made him disabled, bitter and mean, Life is much to short and precious, To spend fighting wars these days, War can't give life, It can only take it away" hit home hard.

"WAR" is one of those songs that stood the test of times even though its production is undeniably a product of the seventies. Norman was highly influenced by Funkadelic and Sly Stone, a product of his times. Yet when Springsteen revived the song in 2003 (Springsteen had a hit with it in the mid-eighties) after the invasion in Iraq during his Rising tour, the song sounded like it was written to comment on that colossal blunder. Still 5 years in the Iraq war has yet to find its own anthems. The war has striking parallels to the war in Vietnam. America again got itself in a senseless conflict it doesn't seem able to win. As the Dixie Chicks controversy proved protests is still a high risk to one's career. But I don't think that is why there's hardly any base for protest. The big difference between today and Vietnam is that there's no more draft. The cannon fodder of Iraq signed up voluntarily.With Vietnam because of the draft the base for protest was broader, the war harder to ignore, because it could easily come knocking on your door. Add to that an almost McCarthy like pressure to support the war, criticism seems to equal anti-Americanism these days, have silenced the popular producers. There have been a couple of high profile protesters like Eminem and Springsteen. But none of them have been as poignant as Norman Whitfield or have the reach Motown had. "WAR" is still king of all anti-war songs and I suspect it will stay that way for quite some time.

"WAR" The Temptations

Persepolis; The Real Iran.

2008-03-08T23:01:00.009+01:00

The biggest brow raiser to the Oscar ceremonies a few weeks back was the passing by of "Persepolis" in favor of Disney's light and breezy film "Ratatouille". It is not very often that an animated film comes a long that tackles complex issues in an accessible way. Of course the nomination alone was an enormous support to the movie. It is questionable if the film would have gotten the distribution and attention it has now if it weren't for that nomination. Even though the Oscars are hardly any indication on the merit of a film, a nomination and especially a win is still a very important promotional tool. The nomination is probably what got the movie out of the festival and art house circuit into a heavier rotation or is at the very least what got the art houses to fill up. "Persepolis" is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Marjane Satrapi. As a work of art it is most easily compared to "Maus" by Art Spiegelman. The book is highly autobiographically in nature and, like "Maus", gives us a window into the human aspect of oppression.

In a day and age where the debate surrounding the Arab world mainly focuses on extremism politicians and the general public risks loosing side of that aspect. President Bush's one liners on terrorism and his "axis of evil" have caused a dehumanization of the Arab world, maybe even the entire Muslim world. In the current debate there seems to be very little room for the many human differences between individual Muslims. Especially with the debate surrounding the perceived terrorist and nuclear thread of Iran we tend to loose sight of such aspects. The media focuses mainly on the insanity of the Mullahs and the president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the complex dynamics surrounding the terrorist debate and the fundamentalist threat the perception of Muslims sometimes tends to take the nature of a caricature not unlike those used in Nazi Germany to portrait the Jew. Ironically it is a comic book that is now helping to give us a more realistic perspective.

"Persepolis" is a cultural and historical lesson, a coming of age story, a comedy and a tragedy all in one. It is against the backdrop of oppression, first by the USA supported Shah and later by the religious fanatics, that Marjane grew up. Though the film gives an insight in the terror of oppression and its mechanisms the film doesn't dwell on that. Through the terror we follow Marjane trying grow up, we get her child like perspective on Iran but we get to see a delightful charming little girl growing into a beautiful woman as well, going through most of the stages of growing up every girl goes through. As a little girl Marjane has imaginative conversations with God, who picked her to become the next profit, we see her rocking out on Iron Maiden as a teen ager, pumping herself up on "The Eye Of The Tiger" as a young adolescent. Especially funny and frightening at the same time is the scene were Marjane hits the street with her "Punk is not ded" jacket sporting a Michael Jackson button. Apparently in Iran, with its ban on music, both have an equally rebellious nature. It is that nature that get Marjane into trouble, openly opposing her religious teacher as a 13 year old, causing her parents to send her to Europe where she is faced with bigotry and the challenge of trying to fit in as a girl growing up.

Though the film and the comic are done in black and white the way it deals with the themes is hardly that. Marjane herself has called her film a color production using gray tones. Her approach to the characters is much the same. In the book there's the Mullah who approves her application for art school despite her unorthodox view on religion, she stays with the ignorant but heartily welcoming parent of a friend in Austria, in the film she shows herself using the terror of the state to her advantage when she's in a rough spot (endangering an innocent by stander) and neighbors who are suddenly religious over night. As the characters pass through Marjane's life at the family table and the illegal parties with black market wine and lipstick the complexities of human nature comes sharply back into focus. With witty, wry irony and an almost poetic animation Marjane demonstrates how normal average people go on their way in times of dictatorship and fanaticism. She effectively shows how the terror of few can dominate the life's of many. In short, in these cynical times where one dimensional views seem to prevail, we need a one dimensional comic to gain some perspective again.

Se also this interview with Marjane for book slut and the this article from the NY Times.

The Dirty Dozen Is What's Going On!

2008-03-08T12:55:00.004+01:00

Take a tuba, a fat drum beat, add a scorching guitar and you've got the foundation of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band as seen in Amsterdam last Thursday. Flesh it all out with a raving horn section and you've got a combination that is guaranteed to make you sweat. The Dirty Dozen are one of those bands that is keeping the Jazz scene vibrant. Leaning heavy into the traditional music of their native city New Orleans, the Dirty Dozen keep pushing the envelope. There's a reason why they worked with everybody from Dizzy Gillespie to Elvis Costello, from the Guru to Bettye LaVette. Few other bands today are able to expand on the great Jazz traditions of New Orleans quite like them. Few bands can tackle a classic masterpiece like Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and get away with it. The Dirty Dozen did and pulled it off. Not just that they made an entirely original wok out of Marvin's album. So my expectations were high for the Dozen's first appearance in Amsterdam. The half filled venue made it apparent that true talent often goes unrecognized in today's music business. Unimaginative programming on the radio and MTV leave stellar bands in the realm of connoisseurs. Jazz has a high (f)art aura to it that is off putting to a lot of people. A shame, because it denies them the raving party Jazz can be.

If there is one thing that the Dirty Dozen seem to understand is that Jazz has a strong tradition of being party music. "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" is a lesson some Jazz combos seem to have lost sight of. While experimental forms of Jazz are not without their own merits, they are hardly ever fun and cooking quite in the original sense of the word. Most Jazz clubs or performances today attract people who quietly sit and listen, stroking their chin in contemplation while secretly fighting sleep and boredom. The Dirty Dozen may not be as subtle live as on record but they do bring the Funk. The Dozen live drop bomb after bomb. Drummer Terence Higgins has a high Hip Hop sensibility, pushing and pulling with an approach that is both sloppy, loose and incredibly tight. You can't help but throw your hands in the air, wave em like you just don't care. The horn section adds a booty shaking grease that makes it impossible to sit down. If the Dirty Dozen don't get you off your ass it is advised to check your vital signs. You might be dead.

The material the Dozen picked to play was aimed at getting the audience into a sweaty Funk. After they were done my arm pits reminded me of the true meaning of the word. With the chops of the Dirty Dozen a classic like "When The Saint Come Marching In" sounds as fresh and funky as "Fire On The Bayou" or "Feet Can't Fail Me Now". Although the band was struggling with the acoustics of the venue some, they paid their dues and then some. The Dirty Dozen is the kind of band that doesn't play for you, they party with you. They are there for their own pleasure as well as yours. Though very accomplished musicians they never loose themselves in pointless solos for musicians sake. Still their music is adventurous and incredibly original. With the Dirty Dozen the music of New Orleans is as vital, challenging and cooking as it was a hundred years back.

"What's Going On (live)"

The Dirty Dozen "Live At Paradiso" is available through the Dime.

Take A Good Look At What You Missed All These Years

2008-03-02T21:01:00.009+01:00

A squealing farfisa, barely in time hand claps, raggedy harmonies, the Fleshtones are back!!!! "The who?!?" you might ask yourself. I feel for you. Asking that very question is admitting your life has been devoid of the purest brand of R&R up till now. The Fleshtones have been giving it up for years. They played CBGB's when Kurt Cobain was still crapping his pants. They blew the Ramones and Blondie off stage when the word Punk had yet to be invented. The Fleshtones were still R&R by the time the Stones traded their sex & drugs for spring water and health spas. They outlived many of Punk Rock's heroes and there seems to be no stopping them yet. Though years of scrambled together tours and albums, through years of high spirits and the lowest of lows, through thousands of sweat drenched R&R dives and dozens of guaranteed hitless albums, the Fleshtones have been the uncrowned kings of R&R. So you'd better take a good look at what you missed all those years.

The Fleshtones have come a long way since they spawned from Brooklyn's seediest of basements. Their brand of Garage took them all over the world touring in obscurity. For some strange reason they became super stars in Paris. But then again the French are strange. But in any other country in the world they've been R&R's biggest promise for the last thirty odd years. Some bands would change their formula when confronted with the amounts of set backs the Fleshtones had to deal with. But they are not your ordinary band. They will simply keep doing what they do best, just as long as it takes for you to get it stupid! The minute the needle hits the first groove on the record, you'll know the boys haven't changed their game, though they might have perfected it a little further. Make no mistake, the raggedy mess you'll hear on "Take A Good Look" is the Fleshtones at their slickest. This album finds the band playing tighter than they ever have, finds them crashing into their songs with the greatest conviction, with a production that is on par with their finest work. In other words, they are still trying to keep up with their R&B heroes and failing gloriously. Taking you down with howling harmonica solos, blazing sax honking, rollicking piano strides, scotching guitar riffs, worn down vocals and just a little more sweat for comfort. This is what R&R is supposed to be, what it needs to be. R&R isn't pleasant, no matter what your FM radio is trying to tell you, R&R is the jumbled mess that is the Fleshtones.

It is rare to find a band so consistent as the Fleshtones. You can pick up almost any record of theirs and get exactly what you expected. The best dose of pure R&R that will have you bopping through the room. The Watusi, the Penguin, the Funky Chicken, the Tighten Up, you'll find yourself doing all those crazy dances even if you never knew how. "Shiney Hiney" is a piece of R&R poetry that would make the Ramones proud, "Going Back To School" with its throbbing base will have the Stones hiding in shame, "New York City" is the great classic Gary 'US' Bonds never wrote, "Jet Set Fleshtones" makes the Faces look like they don't know Pub-Rock. In a better world the latter would rocket up to the top of the charts. The rudimentary farfisa licks, the vicious guitar riffing, the clunky tambourine, are catchier than they should be. Look out! They are indeed the Jet Set Fleshtones, everybody move on up and take a real good look at what you denied yourself all those years. Take a good look, because the Fleshtones are breaking through, dragging you into their world howling and screaming. Pick up the record and get cool online extras from their record company Yep Roc records, see them in a town near you, let them sink in through a blue wale haze. Don't try to fight it, the Fleshtones will make it feel good to feel!!!

"The Jet Set Fleshtones"

Fela Kuti; Music As A Force

2008-03-01T15:07:00.009+01:00

Music is often a cultural and political force as much as it is entertainment. It is a means to get views of a counter movement across to a mass audience. Music has derived that power from its Folk roots all over the world, when music was the primary a source of communication for the poor. Before there was recorded music that made musicians into stars, musicians were simply carriers of the messages, story tellers. No one knew who originally wrote the songs they were singing, in a time before publishing this was not important. When music came into the recording/publishing age this political aspect became more personalized, associated with the artist. It also started to become diluted in favor of commercial interests. Rarely there was an artist so political in the recording age as Fela Kuti. Rarely there was an artists who refused to compromise as much as this African force. Rarely there was an artist so close to the Folk roots of music while pushing the boundaries of music at the same time. Fela Kuti revolutionized in music as much as he did in thought and politics. Even though is ideas were often unrealistic and far fetched he played the confrontational game like no other. During his career he was living proof that Music can be a life changing and political force.

The Nigerian Kuti, produced album length singles that literally seemed to start revolutions. His Afro Beat was an explosive mix of African Rhythms and James Brown Funk, cooking and sweating in a way that might have even made the God Father jealous. Although in his biography James Brown denies being aware of African music before seeing Fela play in Nigeria, it is clear that his JB's picked up on that beat. After visiting Africa, James Brown's Funk seemed to grow more ferocious, getting into locked into the beat even tighter. Fela Kuti's Afro Beat seemed to suit the radicalizing atmosphere of Funk in the seventies like a glove. Nothing quite took the message home the way Fela's relentless and hypnotic Rhythms did. Fela's records often start with a beat, slowly building rhythm on rhythm. Punching horn lines start to spar with each other, the pulsing rhythm getting thicker and thicker. It would not be uncommon for you to be in a sweat drenched dance, minutes into the song before the vocals would even start. But when it did Fela's voice commanded immediate attention. Maybe that's why Fela was feared as much by the various regimes in Nigeria he lived through. The powers that be must have realized Fela got people to listen. Fela told the story the politicians of Nigeria refused to tell, blinded by their power. Fela tapped into the realities of the average Nigerian during shows that would stretch on for hours while explaining where their poverty came from. Although Fela aimed at the powers that be, in songs like "Colonial Mentality" he addressed the apathy of the common African as well. Kuti's music was designed to move more than your feet, he wanted elevate the political conscious of his audience as well, get them to confront their rulers.

Name dropping vice president Moshood Abiola, former ITT employee (an American manufacturer with large defense contracts), in his single "International Thief Thief" got Fela arrested in the late seventies for the first time, but it wouldn't be the last. Fela's politics didn't stop there. Kuti was highly influenced by the Black Power movement and Malcolm X in his political thinking. A glance at Kuti's political career makes it apparent that Kuti took Malcolm's "By all means necessary" quite literally. Kuti claimed independence for his large estate in 1974, declaring the Kalakutu Republic, building a large fence around his estate. In '77 his "republic" was overthrown by the Nigerian government in an attack by a 1.000 soldiers. The attack left Fela's skull fractured. This however didn't stop Kuti, he formed his own political party in 1979 and tried to run as president. His campaign spearheaded one issue, he'd make every Nigerian citizen a police officer. Claiming that would stop police brutality since you cannot beat a colleague. His candidacy was denied. Fela was no doubt feared by the political establishment, his music had literally incited a riot in 1978 during the Accra show when he performed "Zombie". No telling where Fela would have ended up might he have run.

Kuti eventually died of AIDS in '97, though his supporters claim that he died because of government harassment. Fela was paid tribute on the excellent "Red, Hot and Riot" AIDS benefit lp. The guests on that LP stand as a testimony of his influence on modern music. The likes of Sade, Roy Hargrove, Common, Meshell N'Degeocello and D'Angelo all contributed to this Hip Hop infused LP that did Fela the justice he deserved. Bootsy Collins and Ginger Baker were amongst his early admirers but his legacy continues even today. A few years back Damon Albarn from from Blur fame produced an album for Kuti's drummer Tony Allen, bands like Antibalas made their careers by copying Fela's sound, while his own son Femi Kuti continues to carry the torch with his own ban the Positive Force. His legacy also means countless compilations that often need to be approach with caution. The nature of Fela's music means that his songs would often stretch over two album sides. I believe they are best enjoyed that way. But it does leave the starting listener with quite the challenge on where to begin. Wrasse records' recent release offers a good starting point. Mind you, much of Fela's most notorious work is missing from this collection, but it does give you a good sense of the force that was Fela. It comes with a DVD to boot. The two disc Universal compilation Universal released in '99 does much better on picking key tracks, and since there is hardly any overlap between that one and the Wrasse's anthology I simply recommend buying both. For those who want the complete picture try to find the LP boxed sets Barclay issued some ten years ago reproducing the original LPs. Where ever you start, you'll find that diving into Fela's music is an addictive journey leaving you wanting more, more, more.......

See also the interview with Fela on the Shrine.

"Colonial Mentality"

Buddy Miles; Tracing R&B History

2008-02-28T20:55:00.009+01:00

Buddy Miles's death was reported today in the NY Times and with him an important part of R&B history is closed for good. To trace Buddy's career is almost like tracing the history of R&B. Like all great R&B performers of the sixties and seventies, Miles had a solid foundation that was steeped in Doo Wop. Miles built his skill backing numerous acts on the chitlin circuit and in the studio, on vocals. Something often overlooked. Miles is mentioned in various biographies as the one who lend his pipes to the likes of the Inkspots and the Delfonics. Sweet harmonizing groups, where the instrumentation was an after thought. In Doo Wop the singers were both bass, drums, percussion and melody. Later in his career Miles would become best known for his drumming of course. But I think his harmonic schooling that laid the foundation for his entire career. While touring with the Wislon Picket revue, Buddy was discovered by Mike Bloomfield, who included him in his Electric Flag. A rather odd outfit playing Big Band Blues with a pinch of Jazz and Fusion. After recording a sound track for a psychedelic film, "The Trip" and one decent album "Long Time Comin'" the band quickly fell apart. Buddy picked up after that by forming the Buddy Miles Express which had its first album produced by one Jimi Hendrix.

Most people will know Buddy best for his work with Jimi Hendrix. The pair had met on the chitlin circuit years before Hendrix started his successful career with the Experience from England. Their best known work together is the stellar live album "Band Of Gypsys" recorded on New Year's eve 1969 at the Filmore. By that time the Experience was falling apart and Hendrix started using Miles on some key tracks for his "First Rays Of The New Rising Sun" project. The inclusion of Miles in the band has been subject to a lot of speculation. From the black community Hendrix was as much criticized as he was influential. Hendrix made his mark on Funk through his influence on Eddie Hazel and Ernie Isley but was often seen as too white because of his association to the Experience and his popularity amongst mostly white audiences. Especially in the quickly radicalizing atmosphere after Martin Luther King's death. Some have seen the inclusion of Buddy Miles in his Band of Gypsys as a move to broaden his audience by showing color. This is however much debatable. Author's on Hendrix often point out that he refused to align himself along racial lines and if he did he was prone to stress his native American heritage. Funnily enough Buddy's studio work with Hendrix wasn't even all that funky. The most notable recordings were the loose rockers, "Room Full Of Mirrors" and "Ezy Rider". Mitch Mitchell was still on drums on the decidedly more funky tracks like "Dolly Dagger".

Though Buddy's work with Hendrix and his own work with the Buddy Miles express was moving away from traditional R&B to something that was closer to Rock or Fusion, there has always been that undeniable Doo Wop influence. Unlike many Fusion artists Miles never lost his sense of harmony, of coherence. Even though his work was marked by a remarkable creative freedom, with alternating success, Miles understood the importance of melody. Where other Fusion drummers would sometimes loose themselves in rhythmic masturbation, Miles always kept his eye on the tune. Buddy pushed and stretched the principles he was taught while performing with the Delfonics but he never really abandoned them. Miles was at the same time a relentless straight forward Funk drummer as he was a free spirit. This might explain his broad appreciation. After his work with Hendrix, Buddy became a much welcomed sparring partner for many musicians ranging from Clapton to Santana, from Umar Bin Hassan (from the Last Poets) to Nils Lofgren. Though Miles was never as prominently visible as Hendrix was he became almost as influential and was an integral part of the history of "black" music, or rather music period. Buddy became 60 years old. He will be missed.

"Room Full Of Mirrors" - Jimi Hendrix
"Them Changes" - Buddy Miles

The Bosscast March; Magic Returns To Hartford

2008-02-28T06:32:00.003+01:00

Welcome to the second Bosscast. With the tour starting again today in Hartford we'll celebrate Magic in a themed pod cast dedicated to the roots of Magic. So get your ticket and your suitcase.....

I'd like to ask your attention for one track specifically, "Hobo's Lullaby". The track from the "Give Us Your Poor Album" deserves a further look. It was part of a charity project I feel strongly about. All proceeds from that CD will be going to an organization to help fight poverty in the US. The entire album is worth every dollar you'll spend on it and then some. Check them out at their site and support them how you can.

All live recordings used in this show can be found on the BTX mp3 Index. Thanks again to all the people who made that one possible.

01. Radio Nowhere, Bruce Springsteen from Magic
02. 867-5309 (Jenny), Tommy Tutone from 867-5309/Jenny
03. Rosalita, Bruce Springsteen from 2003-08-31 Giant House Party In Jersey

04. Man On The Moon, Bruce Springsteen & R.E.M. from 2004-10-02 Cleveland Ohio
05. At My Most Beautiful, R.E.M. In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003
06. Sloop John B, the Beach Boys from Sounds Of Summer
07. You're Own Worst Enemy, Bruce Springsteen from Magic

08. Hobo's Lullaby, Bruce Springsteen & Pete Seeger from Give US Your Poor
09. Long Walk Home, Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band from 2006-11-11 Wembley Session First Night
10. My Home Town, Bruce Springsteen from 2007-09-28 Today Show NBC
11. Promised Land, Bruce Springsteen from 2007-12-17 Paris

12. People Get Ready, The Impressions from The Definitive Impressions
13. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy), Ben E King from One Step Up/Two Steps Back

14. Girls In Their Summer Clothes, Bruce Springsteen from 2007-12-17 Paris

Bosscast feed.

The pod cast unfortunately will not be available through Itunes as I hoped. But with the help of this feed you should be able to get the future installments.

No Country For Old Men; A Return To Form

2008-02-23T11:12:00.006+01:00

After a series of disappointing movies the Coen brothers have finally returned to form with "No Country For Old Men". Recent years had "demoted" the Coen brothers back to the art house under the category interesting directors. Problem was of course that you can start your career that way, but once you established your name it is kind of awkward. "The Man Who Wasn't There" was still an amusing film, but "The Lady Killers" was simply embarrassing for men with the talents of the Coen brothers. After that I might have missed a film or two. But the buzz around their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's book I decided to pay the theater a visit to see if the flick was worth all the hype. I've never really seen what the fuss about Cormac's books is. His last novel "The Road" struck me as filled with one dimensional characters, addressing themes that hadn't been urgent since the Cold War. Granted "No Country For Old Men" was a bit better but McCarthy's books are inhibited by characters of who's motivations remain unclear. His novels always seem a bit too close to black and white notions of good and evil to me. I enjoy the sparsity of McCarthy's writing and his ability to set the seen in as little as possible words, but I always found his characters to be lacking a certain amount of depth. McCarthy never was the writer John Fante and Charles Bukowski were, who were able to combine bare bone writing with a strong sense of what moved the characters that inhibited their novels. McCarthy's works are of a different genre than those two of course, but I feel he could pick up a thing or two from those two authors.

But as the Coen brother's recent flick testifies, McCarthy's novels might prove to be excellent movie scripts. Movies work very different from novels. In movies the director has the non-verbal expression he can work with to give the viewer more of a sense of what moves the character. A movie director doesn't need to use words, he can let the images do the talking. Voice overs in films are often very unnecessary things that are best used very sparsely. The Coen brothers do just that. Although the movie opens with a voice over from sheriff Tommy Lee Jones reflecting on the times his father and grand father held office, simpler times when they didn't need to carry guns. Neither does Jones for the major part of the movie, that is until he ventures into the city. Tommy Lee Jones resorting to his gun seems a key moment in the film. The whole movie seems to radiate a world in which innocence and simplicity is lost. Something that seems to be a main theme in McCarthy's book. His view on the world strikes me as very bleak, a sense masterfully translated to the big screen by the Coens. McCarthy's books generally seem to portray the world coming to an end, portray that we've lost our moral, they're apocalyptic even if the scenery isn't. McCarthy seems to rehash this theme every novel, which basically isn't more than a cynical form of nostalgia. The Coen brother use their trademark dark humor to take the edge of that message. Throwing you of balance all the while. There is something very uncomfortable about finding yourself bursting out in laughter during scenes of extreme violence, you almost feel like an accomplice.

For a thriller "No Country" follows a slow and dragging pace in which the outbursts of extreme violence achieve maximum impact. Other than most high action thrillers that Hollywood churns out these days, "No Country" excels in restraint. You won't find fast action car chases or major shoot outs in this movie. Yet the film keeps you on the edge of your seat. "No County" is filled with unexpected twists in plot. Those changes are often so brutal that the film manages to evoke a level of suspense I haven't seen in movies for a long time. The plot seems a cliché at first. A Vietnam veteran (Josh Brolin) finds 2 million dollars in drugs money in the desert and tries to get away with it. Of course the hardened drugs criminals won't let him and chase him, leaving a trail of blood. Nothing new here. Yet where in McCarthy's novels the one dimensionality of his characters seem to work against him, they become the films major strength. Javier Bardem plays the sociopath chasing Brolin. He manages to radiate such an evil and threat that he becomes uneasy to watch, exactly the kind of feeling you want from a thriller. The scene in which Bardem forces a gas station manager to call heads or tails for his life should not have worked, as it seems something from a cheap B movie. But the casting, acting and cinematography work together so well that you find yourself wanting to look away. The looming evil is so thick and present through out the movie that the almost idyllic closing scene comes as the biggest shock of all.

Drive By Truckers: Not A Pretty Sight

2008-02-22T14:26:00.011+01:00

The Drive By Truckers were an integral part of Southern music before even releasing their first album. Patterson Hood, one of the Trucker's founding members is the son of base player David Hood from Muscle Shoals fame. As such his father was present on many of Southern Soul's most shining moments recorded at the Fame studios. Patterson continued that family tradition by backing and producing Soul diva Bettye LaVette on her last album, "The Scene Of The Crime". Spooner Oldham, also from Muscle Shoals fame, was asked to play keyboards on that project and a few others sat in. At first glance the whole project seemed a little odd. The Drive By Truckers themselves were better known for their Lynyrd Skynyrd type southern Rock, never really an act quickly associated with Southern Soul. But from an historic perspective the project made perfect sense. Southern Soul like Southern Rock is deeply seeped in Country. Down South Soul and Country would often be bouncing of each other and session players would as easily be found on a Aretha Franklin album as they would be on a Linda Ronstadt recording. Singers would take a song from one genre and record it in the other. All great Southern Soul artists have been known to record Country songs and visa verse. Even though the South was a highly segregated society, ironically the music scene was one of the most integrated their ever was. So of course the Truckers were cut and tailored for the Bettye Sessions.

