The Unexpected And Amazingly Not Unwelcome Return Of Soundgarden

  In this awards season [yea! NOT!] the nominee and winner of the "Sneered At, Eye Rolling and Tongue Clicking Inducing, 'Why-Do-They-Want-To-Do-That' Invoking Attempt At A Reunion / Comeback" goes to.... Soundgarden. Soundgarden is unable or unwilling to show up in my computer room / music den, so I will award 20 pounds of kitty litter to my snarky cat Mojo instead. Use it in good health my fuzzy friend!

  While I thought ending Soundgarden on the odd but still under rated Down On the Upside left something unfinished. DOtU is no Superuknown, which was no Badmotorfinger, which was no Louder Than Love... you get the idea. Soundgarden always seemed like an always moving target. Some people don't dig that. Some people like the rawness of Ultramega OK or Louder, a lot of people bought Badmotorfinger and Superunknown. And I think a lot of people were puzzled by Down And stayed away from it.

  So now they pop up a decade and a half (+ / -) later with a new album. I admit, I really, really really thought "Why?" And having learned the lessons about impulse buying a new album by a favorite band [I am looking squarely at you with daggers in my eyes Aerosmith Get A Grip] I skipped this when it arrived. [Of course never listening to radio - modern or otherwise - where would I be exposed to it anyway?] I skipped it in my recommended list on Amazon right up to the point it was $ 3.99. Half the price of a used CD? OK. Download accomplished. But it still took me a week and a half / two weeks to remember to burn a CD for the work trek. Yeah, I checked the samples of the songs before I bought the thing, but still expectations are a bitch. I'm just hoping that I am not massively underwhelmed [Hello, Robbie Robertson, most boring album of 2011!].

   I was not disappointed. In fact, I was surprised bordering on amazed. King Animal picks up right where the band left off. Yes, everyone is saying that. Lester Bangs is probably screaming it from his grave. What ever happened in the 'lost years' [Cornell's solo albums, Audioslave, Matt Cameron joining Pearl Jam, Kim Thayil and Ben Sheppard disappearing into the ether] must have recharged the magic for these guys. And that's the thing - I think Soundgarden is a band that is the sum of its parts. Those four people get in a room and it sounds like this. Little heavier, little lighter at times, more swirly here, more straight ahead riffing here... but all the pieces fit.

  First song, Been Away Too Long  - guitars, band locks in on a new riff, then Cornell arrives - the voice is raspy and tinny like he has been gargling with ground glass and had pea gravel mixed in with his Grape Nuts. Have all the years of going for those high notes on Jesus Christ Pose, New Damage, Never the Machine Forever and Superunknown - has is come to this? 25 years of shredding his vocal chords, and I think 'Too bad, he's had it. Couldn't they have got some studio trick to fix it?' But then how rock and roll would that be? Zero. This is brave - "Hey I'm here older, greyer and wiser and I'm I'm giving it all I've got!" But the music swirling around him is locked in - like heat seeking missile locked in. Thayil, Sheppard and Cameron are riding that riff for all it's worth and more. They even kick the riff up a notch on the next track, Non-State Actor. Cornell's voice still fits into this, even if he's still a little hoarse. How Soundgarden is the swirling feedback from 2:42 to 3:04, sliding into a deceptively simple and amazingly tasteful guitar solo?

  The third song, By Crooked Steps is where we hit the pay dirt. Cornell's voice is back in familiar range and Thayil adds amazing flourishing riffs and licks over a super insistent throbbing pulsing riff that wouldn't have been out of place on Superunknown. If you're listening closely, you will  here some fantastically tasty work on bass by Ben Sheppard. in fact, I have a great new appreciation for Sheppard and I think I will have to check more of his work using my ancient but honorable Radio Shack Nova 40 headphones. A Thousand Days Before begins with some noodling on sitars and droning, then the riff kicks in, just a slow steady riding rhythm, the Arabic cousin to Searching With My Good Eye Closed.  Bones of Birds hits that sweet spot, the slow burn akin to Switch Opens or Head Down.

  I'm not going to go track by track over this thing. I will only say this if you were / are a Soundgarden fan - I mean a fan who really appreciated the music, not a poser who bought Superunknown just for Black Hole Sun and hated the rest of it - then this is a record you want to hear. I'm nto saying it'll make you feel 21 [or 25 or 29] again, but it's like getting a phone call from an old friend who you haven't talked to in AGES.

