Rock is dead they say.. Long Live Rock

“To absent friends, lost loves, old gods and the season of mists… and may each and every one of us give the devil his due.”  -Neil Gaiman

One of the rituals of air travel from Pittsburgh International is walking the bookstore. What caught my eye this time was Steven Hayden’s Twilight Of the Gods: A Journey to the End Of Classic Rock. Lordy, you know I am a sucker for rock and roll books! A journey to the end of rock and roll? Yes, please!

Hyden isn’t really saying that “Rock” is “dead” but more like the end is in sight for the Classic Rock era style and performers of that style. Just as McCartney and the Stones are the last links to the original era [albeit the tail end of the original era] of “Rock & Roll” before it was  ______ [insert easily understood generic label lice ‘Acid/Psychedelic, ‘Hard,’ ‘Soft/Smooth/Yacht’] Rock which would further be broken down to bits like “Thrash Metal,’ ‘Death Metal,’ ‘Doom  Metal,’ ‘Lipstick/Hairspray Faux Metal.’ 

And just like the original Rock & Roll took the blues from the Delta and Chicago and merged it with the country out of Nashville into a ‘new’ sound, what is listed under “Rock” today has taken bits from the Classic Rock era and merged it with the Indie [i.e. non-commercial] revival, Americana, Grunge,  hip hop, etc and is now something that sounds nothing like what I as a “Classic Rock Era” guy think “Rock” should sound like. [I had deduced this about oh, 1994 when Green Day  arose and Pearl Jam told me via Vitalogy that “This is not for [you]” Me.  And Pantera. And Korn. And Limp Biscuit and “Nu Metal.” ]

But Hyden’s main argument is that those 60’s and 70’s originals [Stones, McCartney, Bruce, Elton, Aerosmith, etc.] are on their last legs. They may be playing great, having fun and raking in the cash on the road or at casino residencies in Las Vegas but at some point, the last classic rocker will perish [even Keith Richards] and all we will have left is the Myth, the Legend and the Legacy of the Classic Rock era.  

 Hyden notes “When people say ‘Rock Is Dead,’ they’re making a statement about themselves – they’re saying ‘This thing that once mattered to me is now dead to me.’

I will use the personal example of Wilco. Wilco up through 2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was one of those new, exciting bands I got into. But 200’s A Ghost Is Born was weird, a misstep IMO. [Jeff Tweedy’s addiction to painkillers explained some of this weirdness but not enough for me to forgive or enjoy that record.] I enjoyed 2007’s Sky Blue Sky enough to buy 2009’s Wilco [The Album]. Which is an okay album I guess – it just don’t have anything particularly exciting or memorable. Or upbeat. 2011’s The Whole Love seemed a return to YHF / Summerteeth. [I really enjoy the 12 minute Dylanesque One Sunday Morning.] But Star Wars [2015] seemed too left field and I just decided to jump off the Wilco train once and for all. Was Jeff Tweedy asking too much of me to follow all of his weird little left turns? Was I just no longer interested in committing myself to immersing myself into a record and learning to love those little quirks and left turns the way I used to? In reality, I think a little of the former and a lot of the latter.

Just like revisiting Ric Ocasek’s solo work when he passed. Ric’s solo records are pretty good “pop” records, really not far from The Cars’ records. But We the Public At Large weren’t ‘into’ that anymore. We would rather enjoy our blasts of the late 70’s / early 80’s Cars [the familiar] than sit down with something new. The same way that when the Who will say “here’s something from our new record” on this tour the queue for the bathroom and the beer stand will suddenly fill up. Had Ric brought in the ever loyal Greg Hawkes and three other guys and called them “The Cars” we might still be hailing Fireball Zone as a “great return to form for these guys.”

The next sentences after the “dead to me” is this:

The flip side is that every year there is a new group of teenagers for whom the world is being created just as they’re discovering it for the first time. Anything that existed before them might as well have been around forever.

My own journey through rock is well documented here and there. I was brought up in the “Classic Rock” era and there are albums that my parents had that are the bedrock of my musical knowledge.  Jo0e Cocker, Elton John, Creedence, Three Dog Night, BTO . There were thing that were new then that became the substructure of – Frampton, Steve Miller Band, Ohio Players, ELO, the Cars. And as a teen in love with the music I went back to the 60s and found the Beatles, those early Rolling Stones records, the Door, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi, Zappa, Trower, Zeppelin… those bands and people that FM radio had been filling me up with when I was listening instead of doing my homework.