On their new album "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" Spooner Oldham is present again. Although Spooner Oldham is best known for his work on classic Soul records from Arteha Franklin and Percy Sledge or his writing with Dan Penn on songs as "I'm Your Puppet" and "Sweet Inspiration", he sounds like a fish in the water on this new Truckers album. No big surprise here as well though. After the Southern Soul scene collapsed when Martin Luther King was assassinated and Stax went bankrupt, Oldham was most commonly found backing the likes of J.J. Cale, Bob Dylan or Neil Young. Artists to which the Drive By Truckers are more than a little indebted. "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" is again the kind of album you'd wish Neil Young would still make with his Crazy Horse. Crank up the volume on your stereo and you'd swear that's vintage Gray Horse you hear blasting out of your speakers, especially on "That Man I Shot", a gripping portrait of a soldier in Iraq. Though the Truckers are lacking in originality that is not necessarily a bad thing. They're filling a gap left by the great Southern Rockers like Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival or rather stepping into a long tradition. Though R&R has always had this progressive image, much of it proved to be highly conservative. To me acts that try to built on the foundations of other always sounded better than bands that take great strain and pain to be absolutely original. As such the Truckers not only fall into the tradition of mentioned acts but are proving to be as lasting as Pearl Jam, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams. All acts who rely heavily on R&R's past and solid songwriting.

Surprisingly that is where this album truly excels. Despite the departure of Trucker tune smith Jason Isbell, the band once again manages to present a collection of vivid portraits. The main theme to the album seems to be the struggles of every day people. Each new lyric transports you to a new life. Its almost like your passing from town to town. The theme the Truckers picked on this album has already led reviewers to compare them to the likes of Bruce Springsteen. No mean feat and I'm prone to agree. The songwriting on "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" has those same cinematic qualities Springsteen's best work possesses. The main difference between Springsteen and the Truckers seems to be that the first cannot help but instill his work with some hope and grandeur. In contrast the songs on this album are bleak confronting tales of people trying to on by a thread or who have already given up. The Truckers seem to have little illusions on what life has to offer for some folks. The song here are filled with alcohol and drugs abuse, gambling addiction, prison and poverty. To the people in these songs the American Dream proved to be an empty promise. "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" is borderline nihilistic at times. Though that will soon make you a critics darling, I doubt that it will bring the Drive By Truckers major commercial success any time soon. For that the Truckers miss the optimism that seemed trademark to Southern Soul. And although their song writing is highly emphatic the Truckers also seem to lack the fragility and tenderness that gave Neil Young and Willie Nelson their careers. The sparks of hope are there. In "Perfect Timing" the protagonist cheerfully exclaims "I used to hate the fool in me, but now I tolerate him all day long". But the albums darkness is mostly balanced out by the occasional wryly comical observations like "Bob" who's got more dogs than friends. Those moments are sparse and few. Good as every individual song may be I must wonder if the album shouldn't have been condensed into 45 minutes to be more effective. As it is now one needs to be able stomach 75 minutes of American drama. The Truckers hold a mirror to America's face and it isn't a very pretty sight.

"That Man I Shot"
"Bob"

P.S.

The Springsteen comparison doesn't seem all that odd after all. Someone was kind enough to direct me to Patterson covering the Boss on yet another fine blog.

Here My Dear; Divorce Devine

2008-02-21T21:01:00.008+01:00

Marvin Gaye's last great album turn 30 this year an Universal celebrates with a two disc expanded edition. The story of "Here My Dear" is probably one of the most fascinating ones in the history of Soul. As is well know Marvin married into the Motown family when he tied the knot with Berry Gordy's sister Anna. When that marriage turned sour and the couple filed for divorce they settled out of court. Instead of Marvin paying Anna the sum of a million dollars he'd pay her the advance for his next album and the royalties that the album would reap. Gaye had little choice, he was broke. He snorted a fortune in coke and the IRS was after him. What Gaye intended to be a trite Pop album became his last masterpiece.

Anna was Gaye's muse though out his career. It was with Anna in mind that Gaye wrote Pop Soul gems as "Stubborn Kind Of Fellow" or "Pride And Joy". When Gaye sang them he simply closed his eyes and thought of Anna to get the feeling across. It was Anna that made his songs come to life, that gave them a heart and soul. Put like that their romance sounds idyllic, a match made in heaven. But nothing in Gaye's life was ever easy. His childhood was troubled to say the least. His father was a cross dressing abusive preacher who scarred Marvin for life. His mother he placed on a pedestal, she was his Madonna. In the excellent David Ritz book "Divided Soul" Marvin basically confessed that he married his mother when he gave Gordy, 17 years his senior, his vows. Marvin was in his twenties at the time, coming to terms with both success and the failures of his youth, looking for a consoling mother figure. Though Marvin masked his uncertainties with his suave Casanova crooner image he suffered from terribly insecurities. Anna was his comfort, his ego boost. Gaye needed her to dominate her as much as he resented that. The relationship was uneven from the get go, destined to fail.

The catalyst for the separation would be the 16 year old Janis Hunter ironically as old as the age difference between the two. Gaye first laid eyes on her while recording "Let's Get It On". He would later claim that it was this sweet sixteen that enabled him to sing the silky balled "If I Should Die Tonight" like he meant it. Janis would become his obsession. Though she may have been the catalyst the seeds for the divorce from Gordy were sown far before that, maybe on the onset of their relationship even. The closing piece on Marvin's second masterpiece was the biting "Just To Keep You Satisfied". Interestingly enough co-written with Anna. It was as if the couple was telling each other their relationship was bound to crash years before it actually did. The songs was filled with vicious indictments, a testimony of a relationship that was suffocating instead of liberating. Theirs was an ambivalent relationship at best. The song was one of Marvin's greatest artistically triumphs. After that his career would gradually slide into a slump. Although often a heralded album "I Want You" was a mere shade of the brilliance that was "Let's Get It On". Though not without its own merits, the near pornographic and coke infested suite never even nearly scratches the divinity of its predecessor.

It was never Gaye's intention to break that slump with "Here My Dear", but Anne proved his muse for better or for worse. As Gaye confessed to Ritz the record became his deep passion, it became an obsession, one of his many. The couple hadn't spared each other in court, their divorce had turned into the mud fight of the ugliest kind. At one point Anna even denied Marvin access to his children. That's how sour their union had turned. Neither could seem to stop that train and resolve things in a civil matter. "I knew I'd explode if I didn't get all that junk out of me" Gaye later confessed to Ritz. Allegedly Gaye went into the studio unprepared and had the engineer simply open up the microphones, the words and melodies simply came oozing out of him, exorcizing all the anger and frustration surrounding the divorce. The result would be an ego document covering two LPs. "Here My Dear" is Marvin Gaye at his most loose and honest. He literally opens his Soul by letting the songs chronicle the divorce. The unstructured nature of the recording sessions allowed "Here My Dear" to be the ultimate Soul confession going beyond the natural emotional exhibitionism that's trademark to the genre.

Given the loose nature of the sessions it is remarkable that the album is as cohesive as it finally became. Over four sides the album takes the listener on a journey through the relationship of Marvin and Gordy and their eventual demise. Marvin makes it clear on the opening track the album is his confession to Anna, giving the record a voyeuristic edge. Smooth as the arrangements may be at times the album gives that uncomfortable feeling you get when you're watching a couple fight at a dinner party. Through out "Here My Dear" Marvin delivers vicious stabs to Anna, accusing her of taking his money and children, while screaming out the next moment to his Anna in desperation, like the scared little boy she married. The album's centerpiece "When Did You Stop Loving, When Did I Stop Loving You" comes back three times, its that tormenting question that Gaye uses to express his anger, frustration, desperation. It's the track by which he tries to remember the good times they must have had and tries to pin point the moment where things started to turn sour. As a listener you're dragged from pure venom to almost absolute devotion and every emotion in between. Anybody who's ever gone through a painful separation will find some common ground on "Here My Dear". Maybe it is the confrontational nature which caused the critics and audience to shun the album, maybe its theme was simply too uncomfortable for a quick embrace, because on its release reviews and sales were disappointing to put it mildly. It nowhere near got Anna the money she had hoped for. Yet over the years this slow burner has reaped recognition slowly but steadily. So much it even wound up on the Rollingstone top 500 albums of all time. The tragedy of Gaye and Gordy would ultimately prove to be one of his greatest artistic triumphs, not to be missed in any record collection.

Fidel Castro; Hasta La Victoria Siempre?

2008-02-20T19:56:00.012+01:00

I'm not about to make this blog political in any sense, but when it comes to the news of Fidel Castro resigning I just have to respond. The revolution of Cuba and the subsequent isolation of the island has been much better documented by the papers and the historians over the years. There's nothing that a simple blogger like me could possibly add. Yet Castro is one of those political and historical figures that fascinates me immensely. There's no doubt that Cuba is a dictatorship, that Castro takes human rights and freedom of press lightly. One visit to Amnesty's Internet site tells you enough and one must wonder if the argument that Batista's reign (the dictator Castro toppled) was worse still stands ground. But it is undeniable that Castro has an enormous amount of charisma. So much in fact that the left intellectuals of the West were so much infatuated with him that they failed to see his flaws. And maybe sometimes still do. Not to long ago Michael Moore took Cuba as an example for America's failings. Even though Cuba's health care system is impressive, especially for Caribbean standards, trying to make Cuba as a standard was an odd choice to say the least. Maybe Moore intended it as a means to instill shame in American leaders, I don't know. Maybe Moore just fell for Fidel the Rock star as well. Because if Fidel Castro is one thing its just that.

R&R in a sense is the little man rebelling, the average Joe getting himself heard. Amidst American dominance their was that little island that defied them, led by a staunch cigar smoking militant with an almost character defining beard. Castro is an iconic image paralleled by the likes of those other great images of the sixties such Martin Luther King, Kennedy and Bob Dylan. That is not to say that Castro is cut from quite the same kind of wood, but he is one of those people who's image transcend his person. Castro's image is more than that dictator he is on Cuba. He's that image of David and Goliath in his defiance of the US. Together with Che, Castro's image is the patron saint of any revolutionary. The image of Castro is the promise that a people can stand up to its dictators and overcome. The ideal image of Castro is bigger than life, better than the revolution ever was. In truth Castro is a textbook case of broken promises, yet he radiates the opposite.

I traveled Cuba some five years back and tried to make some effort to get a sense of the people there. Quite easy since I was traveling alone, something that's impossible in Cuba. At every opportunity the locals tried to catch my attention despite the fact that mingling with the tourists is forbidden for the locals. Every body seemed to have something to sell. For a communist country the level of entrepreneurship I encountered was striking. Everything seemed for sale, from coffee to cigars, from guided tours to women. You name it and it is offered on the streets of Cuba. Though every Cuban has a home, there are no shanty towns, food on the table and clothes on their back, it struck me that a society where the main income for women seemed to be prostitution is sick to the core. Everywhere you turned you seemed to see bloated aging Americans with stunningly beautiful young women on their arms, oblivious to the struggles of the country. Yet I must admit that it was hard not to be tempted when at every bar two or three beautiful women were trying to get your attention. Some were just hustling for drinks, others were offering more. I went for the first option since it was a pleasant way to get to know more of that thrilling and exciting country.

What struck me in my conversations with local Cubans was how well loved Castro was with the elderly. They remembered Batista's iron reign and the poverty that came with it. The young people of Cuba were a lot more impatient with the bread, as they would call him in contempt. The younger generation was eager to get their hands on some of those luxuries that trickled in from the Cubans in exile or were available in the dollar stores. Cuba has a very dual economy where tourists pay with dollars and locals in pesos. It seems a national sport for Cubans to hustle as many dollars as they can from tourists in order to get some hip new Adidas shoes from the dollar stores. This doesn't necessarily mean that the young generation is dying to become part of the capitalist world. Their attitude towards the US struck me as very ambivalent. Though they glamored for Mickey D's and designer clothes, they seemed very much aware of the downside. Even the staunched opposer of Castro ventilated their concern about what would happen if he would ever die. A capitalist society didn't seem to be on anyone's wish list. Flawed as the revolution may be in the eyes of the younger generations even they had some admiration for the beard. Castro starting the revolution from that tiny boat the Granma proved to be the kind of legendary imagery that speaks to anyone's imagination.

The landscape of Castro's revolution is scattered with broken down Buicks and Cadillacs, left over from the fifties, still functioning as taxis. The buildings in the cities are collapsing, the bars in desperate need for some fresh paints. Hotel air conditioning is an unheard of luxury. Coffee and sugar out of reach of many of the Cubans. Gas stations all seem to be without gas and farmer markets only offer what's fresh of the land that day. Maybe the revolution and Castro's accomplishments are captured best in a joke I was told by an old man on a bench while we were sipping rum. After a day of fishing a husband returns to his wife, beaming with pride. He just caught a fish big enough to feed the entire family. Much to his surprise his wife looks to him with a sadness in her eyes. "What's wrong my love" he asks, "aren't you glad I caught you this big fish". The woman shakes her head and confesses she'd love to prepare him the fish but she doesn't know how. The hard economic times have left the stove without gas and her without matches to make a wood fire, there's no oil to bake the fish nor means to boil the water to cook it. Frustrated the man sets the fish back into the sea. Before swimming off the fish turns and shouts "Viva La Revolution". Of course that joke cost me a dollar.

Castro's resignation in the NY times and articles from the archives.

The King Of Pop; Surviving On Nostalgia

2008-02-18T19:15:00.007+01:00

Let's forget for a moment his nose is falling off, pretend there were never any pedophilia cases, no Never Land, no dangling babies of a balcony. Let's forget all that for one moment. Let's forget I do not even have to mention his name and people will know who I'm talking about just from those examples. Let's forget all that and go back 25 years. Mention "Thriller", "Billy Jean" or "Beat It" to anyone and they're just as likely to know you're talking about the King of Pop. 25 years ago Michael Jackson earned that title with the ground breaking album "Thriller". Strange and shocking as his reported personal live may be, I feel that an artist is best judged by the merit of his music. With the re-release of that land mark album that really is the question at hand. Flip open any paper or magazine recently and you'd think we're back in the time of Jackson mania. A time where "Thriller" sold a hundred million plus records. Figures that still make other super stars from the eighties like Prince, Madonna and George Michael look like dwarfs. Jackson outsold them all with the album that spawned 7 top ten singles. Still "Thriller" proved a mill stone around Jackson's neck. Where the others mentioned went on to have lasting and satisfying careers, the King of Pop could only (and did) go down hill. No Jackson album after that quite satisfied as much while his private life started to overshadow his art increasingly. Google Michael Jackson these days and you'll find nothing but picture intent on ridicule and a seemingly undying fascination with the King falling from his throne.

Question at here is though, was "Thriller" all that good, or was it a product of its hype or rather hysteria. When the album hit the market I was in primary school. Like all my class mates we were in thrall of Jackson. There was a time when almost every kid's room was plastered with posters with his diamond gloved image. "Thriller" is the textbook case of mass media's influence on public taste. Michael wasn't to be escaped. You know what they say, "If you can't beat them, join them". That mechanism seems a large part of his success looking back on the phenomenon now. But tempting as it is to break the album down, to discard it as a piece of Pop fluff doesn't quite cover it. Maybe its nostalgia but listening to "Thriller" now, I'm surprised how much of its freshness it has sustained. The sound of the album is undeniably eighties, but that really isn't much of a sin if you ask me. Even the Beatles sound locked in the sixties listening to them now. That has never stopped people from thinking their shit is chocolate. Even today there are simply moments where you can't deny the album's Pop brilliance. Drop the needle and the album opens with the contagiously funky "Wanna Be Starting Something". Though stripped from any grease and nastiness, you can't have but move to its infectious beat. "Billy Jean" and "Beat It" still achieve similar reactions as well. Tracks like that are simply brilliantly produced Pop, no denying as much as you might want to. Their influence on the current day music scene cannot be underestimated. For good or for bad, it was Jackson that launched the teen star think. Artists like Justin Timberlake owe their careers to the man.

But I am afraid that the brilliance of "Thriller" stops there. Listening to the title track today and I can't help but feel that it's hockey. Worse even is the teeth shattering sugar cane sweetness of "The Girl Is Mine" with Paul McCartney. Those tracks simply haven't outlived the hysteria. With the dust settled down some 25 years on there simply isn't a whole lot there. Though Jackson didn't over emphasize his trade mark "Shamoan!" and "Hi Hi!!" yet and though he hadn't yet locked his voice entirely into kindergarten mode, the emotional subtext is missing to many of the songs and they don't really sound as inventive now as they did then. Simply kind of bland really. Which basically is the problem with the entire album. Go beyond the sugar cane coating, the record falls apart. Jackson writes a good Pop song, sure, but he hardly ever wrote a good song. His material simply lacked the depth of albums that might have sold less in their time but seem to last longer now. If it hadn't been for the 25 years marker, there isn't much in the songs to merit its re-release. Ironically one of the album's "lesser" hits hold up best. "P.Y.T" is still the same infectious and playful Pop song as it ever was. But I'm afraid that at the end of the day "Thriller" survives mostly on our sense of nostalgia.

The original NY Times review

Searching For The Snake

2008-02-11T19:32:00.000+01:00

Year ago I owned a cassette which featured a song called "The Snake". It was one of those compilations somebody gave me with all kinds of obscure nuggets. When I moved about 5 years ago I chucked all my cassettes out in an ill conceived cleaning mood. My tape deck had broken down and cassettes were slipping into obscurity. Mp3 downloading and CD burning were taking over. Call me sentimental, but looking back on it now I miss tapes. But even more so I miss taping. There was a time when nothing was better than crawl back into your stereo corner with a 90 minute cassette, a bottle of wine and stacks of singles to create the ultimate compilation tape. Making a tape was hard work. It wasn't the five minute process that creating a CD is. No mouse clicks and dragging to make your work easy. Avoiding sound gaps when working with vinyl is not easy, let me tell you. The sequencing on a tape needed to tell a story as much as the individual songs on the tape. That story varied with whom you intended the tape for. Tapes could be your ultimate sunny day collection, it could be a musical biography to your favorite artist to convince a buddy he had to hear this!!! It could be the necessary lubricant in wooing a special lady as well of course. Tapes were labors of love with sometimes as much work going into the label as the taping as well. Armed with a flash light to see how much space there was left on the tape, cassettes were built brick by brick. At one point I got to be so trained that I could tell by the space left on the tape if it would fit a 2.30 or a 2.40 minute song at the end. The most frustrating moment of course was when the play back revealed that the carefully laid bricks made the house collapse. But just as many times though it would be something you would wear down in your Walkman till it got stuck in the wheels. So what ever prompted me to chuck the tape with "The Snake" is still beyond me.

Today I was in my favorite record store in Amsterdam. Backbeat, one of those thrilling dark and dusty places. Backbeat is run by Dick. The kind of guy who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Soul and played bass with Arthur Conley no less. Here I finally picked up a copy of "The Snake" again. This time I struck the Jack Pot. Two years back I found a CD by Oscar Brown Jr. which also featured "The Snake". One of those finds that make your heart skip a beat. Once home I had to fight a rather silly sense of disappointments when I found out that this wasn't "The Snake" that I had on that tape I had so foolishly thrown out. But here on this fine new Kent release there it was. Not Oscar Brown but Al Wilson was "The Snake" I was looking for. That the rest of the album is simply brilliant as well is just a bonus to boot. Apparently "The Snake" that slithered away from my life came from Al Wilson's album "Searching For The Dolphins". At first listen you'd think its just yet another fine Southern Soul album featuring one of the finest versions of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" I've ever heard. But step by step, groove by groove, note for note, this albums opens up its secrets to you. Al Wilson's brilliant album (yes truly brilliant) is where Percy Sledge and Frank Sinatra meet. Wilson has a meticulous delivery that nears Frank's perfect sense of timing, his voice has a rare flexibility to adapt itself to the material yet it maintains a certain grit. At times "Searching For The Dolphins" is as reminiscent of the Four Tops as it is of the Byrds. The Sergeant Pepper Beatles, the great country singers and crooners of the fifties all seem to clash here with that Southern Soul sound. Instead of the album falling apart into an incoherent mess it all blends together to something that instantly sounds like it should have been one of the great classic albums. In a better world "Searching For The Dolphins" would have been the kind of album that would reappear in every subsequent Rolling Stone Top 500, somewhere in the highest regions. Yes folks it is that good. But that is all just a bonus to finding "The Snake".

"The Snake"
"Poor Side Of Town"

Juno; The Way Comedies Should Be Done

2008-02-10T18:23:00.000+01:00

"Juno" should be the textbook case on how comedies should be done. The film is nothing like your typical American comedy. Somehow comedies from Hollywood seems to get made in either a ridiculous "Dumb and Dumber" style slapstick mode or turn out to be overly sentimental pieces of drivel like "You've Got Mail". What is it in Hollywood that keeps assaulting the intelligence of their audience by making films about two guys pretending to be gay in order to get a green card or trying to awe us with little pigtailed blond girls who help their single dad trying to figure out which one of his three hot dates he's supposed to marry. Part is of course audiences who'll gladly pay to get their intelligence insulted, but there also seems to be an unwillingness to take risks with less "glamorous" scripts. "Juno" is one of those few rare occasions where one of those risks slips through the cracks. What ordinarily would have been an art house film was rather heavily promoted, at least over here, and wound up in those large multi screen movie theaters in front of pop corn chomping and soda slurping audiences. The main strength of "Juno" is the every day sense of the script. In short the film is about a sixteen year old girl who decides she likes Bleeker, a dorky kid from school she somehow finds very cool. Juno makes love to Bleeker in an old scruffy chair, becomes pregnant and tries to find a way to deal with it by giving it up to adoption. Though a premise like this could have been turned into another pie in the face teen comedy, Juno remains a remarkable sober piece of comedy. Al the more remarkable considering director Jason Reitman is the son of "Twins" and Kindergarten Cop" director Ivan Reitman. After debuting with the sarcastic "Thank You For Not Smoking" Jason manages to steer "Juno" in to movie gem haven.

Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody apparently realize something very important about comedy. Namely that "everyday" tragedies or events can be funny enough. Humor feeds on the power of recognition. It is often our own stupidity that makes us laugh, no matter how tragic the results of those stupidities. Of course "Juno" deals with a very serious subject matter, the problem of teen pregnancies. But because the film doesn't moralize it allows us to gain some sense of understanding of how these pregnancies come about and laugh heartily at its difficult implications. Humor as a way to deal with life's sometimes harsh realities. Ellen Page plays Juno as a normal teenage girl. A bit of the odd ball in the class. You know the kind, pretty but not in an obvious kind of way. The type of girl that has a hamburger phone in her room because its totally cool and is into Iggy Pop and Patti Smith. Bands people twice her age are even to young for to have seen them in their prime, yet Juno can honestly claim that "you've had to be there to understand what I'm talking about". Her boyfriend Bleeker is played in an evenly common way by Michael Cera. According to Juno he is cool and he doesn't even have to try. Like all teenagers they think they are as adult as they ever going get yet totally clueless how to deal with this "thing of me". Juno is as playful and innocent as you'd expect a kid in kindergarten to be, yet has that distinct teen smartness or rather, a coyness over her. Juno is still completely oblivious to others around her.

It is that coyness that keeps the movie light and breezy, that makes you laugh out loud at matters that have serious implications. In a sense "Juno" reminded me of Ghost World" with the veneer of sarcasm and nihilism removed. "Juno" is having a pretty normal happy youth with all the normal pains of growing up and lives in your average loving yet dysfunctional family. The type of surrounding we all grew up in, if we're lucky. Yet normal as it all is the film has enough tension to keep you focussed. Will Juno keep the baby in the end is one of those thoughts that runs through your mind while watching the movie, will she and Bleeker get together again is another. There's no dramatic conclusion to Juno, even though there is resolve. And that's enough. I suspect a comedy like Juno is not easily recreated, but judging from how well it went over to the pop corn chomping crowd, I hope Hollywood will try a little harder on films like "Juno".

Science Of Sleep; Gondry's Paper-Mâché Reality

2008-02-09T21:27:00.000+01:00

Michel Gondry is probably most well known for the videos he directed and his first full movie, "The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind". A film that showed to the world that Jim Carrey could actually act. Something we'd suspected since "Man On The Moon", but couldn't really be sure of because he played the part of Andy Kaufman. A comedian with the same overblown stylistics as Carrey himself. "Eternal Sunshine" and its unsuspected huge success, artistically and at the box office, made Gondry as hot in movies as he was in music videos where he started his career. Through is own band Oui Oui and his subsequent collaboration with Björk on "Human Behaviour" celebrities of all sorts had been flocking to be touched by his eccentric talent. In the days where videos made an artist Gondry seemed to be able to make old washed up rocker like the Stones seem like hot new product and gave Kyle Minoque a new sense of hipness where there should be none. Although Gondry worked with artists who already had a buzz going because of their talent, he managed to get Beck and The White Stripes over to the video consumer, who were sloughed behind their televisions.