Tommy, Can You Hear Me?

This is probably going to sound silly [no pun intended], but I concerned about how we are listening to out music these days.

No, I don not mean the usual digital versus analog or CD versus vinyl debates. I admit it - I have gone to the dark side on that one, if only for convenience. Amazon is the devil and I am caught in its evil clutches. A lot of it is convenience, like not having to buy a whole Jethro Tull album to get the 7 songs of theirs I like. And those one hit wonders. The only time I put on an album these days is to play it for conversion to a digital file. But I am still buying vinyl - there is no late 80s / early 90s Pere Ubu on Amazon, people!

No, my concern now is about the little things we are actually sticking in our ears when we listen on those MP3 / iPod wonders. I mean first of all, haven't we been warned for time eternal NOT to stick the tip of the Q-tip into your ear canal? [Yes most of us do it, but you're still not supposed to.] But we gladly stick these little grape sized things into our ears. And there are some you have to squeeze in because they don't stay in any other way [I'm looking at you Sennheiser!] In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I do have a pretty bad tinnitus - from listening to music on real old head phones [and you children of the 70s know what I mean - the old headphones that covered your ears and half your face] at volumes that could be heard clearly in the next room. Yes, all this records that said "Play this record loud" or " best enjoyed at maximum volume"... and just about any other record for that matter. Same thing with the portable tape player [we could never afford a "real" Walkman, so we got the Wal Mart knock off]. And in the vehicle when I was/am riding by myself.

Don't get me wrong - the invention of the portable personal music device has been a godsend. Being able to plug in Aerosmith's Toys In the Attic or X's More Fun In the New World on a two day car trip probably saved some nice family argument time back in the 80s - though it always sucked when the batteries wore down. But I fear the ear bud generation is missing something - I mean besides music made by real people on real instruments.

My argument goes something like this - I was sitting at work listening to the latest offering from Wilco [which I bought in a digital format from Amazon, not on a CD] and it felt like I was missing something. Or missing a lot, really. I couldn't get the music to sound full enough - either it sounded like the highs were clipped off or like it was all compressed in the mid range. Remember when the early CDs came out and the sound sucked because the record companies said "you can't hear anything outside the range of 20 - 20,000 Hz, so we will not worry about sounds outside that range and we will compress the shit out of everything and get these things out before this CD fad ends!" Well that's what the Wilco sounded like. Yes, I know Jeff Tweedy likes to do weird shit, but I don't think he would do that for a whole album. A song maybe but not a whole album. Except that he might... But he didn't - I played it on my real headphones [Radio Shack Nova 40s circa 1986] and on my real stereo [Pioneer SX-737, mid 70s vintage pushing 2 Bose 301s and 2 Sony SS-B3000 speakers] to be sure.

In the ear buds, the bass was muted and the highs seemed exaggerated. Listening in the headphones gave a pretty full range but any excessive volume irritated my tinnitus. Listening in the room I seemed to be missing some of the highs - they do seem to get lost when I have a fan going but the Bose really disappoint with their high frequencies, hence the Sony to boot mid-range and highs. I wonder if this all has to do with sound reproduction and the amount of distance it takes for the sound to reach my ears. Moving a few millimeters in my ear canal versus the headphone where the sound is focused down the whole ear versus room ambiance and speaker performance. Throw in all the music I listen to in my car [confined space ambiance].

Its a silly thing to be curious about but I wonder if how you experience music affects how it affects you. I mean our parents generation went from mono to stereo, our generation went from speakers to headphones to ear phones and now our children [okay, your children] are getting their music straight from their ears. Do they appreciate a full range of sound? When you have them in the car do they listen to the radio / CD you are or put those things in their ears and tune you out? I mean I can jokingly say that it obviously affects them, look at the overproduced computer generated perfect pitch crap they listen to - the same way your parents put down Van Halen / Motley Crue / Black Sabbath / Black Flag / Dead Kennedys / Beastie Boys.

What's my point? Maybe I don't really have one. Maybe I just wanted to plant an idea in your head, something to think about next time you're grooving on your iPod or driving down the road listening to KXT or your Stones comp for the car...

Hockey Rant 2011

Forgive me, but it's been a while since I've done a hockey rant.