 Hyden himself was brought up on the Classic Rock his parents played but was also young enough so that a band like Weezer was to him what The Cars are to me – one of those “my era” bands that you follow thorough their career . I guess it seems weird to me that like my neighbor Matt who has “Classic Rock” knowledge but whose musical history actually started with say the Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magic or Pearl Jam’s Ten. Kids in his high school were listening to bands that make me cringe – Nickelback, Creed. But to him, Nickelback strikes the twinge of nostalgia that I get hearing A Flock Of Seagulls or Devo.

I admit it and not that this is a surprise to anyone – I DID name my blog Chaz Is A Music Snob after all – I am a music snob. Like my musical guru J. Michael Leone, I remain tied to my era and while there may be things that come along that I enjoy [the Hold Steady and Black Rebel Motorcyle Club for example] by and large I am contented to fill in the holes in my 70s – 80s era. Delving into Jethro Tull and the Moody Blues – two bands I swore that I hated - and finding some of it enjoyable is beyond something I would have thought in 1995, 2000, 2010… There is still a permanent order at Born Late though that if I come in asking for Yes to lock me down, call the men in the white suits and my mother.

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to get into 1990s Van Halen [OR David Lee Roth] or 80s Jethro Tull but I am still finding stuff that I can get into.

But like Rock & Roll morphed into “Rock” what is music now really has no interest for me. I don’t consume new music like I used to. I don’t really even consume old “new to me” records like I would have. I make my own little “Classic Rock” CDs that I can stand with little Boston, little Styx and deep cuts of Skynyrd, Zeppelin, etc.

There will always be the people looking for the next thing to blow their mind – and they find them, God bless them. Some of them will be the children of my neighbors who will one day look at me in awed wonder and ask “Did you REALLY see Neil Young and Sonic Youth back in 1992? Can you tell us more about Deep Purple?”

I guess that this little book helped me define how I feel about what I have felt missing from my musical life. Hyden sums it up very  eloquently:

Classic rock will always be my country – it’s where I come from, and the place that still feels like home in spite of the countless ways my life has changed since middle school . That doesn’t mean I can’t see or criticize the flaws – the suppression of women and colr, the glorification of alcohol and drug abuse, the reactionary conservatism, the endless Woodstock retrospectives, the phony Satanism, the drum solo, the stubborn sleaziness of Gene Simmons. My love for classic rock is complicated but remains undying.

I wish I had said that. Check that book out.

Ric

It was My Best Friend’s Girl.

That’s the one that caught my ear. Sometime in the late 70s we visited my grandmother who lived in the projects in Ambridge and one of the neighbors took us down the hill to run to the bank and the grocery and in her car she had a cassette of that immortal first Cars album. While I waited in the car, My Best Friend’s Girl came on. That first riff is a hook, the hand claps are a hook, the backing vocals are a hook and that little galloping riff Elliot Easton throws in after the chorus [stolen from the Beatles I Will] is a stolen hook! It's hooky as hell and fuck it is so fun! One has to be one of the lowest living catfish NOT to be hooked by it.

I suppose that only weirdos like me “Schreive” from Diner remember moments that change their lives [and B-sides] by music. Or when music changes your life.

Over the next 8-10 years I would fall in love with the band and [most] of their output. I’d search B-sides for non-Lp tracks, buy the extended dance mix of one song. I’d replace vinyl with CDs and CDs with remastered CDs only to be confounded by a second remaster with the bonus tracks I hadn’t gotten in my box set. Fortunately Amazon cured some of those missing tracks. But hearing My Best Friend’s Girl that day or hearing Let’s Go blasting out of radios on the bus next to Journey and the Knack...[ and by the way, let's hear that snigger up your sleeve getting thing past the censors LP cut of Good Girls Don't here and there.] 6 albums over 10 years. Far less than the Clash put out in their 5 best years and not counting The New Cars or 2011’s so-so Ben Orr-less Move Like This. [Why the band wouldn’t bring in a bassist / 2nd vocalist like ex-Utopia Kasim Sulton... ah but that’s another rant.] Let me just say IMNHO, a Cars without Ben Orr was a sin. Ben’s vocals were natural and warm against Ric Ocasek’s sometimes cold, distant and robotic tone.

Ric Ocasek was the man behind the machine. As the song writer [although keyboardist Greg Hawkes occasionally got a co-writing credit] he apparently led with an iron first in a velvet glove. Those huge sunglasses of the early years were meant to hide behind. But the songs!!! On those 6 Cars albums I can count the total stink bombs on one hand. There are three or four “Best /Greatest” compilations and I don’t need to go over the songs because they are STILL staples of FM radio. AOR style “Classic Rock” and certainly any “Hits of Yesteryear” station. And that’s is it should be. The Cars were one of those bands that EVERYBODY could agree on.