Making movies is a whole different deal than making movies. But Gondry seems to be catching on awfully quick. If he needed help on the first, by the time he got to science of sleep he could do it on its "own". For that film Gondry wrote both the script and directed. The movies theme makes it apparent why there was such a chemistry between "Eternal Sunshine" screen writer Charlie Kaufman and himself. "The Science Of Sleep" explores the same questions and themes Kaufman likes to ponder on. "Science" is a wonderfully acted and shot visualization of how dreams work. Just as in Kaufman's scripts and in dreams, you are constantly wondering when the fantasy stops and reality kicks in. Like Kaufman's scripts it is an exploration of how our minds can sometimes trick us, work against us.

At the outset the script seems a classic boy meets girl movie. Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal)moves back in with his mother after his father died, right across the apartment of beautiful yet deceptively plain looking Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). But the movie soon starts to shift. Stephane has difficulty separating dreams from reality. In his dreams he imagines himself a brilliant inventor, a stellar artist and a TV professor on the matter of dreams. In life Stephane is stuck in a boring job and finds himself unable to connect to the people around him, including Stephanie, but in his dreams he creates entire new worlds which he rules like a king. In Gondry's script Stephane'd dreams bleed into the real world, keeping the viewer off balance and constantly wondering what is real or not. His dreams are crowded with gorgeous stop-animations created from cellophane, paper-mâché, card board boxes and cotton. The problem with Stephane is they don't stay there. His dreams follow him into his day time reality, altering it, animating his surroundings. "Science Of Sleep" does a brilliant job of both making dreams tangible and offering an insight in their functions and dysfunctions. At first Stephane's dreams seem to offer him comfort when he is able to talk with his deceased father through them, they seem to lift up his spirits when they threaten to get crushed in his dull nine to five job making equally dull calenders and they give him the sense of self confidence he needs to ask Stephanie out. But a little while further in the film you are wondering if his wild fantasies and his lush dream world aren't the very thing that keeps him in that dull 9 to 5 job and which ultimately make him fail at making any real connection with the world around him. It seems that Stephane either can't escape its subconscious or doesn't want to. Although the imagery is often bizarre, in a dreamlike state the world seems to make more sense to Stephane even when it slips beyond his own control.

With its $4,5 million at the box office "Science" wasn't nearly as much of an success as eternal sunshine was with its $34 million. Part of that seems to be because no big actors were attached to this project. Bernal and Gainsbourg are fine actors who've reaped plenty of critical acclaim but they don't draw audiences like Kate Winslet or Jim Carry do. On top of that the movie is part French, much to European for the larger American audience. But in some part it is also due to the script. The character of Stephane brings a certain amount on unease with him. It is difficult to watch someone so at odds with himself. And where most movies follow a line upward, with the character finding coming to terms with himself in some fashion, Stephane seems to go in the other direction. His world is slowly disintegrating while he slips into his dream world. The end of the movie is so inconclusive that its impossible to spoil it for you even if I wanted to. Its like Gondry want to invite you into Stephane's dreams when you go home from the theater or turn off your television. The problem is, at the end of the film, you're not sure if you want to. So although the script is very challenging indeed and the result is a feast for the eye, it isn't exactly Hollywood material. Sadly movies like these are costly endeavors. If Gondry has the ambition to do more on the big screen one should hope that his next film hits big. You're only as big as your last they say, especially in Hollywood. "Science" could earn Gondry the reputation of a flunk director. So here's hoping he has a bit more sense of reality than Stephane. I for one would love to see more of Gondry on the big screen, something I fear won't happen when this wildly original director gets stuck in his own dreams.

Platters That Matter: Have Love Will Travel

2008-02-09T14:46:00.003+01:00

Richard Berry made his fortune with his sole hit record "Louie, Louie". Not the most sophisticated piece of music ever written but somehow it became R&R's anthem, maybe because of its simplicity. I don't think a song was ever covered as much as that three chord monster. Almost to this day playing "Louie, Louie" stands for the exam an aspiring Rock and Roller needs to pass. My favorite Berry song though is "Have Love Will Travel" performed by him and his pharaous. Though it never became as big as "Louie, Louie" the song is another testimony that R&R doesn't always need to be complicated to be effective. R&R doesn't always need to be intelligent, nor does it need to have that many layers. Part of the beauty of R&R is that just about anybody can tap into it.

The great paradox of "Have Love Will Travel" is that despite its seemingly inane content its a delightful piece of musical sophistication. It opens with the bass of the song, a voice simply going "Bow Pop Pop Bow" through out the song, over a dragging shuffle beat. Nothing complex here. But if it hadn't been so perfectly timed it would never have been a song that would have gained such an lasting attraction. Though not nearly as much "Louie, Louie", this gem had the knack of surfacing from time to time over the years. Mostly performed by artists with a strong sense of R&R history or looking for material that matches their limited three chord capacities. "Have Love Will Travel" tends to be recorded by R&R buffs who know that Berry was the uncredited lead singer of "Riot in Cell Block #9" from the Robins or who know that the song was inspired by the Western series "Have Gun Will Travel". Those who know he started out in Doo Wop group the Flairs. Still these are artists and bands of a wide variety from the Sonics to Bruce Springsteen, from Tom Petty ( who reworked the song) to the Black Keys and not forgetting Jim Belushi and Dan Aykroyd of course who briefly gave the song a second life in their Blues Brothers project. The artists who reworked "Have Love Will Travel" were sometimes overly familiar, other times wildly obscure themselves, does anybody remember the Olympic Sideburns or failed Turkmenistan glam-rockers Crazyhead?

Even though compilations with obscure Berry material will from time to time appear on the market, "Louie, Louie" and "Have Love Will Travel" will always be his only songs that matter. Both have become such a part of the R&R conscious that Berry himself is nearly inconsequential. Although he wrote the songs, he doesn't own them. They are songs that nobody really owns. These two Richard Berry classics are testimonies of R&R's democratic powers. Write a R&R song and you risk it being taken away from you, risk it becoming bigger than you, adopted as anthems or soundtracks to a life. R&R has a universal appeal. "Have Love Will Travel" even crossed the mighty oceans and ended up in Moscow (for now) in the hand of the delirious Cave Stompers. Not bad for something that lasts three minutes and takes as many chords.

"Have Love Will Travel" - Richard Berry
"Have Love Will Travel" - The Sonics

The Bruce Springsteen Bosscast, Februari 2008; R&R Shoes

2008-02-08T21:35:00.000+01:00

The Bruce Springsteen Bosscast Februari

Welcome to the first Bosscast brought to you through the Soul Shack. In a series of what I hope to be monthly broadcasts I will be exploring the music of New Jersey's native son. I'm starting this series with an exploration of the Boss and R&R. Every single original track was once played by Bruce Springsteen live or features him in some part.

If there's any song you like to hear on the podcast, or a theme you'd like to see tackled you can contact me through soulboogiealex@gmail.com.

Live recordings used in this show should all be available through the BTX MP3 Index.

01. Wear My Ring (Around Your Neck), Bruce Springsteen, Hammersmith Odeon 1975-11-24
02. Follow That Dream, Elvis Presley from Elvis Movies
03. Summertimes Blues, Bruce Springsteen, the Agora 1978-08-09
04. Johnny Bye Bye, Chuck Berry from Anthology
05. Bye Bye Johnny, Bruce Springsteen from Tracks (4CD)
06. Follow That Dream, Bruce Springsteen, 1984-09-18 Philadelphia

07. Hang Up My R&R Shoes, Chuck Willis from Stroll On: The Chuck Willis Collection
08. Mountain of Love, Harold Dorman from Mountain of Love
09. Devil With The Blue Dress On, Shorty Long from The Essential Collection

10. Oh Boy, Bruce Springsteen, 1978-04-18 Civic Center Charleston
11. Not Fade Away, Buddy Holly from The Buddy Holly Collection
12. Mona (I Need You Baby), Bo Diddley from The Chess Box
13. Ain't Got You/She's The One, Bruce Springsteen 1988-05-03 Shoreline

14. The Big Payback, Bruce Springsteen from The Essential Bruce Springsteen
15. Open All Night, Bruce Springsteen, 2005-07-06 Milan Forum
16. Stand On It, Bruce Springsteen, 2000-06-15 NY
17. Pink Cadillac, Jerry Lee Lewis (featuring Bruce Springsteen)from Last Man Standing - The Duets

18. Only The Lonely, Roy Orbison & Friends from Roy Orbison: Black & White Night [HD DVD]
19. Be My Baby, The Ronettes from Back to Mono (1958-1969)

20. Walking in the Rain, Bruce Springsteen, 1976-11-04 Streak Of Light Through The Tunnel

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The Ten That Made Springsteen; 8. Creedence Clear Water Revival; Who'll Stop The Rain

2008-02-05T20:04:00.001+01:00

Creedence Clear Water Revival, or CCR for short, is undoubtedly one of the key influences on the development of Springsteen's music. Although CCR hardly has the stature of the Stones or the Who these days, in their hey day they were almost as big as those two acts. CCR couldn't have escaped Bruce in the early days of his career. After the Castilles Springsteen made a sudden shift from the Garage to the Power Trio of Earth. Judging from their music and set lists the band was highly influenced by Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors. Suddenly Bruce was sporting long wavy hair and a Gibson les Paul, looking more like a carbon copy of Jimi Page than of the Beatles like he had in the Castiles. For a short period Springsteen indulged himself in long spun out jams. Necessarily maybe for him to get more versatile on the guitar, but hardly interesting music or something that had his distinct own voice. With Steel Mill (first called Child) Springsteen started moving back to more straight forward R&R. Although the music was still lengthy, Steel Mill would incorporate much more down home R&R in their sets and approach. Though Steel Mill is often credited with being influenced by the Stones or the Who, their approach to R&R was very much akin to CCR. Maybe Steel Mill's shift to a more R&R approach could be credited to Steven van Zandt, who played bass at one point, but the band certainly started to go from long jams to a more structured sound. Most notably on early Springsteen fan favorites like "Going Back To Georgia". With songs like "Dancing In The Street" making it into the sets Springsteen was moving back to his Garage roots again in an approach that reminds me of CCR's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (Download an early Steel Mill show here) .

I've always seen CCR and Springsteen as similar artists. Like Springsteen, CCR seemed to be a summary of the R&R that came before. With their classic albums CCR tapped into early R&R as much as Springsteen did with "Born To Run". The bands had similar backgrounds. CCR was born out of Garage bands the Velvets and the Golliwogs. Although the latter recorded some memorable singles, John Fogerty and his brother Tom failed to make a dent in the charts until they transformed their approach to a more personal and distinct sound. Creedence tellingly first hit big with their rendition of Dale Hawkin's classic "Suzie Q" (featuring the immortal James Burton on guitar) but were soon off to making it big with their own material. They stayed so close to R&R's roots sometimes that they had to settle out of court with Little Richard when their "Traveling Band" bore more than a little resemblance to his "Good Golly, Miss Molly". CCR's hit sometimes were so close to the R&R standards of its golden age that they became standards themselves. Their "Proud Mary" is often mistakenly credited to Ike & Tina Turner and got covered by greats Solomon Burke. Although Creedence is best remembered for their swamp blues like approach to music, their influences didn't stop their. CCR are has always been infused with a heavy dose of Country harking back at Hank Williams and the like. I suspect that Springsteen's later infatuation was smoothened by listening to acts like Creedence. When CCR fell apart Fogerty went solo with mixed results. "Rocking All Over The World" (covered by Springsteen two times) brought him some succes in '75, but by the time he released his '85 comeback album Fogerty was surpassed in popularity by the very artists he (partly) inspired.

But going into Country was the only path I suspect Creedence smoothed out for Springsteen. Somewhere around the recording of the River album Springsteen's political awakening started, coached by Jon Landau. One subject that hit close to home for Springsteen at the time was the Vietnam war. Springsteen had been drafted for the war but got out of it by claiming he was gay (amongst other things. He got 4-F on account of his motorcycle accident in which he had badly injured his leg and acting as crazy as he could. Others around Springsteen weren't so lucky. The drummer of the Castiles went and came back in a body bag. Ron Kovic's book "Born On The Fourth Of July" about Kovic's experience as a Vietnam veteran, is well known to have had a major effect on Springsteen, so Creedence's songs on Vietnam must have been easy for Springsteen to tap into. Song like "Who'll Stop The Rain" and "Fortunate Son" must have made Springsteen realize how R&R could work as a political force well before he started listening to Woody Guthrie. "Who'll Stop The Rain" had been adopted by the Vietnam veterans as their anthem, so when Springsteen was asked to play a benefit for the Vietnam Veterans of America, an organization dedicated to the interests of the Vietnam veterans, on august 20th 1981 in LA (download the show here), it was the natural opener for a visible emotional Bruce who warned in his opening speech "you guys out there that are eighteen and nineteen years old, it happened once and it can happen again". Some twenty years later the second Gulf war started and America landed itself in a situation very similar to Vietnam. At the time the of the show the Vietnam veterans suffered from a severe lack of recognition of the pain they had brought home from the war and were shunned by the anti war movement. The war had ended in '75 and many veterans were looked upon as baby killers when the world was confronted with when the home front saw the shocking footage through a press that wasn't as embedded as they are these days. An artists with the stature of Springsteen playing a show in their tribute was one of the first steps in setting things right.

Over the years John Fogerty's seem to have resurfaced every time Springsteen wanted to assert himself politically. He played "Bad Moon Rising" on 18 Jun 1988 at Chateau De Vincennes, Paris, France, at the SOS Racism Concert that was broad casted on French TV, but more significantly, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq of March 20th 2003 "Who'll Stop The Rain" started to reappear regularly in the sets of the Rising tour. When that tour was over Springsteen aligned himself politically for the very first time, at least in an explicit way, with his John Kerry endorsement and the "Vote For Change" tour. Before that his political loyalties had always been implicit in his songs. With "Vote For Change" it all came into the open as he opposed both the war and Bush openly. Although the campaign failed and America got stuck with four more years with the blunder in chief Dubya, for Springsteen the gloves were off. In recent years we've heard a more outspoken Springsteen than ever before, seemingly rallying against the war every chance he gets. His songs suddenly became open indictments against president bystander in "How Can a Poor Man (Stand Such Times And Live)" and against the war in Bring Em Home". VFC also got him some significant stage time with his hero John Fogerty teaming up "Fortunate Son" and "Promised Land" through out the tour. Two songs that represent both sides of the coin, America's nightmare and its lasting promise.

See also the December 2007 Newsweek article

"Who'll Stop The Rain" - Bruce Springsteen
"Rocking All Over The World" - Bruce Springsteen
"Suzie Q" - Dale Hawkings
"Don't Tell Me No Lies" - The Golliwogs

Buddy Holly Will Not Fade Away

2008-02-03T16:46:00.000+01:00

Today in 1959 it was the day Buddy Holly died in a tragic plane incident, taking Richie Valens with him. In my mind Buddy Holly is possibly even more important than Elvis in the development of R&R. Although Elvis was the undisputed King that also made him untouchable, Elvis was iconic from day one. Nobody could dream of touching him, save for Jerry Lee Lewis for a while maybe, until Buddy Holly came along. With his nerdy glasses and his very wholesome looks Buddy was closer to where America's teenagers were than the highly sexual Elvis or the rough and tumble Jerry Lee. Buddy looked like he could have been that kid next door, like he could have been the boy from class. Though Elvis brought Black R&B to white teen agers, Buddy Holly (by accident) brought R&R back to the Black crowds when he was accidentally booked in the Apollo theater in Harlem. His appearance there might have been instrumental in making R&R acceptable to the black audiences leading to the temporarily abandonment of the R&B billboard charts when R&R and R&B started to cross over both ways for a while.

Like many of these tragic events the crash was caused by many unlucky circumstances. In the weeks before Buddy had been touring with a bus. Getting tired of the hectic schedule he decided to switch to a plane. Holly's base player at the time, Waylon Jennings, jokingly told him he hoped the plane would crash when he found out there wouldn't be any room for him on the ride. Jennings got stuck in the freezing bus while Buddy got to go on a comfortable plane ride. The plane would crash minutes after take off, leaving Jennings wrecked with guilt for years. Though Don McLean called the tragic crash "the day that music died" in a throwback to Buddy's hit "That'll Be The Day" this hardly seems to be the case. Buddy Holly proved to be highly influential on the development of R&R. Partly I wager because of his somewhat common looks combined with his highly sophisticated brand of R&R. Buddy Holly was a mean guitar player and an imaginative songwriter who managed to capture the teen experiences like few other R&R artists have. His songs have been covered by a large range of artists. Most notably of course the Rolling Stones, who scored one of their break through hits with Holly's "Not Fade Away". Which was Buddy's take on the Bo Diddley beat. The song was subsequently a a regular in the live shows of Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and even Bob Dylan, who would later claim that his renaissance album "Time Out Of Mind" was highly influenced by Buddy. Springsteen also did a mean version of "Oh Boy" in the seventies.

Not just Buddy's music became important. His clean cut nerdy image has become somewhat of an icon as well over the years. Somehow when we think of the fifties we tend to think more of images that look like Buddy Holly than we'd think of Elvis. Somehow Buddy's clean cut image is synonymous with the fifties when everything just seemed cleaner and simpler. Though far from the case, Buddy does represent that idealized version of the fifties. It is that style pattern that artists like Elvis Costello would tap in to to built his image and that Weezer would wink at in their song and video "Buddy Holly". As wholesome as American pie, Buddy Holly today really does belong to that fantasy world of "Happy Days". In the movie Pulp Fiction Buddy Holly, or a waiter that is supposed to look like him, is played by Steve Buscemi in a scene set in a nostalgia restaurant. In series like the Simpsons Buddy Holly is used in similar references. He even had a posthumous film score hit with "Peggy Sue Got Married" for the 1986 movie with the same title, created from an unfinished demo tape discovered years after his death. Again the film is filled with nostalgic images of the fifties. Sometimes it seems like Buddy Holly is trapped in that nostalgic world filled with melancholy for a place that never existed. As such we'd almost forget what a great and fantastic artist Buddy was, but be it as it may, Buddy will not fade away. He's one of those artists that is forever inscribed in our collective conscious even if we never were part of the fifties.

The Blind Boys In New Orleans

2008-02-03T14:41:00.000+01:00

Since 2001's "Spirit Of The Century" the Blind Boys Of Alabama have made one of the industries most unlikely comebacks. Where most Gospel groups seem to have slipped into obscurity, the Blind Boy Of Alabama have reached an increasingly broad audience and played for a diversity of crowds. Formed in the early forties The "Five" Blind Boys Of Alabama are an institution. Though it may be one of the music business longest running groups, few of the original members are still part of the current line up. In fact 79 year old Clarence Fountain and Jimmy Carter are the only original founding members still part of the group. But even Clarence seems to be dropping now as diabetes related health problems do not allow him to tour anymore. The current "Down In New Orleans" is the first album since the groups founding day that doesn't feature Fountain on vocals. Though the original members might be quietly slipping from the scene, as an institution the Blind Boys Of Alabama are still going strong. Traditions in Gospel music are handed down by the seniors in the group preparing the Benjamins to keep that Gospel train rolling.

Though Down In New Orleans sounds like a traditional album, it by no means is. In a sense the ancient institute that is the Blind Boys Of Alabama have been one of the most progressive Gospel acts in recent year. Traditionally the world of Gospel and R&B have strictly segregated world. There was a time when Blues was considered the Devil's music. Not for Jimmy Carter though. "No indeed! I'm a big fan of Blues music" Carter confesses in the liner notes. This has allowed the Blind Boys to seek alliances with artists who mainly work in the secular field. In 2004 that attitude resulted in a fine collaboration with Ben Harper on his "There Will Be A Light" and a subsequent as impressive tour. With Ben Harper the Blind Boys fused various strands of Blues with their brand of Gospel. A natural continuation of what they had been doing since the mentioned comeback album, on which secular songs and Gospel would compliment each other. Of course the secular material the group picks has a highly spiritual undertone. "We believe in songs with a positive message" Carter acknowledges in the notes, allowing them to branch out while not really crossing over into Pop like Sam Cooke or Bobby Womack did back in the day. But as above video testified Gospel and R&B might have had a little bit more in common anyway. The two styles have been jumping of each other since day one, with store front preacher using R&B theatrics to spice up their sermons and Gospels and Blues singers adding that Gospel fervor to fire up their tunes.

That relation between R&B and Gospel and the Blind Boys' open mindedness to it has brought them to New Orleans for a collaboration with some of the cities finest. From the greasy Funk of the opening track "Free At Last" it is clear we've got another gem at hand. The album is less traditional as it seems on first glance, this wasn't an easy ride for the Blind Boys. "New Orleans musicians use a different rhythm" Carter explains, "Push and pull". It took the Boys some getting used to he admitted. Yet with its syncopation and the use of call and response in the rhythmic foundation, New Orleans' music proves to be especially suited to bring that Gospel message home.The absolute high point of the album to me is "If I Could Help Somebody" with Allen Toussaint's lush and rollicking piano as solo companion to Carter's voice. Though shaky his voice hasn't lost any of its story telling powers through the decades. It is a voice that fill you up with hope, a voice that empowers. "Down In New Orleans" isn't just an album that brings the message of the Lord, its an album that again reaches out to the people of New Orleans and their trials and tribulations after Katrina. The marching band version of "Uncloudy Day" must have a personal resonance to many of that fine city's citizens. But maybe the song that captures the spirit of this album best is "Across The Bridge" as "Down In New Orleans" is truly an album filled with musical bridges, inviting you to cross that bridge of unity, that bridge of friendship, that bridge of freedom and that bridge of salvation.

"Across The Bridge"

Steve Earle Live At The Paradiso Won't Lay His Hammer Down

2008-02-01T12:44:00.000+01:00

Last night was the first time I saw Steve Earle live. I haven't been paying too much attention to Steve's work, a mistake I need to correct. An artist like Steve will probably be placed in the sub genre Alternative Country, a term I always felt didn't do justice to the artists involved. Most artists that are swept in that category do country more justice than most of the drivel coming out of Nashville these days. Steve Earle is no exception. Like the great Country singers Steve manages to convey a broad impression of life, much broader than tends to happen in other genres. The greats in the genre always manged to go for the personal to the political or spiritual, or rather make the personal political and spiritual. Steve Earle seems to be one of those artists. His songs reflect personal trials and triumphs of both himself and others captured in often beautiful cinematic writing. Steve will as easily sing about a telephone conversation with his song, a kiss from his beautiful wife Allison Moorer or his regrets from past relationships, as he will sing about the tragic mistakes of the Bush administration and the experiences of others in these current hard economical and social times.

After a short opening set by Steve's wife Allison, Earle was to give a solo acoustic show. We were going to get Steve Earle naked, just him and his guitars and assorted other sting instrument. All the excess was cut away from most of the performance. Artists like Steve don't need a band anyway. As far as I could judge from this performance, a band is just unnecessary lubricant for his songs. On more than one occasion Steve managed to transport you out of the Paradiso into the lives of the people he sang about. If Steve was traveling the Rocky Mountains, so were you, when he sang about a young man going off to war, you could feel his uncertainty. Steve's songs manage to evoke sympathy for people you might ordinarily not give much thought to. When he sings about a man being send to the electric chair you get a strong sense of his point of view and the implications of the death penalty. "Could you take a long walk with me knowing that Hell was waiting there. Would you throw that switch sir with a strong and steady hand" are powerful lines, which in one broad stroke gives you an insight in the moral dilemmas surrounding the death penalty.

How hard a solo performance is was demonstrated by Allison when she opened up. Though Moorer has an amazingly powerful voice, she didn't capture me with her songs. It wasn't until she did a powerful rendition of Sam Cooke's "Change Is Gonna Come" that you got a sense of how strong she could be as an artist if she'd managed to get more out of her guitar and material. The songs she picked no where near had the same strong imagery as "Change" or her husbands songs and tended to blend into each other. With "Change" something wonderful happened, this blond bombshell took it from its civil rights roots to a more personal prayer. As is often with white performers doing this song it meant that Sam's most confrontational lyric was cut from the song. Singing "I go to the movie and I go downtown, somebody keep telling me don't hang around" wouldn't have made sense for Allison, though it did for Sam who reached out to the segregated South at the time.

Unlike his wife, Steve does have the capability to add extra colors and textures to his songs with a simple acoustic guitar. Although the banjo, mandolin and Dobro guitar were at times a welcome variation, I'm sure Steve could have carried the show without them. The same goes for the DJ Steve is experimenting with these days, live and on his new album "Washington Square Serenade". On some of his songs Earle was backed by firm but sober Hip Hop beats. Although it worked remarkably with some songs to a lot of other it felt like excess. On the Pete Seeger tribute "Pete's Hammer" the DJ gave the song the extra bite to send the anti war song home. But mostly the heavy beats tended to drown out Steve voice a bit or send his instrumentation to deep into the mix. The power "City Of Immigrants" fell apart because of a thunderous base beating your eardrums just a little too much. Though that might have been to the credit of the sound man, I couldn't help but wonder if Steve needed a DJ at all. Bold and successful at times as the experiment at times may have been, Earle is perfectly capably of carrying his material on his own. His guitar play is staccato and dare I say funky enough to keep you on your toes.

The show reached it peak with the encores where Steve got into much more story telling than he had done through out the show. Especially his story about his sons and the telephone conversations he'd have with them was very moving, the kind of thing that'll make a grown man cry. With the encores Steve was stretching out the evening to a marathon two and a half hours, yet leaving you wanting more.