The controversy du jour is this hit by Matt Cooke of my beloved Pittsburgh Penguins on Columbus defenseman Fedor Tyutin.

Now to the initiated, this may seem like a fairly common hockey hit - and no blood, no foul, right? [cue buzzer] This is an unforgivable hit. Tyutin is a) hit from behind, b) hit too close to the boards and glass and c) totally defenseless, as in not expecting the hit. You can tell because if he had been expecting the hit, he would have moved about a stride closer to the boards and braced himself to accept the hit. [Yes, that sounds silly if you're not a hockey follower, but it's like a running back squaring his shoulders preparing for contact in football.]

Matt Cooke is a good agitator in the NHL. He plays a little hard, bordering on dirty to get the other team mad at him, chasing him, running at him to get them off of their game. He's like [N.Y. Rangers] Sean Avery, but not as yapping. [As far as I know, Matt Cooke has never used the words 'sloppy seconds' in front of the press - but I could be wrong.] Let's call him Sean Lite. Admittedly, Matt's far from being 'Matt Angel. His hit on Boston Bruin Mark Savard last year left Savard with a major concussion that he only just came back from - almost a year later. [Savard is concussed again and for the sake of his health, like the Lindros brothers before him, he calls it a career.] Coke may or may not have tried to go knee on knee with Alex Ovechkin Sunday - it looked to me like Ovie was dodging the hit and dragging his back leg and it was an unfortunate accident that Cooke hit him that way.

But this hit crosses the line - it breaks the 'unwritten code / rule.' I'm surprised nobody from Columbus' team jumped Cooke to beat him to a bloody pulp - either they have a bunch of chickens playing in Columbus or they hustled Cooke into the penalty box so fast no one could get to him. But it raises issues. Cooke was given a five minute 'charging' major [I said 'boarding' when I first saw it - charging means taking two or more deliberate steps to hit someone who doesn't have the puck; boarding is hitting someone two feet or farther from the boards into the boards; there's also checking from behind, which is basically if you look at the player and all you see are the numbers on his back, which is what Cooke would have seen] and has been suspended four games [I think it should have been 7 - 10]. And he will have a bulls eye on him when Columbus next plays the Pens. Maybe that won't be until next year - as we saw in Boston last week when Greg Campbell waited two seasons to get at Steve Ott of the Dallas Stars, hockey players never forget a dirty hit. Oh, and Cooke got challenged his first shift in Boston after the Savard hit, - that was early this season.

My question is "what the hell were you thinking, man?"

First of all, your team is totally depleted by injuries right now - Crosby [concussion], Malkin [knee], Mark Letestu [knee], Mike Comrie [hip] and Kunitz [lower body]. You think that's really a good time to go and get yourself suspended for a while? Isn't this the time that veteran players get to work and show the call ups what it takes to stick in the NHL, blah, blah... Second, you're all ready one of the most hated players in the league and have a rep as a dirty player - though I would not put you on the level of former Shark / Oiler / Bruin / etc. Brian 'Mush' Marchment [who rode Joe Nieuwendyk into the boards in the 1998 playoffs, killing the Stars run that year] or the great Ulf 'I Never Drop the Gloves' Sameulsson. But you're a lot closer to Sean Avery now. Way to go, Matt!

And while I'm on hockey, let me say everyone need to leave Sidney Crosby alone to recover from his concussion[s]. Yes, he's one of the most talented players in the league [and was rocking my fantasy team] but as we have watched players try to return from concussions and their after effects over the last few years [Savard, the once great Paul Kariya who is sitting out this year because of post concussion symptoms, the former Flyer (and I will leave it at that and not call him crybaby) Eric Lindros] we know what devastating injuries they are even though we don't know how we recover from them. We do know that each one is harder and harder to recover from and like boxers or football players they can end careers. So I don't blame anyone for taking their time with this. And for the record, I don't think the hit by Davis Steckle of the Washington Capitals, which we think was the hit that scrambled Sindey's eggs, was a dirty play. I think Crosby got caught in an awkward position and two players collided. Now Viktor Hedman riding Cros into the glass is a different story...

Make no mistake - with 27 games left and missing major components of their team, the Penguins are in trouble. Jordan Staal has been the 3rd banana on this team for four years now - is he ready to step into that first line center role with all the defense focused on his line? Can Chis Kunitz, Pascal Dupuis, Tyler Kennedy and Max Talbot step up and take some of the heat off Staal? Which one of the call ups besides Chris Conner wants to win a job next year and send a veteran like Mike Rupp or Talbot on to a new town? Can Dan Byalsma forge a team identity with a quarter season to go?