"Sparkle and Shine"

Get Live at the Paradiso through the Dime or Megaupload

12 Angry Men; An Ongoing Discussion

2008-01-27T21:12:00.000+01:00

When I saw "Twelve Angry Men" in the theater today again it struck me how timeless this movie is. A classic in every sense of the word. Although not a drop of blood is spilled in the movie it is a gripping thriller that works on many levels. Even though the film doesn't accurately depict a jury and its working, it worked at the time and still does as very compelling social commentary on many levels while at the same time it is filled with psychological suspense. The plot and the setting was simple, a jury of twelve men needs to decide whether they find the accused guilty of murder. If they do, the judge stresses at the beginning of the film, the capital sentence is mandatory. The 18 year old boy on trial will be send to his death. On a hot and damp summer day twelve men, all with their personal backgrounds and hang ups, are confined in a locked small room. The case seems clear cut yet one man has doubts and votes not guilty. Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) isn't so sure he feels sympathy for the kid and thinks his lawyer did a poor job in his defense, he is filled with questions he wants an answer to. This leads into an exhausting dialog with the eleven other jurors who were initially hoping to be done quickly in the suffocating heat of their small quarters. Director Sidney Lumet filmed the movie on the small budget, even for 1957, of $350.000 dollars, with the lion share of the scenes in one room, yet managed to instill it with a suspense that leaves you on the edge of your seat.

In the US of 1957 the capital punishment was still common ground, it's ramifications much less discussed as they are today. "12 Angry Men" does an excellent job of explaining why the death penalty should have no place in any legal system. With states like Texas still executing convicts thats is one of the reasons why this movie still bears a strong social relevance. The boy on trial in the movie is of poor backgrounds, born and raised in the ghetto of the city. In a clever casting move by Lumet, it is unclear whether this boy is from Latin, Polish or Italian descent. But it does become clear that his social economical background plays and important part in the film. Besides the explicit bigotry from juror #10, there seems to be an initial carelessness about this boys life, juror #7 has more important things on his mind, his baseball game and #12, who works in the advertising business, is caught up in his commercial slogans. The jury at first shows the same disregard as the boy's lawyer who bungled the case and failed to instill the jury with the reasonable doubt that was obviously there as would become clear at the end of the movie. "12 Angry Men" serves as a classic dramatized example of how class justice works. Although the innocence of the accused is never proved in the film, the risk is implied that the legal system can send an innocent to the chair. This so it seems is the main theme of the movie.

But there's more than meets the eye. Timeless as the movie may be it is obviously set in the fifties. Clothing styles and ashtrays around the room with nearly every juror smoking place the movie firmly in that time frame. Yet when juror #10 falls into another of his bigot "us" and "them" rants there is a frightening actuality to the film. His narrow world view is exactly what troubles discussion concerning the underprivileged today. In a key scene to the movie when juror #10 is ranting, the rest of the jurors stand up turning away from him, singling him out. Especially in the segregated America of 1957 this was an extremely power statement. But although segregation is a thing formally of the past prejudice is still very much alive today influencing society and thus the legal system.

To me one of the most interesting characters is juror #3, a self made man who runs a messenger service. Headstrong, short tempered and very butch juror #3 has become estranged from his own son, which makes this case personal for him. His reasons for wanting see this boy get the capital punishment haven't got so much to do with prejudice, they've got more to do with his own personal demons. #3 introduces most explicitly the human element in the film. He projects his own failure and feelings of betrayal on the boy on trial. He feels abandoned by his son and sees this reflected in the case where the boy murdered his father. Although highly dramatized it does an excellent job of showing how our objective judgment can be clouded and influence our decisions. #3 desperately tries to block out all doubt throughout the movie eventually coming to a spine tingling confrontation near the end of the movie whit Fonda who calls him on his personal interest.

"12 Angry Man" is brilliantly cast and watching the movie today you wonder why the film was ever redone in 1997. That later version is entertaining sure, but nowhere near as powerful and meticulously played out as the original 1957 film. Brilliantly shot and acted you forget its black and white before you're even half way through.

See also the in depth review by Tim Dicks

Grave Digging Heavy Trash In Amsterdam

2008-01-24T14:23:00.000+01:00

Last night the Heavy Trash played the Paradiso in Amsterdam. The first chance I got to see Jon Spencer's new outfit live. Since Blues Explosion show could sometimes be a drag, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Last time I saw Spencer perform it was with that very Blues Explosion and I walked out before the encore. Jon Spencer clearly wasn't enjoying the Blues Explosion anymore. During the endless jams on stage they were were running out of ideas. Hardly one recognizable song was played. Even though song writing was never Spencer's strongest point but dropping them all together made the show a dragging mess of half inspired blues riffs, going nowhere basically. The show started an hour and a half later because of Henry Rollins endless rambles who played the Paradiso early that night with a spoken word show. Apparently mister Rollins likes to hear himself talk because his performance stretched well beyond the planned time. Rollins was sold out, so his machismo beefed up ranting must still have an audience. The minute Jon Spencer stepped on stage it was clear tonight would be different from the Blues Explosion show I'd seen last time around. Spencer was backed by the Sadies and partner in crime Mat Verta Ray, the other half of the Heavy Trash. The Sadies had played a lukewarm twenty minutes as an opening act. Though very capable musicians the Sadies simply miss the personality to make their retro fifties act work. Personality is what Spencer has in spades. He simply needed to step on stage, looks somewhere between a young Elvis and a Johnny Cash mean, lean & strung out on pills, to give the night that extra buzz. Jon was going acoustic, while he left the electric backing to the Sadies an Verta Ray. Clearly Spencer wanted to focus on something different, explore another side of his capabilities as a performer.

As I pointed out in the album review, the Heavy Trash is much more song based. On "Going Way Out" jams and incoherent boasting on explosive blues licks are replaced by an original take on Rockabilly songwriting. The Heavy Trash is more R&R, less Blues, more Hillbilly music, less explosion. The tighter structure of the songs elevates Jon Spencer as a live performer. On "One Of These Days" Spencer even turns out to be a mean story teller going into some heavy heavy rapping with a hard Soul edge. By paying tribute to the Godfather of Soul, Jaaaaaaaames Brown, by playing his "I Don't Mind", Spencer made it no secret what inspired his sudden attempt at stand up preaching. The show was filled with classic R&R references like this. If Elvis, Johnny Cash, Eddie Cochran or Link Wray would still be alive they could sue the hell out of mister Spencer, his show is built up out of their corner stones start to finish. He has no qualms digging their graves for some nuggets. The swiping doesn't stop at licks, riffs and lines. Spencer's got the moves and the looks of a R&R renegade. The show was even spiced up with some hot sci-fi R&R honey dancers, Go-Go dancing their way from Venus to the Paradiso. Yet Spencer has this very distinct personality that ables him to get away with his pillaging of R&R past. If last night made anything clear, Spencer is the driving force behind both of his acts. But after last night I hope he will send the Explosion to its grave for good. The Heavy Trash makes good on the promise of that band in spades.

"Way Out With The Heavy Trash" is out on Yep Roc.

Live at Paradiso in available in FLAC format at the Dime or in MP3 format through Mega Upload. There's also two mediafire links for those having trouble with megaupload, disc 1 & disc 2

"I Don't Mind (live)"

The Ten That Made Springsteen; 7. Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions, People Get Ready

2008-01-19T12:15:00.000+01:00

Soul music has been a constant in Springsteen's career. Maybe even more so than R&R. Albeit that the influence wasn't always as pronounced as his R&R influences. But from the very beginning Soul music was there. At first the influence might have been secondary, borrowed through the Beatles and the countless Garage acts. But soon enough Springsteen picked up on some originals and reworked them in his own fashion. Rufus Thomas' greasy Soul classic "Walking The Dog" was somewhat of a regular in the early days of the E-Street Band. Through Sancious' influence it came out decidedly jazzier than Rufus' funky original. More Funk came into the picture when Little Steven joined the band as a regular guitar player. On the "Born to Run" album Steve arranged the horns on "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" almost as a carbon copy of the Stax sound. That Memphis based label had been almost as influential on the development of R&R as Elvis and the Chess studios that gave us the likes of Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters. Bands like the Animals and the Rolling Stones looked at acts like Otis Redding and Rufus Thomas for their sound and inspiration. When the Stax revue hit Europe in '68 they were treated like major stars, where as in America they were still a few regular Joes from Memphis Tennessee. Of course this was a two way street. The British Invasion had an enormous impact on American music and soon the Soul and R&B stars from the states would be covering their British counter parts. With Springsteen's affinity for British Invasion music and Garage a dive into Soul would be inevitable.

Not only did Springsteen infuse his show with a few classics from the genre, most notably "Quarter To Three" from Gary 'US' Bonds and "Raise Your Hand" from Eddie Floyd fame, his showmanship borrowed a lot from the world of Soul. E-Street show were infused the Cropper like guitar phrasing from then 'Miami' Steve, Danny's soulful organ grinding and Clarence's wailing. Springsteen milked the Soul antiques for all they were worth, bringing down the band, slowly, softer, before taking them back into a R&R explosion that would have everybody jumping in the aisles, dancing on there seats. To top it off Springsteen stole James Brown's cape routine, where he would fall down, apparently from exhaustion, the Big Man rushing to comfort him and pick him up, leading him back stage to rest. But Springsteen would break free, bust loose, fueled as it were by the power of R&R, blazing in yet another chorus of "Quarter To Three", "Twist and Shout" or "Higher and Higher". Seemingly refusing to go home until both he and the audience were completely drained. He sometimes mockingly warned that the next tune might be bad for your health, asking those with weak hearts to step out, by the time he was through, that warning didn't sound as tongue in the cheek as it seemed at first.

But it didn't stop there. Springsteen infused his show with numerous raps. Something uncommon in R&R shows, but a custom that had a long tradition in Soul music. James Brown, Isaac Hayes, Solomon Burke and much of the Stax roster were known to rap to their audience at length. Springsteen is one of the few R&R artists I've known to do that. That isn't to say that his raps were carbon copies of the great Soul acts. Springsteen had his own original voice when he was spinning his yarns. For one thing his stories were a lot more subdued at first, though they did grow cockier when success came knocking. For fans the story telling is part of what Springsteen is about. Some of his tales are considered to be as classic as his songs. There is the story of small town resident Ducky Slattery as in the intro to Änd The Band Played" in 1973, getting the band together as in the intro to "The E-Street Shuffle" in '75, his struggles with his father as in the intro to "It's My Life" and his uneasy first steps into the world of girls leading into "Pretty Flamingo", and of course the teenage werewolf story where God personally commanded Springsteen to "Let it ROCK!!!!" in 1978. His early raps hovered somewhere between that church Soul shouting, the romantic confessions from the classic Doo Wop records and Frank Sinatra's coy stage antiques.

As his success progressed and took him into the big arenas and stadiums, the story telling gradually changed into something that was getting closer and closer to Solomon Burke and his version of store front preaching. Springsteen gradually developed a thunderous preacher shtick. The preacher bit first surfaced during the "Born in the USA" tour where the "garden of eden" bit led into "Pink Cadillac". But gradually the bit grew and took a more prominent place in the shows. With the Tunnel of Love Express tour "I'm A Coward" was a staple, a show piece that came back every show and had an important narrative function in the set. There still was the more Doo Wop based rap leading into "All That Heaven Will Allow", but they would become a thing of the past after that tour. The big arenas and stadiums begged for a more powerful and more important, louder performance. The subdued raps had people scurrying to the beer stands, the preacher shtick commanded more attention, with added audience participation the shtick was more inclusive and about as intimate as you could get before tens of thousands of people. "I'm a Coward", built around Gino Washington's "Gino's a Coward", proved to be the perfect vehicle.

When Springsteen disbanded the E-Street Band and formed another road act in '92, the Soul influence became even more pronounced when he added a gospel like background choir to some of his songs. On his records his writing became even more soulful than ever before teaming up with the legendary Sam Moore, from Sam & Dave fame, on "Soul Driver" and infusing his songs with quite a bit more Soul imagery like in "Leap of Faith". The shows might have been heavy on the guitar but it was clear that Springsteen wanted to bring this side of him more to the front. Seeing how the albums and tour turned out, one might wish he made a more fundamental choice and went all the way tour with his version of the Mar-Keys. Though Dave Marsh claims in his live overview "On Tour" that Springsteen's audience may have been too "white" to grasp the concept, and thus shunned the tour and album, I think that is hardly why it was a relative failure. Springsteen always had a strong R&B influence in his music, it has always been part of the attraction, the problem was that Springsteen still had one foot in the E-Street Band with his music and material choice. The result was more E-Street light and less the Soul revival it could have been.

In spirit Springsteen's music, especially with the E-Street Band, has always had a heart full of Soul. Not just musically but spiritually as well. Soul music, as Ray Charles designed it and Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield molded it, has always been about the sanctification of every day life. With a heavy root in church music, Soul music is very much about rising to the occasion, transcending hardship, keeping your pride in times of strife. That humanist strand infused with an almost religious fervor is very much present in Springsteen's R&R. Springsteen has often stated that he views music as a force that can change people, called his shows a revival meeting and a political rally. It is clear that Springsteen feels his music is more than just hedonistic escapism. Springsteen's R&R is less sex & drugs than most of his counter parts in the world of Rock. Songs as "Promised Land" are more indebted to a song as "People Get Ready" or "A Change Is Gonna Come" than they are to the staples of R&R. Although the first might not be the song that introduced him to the genre I do feel it captures the essence of Springsteen's approach to his music best. "People Get Ready" was, when released in 1963 one of the first civil rights songs to be recorded in the R&B and Soul industry. It is a song of tremendous promise and although its a Gospel it does have the feel of rewards to come in this world. "People Get Ready" taps into that quintessential American imagery of the train. Through the rail roads the west was won. As such trains symbolize the promise of America a century or so earlier as much as cars did when Springsteen grew up. Of course in "People Get Ready" the train also calls back to the underground railroad that helped to free slaves in the south. As such it is a song about personal freedom. "People Get Ready" acknowledges the individual but stresses that the individual is lost when he or she isn't connected to the people around him, in order to achieve something people have got to work together, get on that train together.

It's the spirit of "People Get Ready" that lead directly to one of Springsteen's most powerful recordings in the past 10 years, "Land Of Hope And Dreams". Comparing the lyrics one might even say that Springsteen was more than just a bit inspired. "People Get Ready" was often included as an apt coda to the song it borrowed so much from. The coda returned during the curring Magic tour in Europe at the tail end of "Promised Land", somehow it sounded like it had been there all along. "Land Of Hope And Dreams" debuted during the Reunion tour were Springsteen got the band back together. In the tour that followed his signature raps were gone, but he did refine his preacher shtick in a raucous version of "Light of Day". The Reunion tour was very much about the reaffirmation of Springsteen's promise, proving R&R could save, if only for those two to three hours of sweat infused performance. In his speech he captured it perfectly, "Unlike my competitors" he belted out to an enthralled audience "I cannot, I will not, I shall not, promise you life everlasting......" clinging to his mic, looking like he's going to pass out, rising up again sweat dripping from his forehead "but I can promise you life, right NOW!!!!!". What more do you need?

"Pink Cadillac (live)"
"Light of Day (live)"
"Land Of Hope And Dreams (live)"
"Gino is a Coward (aka I'm a Coward)" - Gino Washington

Merle Haggard: An Okie Renaissance

2008-01-12T10:33:00.000+01:00

In my mind Merle Haggard is one of the most paradoxical Country singers in the field. Merle is forever linked to the song "The Okie From Muskogee". Released at the hight of the hippie movement, "The Okie" portrayed what was then the silent majority, patriotic God fearing men and women of the mid west who wouldn't dare burn draft cards and bras, let alone the flag of the mighty US of A. Those who were taken aback by the cultural revolution of the sixties found recognition. The success of "Okie" already betrayed that times weren't changing as fast as the hippie movement thought it would be. The song represented the part of America who didn't question Vietnam, who supported old fashioned family values and saw the merit of the Christian life. Merle attracted an audience, who as a political force, would be the ones that put Nixon and Reagan in office and would ultimately be the moving force behind the Bush dynasty.

But Merle was hardly the fine upstanding citizen that came to be so enamored by "Okie". When the single was released the Hag had by then spent more time in jail than out. Haggard had in fact grown so accustomed to jail that he had trouble feeling at ease when he was out. Ever since his father died when he was young Haggard had spend his life rebelling. At the age of 9 the Hag was sent to a correctional facility for the first time. It only seemed to strengthen his resolve or need to be at odds with society. If it wasn't for his music the Hag would be back there today. Legend has it that Merle Haggard's life turned around when he saw Johnny Cash perform in San Quentin during his incarceration in the second half of the fifties. "I certainly enjoyed your show at San Quentin" Merle would later tell Cash."Merle, I don't remember you bein' in that show" Cash responded bewildered, probably wondering if his pill addiction got the best of him, "Johnny, I wasn't in that show, I was in the audience." Cash's music must have resonated with the outlaw, the Man in Black's songs about the hard life reflected much of Merle's own. Seeing Cash was the last push Merle needed to give up his outlaw life and give himself to music. Soon after the show Merle got a chance to escape, he declined.

Though Cash tipped Merle over, the seeds were sown earlier. In the early fifties Merle got the chance to perform with Honky Tonk legend Lefty Frizzle. When later developing his own style Lefty was arguably a bigger influence on Haggard than Cash. With his recent album "The Blue Grass Sessions", though not exactly Blue Grass in the strictest way, Hag harks back to the great early Country superstars such as Lefty, Bill Monroe, Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams. The "Blue Grass Sessions" is a testimony that the creative renaissance of Merle's career isn't over yet. Ever since the turn of the century Merle has seemed very comfortable far away from the main stream of Country to which he once belonged. Merle has been shying away from the bright lights of the big cities like Nashville. His albums from "If Only I Could Fly " and on have had this constant feel like they were recorded on his back porch. Though not exactly rough and raggedy, Merle does seem to strip his material from excess, going straight to the core of a song. This becomes most strikingly apparent when comparing the re-recording of "Big City" with the original version. The defiant Country ballad gains a more reflective mood that seems to fit the twilight of Merle's years here on earth like a charm.

Merle is one of those artists that is like a fine wine, just getting better with age. "Sessions" once again finds Haggard on an independent label after his short stint on EMI records where he incidentally recorded the negative of "Okie", the indictment of the Bush administration and American culture "That's The News". But mostly Merle stays away from social commentary in the shadow of his life. "Sessions" once again finds him looking back on his life in full appreciation of the peace he seems to have found. Like only Country music seems to be able to do Haggard takes you through the full human experience. Haggard is feeling mischievous on the sexy "Runaway Momma," a song that seems to reflect that the years that landed him in jail weren't filled with regrets only. Even though he counts his blessings in "Pray" Merle does seem to have this melancholic streak when he looks back on his straying years. In "What Happened" it is astute social reflection again. "How did we ever go so wrong, did we get too high, did we sleep too long" Merle asks himself while reflecting on the unreliable politicians, lost American industries, looking at Americans struggle to get by, being able to pay their taxes but not their rent. But the most stand out tracks are not those who reflect on society but on the very human struggles that are so common to all of us. "Holding Things Together" is a spine tingling lament of a father needing to care for his children alone after his wife left him with the children. In three minutes Hag gets to the core of that experience in a few well chosen scenes. It is in those songs that Merle proves to be one of America's greatest song writers.

"What Happened"
"Holding Things Together"
"Big City"

Platters That Matter: Hymn No. 5

2008-01-09T19:51:00.001+01:00

The Mighty Hannibal is one of those Soul artists that is wrongfully obscure. The world of popular music is filled with myth building, myths sometimes becoming truth, facts obscured. A handful of people these days remember Hannibal. The kind of people who like to hang out in dusty record shops, swap endless amounts of stories and usually useless little facts about obscure and forgotten Soul singers that are God's gift only in our minds. I'm one of those people. I'm a Soul addict. But truth is, a lot of the singers I admirer are obscure for a reason. In the enormous flood of 45s between '54 and '64 there were just too many singles better than the ones my heroes churned out. The trouble is more I heard those classic singles just one to many times, so I spend my time digging through the obscure. Hannibal's "Hymn No. 5" is in my opinion an exception. It is one of those few obscure Soul records that should be saved from forgetfulness. "Hymn No. 5" is both a record of rare beauty and relevance. For a long time Hannibal was just a singer hanging out in Cali, getting friendly with Johnny Otis and Taylor, and getting into mischief with Little Richard or Larry Williams. Occasionally he would churn out an amusing and pleasant R&B single, all of who failed to make any real impact. Something that changed when he donned his trademark turban and added mighty to Hannibal somewhere around 1964. Armed with a new image, James T. Shaw by birth, penned the explicit (anti) Vietnam song that is subject of this little Blog post today, "Hymn No. 5". In my mind one of the most moving songs written about the subject.

Taking the form of a letter to his baby "Hymn No. 5" opens with Hannibal's mighty belting voice but soon moves into the claustrophobic clunking of a tambourine complemented by a haunting organ giving the song the feel of a feverish nightmare. "Hymn No. 5" doesn't spare the listener, it pulls you into the fear and feeling of senselessness that the soldiers in Vietnam must have felt. "Tell my father" Hannibal pleads "I'm way over here in these trenches covered with blood" he moans, baring naked the horrors of war. "There's no tomorrow" continues the song in harmonic desperation taking us in to moaning that seems to be somewhere between pain and hopelessness while remembering he has a family and a home far from that godforsaken jungle in Vietnam. An unlikely song to hit the R&B charts at #21 when picked up by Josie records for national distribution, reflecting the level of identification Vietnam veterans and those left behind must have had with it. This wasn't a song you exorcised you demons in the land of a 1.000 dances, with this song you stared them straight into the eyes.

"Hymn No. 5" wasn't the first Vietnam record recorded. Two years earlier Marvin Gaye recorded "Soldier's Plea". But unlike that patriotic and romanticized 45, Hannibal confronted the horrors of war in a direct manner that was unprecedented. After becoming active at political rallies Hannibal had decided that he needed to speak out. With segregation still in a fact in the South black soldiers were supposedly dying for freedom, a freedom that was denied them at home. They were treated as second rate citizens at home, as cannon fodder in the orient. Maybe it was that Hannibal didn't really have a career to lose that he dared to speak out, he had no audience he could lose, allowing him to sing fearlessly on the subject. When the song hit it must have inspired other artists to sing out. And as the decade pushed on many more social conscious hits dealing with the bleak realities in Vietnam hit the radio waves. I believe that it was "Hymn No. 5" that got the big players to speak up, that prompted Joe Tex to record "I Believe I'm Gonna Make It". I think Bill Wither's moving "I Can't Write Left Handed" or Marvin Gaye's legendary "What's Going On" are a direct result of the doors Hannibal opened.

With the war in Iraq still taking young lives on a daily basis I feel it is important that art like this is remembered. It is through art that we understand the true atrocities of war. If we left it up to our politicians war would be narrowed down to one-liners and personal interest. The news may gives us the facts, photographers may give us the images, but art gives us the personal implications. A song like "Hymn No 5" allows us to feel what war means, allows us to forget the bullshit of the politicians, the confusing statistics scientists use, transcend the daily cold news and actually feel what war does to people. Art allows us to experience the very human consequence of war.

"Hymn No. 5"

See Also: "The Mighty Hannibal's Triumphant Return"

The Ten That Made Springsteen; 6. Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels - Devil With The Blue Dress On

2008-01-06T10:56:00.000+01:00

"Everybody's always asking the definition of Garage Rock. Well, I'm gonna tell you right now. It's white kids trying to play black Rhythm and Blues and failing......gloriously." Little Steven van Zandt.

I picked Mitch Ryder's classic rendition of Shorty Long's "Devil With The Blue Dress On ", but I might as well have picked the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" or "Dirty Water" by the Standells, "Double Shot Of My Baby's Love" by the Swinging Medallions or "You Can't Sit Down" by the Dovels. I simply picked "Devil" because it was the template crowd pleaser "The Detroit Medley" that has been present in Springsteen's set lists since September 1975, all the way up to the Rising tour in 2003. Mitch Ryder was one of those quintessential Garage acts from the early mid to late sixties. "Devil" was one of Mitch's few hits peaking at #4 in the billboard charts. But contrary to popular believe this was not uncommon those days. Garage acts, or Frat Rock bands, though often one hit wonders, would regularly be on top of the charts. But since Garage was a factor in a time when the 45 still reigned supreme and in a time where small labels still were a force to be reckoned with, a lot of those hits became obscure nuggets when the album format took over R&R.

Garage was part of the tidal wave caused by the British Invasion, or rather the Beatles appearances on the Ed Sullivan show. Even though "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen was released in 1963, as sort of an avant garde Garage release, those appearances were what busted the band culture wide open and prompted Springsteen to pick up the guitar and join his first band the Castilles. I believe that Garage became an important part of the aesthetic, romanticism and ethics that is at the base of Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band. Garage gave young kids the feeling that anybody could have that big record on the top of the charts. More than ever Garage made the dream of R&R accessible to just about anyone. By the time the Beatles hit, the first wave of R&R had perished. Radio was dominated for a while by R&R based pop, by the lavish productions of Phil Sector or Leiber & Stoller, or by the highly polished songwriting and performing of Sam Cooke and Roy Orbison. While that did give R&R more credibility and gave R&R more artistic value it also put R&R beyond the reach of many kids. The Beatles showed that you could do it yourself basically, they opened the doors to a whole new bag of R&R dreams.

That band ethic is why "Born To Run" turned out the way it did. Springsteen wanted to record his own Phil Spector album, but I believe he never even contemplated recording it with studio musicians and a proper producer. In stead he took the band in the studio trying to recreate the Spector sound with his own band, layer by layer. Spector simply had an army of musicians in the studio recording them simultaneously on a two track recorder. Although the musicians on Spector's record became known as the Wrecking Crew, they were never a band in the way the E-Street Band was. I think to Springsteen the R&R band represented the sort of mystic brotherhood busting out of class together, trying to get away from those fools. That romanticism created a different aesthetic from the producers approach Spector had, where musicians were secondary to his own genius. It was also the reason why "Born to Run" ultimately came out sounding different from Spector's ground breaking singles. Though recorded with a smaller band, the album ironically sounded a bit more cluttered and muddy than what Spector achieved with his two track. By the time "Born To Run" hit the market Spector was already far in his decline. Springsteen met him once in the studio when Phil was recording one of Bruce's idols, Dion, in '77. Spector merely turned to Springsteen and said "doesn't this make "Born To Run" suck".

Though the band ethics of Garage were important to Springsteen while recording his albums with the E-Street Band, on stage it wasn't as pronounced till Little Steven joined the band. Van Zandt has always been much more the Garage connoisseur and enthusiast. Though Springsteen tapped in to the Band ethics of the Garage movement and part of its aesthetic (taking his loud guitar sound from there), I think he himself was much more enamored with the R&R sound of the mid fifties to the early sixties. Van Zandt however was a hard core Garage fan. I think his enthusiastically running mouth is what made Springsteen realize how important the Garage sound was to the E-Street Band, often characterized as the greatest bar band of R&R. With Little Steven joining the Band the Garage classics became regulars in the set with "The Detroit Medley" turning out to be the ultimate rave up for the boys. In no other song Max's relentless pounding, Gary's throbbing base, Danny's raucous organ licks, Roy's rollicking piano or Clarence honking would come together in quite the same way building to a climax in a R&R frenzy. "The Detroit Medley" made clear we were indeed dealing with the heart stopping, pants dropping, earth shattering, hard rocking, hips shaking, earth quaking, nerve breaking, Viagra taking, history making, legendary E-Street Band.

Springsteen's Garage sensibilities would be part of his break through success as well. By the time "Born To Run" hit the market R&R was threatening to collapse under its own pretenses. The album culture and art rock had taken the fun out of R&R. In a recent interview with Boulevard Magazine Little Steven called Art Rock "the anti-Christ", while trying to make an argument that songs like "Louie Louie", with their simple effectiveness, are actually harder to write than Pink Floyd's pretentious drivel of the early seventies. The Jack Holtzman release of Nuggets in 1972, with the infamous Lenny Kaye liner notes coining the term Punk, was signifying that something was simmering beneath R&R's pretentious surface. Nuggets stood as a reminder of R&R's dream and glory. While Springsteen played in the infamous Max's Kansas City, one of the key clubs to the birth of Punk, he was never part of that scene. Springsteen is never mentioned when it comes to the significance of Max's or the birth of Punk. Even though "Please Kill Me (the oral history of Punk)" does have a chapter called "Because The Night", a Springsteen penned Patti Smith song, Springsteen is never mentioned. Although Springsteen was trying to find that three minute essence of R&R, much as Punk was, Springsteen stood outside of that movement. Maybe that's because Springsteen, although undoubtedly part of the counter wave, simply was too good a musician and songwriter to be a part of the Punk scene. Springsteen wasn't marred by the artistic pretense Punk had before the Ramones hit the scene, he wasn't NY enough, but more importantly he wasn't held back by being unable to play even the simplest chords. Springsteen became the artist who infused the album culture of Rock with the aesthetics of early R&R and Garage, bringing R&R back down to earth.

But as Don McLeese pointed out in his classic article, "Abdicating the Rock 'n' Roll Pedestal: Bruce Springsteen Gets Down", for the Chicago reader in 1980 there was a paradox to Springsteen as well, "[By] treating a Springsteen as something special, we threaten to undermine what made him special in the first place". As early as '78 Springsteen realized that when the first River songs became part of the Darkness tour. Two of them "The Ties That Bind" but especially "Sherry Darling" were much closer to the the sounds of the Garage bands that inspired Springsteen. As "Tracks" showed, Springsteen had been writing songs like that for the E-Street Band as early as 1973 with "Seaside Bar Song". It wasn't until "The River" Springsteen started to bring those Garage sounds more to the foreground. Further scaling down his songwriting Springsteen abandoned much of the grand imagery that defined "Born To Run" and "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". Partly produced by Little Steven, "the River" was oozing with the sweat of the garage that gave birth to Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band in the first place.

"Devil With The Blue Dress On" - Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels
"Dirty Water" - The Standells
"Double Shot Of My Baby's Love" - The Swingin' Medallions
"Sherry Darling" - Bruce Springsteen (live '78)

Fats Domino: Rebuilding A Home

2008-01-04T09:43:00.000+01:00

On the 23st of August Katrina hit New Orleans with a devastating force. When the levees broke, some 80% of the city was flooded. The lower ninth ward, home to much of the cities poor, Black and disenfranchised, was completely destroyed as president "bystander" Bush shamefully looked the other way, prompting Kanye West to speak the infamous words "George Bush doesn't care about Black people". But even before the storm hit the city, and matters became federal, the sights of New Orleans were shocking. I remember seeing people trying to get out of the city by foot, because they couldn't afford to go by any other means of transportation. Katrina not only destroyed the city, it laid America's poverty bare for the world to see. When I saw the photos shot in New Orleans after the storm for the first time at the World Press Exhibit I thought I was looking at a third world country. Only when I looked closer to see the post script I realized these pictures were shot in one of the richest countries in the world. The moral and humanitarian bankruptcy of America's brand of capitalism was naked to the eye of the world. Unfortunately the outrage about those images of poverty and the mismanagement of government was quickly put to rest. Katrina failed to kick start any real discussion in society about the measures needed to confront poverty. Such a discussion simply didn't fit in the neo-conservative and intellectual barren agenda of Dubya and his. Although the Fats Domino tribute "Going Home" isn't going to chance that sad fact, I do feel releases like that are important not only as a reminder of the disaster that hit New Orleans, but of what it made clear as well. Parts of America are closer to the Third World than to the rich West.

Aside from the humanitarian disaster, Katrina was a cultural disaster as well when most of the cities instruments and musicians were lost. La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded by the French 1718 and soon became one of the main ports of the south. As such it was an important import point of African slaves. Ironically New Orleans was also a city where free slaves could co-exists with the European populous for a long time. This created an environment where cultural exchange was possible in a way that was unique in the New World. "Gens de Couleur Libres", the Free People of Color, or the Creoles as they became popularly known, infused their culture in what was the most European city of America. New Orleans essentially defined what would become the American melting pot. Starting with Creole influences in European classical music through the likes of Charles Lucien Lambert or Edmond Dédé, New Orleans would soon be giving birth to Jazz, a musical form that in my mind is as much indebted to Creole influences as European influences. In New Orleans the European marching bands and other musical forms were transformed to something that was unique to the city. New Orleans has been funky with the sweat of its musicians from day, constantly cooking and swiping each other's recipes. That Gumbo has had an impressive roster of musicians over time, ranging from Kid Ory to Louis Armstrong, from Professor Longhair to Doctor John, from the Neville Brothers to the Meters and from Fats Domino to Allen Toussaint; to name but a few.

Fats Domino is one of those quintessential New Orleans artists that was long overdue for a tribute album. The Fat Man was at the cradle of R&R when his single with the same name made a national impact on the charts. Though not as flamboyant as Little Richard, his laid back rolling piano style was as instrumental in the development of the genre as the latter. When Katrina approached the city, Fats chose to stay home. While at first he was rumored to be dead, "R.I.P. Fats, you'll be missed was written" was even spray painted on his house, Fats survived the flood, losing his house. This giant of New Orleans was as homeless. Through charity Fats was housed again in 2006, choosing to stay in his old neighborhood and city. Undoubtedly an inspiration for other artists to slowly come back. Fats had already payed his debt by donating the proceeds of his 2006 album "Alive and Kicking" to the Tipitina's Foundation. As a charity organization Tipitina's focuses on rebuilding the cultural heart of the city by supplying the musicians of the city with new instruments amongst things. Proceeds of the Fats Domino tribute album "Going Home" will go to this fine organization as well. Charities like Tipitina's are instrumental in giving the city its old glory back, that alone should be reason enough to buy the album.

"Going Home" is not only a stunning tribute to the music of Fats Domino but a startling testament of New Orleans musical heritage as well. With the city of New Orleans still struggling to get its community back together, "Going Home" is a prime example of its cultural significance. In a sense the double CD transcends being "merely" a Fats Domino tribute, its a showcase of New Orleans culture and the scope of its impact. With artists as Joss Stone and Robert Plant teaming up with New Orleans finest as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the Lil' Band O' Gold, with Neil Young mumbling his way through "Walking To New Orleans" or Tom Petty's rollicking version of "I'm Going Home" and Toots and the Maytals skanking version "Let The Four Winds Blow", New Orleans' melting pot is revisited once more. Tribute albums are often tricky things, most wind up being a messy hotchpotch of tributes, but "Going Home" is a mess of the glorious kind.

Leiber & Stoller: R&R Royalty

2008-01-02T20:20:00.000+01:00

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are to R&R what George & Ira Gershwin were to Jazz. In their prime they were genre defining authors and producers. They trumped other great R&R composers in both output and quality. Great as Carole King & Gerry Coffin were, they couldn't touch this dynamic duo, Phil Spector might have been the Tycoon of Teen, he would have been lost without their schooling and Doc Pomus doesn't nearly have as much hits that are locked in our collective memory. Leiber and Stoller were at the synthesis of R&R, helped shape it to the form Elvis Presley tapped into, and finally transformed it and gave it the sophistication it needed to become a lasting force. The funny thing is Leiber & Stoller almost never happened. When Jerry approached Mike to become his song writing partner, Mike turned him down. Stoller hated Pop with a vengeance, ironic for one of the writers responsible for transformer the field a few years down the road, so Mike turned Jerry down. Leiber turned out to be very persistent and pushed until he had the chance to show Stoller some of his songs. When Stoller realized it were R&B tunes he agreed to jump on board. It turned out to be one of R&R's most successful partnerships, both creatively and commercial.

As two young men from Jewish descent Leiber & Stoller may seem like very unlikely characters to shape R&R, especially today. But in the early thirties many of the Jewish-Americans, especially those from European descent, lived in the run down ghettos of the cities. As such Lieber grew up on the edge of Baltimore's black ghetto while Stoller got to learn how to play Booie Woogies from the Black kids at summer camp. Jerry's father had a groceries store where the radio was always playing. Leiber later confessed that "those radios were like magic boxes to me. They played music I never heard anywhere else". Those sounds on the radio would never let go again. Music ran in Stoller's family, his mother had performed on Broadway in one of Gershwin's plays while his father was an engineer. As a teen he used to sneak into Harlem's Jazz clubs. Their passion for Jazz and R&B lit a spark between the two. Their backgrounds would later make it easier to be emphatic to the Black man's trials. It was the Modern label that gave the duo their first shot at recording when they cut "That's What The Good Book Says" for the Robins.

It was with that single that Kent records started their anthology of Leiber and Stoller three years back, only to finish it just recently. Kent's anthology focused on Leiber and Stoller as writers, doing an incredible job on research and compiling material from all the different labels Leiber & Stoller wrote and produced for. The duo seemingly recorded for almost every label that meant something in R&R as well as having a label of their own. "That's What The Good Book Says" is still a pretty much straight forward R&B song, though it did all ready betray their sense of sophistication. Although things would be off to a decent start for Leiber & Stoller things really started shaking when they produced "Hound Dog" for Big Mama Thornton. The single went number one on the R&B charts for seven straight weeks. "Hound Dog" is where the Kent anthology is starting to go wrong. Instead of Thornton's raucous and definitive version, the compilers choose to go for an alternate lesser known version by Freddie Bell & the Bell Boys. Although it is an interesting recording, compared to Big Mama's it kind of sounds flat and stale, just like Elvis' version did. Both fine performances, but they don't come close to Thornton's mighty thunderous voice.

"Hound Dog" would bust it all wide open for the duo, but it would also be their first hard lesson in the dealings of showbiz. Leiber and Stoller never received any royalties on the song. This promted the gentlemen to start their own label, Spark. Since Kent already did an anthology on the output of that label, much of the key material from Spark isn't included on this trilogy. Since the discs boast to be "the Leiber & Stoller story" I feel this is an oversight on their part. The argument Kent uses for their picks doesn't cut any real wood. Although the compilers rightfully claim that Leiber & Stoller produced to much material for an complete overview in three CDs and are troubled by not getting a license for the Elvis material, I feel the anthology turned out to be neither flesh nor fish, despite the quality material that is included. To be truly called the Leiber & Stoller story too many key tracks are missing, yet the trilogy doesn't amount to an alternative route through their career as well. It tries to be a little bit of both and fails to really hit mark because of it.

The compilation does include "There Goes My Baby" by the Drifters for example. As one of the first, if not the, R&B records to include strings it is a true essential from their catalog and rightfully included. "There Goes My Baby" was one of the first tracks where Leiber and Stoller's significance was really starting to shine. Like the Gershwin brothers before them, Leiber and Stoller managed to apply the rules of classical music on a different genre, in their case R&B. Doing so they installed R&B with a new sense of sophistication and granted it with a whole new template for telling stories. Although the lyrics of "There Goes My Baby" are upbeat and dealing with young love, the melancholic undertone betrays that not all is well. Still on the same disc the compilers include "Spanish Harlem" by Clyde McPhatter, significant because it was co-written by their then pupil Phil Spector, is chosen over the land mark hit by Ben E. King. Mohammed Ali's rendition of "Stand By Me" raises even more eyebrows. While "L'Homme A La Moto" (Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots) by Edith Piaff on the first disc had some aesthetic value, Ali's talents were clearly in the boxing ring only. An impressively running mouth doesn't make for an interesting singer, Ali's attempts as such are best forgotten. It might say something about the extent to where Leiber and Stoller's material reached, but a mention in the liner notes would have been just as effective. The same goes for other hits. While the trilogy does include the break through Pop smash "Lucky Lips" for Ruth Brown, it takes Buddy Holly's version of "Smoky Joe's Café" over the by far superior one of the Coasters.

The third installment continues in this slightly frustrating vein. Here we find Jimmy Scott's version of "On Broadway". Interesting again, but not much more. That isn't to say that the compilation isn't without merit. There are a lot of interesting inclusions and somewhat forgotten gems. "Rat Race" by the Drifters is present for example, though on the same note their version of "Only in America" was scratched when Jay & The Americans version was included. Here Kent's defense of going for rare recordings really fails to hit mark as the Drifter's version was originally shelved. Buried as an album track in '72 this fine piece of writing is much overlooked by Soul fans, even though it is one of Leiber & Stoller's best civil rights songs, talking openly about sitting in the back of the bus. A rarity in R&B in 1963. "The Leiber & Stoller Story" could have been what "Back To Mono" was to Phil Spector, even with the omission of their Elvis material. It became a slightly disappointing release instead. Though the compilation shows the full scope of talent of this brilliant duo, including gems by Johnny Cash, the Shangri-Las, The Robins, Ben E King, the Drifters and many others, displaying their prowess as both song writers and producers, omissions of some of the key classics left me with a slight dissatisfaction.

"Hound Dog" by Freddie Bell & the Bell Boys
"L'Homme A La Moto" by Edith Piaff
"Spanish Harlem" by Clyde McPhatter
"Stand By Me" by Mohammed Ali
"Only In America" Jay & The Americans

Jill Scott, Silk Wrapped Hurt

2007-12-28T21:04:00.000+01:00

"The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3" was released in September 2007. Thus far it had escaped my attention. In todays music biz that isn't saying a whole lot. Total crap manages to reach the top of the charts, gems buried deep beneath it. Then again, Jill Scott is not what you'd call a new arrival. You'd expect a little buzz when a critics favorite releases something new. So the question is, is her album indeed the real thing or is it yet another in line of increasingly dull Nu-Soul albums. As I have posted before I feel Nu-Soul is a flawed problems, stuck in the same radio friendly beats that are hardly capable of making a wave even if you would crank the volume up to eleven. Most Nu-Soul is unfortunately nothing more than wall paper to the numerous lounge cafés that infest the inner cities. With Jill Scott it has always been a hate love thing for me.

Jill Scott grew up in the city of brotherly love, where she had, by her own account, a happy childhood. In the field of music that is often a handicap. Music is not unlike method acting. You need to be able to draw on your own experience to make the songs of heartbreak and yearning sound convincing. As much as its a cliché that artists have to suffer in order to create, it is almost scientific fact that artists with a monkey on their back, or carrying a heavy load, are the ones that usually deliver the goods. Jill Scott always struck me as somewhat of a exception on this rule. Jill Scott started out as a spoken word artist, a poet at heart. Ruthlessly intelligent, Jill Scott has always had the ability to whip words in the shape she needed them to be. Her lyrics floated somewhere between sharp analyzes of her relations to people, a strong sense of her womanhood and an almost retro sense of Black pride. To top it of, Scott has that kind of gentle voice that is capable of lashing out at unsuspected moments, giving her often too relaxing beats an edge they sorely need. Jill Scott is one of those artists cut and tailored for the Nu-Soul genre that needs to get its conviction out of lyrics and a voice to translate them.

"The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3" is one of those albums that doesn't disappoint but doesn't really thrill either. Most of the album again conjures up images of soft cushions, silky sheets, dimmed candle candle light and none to offensive rocking hips. Nu-Soul seems ever stuck in foreplay. Only on, what has apparently been the single, "Hate On Me", things heat up a little. Jill has a chip on her shoulder, a left over from a failed relationship, and makes it known. It's the third track in, getting your hopes up after hearing all this naked raging emotion. Unfortunately the CD settles back in its all too comfortable groove after that. Much of the album deals with broken relationships, the lyrics hold a lot of potential, but it never amounts to anything really interesting. The unsuspecting listener can slide back in his or her comfortable cushion and order another Mojito without his slumber being disturbed. The unsuspecting listener might just play this album to seduce his new girlfriend, hoping to get some action on a record that is built on heartache. Jill has a lot of potential, but what is lacking so far is let it all hang out. Anybody who's seen her in concert knows she can, so Jill, please get to it.

The Ten That Made Springsteen: 5. The Animals - It's My Life

2007-12-28T12:08:00.000+01:00

Of all the British Invasions bands the Animals may have had the most profound impact on Bruce Springsteen. In particular two songs, "It's My Life" and it's predecessor "We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place". It is save to say that the British Invasion saved R&R. By the time the Beatles hit America R&R had been near death. Elvis enjoyed his stint in the army and came back to churn out increasingly uninspired Pop schmaltz, Jerry Lee Lewis was caught up in the scandal for marrying his 13 year old niece, Chuck Berry was doing prison time for sleeping with a 14 year old prostitute, Buddy Holly flew into a mountain and Eddie Cochran found his maker after a tragic car accident. On top of that the payola, a practice where DJs would be offered money or other services in exchange for airplay, was made illegal in 1960. This hurt the independent record companies, instrumental in pushing R&R, considerably as this was their main means for getting their material under the attention of DJs. Famous R&R DJ was caught up in the following witch hunt and lost his radio show and job. R&R had lost one of it's primary advocates. R&R's surviving performers, like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, or producers as Lieber & Stoller and Phil Spector, were now striving for a more sophisticated sound. Even though it meant that R&R gained some maturity, it also meant it lost some its edge.

The British Invasion, kicked off by the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, gave R&R its balls back. An entire tilde wave of acts inspired by the sound of early R&R by Sun in Memphis, the inner city Blues from Chess records in Chicago and the upcoming Motown sound of young America flooded the US charts. Among those acts were many of Springsteen's pronounced influences. From the Rolling Stones to the Kinks, from the Yardbirds to the Who, from the Zombies to Manfred Mann, the young Springsteen sucked it all in. Barely a year after the invasion found its way to the US Springsteen was playing guitar live on stage in his first band the Castiles. Somewhere in June 1964 "Twist and Shout" was the first song Bruce performed at an audition for the band formed by Tex Vinyard, who would promptly give him a spot in the line up. Soon after that the Castiles would start playing the Jersey shore. The R&R that was spawned from the British invasion, along with Bob Dylan, would prove to be the main ingredient for Bruce's early musical education. The British invasion would soon kick start the American Garage or Frat Rock scene, Springsteen was part of that and it would form his definition of R&R and instill in him an importance of having a band. The power blues of Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds and Cream would prompt Springsteen to shortly experiment with the genre himself in bands like Steel Mill before settling back into classic R&R and British Invasion music with the E-Street Band.

Shortly after breaking through with "Born to Run" Springsteen was confronted with the uglier side of the R&R industry. The recording of the album had hardly been a breeze and Springsteen had at first hated the results. Maybe it was fear of failing acting up, what else was he going to do but be a R&R star. On top of that Springsteen had to deal with the draw back of the hype that was created around him. Although he wanted to make it big, I don't think Springsteen had ever considered what that would mean, the hassle that would bring with it. Springsteen was uncomfortable with the adoration, going from a small town kid with a R&R band enjoying moderate success on the Jersey shore to the messiah of R&R is not an easy transition to make. His manager Mike Appel had filed suit when he saw his young protégé slip from his control with Rock critic Jon Landau now in the picture as producer. As a result Springsteen could not return to the studio. Instead he was forced to go back on the road after the emotionally exhausting "Born To Run" tour to gain some revenues to pay for his legal battles with Appel.

During what would be called the "Chicken Scratch Tour" Bruce's frustration and disillusion would increasingly start floating to the surface. Some performances on this tour would proof to be his most personal. Although Springsteen threw some new self penned material into the mix, like the "Thunderroad" negative "The Promise", some songs of Eric Burdon's the Animals proved to be a better vehicle. The Animals had first broken the charts with Josh White's "House Of The Rising Sun". Although Both Bob Dylan and Nina Simone would cover the song with success before the Animals, Burdon's dark, brooding and intense vocal made their version the one that mattered. The Animals set themselves apart in the whole British Invasion by heavily relying on keyboards instead of guitars, add to that Burdon's uninhibited baring of the Soul the attraction for Springsteen is easy to see. The Chicken scratch tour would feature two songs made popular by the Animals. First there was Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill penned "We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place". Originally this song was intended as the follow up for the Righteous Brother's immortal smash "You've Lost That Loving Feeling", to be produced by Phil Spector. Through the intervention of the Animals manager Allen Klein the song found a much better voice with Eric Burdon. The song quickly grew out to be an anthem for soldiers serving in Vietnam and for small time teens wanting escape, a sort of prototype "Born to Run". Throughout his career Springsteen performed the song a handful of times, reflecting both interpretations.

The second song Springsteen would perform was the chilling "It's My Life". Springsteen would stretch out the three minute record to a full blown fifteen minutes starting with a long spoken intro in which he revealed much of his troubled relation with his father. The best recorded performance, on bootleg that is, in my opinion the November 4th 1976 version performed at the Palladium in New York (download here). With a subdued arrangement Springsteen would describe the confrontations he would have with his father in the kitchen of their house. The piercing guitar backed with the haunting glockenspiel, saxophone and cymbals would add to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the intro. Springsteen sets the scene perfectly, we can see his old man hunched at the kitchen table, over the empty cans of beer and his cigarettes. We can feel the apprehension Springsteen must have felt entering that kitchen, dreading yet another confrontation. Here we see a young Springsteen trapped in his relation with his dad, feeling suffocated by the small town he was growing up in, scared to death he'll end up like his old man with his dreams broken. R&R was Springsteen's means of taking control, of acting out his dreams and fantasies. And as "It's My Life" moves into Springsteen's venomous reading of the song, spitting out the chorus "It's my life and I'll do what I want", its not just his father anymore he's shouting at. Bruce is also directing his frustration at Appel, who's at that moment threatening to take away his dreams and means of escape.

When the lawsuit settled Springsteen was free to record "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". The direction he took in that spoken intro of "It's My Life" would prove to be instrumental for large parts of that album. The venom of that intro and song can be found back in "Badlands", a song decidedly more confrontational than "Born To Run". The latter was a statement, with the second we find Springsteen spitting in the face of his background and maybe even Appel. It's there in his affirmation of being a man in "Promised Land". More pronounced "It's My Life" echoes in "Adam Raised a Cain", here the song and intro have simmered to adolescence angst of biblical proportions. But the traces are found in "Factory" as well. Nowhere near as venomous as the first examples "Factory" is a song of a much more reflective nature. "Factory" might be one of the key tracks in his career. It is where Springsteen let go of the battle with his father for the first time and took an effort to see where his old man was coming from. Through understanding Douglas Springsteen he got a look into the lives of working class America, a look into the lives who hadn't had the means to escape it. Through his father he became to understand what moved that segment of America better, allowing him to write about them and for them with more intelligence and authority in the years to come.

"House Of The Rising Sun" - Josh White Jr.
"We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place" - The Animals
"It's My Life" - Bruce Springsteen
"The Promise" - Bruce Springsteen

Fo' Shizzle, Ma Nizzle; Cash Is Gansta

2007-12-26T10:15:00.000+01:00

The buzz in showbiz world is that Snoop is planning to cover Johnny Cash on his upcoming album "Ego Tripping". The controversial rapper claims "To me, Johnny Cash is a rapper. His shit was dope, a lot of rappers don't know that. 'A Boy Named Sue' sounds gangsta." and finds it high time to pay homage to the man in black. This isn't the first time Snoop has show his affection for the legendary Country artist as he was the one to hand out an MTV video award for "Hurt" posthumously while trying to link his brand of Gangsta rap to the songs and work of Cash. Question is though, does Snoop have a point, are the two in the same league, do they have a common ground, or is this just a gross misinterpretation of Cash's work on the part of Snoop Dogg?