And while I'm at it, let me say something nice about the Dallas Stars. Without making any significant changes to a roster that finished 12th last season, the Stars are currently leading a Pacific division in which 1st and last are separated by a mere 5 points. I swore it wasn't all goalie Marty Turco's fault last year. I swore it was a young defense in front of him. I guess I was totally wrong. The Stars have hit a bump, dropping 5 of their last 6 - twice to league leading Vancouver and once to eastern leading Philadelphia in that span though - but they're not hitting the panic button and could really make a run in the playoffs - if they don't fall to the eight seed and draw Vancouver in the first round.

San Jose, who I thought was dead two weeks ago appear to have turned the corner with a 9 - 1 - 1 run. Detroit seems to have hit a mid-season malaise even though they have people returning from injury and should start their annual post season run. The Flyers - *sigh*. I don't want the Penguins to play the Philadelphia Flyers in the playoffs. They are so deep and so dangerous... I will only root for them if the Pens are out and they are playing Washington in the conference finals.

Since I had so much fun igniting the fires of controversy with my Beatles list, I thought I’d try out the Stones. Artwork by Mr. Nate Fowler.

01. Jumping Jack Flash

02. Monkey Man

03. Tumbling Dice

04. Wild Horses

05. Torn And Frayed

06. Gimme Shelter

07. Happy

08. No Expectations

09. Honky Tonk Women

10. Live With Me

11. Sway

12. Memory Motel

13. 2000 Light Years From Home

14. Almost Hear You Sigh

15. 19th Nervous Breakdown

16. Little T & A

17. Soul Survivor

18. Respectable

19. All Down the Line

20. Slave

21. Before They Make Me Run

22. Dear Doctor

23. Mixed Emotions

24. Ruby Tuesday

25. The Spider And the Fly

26. Baby Break It Down

27. Slipping Away

28. Thru And Thru

29. Stray Cat Blues

30. Connection

31. Lowdown

32. Dandelion

33. Brown Sugar

34. Can’t you Hear Me Knocking

35. Let It Bleed

36. Jigsaw Puzzle

37. My Obsession

38. Lady Jane

39. Play With Fire

40. Let’s Spend the Night Together

41. I’m Free

42. Citadel

43. Loving Cup

44. Moonlight Mile

45. Casino Boogie

46. Dance Little Sister

47. Saint Of Me

48. Rough Justice

49. Heaven

50. Shattered

And just for fun, their best covers:

01. Love In Vain [Robert Johnson]

02. Carol [Chuck Berry]

03. I’m A King Bee [Slim Harpo]

04. Little Red Rooster [Howlin’ Wolf]

05. Down the Road Apiece [Will Bradley Orchestra, though the Stones probably nicked the Chuck Berry cover]

06. Mercy Mercy [Don Covay]

07. Route 66 [Nat ‘King’ Cole]

08. Prodigal Son [Robert Wilkins]

09. Cherry Oh Baby [Eric Donaldson]

10. Hitch Hike [Marvin Gaye]

Generations & Moving On

I found out today that my great grandparents' [my mother's mother's mother and father] house will be put up for auction sometime next week. My mother's cousin who owned the place moved out and it's apparently become bank property.

I really can't remember the last time I was in the house. I know I was never in it when Bernie's family lived in it and they raised a mess of kids there and sent them out into the world, so we're talking a generation... twenty years? Twenty five? I barely remember my great grandfather, Joe Vorderbreuggen. He died when I was 9 or ten. But grandma lived for another 10 years or so, so I can recall her a little better. She always was thin. She had a throaty chuckle when she laughed, which grandma seems to share. I used to love to run up the hill early in the day and say hello to her. Sometimes she's be watching the television, but the best times were just sitting on the porch glider with her.

The house seemed to be huge. Two stories straight up. I don't remember the layout of the upstairs. The only times I was up there was to rush up the main stairs run across the the back of the house and rush down a hidden back stair and pop out into the kitchen. I don't ever remember being in the master bedroom. Most of the time we were in the little living room, in a kitchen with a one tub sink and an ancient gas stove.