Through out his career Johnny Cash has show a sensibility to the dark side of human nature up to the point where he could make his character sound real when he sang "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die" in his infamous "Folsom Prison Blues". Cash never did shy away from controversy, always ready to speak his mind, hardly ever considering the sensibilities of the day. It is that grim side of human nature that Cash was able to translate so well to song that Snoop Dogg finds his common ground. The thug life, or the outlaw, life has been a theme that both artists regularly put on wax. Both artists gained a lot of credibility that way amongst the outcasts of society, even though Cash never actually shot a man, you could sense he was the real deal. Johnny Cash always had a dark side to him that he was struggling to contain, part of what made his music so human. Something the convicts of Folsom and San Quentin tapped into when he played those prisons. Judging from the reaction of the crowd and the mini documentary the BBC shot at San Quentin, the convicts could relate to Cash in more than just a superficial way. Snoop Dogg's impressive list of confrontations with the law and his self confessed pimping in a Rolling Stone interview a year back took away all doubt about his credibility. Snoop was rhyming and living the Gangsta life. Both artists share a bluntness about the grim side but that is possibly where the comparison stops. Even though Cash often played the prisons through out his career, he never actually did time like Snoop did, not counting county jail.

The main difference between Cash and Snoop is struggle, or the lack there off. Cash may have sung of drug abuse in "Cocaine Blues", he may have sung of spouse abuse and even murder in "Delia's Gone" or "Kate" and may have sung of violence and prison, his music always had a highly redemptive and even moralizing core the Gangsta life glorifying Snoop often misses. On Snoop Dogg's records the Gangsta life seems something to aspire to. Snoop more than once relished in the fact that he was/is a pimp, a hustler, a pornographer, even hinting at his capacity to be a murderer without apology. Though it is true that the down side of the Gangsta life is featured more than once in his rhymes and his lyrics sometimes borderline parodies of the life, the glorification has remained firmly in the foreground through out his career. Snoop Dogg may have claimed to have given up on the life and professed to finding God as a new moral compass, his music doesn't breathe it. Although he is active in various projects to offer the ghetto youth an alternative to the life at the same time Snoop continues to glorify it because that is where the green is.

So who is mister Snoop kidding when he claims that Johnny Cash is Gangsta. Mainly himself I believe. I wonder if Snoop has the eye and ear to see the redemptive side of Johnny Cash's music. If Snoop Dogg owns the "Live At San Quentin" album, I presume he does if he plans on covering "Boy Named Sue", he can hardly escape the highly moralistic and redemptive qualities of that album. He can hardly escape that Johnny Cash acknowledged the dark sides of his character yet struggled not to be consumed by it. Cash's music was ever humble, infused with a sense of shame that undercut the machismo of shooting a man in Reno. Cash balanced out his stories of drug abuse and violence with songs as "I Walk The Line" on the redemptive power of love or with Gospel such as "(there will be) Peace In The Valley". Cash underscored his his struggle to become a better man, never relished or glorified the mean streak that his character had. That's why Cash could sing "The Beast In Me" on the Rick Rubin produced "American Recordings" and make it sound as convincing as when he shot Kate or Delia. For Cash these tales were metaphors for the human struggle between good and evil, Cash simply acknowledged that we all will sometimes stumble and fall. The question for the man in black was how do we pick ourselves up.

I can only hope that Snoop Dogg plans on giving his work the depth Johnny Cash's had, that he's planning to create an album that is an honest account of the questions and realities the ghetto life brings. The man's work would benefit enormously if he's bare his Soul and tries to make an album that shows his own personal struggles, shows how he came to terms with his pimping and hustling, or is trying to. But the planned album title "Ego Trippin'" somehow doesn't bode well on that account. I'll withhold my judgement until I actually hear his cover of Johnny Cash, but seeing how he, and fellow Gangsta 50 Cents, released a video sporting women on a leash, my hopes are down. Snoop doing Cash can only become a parody of the latter.

Oscar Peterson Passes Away

2007-12-25T12:31:00.000+01:00

"Oscar Peterson is a mother fucking piano player!" Ray Charles, in Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues - Piano Blues (2003)

A quick entry on this Christmas morning as sad news came to my attention last night, Oscar Peterson passed away at the age of 82 in his home of Toronto Canada. Peterson is one of those piano players who was instrumental in popularizing Jazz, and I do mean Jazz with a capital J. Peterson didn't bring you any of that diluted background wall paper drivel that is sometimes called Jazz. Peterson was the real deal, one of the few original Jazz giants still walking around. Like Jazz legends Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Peterson came up at the dawn of Bop. An approach to Jazz that would revolutionize the genre, lightening fast and highly improvised with a heavy doses of Swing. Cause it don't mean a thing if it aint.

Born August 15th, 1925 Oscar Peterson grew up in Little Burgundy, Montreal. An African American neighborhood where many had found refuge for the harsh and segregated realities of the United States. Oscar first touch down on the keys at the age of five, barely able to walk straight he began on his road to greatness. At seven tuberculosis made it so that his only focus was the piano as the illness isolated him from the world. From Canadian radio Oscar would soon make the jump to Jazz Mekka NY, or should I say Harlem. He made his first recordings as a band leader in 1945, near the end of World War II. No mean feat for a twenty year old in a city with such stiff competition. Harlem truly was the place that drew the greatest and you'd better have your shit together if you were going for the scrapple from the Apple. Inspired by Art Tatum and later Nat King Cole, Oscar was more than ready, The Brown Bomber of Boogie Woogie had developed his own style when others were still stretching their fingers reaching for that chord.

His distinct rollicking and versatile yet accessible style would soon land him in a recording deal with Verve, one of Jazz's greatest labels. Although Oscar was part of the same movement as Bird and Gillespie he was never quite the ground breaking artist, more the great translator and communicator of Jazz. Oscar was as much at home in small combo's of his own as he was in Count Basie's big band. Oscar was a welcome player on the scene, working with almost anybody who was somebody throughout his career. His name pops up on session dates from Billie Holiday to Stan Getz, from Benny Carter to Anita O'day. In those sessions Oscar had the talent to coach the tune, make it tangible through his licks on the piano, subtle where he needed to be, mind blowing with fingers rolling high speed down the keys if asked for. Peterson was as much Jazz's great show man as he was dedicated to the art form. That ability made for Oscar being key in breaking Jazz to a much wider audience and a talent of who's likes we're not likely to see anytime soon again.

The Soul Shack's Top 10 Picks Of 2007

2007-12-22T12:38:00.000+01:00

1) Mavis Staples - We'll Never Turn back.

With this Ry Cooder produced album Mavis really revived her career. Ry's approach is much the same as the Joe Henry productions on Solomon Burke and Bettye Lavette, sober yet penetrating. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Mavis' voice had aged. Her singing might not be as full as it was in her prime days, but she never lost any of her emotional strength. In an decade where civil liberties have come increasingly under pressure an album that revokes the civil rights struggle of the sixties, the time of segregation and Vietnam, is much needed. A civil rights anthem like "Eyes On The Prize" suddenly felt shockingly timeless.

2) The Arctic Monkeys - Your Worst Favorite Nightmare

It is very seldom these days that a band comes out with a follow up to their debut album that is actually stronger. The Arctic Monkeys were one of the few bands out there who had been able to use the Internet to their advantage, creating much of their own hype. Where bands as Franz Ferdinand or the Kaiser Chiefs failed to impress with their second outing the Monkeys came out rocking in full force, playing better and writing better than they had done before. The Monkeys may just be the best thing that has happened to R&R in a long time.

3) Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81

After going to the roots of American music on "Howl" two years ago the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club felt it was time to plug in again. On "Baby 81" the band infuses the Blues and Folk sensibilities they had tapped into with "Howl" with a heavy dose of R&R that harks back to the hey days of the Rock Super Groups without sounding dated. This is what a Rock record should sound like, raw, sexy and rough.

4) The Detroit Cobras - Tied & True

Garage rockers the Detroit Cobras seem to have found their groove on this one. With help from Greg Cartwright from the Reigning Sound the Cobras have delivered and album that sounds more accomplished and subtly produced than anything they've ever done. As usual the Cobras manage to dig up some great R&B nuggets and transform them into superb Garage Soul with the help of Rachel's husky and oh so sexy voice. The Cobras make great albums for you to do a little digging in stacks of 45s as well, while maintaining a great sense of originality.

"As Long As I Have You"

5) Bettye Lavette - The Scene Of The Crime

After Bettye's superb come back just two years ago with "I've Got My Own Hell To Raise", I was very pleased to see her do a second album for Anti-records. This time Bettye was backed by the Drive By Truckers, a fine band in their own right, with the help of legendary Spooner Oldham. To top it off the album was recorded in the legendary Muscle Shoals studio. That doesn't mean that the album has a retro sound though. The band proves to be a rough and gruff backing, underscoring the hard knocks of life that just seem to ooze out of every syllable that escapes Bettye's voice.

"Jealousy"

6)Nathaniel Mayer - Why Don't You Give It To Me

Nathaniel's new album might not give him the success he so much graves but it might just give him what he needs right now. The fuzzy Garage guitars seem to be the perfect backing for his ragged and beaten voice. Nathaniel's years have not been kind to him, seeing him on stage you'd give him at least 20 years over the 61 he has under his belt. It is the stark honesty of this album that makes it one of 2007's best. Nathaniel doesn't try and hide his decline yet displays it for the world to see, enjoying every second of it. "Better than getting pussy" he admitted to me earlier this year.

"White Dress"

7) Bruce Springsteen - Live in Dublin

Maybe an odd choice in the year where Springsteen his long awaited new album with the E-Street Band, "Magic". But that album was somewhat disappointing in my book, lacking the cinematic songwriting he so excelled in on past albums. "Live in Dublin" is a registration of the tour he did a year back with a different band, doing the songs of Pete Seeger and covering much of America's traditional music in the process. Bruce and the Sessions Band mixed it up in a way that might offend the purist lovers of folk music but in my mind the approach sounded quite revolutionary. Everything from New Orleans to Memphis, from Zydeco to Blue Grass got mashed together in that great American melting pot. The results, in which he reworked much of his own material, was a stellar and surprisingly fresh show.

8)Grinderman - Grinderman

2007 was also the year that Nick Cave found his Rock voice back with a new band. Nick Cave had been moving more and more to grim and moody balladry on his solo albums. Although the results were often moving, sometimes no more than a notch away from true brilliance, Nick always had a dangerous and aggressive side to him that is best expressed in R&R. "Grinderman", oozing with a perverse sexuality, has got that in spades. You'd almost wish Cave would abandon his solo projects and stick with his new guns. Quite a few year in his career it is jaw dropping to hear him still being so inspired and creative.

9) The Hives - The Black and White Album

The Hives returned in full glory this year. You think they might have been humbled when their last album turned out to be somewhat of a dud, yet the Hives continue to make themselves bigger than they are. Delightful R&R bravura, one of the best "Garage" albums of this year. The Hives managed to work with unlikely producers such as The Neptunes yet managed to remain one of the most vicious R&R acts in the business. No small feat.

10) Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

Finally, with Wino Winehouse getting all the praise, the band that made her success possible. Fronted by one of Soul's greatest vocalist the Dap-Kings hark back to Soul's golden age with just enough of a modern edge to prevent it from becoming a nostalgia act. Sharon Jones has a voice that reminds you of Aretha Franklin with a little bit of Tina Turner thrown in, propelled by uncut James Brown Funk with a Motown Beat, greased of course with some honest to God Stax gravy. Forget Wino, this is the album you want.

The Ten That Made Springsteen: 4. Roy Orbison, Only the Lonely

2007-12-21T11:51:00.000+01:00

''In '75, when I went into the studio to make "Born to Run", I wanted to make a record with words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector, but most of all I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison" 1987 at Roy Orbison's induction in the R&R Hall of Fame.

Of all the R&R artists present in Springsteen's ground breaking album, Roy Orbison might be the one that is most pronounced. Even if it is only because Roy makes it into the album's opener "Thunder Road". But when Springsteen mumbles the line "Roy Orbison's singing for the lonely, hey that's me and I want you only" does a little more than just provide a superficial link to the Big O's work. Springsteen places the album where he needs it to be, smack dab in the middle of R&R's glory days of the late fifties and the early sixties. A time when radio's reign was supreme and offered you an ear into the heart of American music, the very radio that stood in Adele Springsteen's kitchen and gave him his first sense of R&R and a little more. Aside from the burgeoning R&R industry, Radio in the fifties and the early sixties offered you an ear to the great Pop hits of the day. In the fifties it wasn't R&R that dominated the airwaves it was Sinatra's coy voice, Nat King Cole's syrupy delivery, Perry Como's crooning and Julie London crying a river. Roy Orbison was among those artists that would combine R&R's sexual energy with the finesse of the Pop records of the day. Along with Lieber & Stoller and their protogé Phil Spector, Roy Orbison was one of the first who would make R&R into a form of high culture. With Roy the paradox of R&R was born, the no nonsense common man's great art of R&R. Two things that seemingly didn't gel together all that easy. But maybe Steve van Zandt recently explained it best when he called "R&R the great equalizer", maybe the only art form where races, classes and genders find common ground. R&R certainly democratized art, with the genre's simply chords and straight forward word play, art was suddenly within reach of anybody willing to master a few rudimentary chords on a guitar. Of course Roy Orbison's operatic song writing went a little beyond those basic chords.

In his Springsteen Biography Dave Marsh at one point quotes the lines "Only the lonely know the way I feel tonight, Only the lonely know this feeling ain't right" as the introduction to a new chaper. Curiously enough Marsh doesn't go into how seminal those lines seem to be for Springsteen's perception on himself. Springsteen who considered himself an outsider, who was seen as weird in college, the kid unable to fit in, the boy sent home for pissing in his desk, the adolescent constantly at odds with his father. "Only the Lonely" indeed. Springsteen himself must have known that feeling ain't right. Aside from those lines the parallels between Springsteen and those lines the comparison between the Big O and the Boss' background are a little more than just superficial. Roy Kelton Orbison was born on April 23, 1936 at 3:30 pm, in Vernon, Texas. Vernon made the small town where Springsteen grew up, Freehold New Jersey, look like a metropolitan area. Like Springsteen, Roy got grabbed by the spirit of American Music at an early age when his father bought him a guitar at six. Of course R&R didn't exist at the time but Orbison made his first careful strides in that direction by winning a talent show performing "Jole Blon ", one of those hill billy R&R prototypes. Roy would immerse himself in anything radio had to offer from Country to the string laden Pop classics of the day. By the time Roy recorded "Ooby Dooby" for the legendary Sun records he was an as unlikely R&R as Springsteen would be in his early career. Roy Orbison was the negative of R&R's machismo radiated by the likes of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, also signed at Sun. Although Springsteen's image these days is marred by beefy pumped up arms at the time Springsteen embarked on his most ambitious album to date, "Born to Run, he was nothing more but a scrawny punk. With his two first albums a dud and eager to bust loose like Orbison once had when he released "Only the Lonely", as much of a fusion of R&R and Pop radio as "Born to Run" would turn out to be.

By the time Springsteen tapped in on his early influences such as Orbison, Elvis and Spector, all three of them were sliding into R&R limbo, becoming curiosities from a long forgotten age. "Born to Run" was recorded in a time when the artistic side of R&R had become snobbish yet tame. Folk "rockers " and jam bands with their intellectual aura ruled the day. Although Springsteen had dabbled in such musical forms himself during a short solo stint before getting signed at Colombia and with his Cream-like "super group" Steel Mill, this wasn't the direction Springsteen was going to take. His small town anxieties were much better captured in those heroes of R&R's golden days when R&R's main objective seemed girls, cars and escape. The holy trinity captured in the album's title track. As such "Born to Run" would become laden with the classic riffs from Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues", Duane Eddie's "Rebel Rouser", Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" and most noatably Bo Diddley's "Mona". The album winked at the classic studios as well with the Stax like horn lines of "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" or Max Weinberg's Motown like drum approach. "Born to Run" had the grand ambition of capturing R&R history in little under 40 minutes.

For the albums production Bruce turned to Phil Spector for inspiration, creating layer after layer in a painstakingly recording process. Spector ultimately would become as much of an influence on the album as Roy Orbison was, maybe even more. In a sense Spector and Orbison were of the same breed, none too attractive R&R geniuses with a similar operatic approach to the genre. As Orbison, Phil had infused his brand of R&R with the theatrics of Wagner and the Pop sensibilities of Sinatra ( a little less recognized influence on Springsteen as well). Of course Springsteen hardly had the means Spector had to its disposal, brimming with ideas, hanging on a thread with the record company and no real studio experience to speak of Bruce recorded the title track in between tour dates in 1974. The many mixes of the song available on bootlegs (download here) with added strings and whole choirs stand a testimony of the singles exhausting sessions. An advance copy was released in November '74, the actual album being almost a year away from that date. Although the lyrics are an obvious Orbison throwback, Bruce had infused the song with his own majesty. "Born to Run" with its runaway American dreams, chrome wheel, fuel injected motor cycles, towns that rip the bones from your back was a R&R opera of adolescent frustration and big dreams struggling to be contained in four and a half minutes. The song is layered with Spector like glockenspiels, multiple guitar lines, a relentless throbbing base and ferociously pounding drums to keep it in check. How much Springsteen was indebted to Spector became apparent when he performed with Ronnie Spector in 1976 on stage, providing the perfect wall of sound backdrop for her with the E-Street Band and the Miami Horns (download that show here).

"Born to Run" would be the epic from which both the album and Springsteen's career would slowly unfold. The earlier mentioned February Main Point broadcast now gives us a look at how far the album was from being finished with "Born to Run" already riding the airwaves. "Thunder Road"was still called "Wings For Wheels" with Mary still being Angelyna, "She's the One" still had much of the lyrics that would ultimately go to "Backstreets" and "Jungle Land" was nowhere near as the impressive epic it would become. Springsteen's wordy rants still were in much need to be condensed to R&R's essentials. The creative process got an unsuspected boost when drummer Ernest 'Boom' Carter and keyboard player David Sancious left to pursue solo careers and were replaced with Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan respectively. While David Sancious had been instrumental in creating Springsteen's somewhat jazzy R&R beat poet image and 'Boom' had temporarily infused that image with his Jazz licks when Bruce had to sack the unpredictable first E-Street drummer Vini 'Mad Dog' Lopez, the "Born to Run" album needed a more straight forward approach with a grand feel. Max's relentless pounding and Roy's graceful piano lines proved perfect for that. Aided by Landau at the production reigns, much to the dismay of his then manager Mike Appel, Springsteen was able to bring the album to a good end.

"[I was] listened to Roy Orbison a lot doing this record" admitted some tow years back when he performed "Thunder Road" for the VH1 Storytellers broadcast. Orbison's mini epics might just have been what Springsteen needed to start trimming his lyrics, trying to get back to the essence of R&R, trying to recapture those three minute records. If Roy Orbison was able to tell his grand stories of anxiety, heartbreak and desire over the course of the A-side of a 45, so was Springsteen. Springsteen slowly started stripping his lyrics creating a that cinematic feel to them would become his trademark throughout the rest of his career when the process started with "Born to Run" would continue. Stripping the lyrics until they reach that bare essence they held on the Nebraska album. It is no coincidence that Springsteen was inspired by B-movies for the album, albeit only the poster of Robert Mitchum's movie for "Thunder Road". Film imagery provided the necessary back drop to which Springsteen would start to mold his songs. The moving pictures are present through the album from Mary dancing like a vision as the screen door slams, to the film noir of "Meeting Across the River" or kids who flash guitars just like switch-blades in "Jungle Land".

Roy Orbison provided Springsteen with the approach and inspiration he need to get his career off the ground. Bruce needed the Big O to fulfill the promise of R&R captured in "Born to Run". Without Roy the album might never have become the classic it is today. Ironically by the time "Born to Run" hit the market the record buying public had forgotten about the Big O as they embraced his successor. Springsteen payed his debt in part when he was part of "The Black and White Night" TV special that helped revive Roy Orbison's career. Something that might not even have been possible if performers like Springsteen hadn't saved R&R from its own pretenses and brought it back to the every man's art form Orbison had molded it into.

"Rebel Rouser" - Duane Eddie
"Summertime Blues" - Eddie Cochran
"Mona (I Need You Baby)" - Bo Diddley
"Walking In The Rain" - Ronnie Spector & the E-Street Band (live)
"Born To Run (alternate take)" - Bruce Springsteen
"Wings For Wheels" - Bruce Springsteen (live)

The Ten That Made Springsteen: 3. "Highway 61 Revisited" - Bob Dylan

2007-12-16T13:51:00.000+01:00

"The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind" Bruce Springsteen 1988

The first Bob Dylan single Bruce heard was "Like a Rolling Stone", allegedly over the car stereo while riding with his mother. Springsteen was blown away by this voice from a man that according to his mother couldn't sing. Bruce knew different and ran out to buy the "Highway 61" album. It might be the tittle track to this album that arguably got to be more important over the years than the "Like a Rolling Stone" single release. "Like a Rolling Stone" was released in 1965, a little over a year after Springsteen's interest in R&R was rekindled by the Beatles. Bob's song gave him a totally new perspective on what R&R could be. Like so many other artists Springsteen suddenly realized that R&R could be an intelligent yet young and rebellious art form. The former folkie Dylan took R&R to a next level by plugging in, much to the dismay of his early fans. "Like a Rolling Stone" shot up in the charts to #2, stopped only by the Beatles "Help". Those two songs played back to back seem light years apart. Though it was little over a year since the British invasion had started the early singles of the Beatles suddenly seemed like relics from a long ago past.

Dylan would become an integral part of Springsteen's career for better and for worse Seven years after Dylan released "Highway 61" Bruce found himself auditioning for John Hammond. His bold and abrasive, some might even say offensive, manager Mike Appel had arranged the audition by a fair amount of hyping. It was in Appel's hype that Bruce's moniker as the next Dylan was born. A label that would hunt him for much of his early career. That label got enforced by John Hammond's history with Dylan, being the man who discovered the elusive word smith. Springsteen's own Dylanesque dense song writing didn't help either. Despite Appel's off putting ranting and raving Hammond saw a much better rounded artist in Springsteen than he had seen in Dylan when he auditioned the latter. Appel had challenged Hammond by snapping "So you're the guy who discovered Bob Dylan huh, well we want to find out if that was luck or if you really got ears". Springsteen played him "It's Hard To Be a Saint (in the city)" and "Growing Up". Hammond was impressed by what he heard and Bruce got signed as a folk artist even though he had been playing in R&R bands all this time. Years later Bruce admitted in Mojo magazine interview "it was a big, big day for me. I was 22 and come up on the bus with an acoustic guitar with no case which I'd borrowed from the drummer of the Castilles. I felt I'd written some good songs and this was my shot. I had nothing to lose and this was like the beginning of something".

Because of Bruce being signed as a folkie and him not yet knowing how to handle himself his quickly recorded debut "Greetings From Asbury Park" (sessions for the album only took two weeks) came out a little uneven. Even though critics raved, quick to slap the Dylan stamp on him, it was apparent from the get go that Bruce was something else, an artist in his own right. His wordy rants were much more cohesive and direct than Dylan's misty word play. Where Dylan would remain elusive, a trickster, through out his career, Springsteen immediately gave you a sense of himself. The song writing on Bruce's debut was much more autobiographical than Dylan's work would ever be, infused with the ballsy attitude that marked R&R. Springsteen's music was more akin to the artists who had traveled the Highway 61 than the album Bob Dylan created. Highway 61 was were Ike Turner wrote his first R&R song about an Oldsmobile "Rocket 88". Highway 61 was the route that future R&R stars such as Chuck Berry would take up North from Louisiana. Highway 61 was an integral part of R&R history long before Dylan put it into song. As such "Greetings" came out more as an album where Dylan and Berry collided. Bruce was cocky when he belted out lines as "I had skin like leather and the diamond-hard look of a cobra", but never as arrogant like Dylan could be. Springsteen's debut dealt with growing up, R&R being his weapon to battle the growing pains.

The music on "Greetings" and his much more matured follow up "The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle", bore a much stronger resemblance to Van Morrisons early solo records. Van's music was much more steeped in the same R&B Springsteen would tap in to than Dylan ever was. Though Dylan's "High Way 61" may have been the reason why Van left his R&B group Them to pursue a solo career and record the mystic "Astral Weeks". We know for certain that Bruce was a big fan of Them's "Gloria", which he often used in the seventies as an intro to "She's The One". Them was closer to home for Springsteen than Dylan. Them was a classic R&R band, much easier to identify to than the mysterious Dylan. Early in '74 Bruce even tried to distance himself from Dylan by claiming in an interview with Crawdaddy, "There was only a short period of time when I related, there was only that period where he was important to me, you know, when he was giving me what I needed. That's it". Listen to either "Greetings" or "The Wild" now and Van Morrison's "His Band and the Street Choir" seems a much more apt comparison than "Highway 61". I find it telling that Springsteen chose to cover a more Pop oriented song from Dylan in his set around that time. When Bruce was to play a radio broad casted show on February 5th 1975 (download the show here)he didn't pick "Highway '61" but stuck with Dylan's Pop gem "I Want You".

It wasn't until Springsteen managed to shake his next Dylan moniker by releasing his Roy Orbison and Phil Spector inspired masterpiece "Born to Run" he revisited "Highway 61" on his next album "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". The biblical imagery in "Adam Raised a Cain" and "promised Land" couldn't have come from anywhere else than the title song of Dylan's ground breaking album. Bruce was blazing down Thunderroad into that promised land, escaping his small town roots. His escape needed the bigger imagery of Dylan. By this point in his career Bruce could confidently tap into Dylan's type of imagery, yet give it his own distinctive stamp. The Dylan connection would only become more pronounced as his career advanced. Bob Dylan would be the doorway to introduce him to folk artists such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. When Bruce joined the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Tour Bob's "Chimes of Freedom" featured on the set in a trimmed down version and ultimately got released on the live charity EP by the same name. Bruce had started to tap into the bigger ideologies Dylan represented, much against the latter's own liking. Dylan had become, in his career, as much of a symbol of the rebellious sixties against his will as Springsteen got labeled the next Dylan when he started his. When Springsteen performed at a benefit for the Christic Institute (download the show here) , Bruce pulled out "Highway 61", performing it together with Jackson Brown and Bonnie Rait. Springsteen would perform "Forever Young" with Dylan in 1995, during a concert for the R&R Hall of Fame. Maybe the one song that captures the spirit of both artists and the essence of R&R.

They would again share the stage in 2003 during the closing night of the Rising tour at the Shae Stadium (download the show here: part 1 and part 2). Seeing how that tour rolled down the tracks while the invasion in Iraq started to unravel their performance, of two children from the Vietnam generation, got an extra dimension. History was threatening to repeat itself, with Bruce ultimately trying to assume the role that had been ascribed to Dylan in the sixties with the Vote For Change initiative. During this series of concerts Bruce would regularly share the stage with another big sixties influence and hero, John Fogerty (download a show here). Dylan would be present once more when Bruce hit the road with the Seeger Sessions tour, a series of shows heavily instilled with the rebellious nature Dylan represented.

"Highway 61" - Bob Dylan
"Highway 61" - Bruce Springsteen feat Jackson Brown and Bonnie Rait
"Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)" - Van Morrison
"I Want You" - Bruce Springsteen

The Ten That Made Springsteen: 2. Twist and Shout - the Beatles

2007-12-14T21:00:00.000+01:00

"the first record that I ever learned was a record called "Twist and Shout", and if it wasn’t for John Lennon, we’d all be in some place very different tonight" Springsteen December 9th 1980.

The second major influence on Springsteen were the Beatles. During 1963"Introducing the Beatles" made it into the Springsteens' household and rekindled Bruce's interest in the guitar. Although the reports are somewhat conflicting, Bruce first got a guitar when he discovered Elvis at age eight to nine. At that time Bruce's hands were to small to even begin to play. The instrument sat in the corner. After hearing the Beatles Bruce wanted to pick up the instrument again. His mother, Adele Springsteen, got him one for Christmas. Close to thirty years later Springsteen would thank his mother when he wrote "the Wish". "Twist and Shout" is allegedly the first song Bruce learned to play, at least he admitted as much during a show the night after John Lennon got shot. It is highly possible that Bruce was already strumming along when the Beatles performed the song on the Ed Sullivan show early in 1964. Lennon's clunky strumming on his Rickenbacker and his strained belting caused a tilde wave that would cement R&R and make it an art form to be reckoned with.

As Bruce recently affirmed once more during a recent interview for German television, radio was at the time Bruce grew up his main source for music. Other than today, radio in the late fifties and early sixties did bring the best in music, or at least in R&R. At the Springsteens' house hold Adele had the radio on through out the day as her escape for her dreary live into the romantic world of Pop. It is therefore likely that Springsteen heard the Isley Brother's version of "Twist and Shout", originally a lack luster early Phil Spector production for the Top Notes, well before the Beatles issued their album in the United States. The cross over success the Isley Brothers enjoyed at Wand records with the song early in 1962 directly led to them being signed at Motown. During the sixties the sound of young America was omni present on the radio and would ultimately be a big influence on Springsteen as well. But it were the Beatles that proved to be at the nucleus of what Springsteen would become.

The Beatles first broke in the US with "Please, Please Me", a mid tempo bluesy song that according to John Lennon was inspired by the singles of Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby. Seeing how heavily the Beatles success was derived from Black American culture it does seem fitting now that the Black owned VeeJay got to break the Beatles in the American market when everybody was still underestimating the impact the Beatles would have. After all what were they but a bunch of middle class white kids from Liverpool recycling American music. As an independent label VeeJay probably jumped at the opportunity to distribute to make a quick buck, as the Beatles had already scored a minor hit back home with "Love Me Do". What record companies failed to realize at the time was that with Elvis in the army and Jerry Lee Lewis caught up in the scandal surrounding his marriage to his 13 year old niece, R&R had a gaping void. The market was dominated by Black acts and what white acts there were had gone over to sugar cane pop. White teenagers really hardly had any reference, as far as they were concerned R&R was something exotic performed by wild Black acts. Suddenly there were the Beatles proving you and your friends could be in a R&R band and make it big. Exactly the type of R&R mythology the E-Street Band still thrives on today.

Aside from what is now called the British invasion, the success of The Beatles caused a tilde wave of Garage bands to storm the scene. Amongst those bands were big Springsteen influences such as The Young Rascals, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, the Animals, the Rolling Stones and of course the Kingsmen who immortalized "Louie Louie" and did a mean version of "Twist and Shout" themselves. Part of this scene, albeit very minor, was a band Springsteen joined in 1965, the Castilles. If there was any doubt on the influence the Beatles had on the then zit infested Springsteen one only has to look at the hairdo of choice in that particular outfit. The Castilles would prove to be Bruce's first important school of R&R. It was with this band he did his first show, wrote his first songs and would ultimately record his first single "That's What You Get" with the flip side "Baby I". The single never saw the light of day. The band performed on some local dances and even at an insane asylum, what better place for R&R to thrive, but ultimately disbanded in 1967 at the dawn of the Summer of Love.

Though the Beatles busted it all wide open for Springsteen, his influences didn't stop there. Springsteen was that kind of kid who absorbed it all, borderline obsessive an head ache to his parents, his father especially. For his live presence the Garage or Fraternity Rock bands and the great Soul acts would ultimately be more important. "Twist and Shout" would ultimately become something of a staple in his sets when he formed the E-Street Band. Notorious for their long shows from the beginning the E-Street Band was confronted with too little original material to fill out a set. Besides, Springsteen as learned with the Castilles a R&R band would go over much better when they played a few hits from the radio that would allow the crowd to really shake it on down. Maybe that's why covers would be featured so prominently near the end of the set, to really tear the house down. These were the days before Born to Run became a R&R classic in its own right, Springsteen needed to lean into the hits of others. In developing his stage act, the Isley Brother's version of "Twist and Shout", with them calming the audience down before firing it up again as to get the audience in a frenzy became the template to which the E-Street Band set their encores. The Beatles may have busted R&R wide open, over the years Springsteen would become instrumental in keeping R&R alive.

"Twist and Shout" - The Isley Brothers
"Twist and Shout" - the Kingsmen
"Twist and Shout" - Bruce Springsteen (live, august 20th 1975)

The Ten That Made Springsteen, A Career in 45s.

2007-12-11T21:04:00.001+01:00

This will be an article in progress with additions coming in the following weeks. Bruce Springsteen has always struck me as the ultimate synthesis of American music. As the Magic tour rolls on I want to try and trace the roots of Springsteen's career by telling his story through a series of key 45s and songs. What you find here is the first entry.

1. Follow That Dream – Elvis Presley.

“Elvis is my religion. But for him I’d be selling encyclopedias right now”.

It is hard to determine when Bruce first saw Elvis. Bruce recalls it was a Ed Sullivan show but over the years it has become misty which show exactly. Most critics pin point it at the January 6^th 1957 show. Al though this may very well be true, it was also one of Elvis’ least inspired shot from the hips up shows. If the Springsteens were regular watchers of the Ed Sullivan show it could very well have been the electrifying first show when Elvis came out with his full sexual powers. With his slicked back hair, his eye shadow and propulsive pelvis, Elvis was the right man at the right time. Popular consent pin points the birth of R&R at the rise of Elvis. The King was the one who’d bust it wide open. Critics may feel there was R&R before him, but nobody had the cultural impact Elvis had. The young Springsteen was awestruck at nine years old. He later recalled “When I was nine, I couldn’t imagine not wanting to be Elvis”. Bruce also made a vow for himself “When I first heard Elvis, I knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody” he said later, “I was going to be my own boss”. Prophetic words indeed.

Elvis would bust it all wide open for Bruce. The King was his means for escape from the mundane lives his parents had created for themselves. Seeing his enthusiasm Adele bought the nine year old his first guitar. All though at the time that guitar was too big for his hands Springsteen would never let go again. Over his career Springsteen covered Elvis on more than one occasion. “I Can’t Help Falling In Love” was one of the staples during the Tunnel of Love Express tour in ’88 but one off Elvis covers are to be found through out his career, dating back to the earlier days of the E-Street Band and preceding. Although Springsteen would ultimately become more enamored with Phil Spector’s productions or operatic Rock & Roller Roy Orbison, without the King there would be no Boss. Many of Springsteen’s early stage theatrics and body movements were directly derived from Elvis, from the boyish tweaking eyebrows to his quivering lips and his uncontrollable body movement, Elvis was the spirit that possessed the Boss. Some may even feel that Bruce Springsteen became the one and only rightful heir to the throne, one of the few performers who made true on the promise of R&R.

How much the image of Elvis overlapped with his own would become apparent when Springsteen reworked Elvis’ “Follow That Dream” in the early eighties. With that song Springsteen suddenly makes it apparent how much of his own values are inspired by Elvis’ promise. “Follow That Dream” by Elvis is a 1 minute 39 “Promised Land” prototype. A vow that somehow seemed more solemn to Bruce, reflected in the slowed pace and preaching deliverance of Springsteen’s version. On the ’81 live version Bruce performs that song to sparse accompaniment, his voice starts out with a whisper but slowly climaxes before it climbs back to muted prayer. Springsteen first performed his version of Chuck Berry's “Johnny Bye Bye” in 1981, re-designed as a tribute to Elvis. One of the most gripping performances was delivered at a tribute concert for Vietnam veterans that year (download here). It was in that show that Springsteen slowly started to show his political and social commitment. Elvis stands as a reminder of the Big Bang of R&R in this show, a voice that gave generations a means of protest against the establishment. Maybe that's why Springsteen felt the urge to include the song in a show where he started to reveal his own political and social affiliations more outspokenly than he had done before. In the introduction to "Johnny Bye Bye" Bruce called the King "the biggest dreamer". The somewhat sombre lyrics Springsteen added to the original, especially, " Well bye-bye Johnny, Johnny bye-bye, You didn't have to die, you didn't have to die", might betray that Springsteen felt that Elvis ultimately didn't live up to his dream.

"Follow That Dream" - Elvis Presley
"Follow That Dream" - Bruce Springsteen
"Johnny Bye Bye" - Chuck Berry
"Johnny Bye Bye" - Bruce Springsteen

James Brown: Revolution In Progress

2007-12-09T18:37:00.000+01:00

James Brown passed away Christmas last year. Thousands of fans and celebrities attended the memorial services at the Apollo theater in NY, paying their last homage to a man they knew as no less as JAAAAAAAAAAMES BROWN!!!!! As a performer and a public figure James made every capital count even though he died a shadow of his former self. There was a time when James Brown seemed forever in vogue, there was a time when James Brown was a walking symbol of Black pride and entrepreneurship. James Brown was so bad he needed more than one name. James was the God Father of Soul, the hardest working man in Showbizz, Soul Brother no 1, the Funky President and mister Dynamite amongst others. Even though James Brown and the Famous Flames claimed immortality before they achieved it, there was also a time when it seemed very unlikely that James Brown would ever become a force to be reckoned with.

James Brown was born in 1933 during the depression era in the rural South. The Browns lived in extreme poverty and when his parents divorced his father eventually sent him off the live with his aunt in the brothel she ran. Nobody got the Browns anything as Brown recounted in his candid 1986 biography. Brown likened the situation in the rural South to slavery, after seeing his father working for nearly nothing, himself hustling from early age to get by. One a few occasions Brown was even send away from school for insufficient clothing, eventually dropping out in the 5th grade. Maybe that's why James Brown got so determined to get it himself. James experienced the terror of the Ku Klux Klan, he knew he wasn't about to expect any handouts. It was in his aunt's brothel that James' seeds for his musical career were sown when he picked up some guitar from legendary blues man Tampa Red, but the road to success from those first three chords was long and hard.

Things started to turn around, oddly enough, when he was send to reform school for armed robbery. Through his time there he got acquainted with Bobby Byrd who's parents took the young Brown in when he got paroled. With Byrd he would eventually form the Famous Flames, the band that got them signed at Syd Nathan's King/Federal through producer and talent scout Ralph Bass who was impressed by James' live presence. At the time the Flames were a far cry from what James Brown would become. With James' relentless energy the Flames were modeled to Little Richard and the Upsetters. So much in fact that they would fill in for Richard when he abandoned R&R to serve the Lord. Nobody even noticed at first. Despite the resemblance to the money making Richard Nathan didn't like what he saw at first, in fact he hated it. When Brown came up to Cincinnati to cut "Please, Please, Please" Nathan got close to throw them out of the studio. Much to his surprise, and maybe even disgust, the record hit big when he decided to put it out on Bass' insistence. "Please, Please, Please" hit #5 in the R&B charts, while sniffing at pop at a #105. James Brown was on his way.

With the abundance of James Brown compilations these days it is hard to tell which of those will give you a decent review of his career. Many of these compilations focus on his early career to boot, leaving his early career under lit. With "The Roots Of A Revolution" and "Soul Pride: The Instrumentals" out of print, there hardly was any of his early material left on the market. Hot on the tails of the "Complete Motown Singles" Hip-O Select is determined to fill that current gap in the James Brown reissue market with an ambitious project. Started on "Please, Please, Please"'s 50th anniversary in 2006 Hip-O intents to re-release every single 45 Brown has ever released, A and B side, even a few that never saw the light of day. A project that should get any James Brown fan's heart running faster as some of these singles are criminally rare and have never been released digitally. Every double disc comes with an informative booklet with sessions information, dates and personal complemented with rare photo's and essays by Brown historian Alan Leeds. Like no other project before, the complete singles give a complete picture of how Brown's music evolved from the early days on. Especially the first three compilations working up to 1965 and "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" may prove to be the most interesting of the lot.

Although there are a lot of gems to be found on these compilations they are aimed at the hardcore James Brown fan indeed. A lot of the early sides between "Please, Please, Please" and his ultimate follow up smash "Try Me" (with Jazz legend Kenny Burrel on guitar) are not very distinctive, especially when set off against the constant flow of R&B hits during those days. On tracks like "I Feel That Old Feeling Coming On" your can clearly feel mister Excitement trying to break loose, but James Brown in his search for a follow up hit was still trying too much to copy other smash records. If "Please" hadn't hit Syd Nathan's patience with Brown might have worn out fast, but because it did Brown was allowed to develop himself as an artist. Legend in the making got recorded every step of the way. We get to hear Brown form his distinct sound, trying to follow up "Try Me". Dabbling in mid tempo Gospel Blues ballads as "I've Got To Change", rousing instrumentals as "Bucket Head" with a honking sax, through raving rockers like "Good Good Lovin' ", before hitting big again with "Think". It is on this 45 with its whiffs of Funk that Brown's later career starts to simmer beneath the surface while pulling him away from his one hit wonder status.

The second compilation covers 1960 to 1963. Both James' sound and his band start to evolve as his success broadens. As far as taking apart the myth of James Brown these two discs are extremely interesting. James Brown's Funk revolution is often described as being overnight with critics pinpointing the exact song at "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" or "Cold Sweat". Brown's sense for syncopation is often credited to legendary Funk drummers Melvin Parker or Clyde Stubblefield who wouldn't be in Brown's band until years after the period covered in volume two. Yet as disc two shows James Brown's Funk is much more a result of his evolution than a revolution. Partly because of James' disputes with Nathan over royalties and partly because he wanted to add more depth to his profile Brown recorded quite the few instrumentals during this period with his band (a rarity in those day). With his trade mark limited but greasy organ playing and an incredibly tight band backing him, Brown's music started to bounce more. A big brake through came with the B-side for Country outing "Three Hearts In A tangle", trying to benefit from Ray Charles' success in the Genre. "I've Got Money" is an extremely raucous and funky track featuring the New Orleans born Clayton Fillyua on drums. With Fillyua on drums Brown seemed to momentarily jump into his future. It wouldn't be until 1968's "Cold Sweat" that James Brown would sound quite as funky again. Brown's biggest successes from this period are still derived from Gospel Blues ballads and R&B raves but James was on his way to become a very distinct voice in the field of music.

Late in 1962 Brown again triumphed with one of the first Black live albums to rocket up the charts. Again the stubborn and headstrong James Brown proved Syd Nathan wrong who felt that such a project would never work since the R&B market was very much a 45 market. That's where the big money for King was, not in expensive live album where no singles could be drawn from. James went ahead and financed the album himself, "Live At The Apollo" was released and when DJs started playing the whole album start to finish, the rest became history. "Live At The Apollo" captured an essential aspect of James Brown, the live performer. It was his reputation as a scorching live artist that kept him alive during his dry spells on the charts often selling out without any hit to back him up. The third installment, covering James' road to super stardom through 1964/65, opens with Nathan trying to cash in on the albums success by over dubbing the original "Please, Please, Please" with canned applause. The fans were not to be fooled and the single failed to chart as the album continued to sell, even crossing over into the Pop market.

1964/65 was also the period where Brown's desire for a better contact with King prompted him to start releasing records through the Smash label when Nathan wouldn't budge. James felt he could do so since he was singed to King as James Brown and the famous flames. The first few singles on Smash didn't get much chart action as Brown oddly enough chose to venture deeper into a more classic Blues sound with releases as "Caldonia", originally a hit for Louis Jordan, one of Brown's few inspirations he would later claim.

When those Jump Blues sides failed to chart Brown dived back into R&B with "Out of Sight". Here Brown continued the path started on "I've Got Money" as he started to incorporate the hypnotic vamps that were already trade mark for his live shows together with his lightening fast dancing. The 45 became a cross over hit and Nathan filed suit. Brown was no longer allowed to record for Smash, at least not as a singer. An odd period followed where King tried to milk Brown's backlog and James would release instrumentals on Smash. Great as especially the instrumentals were, they didn't get much action of the charts. "I Got You" was performed in the film "Ski Party" but Smash had to sit on the much requested single because of the legal difficulties between Brown and Nathan. Brown's career continued to sky rocket because of his TV appearances, prompting both gentle men to come to a settlement.

Brown returned at King with a lightening Smash, a superstar was born when he released "Pappa's Got A Brand New Bag". A tune so hot it needed to be stretched over both the A and B side. even James was allegedly baffled by the revolutionary sound and the energy that the single held as he admitted in an interview "It's a little beyond me.....it's a thing and it's out there". With Melvin Parker's tight drumming and Maceo Parker's sax bouncing off that syncopation, Brown unleashed a force he couldn't stop even if he had tried. Papa became the template for the rest of his career. The follow up a poppy but decisively funkier re-recording of "I've Got You (I Feel Good)" stormed up the charts, locking Brown deep into a groove and made him one of the hottest stars for the decade to come. James Brown would eventually become a genre in itself, Hip-O Select's releases give an unique perspective of how he got there.

"I've Got That Old Feeling Coming On"
"Suds"
"I've Got Money"
"Caldonia"

The Fleshtones: Final Destination, R&R Station!

2007-12-07T19:10:00.000+01:00

R&R is not defined by its stars. Although undoubtedly R&R in their hey days Elvis, the Stones or Springsteen do not define the genre. The may make up for its aspirations, but they are not at the core of what R&R is. At its heart R&R is literally thousands of bands busting their chops in the garages and sordid basements all over the world, dreaming to make it in the big league one day. The Fleshtones have been at this game for about 30 years now, never escaping the basement. In a sense they are the text book example of R&R. Joe Bonomo's book "Sweat" captures their ongoing search for ever elusive fame perfectly. Anybody familiar with the band couldn't have thought of a better tittle to this autobiography. The Fleshtones have been guaranteed to give the best R&R show around for as long as they've been together. Yet the subtitle to sweat, "30 Years, 2.000 Shows, 1.000 Blue Whales, No Hits, No Sleep" gives the perfect summary of what to expect when reading "Sweat".

The Fleshtones story starts in a basement in Queens. Much to the dismay of the neighbors, some of the key members of what later would become the Fleshtones, throw legendary Blue Whale parties while churning out raggedy R&R, barely being able to master their instruments. A Blue Whale apparently is quite the toxic mix of various kinds of alcohol, preferably served in big barrels. That loud and lethal mix of three chord R&R would be a constant in the band's bumpy career. It would get them kicked out of their apartments, make them lose record companies, would find them in bloody brawls, turn them in the gutter but would also make living legends out of them. Although there are way to little people to recognize them. For the lucky few who fell under their spell, they are R&R best hidden deities. For the lucky few who stumbled onto their albums the Fleshtones have come to symbolize sweat drenched good times at their shows, roaring saxophones, screeching farfisa organs, rambling guitar riffs, raggedy soul crooning and pure and simple R&R.

The Fleshtones came smashed between the burgeoning Punk scene of NY city in the late seventies and back to basic superstars such as Bruce Springsteen. Like the latter the Fleshtones went back to the core of R&R. They found their inspiration in a time when 45 was king. The core of the Fleshtones, Peter Zaremba and Keith Streng found themselves in their love for the format. Swapping obscure 7" records filled with R&R, ranging from Hank Ballard and the Midnighters to the Strangeloves. At the time when Punk and Springsteen were about to burst wide open, R&R had strayed from its true path. The scene was marred by various horrific super groups, making guitar based intellectual drivel that had very little to do with R&R. Both Punk and Springsteen were a counter reaction to that drivel. The Ramones brought R&R back to its (barely) three minute essence in a loud cartoon like mess. Blondie did much the same, giving R&R a new sense of ice cold cool. Building on the foundations Punk's god fathers, the MC5 and the Stooges, had built, NY busted R&R wide open again.

"Sweat" unravels the mystery why the Fleshtones, despite a killer live reputation and rave reviews, never managed to reap the benefits of that movement. In a sense R&R was the Fleshtones final destination. Though you couldn't accuse the Fleshtones of being a retro act, the strand of R&R they tapped into just didn't gel with the all too self conscious Punk movement, especially in NY where Punk was as much high fashion as it was a new form of musical rebellion. The Fleshtones simply didn't thunder down the same tracks the Punk movement lays down. In Bonomo's excellent write up of that scene it soon becomes clear that the Fleshtones' brand of good times and party hard R&R "danced" to a different beat than the Punk movement where shaking it up was branded out of style. Punk rebelled against the drivel of the day, but wasn't about to put the fun back in R&R. The very fuel that kept the Fleshtones running.

At the same time the Fleshtones never made R&R any grander than it was. Unlike Springsteen who infused his brand of R&R with big dreams and a lingering sense of melancholy. Where R&R was the door to ultra coolness for the Punks, to Springsteen it was the door to something bigger, an escape for his small town background. R&R as a means, R&R as a promise, not an end. To the Fleshtones R&R was the final stop. They live to recreate the exitement on the records of Larry Williams, The Kingsmen, Lee Dorsey and Link Wray. The Fleshtones never aspired to anything bigger, be it a fleeting sense of cool or the realization of bigger dreams. The Fleshtones simply wanted to be R&R and indulge themselves in the accompanying lifestyle of sweaty parties deep into the night, raving live shows, sex & drugs.

It's not that the Fleshtones never dreamed of making it bigger. Bonomo's book is drenched with frustration. The Fleshtones were chasing that same all to elusive dream of R&R stardom. Save for in Paris, where they were treated like R&R royalty throughout the years, they would find that dream always more than an arm's length out of reach. Although their career seemed to be off on a promising start when they got signed at Punk legend's Marty Thau's Red Star label in 1978, the band soon hit that brick wall they would ram in to on various occasions throughout their career. Red Star folded after the recording sessions, the Fleshtones' "American Beat" single fell of radar and their debut album never properly saw light of day. American Beat would be recorded in 1984, complete with a video for MTV, but the Fleshtones never fitted the video medium.

The Fleshtones would be forever stuck in the basement their story is defined by bad business decisions, botched album preparations, odd production decisions and sometimes disastrous tours drenched in and caused by a haze of alcohol and drugs. Although "Sweat" is superbly written, Joe's subject is what makes the book hard to stomach at times. I don't think that there are a lot of R&R biographies out there that are as honest and confrontational as "Sweat". Even though Joe is clearly a fan, he doesn't spare the band. Peter's and Keith's erratic moods are thrown right in their faces, they come off as troopers of R&R yet seldom as heroes. Through out the book you keep waiting for that release of success and career highs that are trade mark to most R&R biographies. That release never comes. Instead there's this uneasy sense of "what if.......". You can't help but escape the notion that with a little more luck and discipline the Fleshtones would have been inducted in the R&R Hall of fame by now, doing high priced reunion tours. In stead the Flsehtones stumble their way through their career, seemingly forever one step behind or beyond the zeit geist. Never really fitting into the Punk movement, too raggedy to go up against the super stars of the eighties, too upbeat for the chronically depressed Grunge movement and finally too old for the recent Garage revival.

Yet despite all the hard knocks and set backs the Fleshtones have managed to keep that train rolling down the track. They are still living it up on the road, albeit with moderate amounts of drugs and alcohol these days, garanteed to give you one of the best R&R shows you'll ever witness. They seem to have found a stable record deal at Yep Roc-Records, issuing some of the best albums in their career. A new Fleshtones album is slated for early next year. I don't think it will make any dents in the charts. Meaning that quite a few people will deny themselves some of the finest R&R there is to find.

"Theme From the Vindicators"
"Tribute To Hank Ballard"
"God Dammit"
"Good Good Crack"

PLatters That Matter: On Broadway

2007-12-04T19:45:00.000+01:00

On Broadway is both one of the seminal Drifters recordings as it is one of Leiber & Stoller's most well written songs. Not yet quite Soul, "On Broadway" stems from the Black Pop era. A time where R&B was turning increasingly sophisticated as record producers started to discover their cross over success. Penned in the time when the Freedom Riders were testing segregation in the deep South, "On Broadway" was social commentary at his finest yet most subtle.