But now it will be somebody else's house. Which I guess it was when Bernie and Nellie moved in. But this time it probably won't be family. I found out today that that wasn't built by Grandpap. it was on the land when he bought it, so it was somone's before them and now it will be someone's again. The house IS 110 years old, which speaks to the permanence of the structure. It certainly outlived the barns and the chicken coops which used to be there. Of course one can only hazard a guess at what one would find between the walls and how much upgrading will need to be done by a new buyer... as I said, I have no idea how much upgrading was done on the 80s when it was last empty.

It just brings a certain sadness to those of us who knew it as 'Grandma Vorderbreuggen's house.' Which is nostalgia. A piece of our childhood that we can no longer visit, one chapter closing and all of that. But we have all moved before. I can remember living in 7 houses or apartments while growing up. Some are dim, hazy memories like a dream that fades as you wake up. Some are more etched in the mind, places you played and people you knew. My mother has been in her house since 1980. Before they bought that land, the house didn't exist. Now it does. Mom threatens to sell it every so often and move into an RV so she can just take off when she wants to. I doubt her, but she may have a surprise left in her. Someday - hopefully not soon, but someday it will be empty and it will be sold. And someone may gut it and just start with a shell and rebuild or they may just knock the whole thing down and build the McMansion of their dreams. Hell maybe one of my nieces will inherit it and raise their family there. In thirty years [and counting] I have memories there, sure. Do I want to live there? Not really. It's still too far out of the action for my taste and I have no use for the land or the barn.

But back to my original thought: Do I think about the places I used to live and the people that are living there now? no. Do I wonder if they painted the house a different color or how the trees that were there are now? No. But is it weird to think that someday, someone who is not one of the family could be living in the house that my grandfather built from the ground up? Most definitely! It seems harder to bear that thought than someone living in the house I spent my teenage years... ahem and a GOOD PORTION of my twenties. I think part of it is that it's "Grandma and Grandpap's House." Those carefree summer days of youth spent there. [Youth? I sleep better in that house than anywhere on Earth. My next to last visit I spent half horizontal on a couch or bed, I think.] The smell of dinner cooking or reaching in the cookie jar or the early evening "dish" of ice cream - sometimes with a little Hershey's syrup, sometimes a little float with 7 Up or Sprite! Grandpap holding court in the living room watching his shows - Hee Haw or Gunsmoke always seemed to be on. Catching fireflies or games of freeze tag or croquet with the cousins. [No horseshoes for me after I saw what they did to Milo.] Walking into a room and kissing Grandpap on his beautiful bald dome. Lazing in the hammock or on the swing. All the memories there. Someday - again, hopefully not soon but someday] someone else' family may live in that house and their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids will make memories there like we have. And one day, maybe a couple of generations down the road, the cycle will move on for them also.

I guess my point is this: This is part of life. I don't like it, but it is. People move on, either physically they move away or they pass away and all we are left with is structures and memories. When our parents are gone, their memories will be gone, but things will remain. When we are gone out memories will be gone, but we will live in the memories of those who knew us until a few generations down the road we are nothing but a picture in a family album or a line on a genealogy tree and a head stone in a cemetery. I guess this is the hard part. We have funerals to say goodbye to our loved ones and be comforted by our friends and families. But I guess some things we have to face alone with our own thoughts.

So long, baby and amen.

Rock And Roll, Part 2 [OR "Radio Gaga"]

I was thinking again today about this Almost Famous and "Whatever happened to my Rock & Roll?" [a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club tune, by the way....] conenction and another thought struck me. [Ow!] Specifically I was thinking about Sapphire's speech where she's talking about 'falling in love with some silly little song...' and how I used to hear all this great music. "Invisible airways crackle with life / bright antennae bristle with the energy / Emotional feedback on timeless wavelengths / Bearing a gift beyond price almost free..."

Then I though about Marty's son - the 15 year old drummer dude - [and maybe some of your kids] don't know about radio. They don't know how we used to live to get to a radio after school. "Busted out of class / Had to get away from those fools / We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school..." They don't know of a time when you couldn't log onto a computer and download a song.They don't know about DJs and waiting [AND waiting ... AND waiting] for the DJ to play your request... if they ever really did.

Marty, a real go getter and at one time a music business management major [in a class with Trisha Yearwood at Belmont, right?] used to call and talk to all the DJs and program managers. ["Why do you play this? Why don't you play that?"] What do today's kids know about program managers? Anyone else remember on WKRP when the 'consultant' came in and said his 'service' could program the music [i.e. make up the play-list] better than Andy? Well that's what radio became. It's all programmed from one coast or the other and it's all the same all up and down the dial, unless you hit a college station or a real independant like KXT here in DFW. There's no such thing as a regional hit anymore. You can't have Tommy James' Hanky Panky suddenly break out in Pittsburgh and then begin making national waves. You can't have Celeveland or Detroit breaking a band like Rush or Meat Loaf or the J. Geils Band. It's all down to one guy giving the thumbs up or thumbs down for the whole nation!

I don't know how it was where you grew up. I grew up partially in the north when AM radio was king. AM radio then was a lot of top 40. My parents are fairly young so I was also exposed to some stuff via the miracle of the 8 track, and I still have a fondness for a lot of those bands - Steve Miller, Elton John's Madman Across the Water, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Creedence Clearwater's Pendulum, the Ohio Players' Honey... When I moved to Texas, I found FM and AOR [Album Oriented Rock if you don't recall or never knew]. Yeah, some hits like Cheap Trick, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, ELO, Jackson Browne, the Eagles - but also some stuff a little more out there... Billy Thorpe's Children Of the Sun, Zebra's Who's Behind the Door, the Kings' The Beat Goes On / Switching To Glide, the long version of Slow Ride and of course those deep cuts of Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Who and lots of ZZ Top in Texas. Plus you could get things that seemed to be regional, like Joe 'King' Carasco's Party Weekend.

In DFW there were three stations that were the rock and roll champions - KEGL [The Eagle or Eagle 97 - originally they were Z97 and a little more AOR, but they went a little more pop in the early 80s and kind of fell off my radar], 98 KZEW - The Zoo and Q102. The Zoo and Q102 had a long running battle for supremacy. Q102 had the wild men of the morning, BNo Robert and 'Long' Jim White [still on the air here, now at 92.5 KZPS, still slinging tyhe same old songs on 'classic rock radio. Good God, how many times can you play .38 Special before you just want to shoot yourself?], while the Zoo threw up the smarmy, wise guy, Steely Dan of the radio LaBella and Rody. John Dillon on mid morning on the Zoo - I'd listen while grading papers as a TA my senior year. Sally Diamond on 102? Tempie Lindsey on the Zoo afternoon drive, Redbeard [who got great guests - he got Joe Walsh to cover for him one week while he was on vacation] on Q102. Evening on the Zoo was Chas Mixon...I'm blanking on the Q person - not bad for 25 to 30 years ago. You can see what an impact radio had on me!

But that was what I had - of course I had some records and a tape deck in my car, but radio was still good enough where you could cruise and listen to the radio. Now I get in the car, spin around 12 FM stations twice in three minutes and push a CD in. Partially this is because I have become my parents: I've heard that so many times if I hear it once more I'm gonna throw up. I never thought I'd get sick of some songs, but now I have songs I will willingly give up days at the end of muy life not to hear again. Dream On by Aerosmith? Three days. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin? Maybe two. Wonderful Tonight, Tears In Heaven by Eric Clapton and Layla [Derek And the Dominos] - take a week. Candle In the Wind by Elton John - two days. When the Zoo was flipped in the winter of 88, the war was over. The Zoo had been trying some other stuff - incorporating newer music both from the college end like R.E.M., Kate Bush and XTC and some of the 'Metal' like Dokken, Poison, Tesla, etc. I guess it didn't work. Or maybe Belo was tired of them. After that it seemed like there was nuthin' good on the radio, no matter what station you were tuning to. And that's when I became a tape junkie.

But what saddens me with the loss of radio, is the loss of the magic moments that sometimes happen. The first time something new comes blasting out of those speakers - the first time you hear the Black Crowes' Jealous Again or U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday or the Foo Fighters' Monkey Wrench or Pearl Jam's Evenflow and you go "What was THAT?!?" Or maybe you hear a song you've heard before, but this time it clicks and you go "Oh. OH! Now I get it." Or the DJ pulls some moldy oldie that you haven't heard in ages - or maybe you never heard and it sends you scurrying to the record store [or I guess iTunes now]: Dylan's Shelter From the Storm, Springsteen's The River, the Who doing Summertime Blues, Aerosmith's Rats In the Cellar, Neil Young's Powderfinger, Joe Walsh's County Fair.. or almost anything by the Kinks or Johnny Winter or Frank Zappa or PiL or X or Roxy Music... Where will kids find out about such things? It's what Michael Leone did for me and I try to pass it on. I guess people who make connection with the music will always find someone to say "You should check this out." At least I hope so.