The song was recorded by the second Drifters, with Rudy Lewis on vocals. Lewis replaced Ben E. King in 1960 when the latter went on to pursue a solo career. Although Rudy Lewis now thrives in the R&B limbo of obscurity, it was the combination of his voice and Leiber & Stoller's songwriting and arranging craft that gave the Drifters their golden age. The Drifters with Lewis on lead scored some of their biggest and memorable hits with "Some Kind of Wonderful", "Up On The Roof" and "Sweets For My Sweet". Lewis died of a heart attack in 1964, "On Broadway" would prove to be his final shining moment, peaking at #9 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963. Phil Spector played guitar on the sessions and would later put his experience with Leiber & Stoller to good use as a legendary producer in his own right.

Although the early to mid sixties would prove to be the golden age for the civil rights movement as well, social commentary in Pop lyrics was very uncommon indeed. As I mentioned in "Platters That Matter: Dancing In The Streets", it was more common for Black entertainers to signify protest. Outspoken portrayals of the Black experience in America were still very uncommon. Buried under lush string arrangements and sweet harmonies, "On Broadway" allowed a peek in the lives of disenfranchised Blacks that was very rare at the time. Making it one of Soul's key tracks. It wouldn't be until the late sixties, early seventies when social commentary became common with highly confrontational songs like James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) or Syl Johnson's "Is It Because I'm Black". The bluesy yet sugarcoated "On Broadway" was a necessary transition to that era.

Leiber & Stoller captured the black experience in the intercity perfectly with stark and descriptive lyrics:

"They say the neon lights are bright
On Broadway
They say there's always magic in the air
On Broadway
But when you're walking down the street
And you ain't had enough to eat
The glitter rubs right off, and you're nowhere
On Broadway"

Jerry Leiber, as the son of a Polish Jewish immigrant, and Mike Stoller, born and raised in Queens may seem like unlikely vessels to write about the Black experience in America today, but at the time it made perfect sense. Many of the immigrants from Eastern Europe and their children had escaped poverty and bigotry not so long ago. From that cultural heritage Leiber & Stoller had a deep understanding of poverty. A youth in which both gentlemen got drenched in Black culture gave them the sensibility needed to write about the Black experience. Leiber & Stoller gave African-Americans a voice at a time when that community was still largely trying to find a way to spreak out without getting lynched, especially in the South. It is no surprise than that the first more outspoken R&B came from the Northern cities, such as Chicago or New York. With Broadway and Harlem just around the corner of the Atlantic studios the song found its habitat effortlessly. The glitter of Broadway and the grim reality of Harlem collided in that bittersweet wall of sound.

A bittersweetness that was reflected in the lyrics:

"They say that I won't last too long
On Broadway
I'll catch a Greyhound bus for home, they all say
On Broadway
But no, no they're wrong, I know they are
'Cause I can play this here guitar
And I won't quit till I'm a star
On Broadway"

"On Broadway" reflected the harsh reality of the African-American experience while infusing it with the most coveted dream of African-Americans at the time, making it big. Music and sports were at that time the only outlet Black Americans had for that dream. Even though the social economical position of Black Americans was looking up through out the sixties, the gap between their position and that of the average White was still as wide as the cliffs of the Grand Canyon. Many of the fine jobs and houses still remained out of reach, so with growing cross over success in the charts, music was one of the few means by which Black men could become a part of the American Dream. Tapping into that hope many African-Americans had allowed "On Broadway" to transcend the mediocrity of the charts, allowed the song to stand the test of time. "On Broadway" is one of those songs still relevant today because it taps in to a form of despair that is universal for all those living in the inner city ghettos today, while still offering a dream to cling on to.

"On Broadway"

Bruce Springsteen in Arnhem: High Energy Magic

2007-12-02T17:45:00.000+01:00

Bruce Springsteen shows are always something akin to going to church for religious fans. A sermon delivered right creates a transcending experience for those watching. Springsteen live in Arnhem last night was a very well performed R&R sermon. Springsteen likes to use R&R to exorcise personal demons but with Magic he's been going after real live demons as well. Springsteen is angry about the state his country is in, that anger in reflected in the current tour. Springsteen comes at you with high energy, hard rocking, vicious sets that leave you gasping for air.

The Arnhem shows were marred with a few problems. The legendary E-Street Band was set to play the Gelredome, a large soccer stadium. At first an "intimate" setting of 19.000 people people was chosen. When tickets went faster than Roadrunner crashing over the coyote a decision was made to expand the capacity to 33.000, leaving people in bad seats who had great ones at first. Then on the day of the show Springsteen was caught with a nasty virus, needing to postpone to the next day. Being an artist that attacks fans from all over the globe this meant some off them were stranded. Springsteen had something he needed to make up for, he did so in spades.

The Gelredome isn't a real intimate arena, seats are up high, no where near the stage, the floor a wide concrete spread. The pit was huge and held some thousand people. The stage itself was higher than it usually is, fans couldn't lean on the catwalk like is customary these days with Springsteen shows. Not an ideal setting to see the Boss. In effect this was his first stadium show in what's supposed to be a barn storming tour. But still, when the first notes of "Radio Nowhere" hit the crowd exploded in a feverish release, hardly relenting throughout the shows. European crowds are different from the American crowds in that way. They seem more fanatic when an artist like Springsteen hits Europe. We've got fewer possibilities to see the real thing and when we do we dive into it full force. It also means European fans are ruder when it comes to getting into the pit and cutting in line. I found the American crowds to be more relaxed, easier to hang around with. "I'm Alive" Springsteen joked before crashing into "Radio", as the show would proof the Boss being alive spoke for itself.

After "Radio Nowhere" Springsteen drove that train straight into "No Surrender", maybe the song that reflects his commitment to R&R best, "We learned more from a three minute record man, than we ever learned in school". With the base pounding in your ears and chest, those are the lines that make you feel like your heart is about to explode. It was the material from Magic again that allowed for some rest points in the frantic set. By the time he hit "Gypsy Biker" I felt like I had already witnessed a complete show. We weren't even 15 minutes in. With the material on "Magic" Springsteen tries to reflect the times were living in, the challenges we face as we experience the fall out from the so called "War On Terror". Reflecting the disoriented times where "The truth feels like a lie and a lie appears to be the truth" Springsteen said as he explained to us that the title song of his album was about tricks, not about Magic. Springsteen commentary isn't up front, never really direct, but the emotional layers of the show tell you where he's coming from. Springsteen is angry and tears into that anger with a sweaty fervor. His determined to be optimistic anthem "Promised Land" follows the somewhat ironic "Living In The Future", a song both about the denial of these times as their impending shadow hanging over us. Springsteen wouldn't be the Boss is he didn't signal us to take control of our own destiny again. To take our lives back from those "tyrants and kings".

That same anger is reflected in the relentlessly rocking version of "Reason to Believe", with Bruce belting over John Lee Hookers brand of road house blues. That anger comes back in "Last to Die", it is there again as "we spit in the face off these bad lands". If this would have been the complete picture Bruce would've have painted with his Magic show, his message would've been impressive enough. But the Boss never stops there. He wouldn't stop without offering promise and release. And there was release in abundance last night. There was the sexual release in "She's The One" with hip grinding Bod Diddley beats. There was the release in "Darlington County", an infectious R&R rave up compelling you in silly dance moves somewhere between the Monkey and the Penguin. There was the ultimate release in "Born To Run", that ultimate E-Street song which throws the audience in to R&R camaraderie.

The band seemed in prime shape last night. Clarence was slinging his tambourines looking like he was ready to kill, hardly missing a note on his saxophone. Little Steven was belting out his Soulful not so honey sweet moans on "Long Walk Home" as the band's guardian of R&R. Though Danny was sorely missed Charles did a great job replacing him. Springsteen himself was stirring up a storm, going in his trademark Gospel belting at one point, slinging his guitar, shooting raucous erratic R&R chords, leaving the audience drained yet screaming for more.

The show's high point this time came from an unexpected "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". A song he regularly pulls out in the States during the Holiday season but had never reached our side of the pond. He rechristened it to "Sinterklaas Is Coming To Town" after our version of the Holiday. An unlikely stadium breaker, but it did the trick.

"Living In The Future"
"Promised Land"
"Darlington County"

The Hives: R&R Blitzkrieg

2007-11-25T13:23:00.000+01:00

The Black and White tour is rolling through Europe as the Hives have a new album out. "People, it is as if you have existed only in pathetic colours like beige, or pastel pink. For two years, you have felt listless, wishy-washy and largely kicks-free. Bad! But it has been bad for a reason: so that you fully appreciate the return of the good times. And these only come in two colours: BLACK & WHITE! Yeah!", the Hives boast on their site. They haven't lost a shred of that contagious arrogance that made them such an attraction in the first place.The Hives have been slowly building their audience since 1995. Akin to James Brown and the Famous Flames, they claimed superstar status when they were still playing for some fifty odd people. The Hives claimed to be the greatest R&R act on earth, shouting it loud to everybody willing or unwilling to listen. When the Hives hit the scene, R&R had become unbearably bland. After the whole Grunge movement R&R wasn't allowed to be fun anymore. R&R was drowning itself in a misguided sense of over seriousness. R&R was populated by navel staring acts. Dancing at a R&R show, if done at all, had to be done with your face to the ground, hiding behind a hair do screaming for a cut. R&R fashion was all but dead, the standard uniform became woodcutter shirts and ripped jeans, sporting clunky military boots. under no circumstances were you allowed to be actually enjoying yourself.

Somewhere at the turn of the century the Hives hit with a big bang with their first world wide album Veni Vedi Vicious. Claiming to have conquered the world when they had hardly stepped onto the scene. And Vicious R&R it was indeed. I remember seeing them in one of those depressing small town dance halls. The Hives hit the stage in smart looking matching suits with ties, slicked back hair and flashy instruments. "Hate to Say I Told You So" Howlin' Pelle blared into the microphone, prancing around like a macho bi-sexual, touting his lips like Jagger, scorching like James Brown, kicking like Kung Fu Elvis.Holy Shit!!!! Lightening hit!!!! This was R&R!!!! Within the 45 minutes set the audience was smacked right back into that raving storm of ballsy sexuality and raging celebration what R&R was supposed to be.

The story of the Hives is that of a classic Garage band. They had been slowly building their career since 1995's "Oh Lord, When? How!" EP. Starting out from the Garage they soon managed a pose that would propel them across the globe over the course of those next five years. The Hives soon successfully clouded themselves in constructed R&R myth. They claimed to have a mysterious sixth Hive, R&R mastermind Randy Fitzsimmons, writing all their songs. They claimed to be selling millions of albums before they hardly even broke the charts. The Hives warned us they might be to big to handle for the world, we were going to get burned. Somehow all this bravura caught on, turning myth in near reality. Within the course of a half year they went from that depressing dance hall to the charts, the dance floors of the clubs, the big venues and large festivals. Everywhere the Hives appeared they conquered, they were the hype of the day with the guts to back it up.

And a bit more than just guts to be honest. Where most Garage acts stick to their ramshackle guns, to their swaggering drums and guitars, the Hives next release "Tyrannosaurus Hives" betrayed they had bigger plans. The Hives had looked at the world and planned to take it. They wanted the whole pie, there was no way they'd be settling for a slice. "Tyrannosaurus Hives" kind of failed to make that transition, it didn't quite make it to that next level, failed to be the knock out it should have been. The Hives promise to be your next favorite band sounded a bit shallow there for a while.

But rest assured my friends, the Hives are back in full force with the "Black and White" album. The title cleverly appeals to legendary albums as the Beatles' "White Album" or Prince's "Black Album". The Hives aren't too much in your face claiming superstar status with this one, but they sure are suggesting that. If you would have thought that "Tyrannosaurus Hives" would have humbled the Hives some, you are mistaken. The Hives are still ready to conquer and brought in an army this time round. Under the working title "The World's First Perfect Album" the Hives worked with unorthodox but heavy weight Hip Hop producers the Neptunes, amongst others. This unlikely battle plan proves to be successful as the album hits like a Blitzkrieg from the opening chords to the final R&R packed explosion. The Hives open "Tick, Tick, Boom", dropping that bomb, exploding in your face, they allow no escape, pursuing you with vicious riffs and war drums through out the album. They are R&R soldiers marching on. To be honest, the album damn near lives up to its working tittle. Their new battle techniques remain subtly hidden, blind sighting you. Hardly allowing you to recover from the opening track hitting they strike nuclear with "Try It Again".

The Hives armies march in fast pace from there on. Packing fast punches layered with whiffs of New Wave and Hip Hop. The Hives stay true to their main R&R battle plan but add enough to keep breaking through the armies that might stand in their way. The years on the road have paid of. The Hives have never sounded tighter than on "Well Alright", swaggering between Franz Ferdinand and Stax chops. Try not punching your fist in the air on that one, I dare you, double dare you! They claim their name in capitals with Funk bomb "T.H.E. H.I.V.E.S". David Boewy could only wish he'd sound so sexy and dangerous again, the Hives are marching on, hide your mothers and daughters. They drive those R&R tanks through the enemy lines on "Square One" in a way the Stooges could only dream of these days, leaving those R&R dinosaurs trembling in fear once more. The Hives are here to take over, better get used to it.

Lost Directions To The Village of Love

2007-11-25T10:29:00.000+01:00

Guitar riffs rise like Louisiana swamp gasses, like a distant toxic warning. A voice cackles with more than a few cracks, calling from a far forgotten past. The drums dance to a voodoo beat, hypnotizing. Somehow you feel like an alcohol infused delirium has taken over from you, cold sweat sticks the shirt to your back. A bubbling base disorganizes your thoughts, the blues rip through your Soul, your mind feels barely alive. Pretty soon you need a whitch doctor's cure. Nathaniel Mayer has a new album out, ready to come over you like a hang over from a three night booze spree. "Why Don't You Give It To Me" clings to you like a bad fever. Mayer pulls you in like cheap sex on an alcohol hazed night.

In 2004 Nathaniel Mayer was the unlikely choice to follow up Solomon Burke's departure at the Fat Possum label. Solomon had brought Fat Possum their biggest selling album and Burke a full fledged comeback. Of course Solomon's mighty yet silky pipes were an all different bag than Mayer's ramblings. "I Just Want To Be Held" didn't sit quite as easy as Solomon's "Don't Give Up On Me". “I want to get one more hit. Just let me get one more hit,” Mayer said in a 2003 interview for the Detroit Metrotimes, with his hands poised for prayer and his eyes directed toward the heavens. “Go out with a bang, man … Moving, grooving. That’s the way I want to go out.” Maybe that's what prompted Nathaniel to get to work with some of Garage Rock's finest. Nathaniel must realize that his current material will never have the same impact as his '62 hit "Village of Love". Yet there's a fire burning in Nathaniel, threatening to consume him if he doesn't put it down on wax.

Like his former Fortune Records label mate Andre Williams, Nathaniel has an unlikely pull on the current Garage scene. Aside from the Doo Wop hit "Village of Love", recorded at the age of 15, and R&R nugget "I Want Love and Affection (not the house of correction)", Mayer hardly made a dent on the charts. Detroit native should have disappeared in the limbo of one hit wonders, shoved there by Detroit's giant Motown. Nathaniel simply didn't fit in to the factory of hits. It wasn't until Fat Possum's owner Matthew Johnson went looking for new talent to sign on his label, with a lot of his money makers, like R.L Burnside and T Model Ford, dying from old age, that Nathaniel got the chance to record his first ever album, "I Just Want To Be Held". Allegedly Mayer was signed in exchange for a 20 dollar blow job. On his first album Mayer was backed by the Fabulous Shanks, a Garage band to come out of cult act the Detroit Cobra's. The latter had paid Mayer tribute by covering that long forgotten Fortune 45rpm, "Village of Love". "I Just Want To Be Held" gained enough attention for Mayer's old 45s to be collected again. Most notably on a recent anthology on Vampisoul Records.

At Fat Possum Mayer met Black Lips' guitarist Dan Auerbach, who formed a Garage super group around him to record "Why Don't Your Give It To Me". The band Auerbach put together consist of Bass player Troy Gregory (The Dirtbombs), drummer Dave Shettler (SSM/The Sights) and gitarist Matthew Smith (Outrageous Cherry). While none of these artists will ring any bells outside of the scene, within it these gentlemen make up for an impressive roster. Together with Mayer's sand papery toothless voice, layered by the hard knocks of live, they deliver an album scares the living hell out of you. Yet you can't help but being sucked in. On the album the R&B format is left alone for more stretched out Blues jams. "Help me somebody" Mayer sputters on the title track, as he threatens to sink in the swampy sound scape of this album. Mayer sounds more like a deranged Iggy Pop than his former hero Jackie Wilson. Soul claps are on the base of "White Dress" but the sweet Doo Wop harmonies are missing. There's no young love on this album, Nathaniel replaced it with sordid one night stands at his old age, trying to drown out the disappointments of live in sweaty sex. The slow dragging Bo Diddley beats and geriatric Funk on "I'm a Lonely Man" blend into the retirment Reggae on "Dancing Mood". But make no mistakes, Nathaniel still has a lot of fight in him. "Living in the twilight" zone he sings like a man who should have been cut down by the hard life long ago, yet refuses to blow out that last breath. Mayer keeps "Doin' It" struggling to hold on, taking in life's dirty pleasures. Mayer may be from Detoit, but this album is nowhere close to Motown.

Nathaniel Mayer is looking to score that one more elusive hit. Great, in a vile way, as this album may be, it is highly doubtful that Nathaniel finds what he is looking for. I saw Nathaniel perform last night. It was in one of those R&R dens without comfort, surprisingly filled up to it's 100 capacity. Those who came saw a force driven by the Devil clinging to his alcoholic delusions. Maybe in his mind Mayer found himself back on the chitlin' circuit, as young and vital as ever, riding high on his latest hot 45. Maybe in his mind the ramshackle punks backing him were the tightest band he ever played with. Maybe in his mind. Those who came got a raving Garage Rock performance, with Nathaniel howling in the microphone. Nathaniel was shaking it down like a twenty year old man turned seventy over night, his voice rasping, barely recognizable as Soul. This was a whole other force all together. Nathaniel preached with a hoarse throat. But this wasn't no nice gospel dream he was preaching, this wasn't a promise that we will overcome, this was no bright new direction, Mayer was preaching the hard knocks of life. His message was simple You gotta work if you wanna get paid, work if you wanna get laid". Nathaniel was imploring us to roll with the punches, reminding us that cheap thrills is the best most of us will get. After a few beers his promise doesn't sound half bad at all. Getting laid was still the main objective in life. During one of his noisy but funky work outs one of the girls got up on stage, bumping and grinding. "I may be old, but I got some Viagra out back, I'll take to whole bottle if I have to" he hollered staring at the young girl's thighs with a lust a man 40 years younger would have difficulty finding in himself.

Just minutes before the show it didn't look like we could be suspecting such a raving show albeit rambling show. Nathaniel came dragging across the dance floor sporting his cane, looking somewhat abscent minded he was trying to make his way to the bar dangling a bottle of beer in his hand. I figured I'd grab my chance to ask him a few questions and headed over to him with his new album to sign. As soon as I asked him how he felt about being here, a big grin appeared on his face. "I love it man" he said "music is my first love, being back on stage is better than getting pussy", grin widening, watery eyes starting to sparkle. His recent album is very different from the work he used to do at Fortune, but Nathaniel couldn't care less. "Is different, but I'm different see", rasping his voice, words wihstling out of the back of his throat, "I ain't gonna jump and holla like I used to, got this cane see, I'm a cripple". Nathaniel at that point cackled somewhere between a laugh and a cough. He knows his prime days are over, he's just enjoying the ride as best as he can. But "who knows, I might score that hit yet" he claims sporting an optimistic smile, "The damn record is called "Why Don't You Give it To Me", see? They gave it to them other cats, why not give one to me?" Scoring that hit or not, Nathaniel is still loving life on the road, "I'll do this till I drop dead!!!"

"I Want Love and Affection (not the house of correction)"
"White Dress"
"Village of Love (Detroit Cobras)"

Catch Nathaniel Mayer on tour through out Europe!

Phantom Dan: At The Heart and Soul of the E-Street Band

2007-11-23T11:45:00.000+01:00

On November 21 an official press release was issued from the E-Street camp that Danny Federici has to take a leave of absence from the now rolling Magic tour. Danny has been diagnosed with Melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Sessions Band accordionist and organ player Charles Giordano will replace Danny Federici for the time being. Even though Charles will undoubtedly be up to the task at this stage in the history of the E-Street Band replacing members is tricky business. Ever since the band Reunited in '99 fans have been able to experience what I like to call the mythical incarnation of the E-Street Band. Even though the boys never played in that particular combination before, each one of the members on stage in '99 was an essential part of the history of the band. Danny's leave of absence now is different from earlier personal changes in many ways. It is true that Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez was replaced by Ernest "Boom" Carter in '73. Vini was fired on account of his erratic behavior. It is true both Boom and David Sancious left in '75, right before Bruce Springsteen would bust wide open. The band at the time wasn't making any money and both gentle men had the opportunity to build a career else where. Little Steven left the fold, in a temporarily lapse of judgment, right before the "Born in the USA" tour started. Steven wanted to pursue his solo career and there were some rumors he wasn't all to happy with his role in th band. Steven was replaced by the over qualified Nils Lofgren.

Both band members and fans were shocked when Springsteen disbanded the E-Street band in the late eighties. Springsteen needed a break from the band, needed to see if he had viability beyond the E-Street band. He was arguably going through a personal as well as creative crisis at the time. Touring with another rock band in '92, during the Luck Touch tour proved however what an essential ingredient the E-Street Band was to his Rock sound. As early as '95 Springsteen began researching a reunion with the sessions for the Greatest Hits album. At the time things didn't sit well. But after gaining critical acclaim with a solo tour promoting the "Ghost of Tom Joad Album", Springsteen was ready to get the boys back together. The band that reunited in '99 consisted of all the members that played an essential part in building Bruce's career and had become a legendary entity of it's own in the intermittent years. This was the Band that played on Springsteen's break through album, this was the band that rocketed Springsteen to unimaginable heights in '84.

The E-Street band became more than a band in '99. They became a symbol. The E-street Band signified the promise of R&R. A genre that has been band based since the British Invasion. R&R holds that romantic notion where you can get your friends together in your garage or basement and make your way up to the top. R&R success has to do with more than simply scoring hits, it has to do with the ties that bind, it is that idea of lasting friendship. The E-Street Band is one of those rare examples that such a bond is possible, one of the few bands that managed to stick together with everybody alive and well. Springsteen may have proved his merit as a solo artist but when touring with the boys he is as much a member of the band as he is the main attraction.

Danny Federici is at the heart and soul of that band. With base player Gary Tallent, Danny always played a background role. So its easy to understate his significance to E-Street. He isn't up front wailing his sax and doing silly dances with Bruce like Clarence Clemons, he isn't up blaring in the microphone with his arm around the Boss like Little Steve, nor is he dueling in solos like Bruce likes to do with Nils. Yet in more than a few songs Danny is an essential part of the foundation the Band needs for its theatrics. Listen to the band rip into "Glory Days" or "Ramrod" and hear Danny's raucous organ laying down the ground works. Listen to "The Fever" with the Band going into wailing blue eyed soul mode, Danny's there providing the essential texture. Listen to "Lost in the Flood" or the quintessential Danny song "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" and he's there to provide the the very heart of those songs.

Danny Federici is a rarity in R&R. He is one of the few examples of an accordionist working in a R&R bar band. Starting out on classical accordion from the age of seven, Danny was converted to the Gospel of R&R when he heard the Beatles. Like many boys from his generation Danny was pulled into R&R hearing "Twist & Shout" coming through the radio. For that generation R&R was a revelation. Even though initially he made the transition into Jazz and Blues from there, as admitted in a 2002 interview, he soon found himself playing in a New Jersey Garage band, the Storytellers. Through the Jersey shore scene he met Bruce Springsteen in '67, who was playing in the Castilles at the time. As early as '69 he found himself playing with the Boss in the short lived band Child. That band eventually evolved through Steel Mill and Doctor Zoom and the Sonic Boom into the E-Street band. It was in these early, pre-E-Street days that Danny would earn his nickname Phantom Dan. When a riot broke out during one of the Steel Mill shows sound equipment fell on the local chief of police. Danny fled the scene like a ghost.

Danny's affiliation with the Boss dates back for a rough 40 years. Few friendships survive that long a stretch, certainly not when friends form bands with all the tension the road brings. Listen to those early Springsteen albums today and it is apparent that Danny played an important part in Bruce finding his initial voice. "Wild Billy's Circus Story", "Sandy" and "Kitty's Back" are a few examples that stand out. Danny provided some of the jazzy and romantic touches that made those songs into the early Springsteen classics they are today. Danny would find himself playing an equally essential role throughout the history of the Band. Without him E-Street would have been a very different place in R&R indeed.

The Boston show of November 19th will be the last show Danny plays for a while as he goes into treatment. The set very featured a prominent "Sandy" with Danny shining on the accordion. I'm sure it wont be the last time around for Danny on E-Street. Dates for 2008 have already been announced. As I cannot imagine Springsteen and the boys continuing as the E-Street Band without Phantom Dan, I take it as a sign that Danny's recovery will be swift and to good health. My thoughts are with him and his family and I want to use this place to thank him for all he's contributed to the E-Street Band over the years. Take care and we'll see you on the road Danny.

Contribute to the Melanoma Research Foundation.

E-mail your best wishes to Danny at getwelldanny@cox.net

Listen to Danny live in action with the band here:

"Wild Billy's Circus Story from '74"
"The Fever from '78"
"Ramrod from '80"
"Glory Days from '03"