I Miss My Rock & Roll

"These people want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars and they will strangle everything you love about it. They're trying to buy respectability for a form that is gloriously and righteously dumb. And the day it ceases to be dumb is the day it ceases to be real. Then it just becomes an industry of 'cool.'"
- Lester Bangs to William Miller, Almost Famous

Whether the real Lester Bangs uttered these words or words to this effect to a very young Cameron Crowe somewhere about 1973 will never be known except to the two persons involved in the conversation. Or is this Crowe's view from a standpoint almost two decades later as he wrote Almost Famous? Or some combination of both? Having the 20/20 hindsight and a review of the history of music from roughly the start of the rock and roll era, the words strike me harder this time I view the film [on Turner Classic Movies!]

Having read some Lester, the words are in line with Lester's thinking. And he was right - 'They" won. When the suits got the numbers from albums like Frampton Comes Alive, Rumours, Hotel California and [shudder] Saturday Night Fever, the war they had been fighting to have that blockbuster album that everyone "had" to have was won. And it did become and industry of 'cool,' heavy emphasis on 'industry.' There's a reason the record companies were taken over by big multinational conglomerates like Sony and Phillips in the 1980s. There was money to be made. And eventually, this is what killed the 'record company' or the 'music industry.' Being tied to an old business model, it wasn't able to adjust to the new technology once the CD was no longer the prime medium of delivery of the product [music]. Except to hard core idiots like me who still like holding the plastic and reading liner notes. But even I am slowly succumbing to the lure of the download, having hit up the Rhino and Merge websites for a few digital music purchases this year. [If Sony /Legacy would set this up instead of trying to make me go through Amazon, it would be a great day for music!]

I look back at the 1980s now... yes there was a lot of dumb resurfacing - some on purpose [The Replacements], some accidentally dumb [Poison] - and a lot of pushing 'cool.' At Sound Warehouse, we had a monthly music sampler the corporate pushed on us to make sure it played every two hours or whatever. Basically, someone had an album they were pushing and paid some dollars to get 'guaranteed airplay.' [Now you can't do that on radio - that's 'payola' and highly frowned upon, but to push it in the store? *sigh* This was the 80s and I guess greed was still good.]

I have been working on a maddening and enlightening set of projects - for myself really - making car CDs of two of the three major eras of my music listening. One is called 8 Track Flashback, covering an era from the late 60s to about 1980. The other is called Walkman Favorites, covering from about 1978 to about 1995, when cassette was my primary source of music playback - mostly in my vehicle. And I wonder as I wander though, looking for the tunes: Why that album? Why Then? Why was the world ready for [insert album] at this time and not before? And why not [insert more obscure band and/or album]? Why Frampton Comes Alive? Why was Springsteen / Born In the USA so huge in 1984-85, but when the follow up came out [Tunnel Of Love] it sank? Why did Billy Joel connect with so many people? Yeah, Billy made some good albums between 1977 and... say 1984, [and he made 52nd Street, which had its hit singles, but otherwise - bleh.] but why? Why do most casual music fans only know about one or two Thin Lizzy songs, but a whole wealth of the Zeppelin catalog? Why did Metallica explode into what they are while Megadeth or Anthrax are 'also rans?' Why R.E.M and not the Long Ryders or Lone Justice? Why are Pete Townshend and Andy Partridge so smart and Paul Westerberg the 'brain damaged cousin'?

Which is not to say I haven't enjoyed hearing some older stuff I haven't visited in a while. But side 2 of Billy Idol's Whiplash Smile? Uh... no. And I was so excited when that came out, too. Why do I still like side 2 of Billy Joel's Glass Houses so much? Or the Cars Panorama? How come me and Marty [and now Marty's 14 year old son] seem to be the only people who love the Black Crowes Amorica?

To Be Continued [or not]....

"I used to get a little speed, you know - a little cough syrup. And I'd just sit and write for hours. 20 pages of nothing but dribble on Coltrane or the Faces. Just to fuckin' write."
-Lester to William again, Almost Famous