My favorite, though it is not their best, is Panorama. It was the first one I owned and I played it to death. Not as pop or polished as The Cars or Candy-O and frequently missed by those “hits” because Touch And Go wasn’t a great big smash. But I have never cared what anyone else thought. Yeah I know all of the other Cars records are damn catchy, although for a long time I resented “Mutt” Lange’s treatments on Heartbeat City. I relented after listening on the box set. But it is still probably my least favorite as a whole though there are great songs like Drive, Magic and You Might Think. 

Ric’s first two solo records Beatitude and This Side Of Paradise were much darker than the songs that appeared on the Cars records. Beatitude remains another of those unsung records that got me through my teenage years. They frequently made my mix tape love letters to a girl who really never liked me as much as I wanted.

In the first or second week of summer break in 1984, I dragged myself up to the Sears at Seminary South mall about 7:30, 8:00 to get in line for Cars tickets. In that old lime green ‘73 Duster with the cassette deck bolted under the dash. About a dozen of use hung around, then rushed upstairs to Ticketmaster when they opened. I got lower balcony, dead center, maybe 15 rows up. Dad drove / went with me and we got bonked on the head by two girls dancing and shouting “Wang Chung is EXCELLENT!” [This was the Dance Hall Days Wang Chung, a couple of years before Everybody Have Fun or even To Live And Die In L.A. Still I bought Points On the Curve that summer because of that show and it too remains one of those teenage favorite albums.] The concert was fairly straight forward, no lasers, fire or smoke bombs.

I guess I gave up on Ric - really kind of moved on musically in the gap between the Cars [somewhat disappointing, though history shows it's held up very well after the first two songs] Door To Door [1987, same day as Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation] and Ric’s 1991 Fireball Zone. It’s a shame because listening to it now it’s a fine record, as good as any of his solo records. But by then “We” had moved into louder, lipsticked and hair sprayed bands, then louder, angrier, flannel dressed bands, then... I don’t know. Ric’s pop rock was passe to radio. Not that we listened to Top 40 radio anymore. Ric hadn’t changed, we had and he got lost to a lot of us. But he was still active. Ric went behind the desk, producing Weezer, the Bad Brains, Suicide, Romeo Void, D Generation, a couple of No Doubt songs (don’t ask me if they were hits, I don’t get No Doubt), Bad Religion, Nada Surf and others. Not so much in the last decade, Ric certainly earned the right to drop out and live the life of a retired rock star. He apparently approved the Cars last remasters sometime in the last couple of years.

An now one of the great songwriters of our generation is gone. Ric’s legacy is no doubt cemented in rock and roll history. The Cars first album and Shake It Up are pure masterpieces, the right mix of technology, synthesizers and guitars in rock and roll without losing the human element.

Thanks, Ric. Really. Thanks a lot. There will always be a spot in my heart for your music.

Band Of Bothers

So I am watching Band Of Brothers – yes, not exactly cheery, feel good Saturday morning fare episodes 9 & 10. Episode 9 is titled “Why We Fight.” This is where the unit crosses into Germany and discovers one of the concentration / slave labor camps. My grandfather was in the ETO [102^nd Div, 405^th Infantry – see more here http://www.lonesentry.com/102thrugermany/index.html]. I had never specifically asked about such things but according to the pamphlet, outside of Gardelagen  in April ’45 “…Monday morning were found the charred and smoking bodies of over 300 slave laborers, prisoners of the Nazis who had been deliberately burned to death by their captors. Freshly dug common graves in nearby fields mutely emphasized the haste with which all evidence of this atrocity was being concealed. Another day and no trace would have remained. Investigation disclosed that 1016 political and military prisoners had perished [t]here.”

Grandpap never talked to me about combat – other than one apparently fresh from the states Lieutenant who walked down the middle of a road despite all warning from combat vets and got himself killed. If I had asked, he may have tried to describe such a thing but maybe not. Maybe he would simply have explained that there was no way to describe or explain it. Did those sights, smells, memories haunt his dreams until he passed? I don’t know. 

I never asked if he “understood” or “questioned” what he was fighting for. I doubt I understood at the time though I had – we both had - seen BoB. He once told someone that Grandma would “never have understood what [he] saw and went through over there.” But on the other hand he would never have understood what she would have been going through with him over there and two young daughters to take care of. Did SHE understand or question why her husband was sent halfway around the world to fight? I don’t know. 

With age comes the insight to ask such things but alas the time of my grandparents has passed. What I do know is that my grandfather returned to the softly rolling hills of Beaver County and lived the rest of his days in peace. Amen.

Looking for the landmarks
Of a youth long gone
Most have been erased
By time and progress that keeps marching on
New strip centers a dime a dozen
Filling a much needed green space
Some re-purposed,
Same spot, new name, new occupation
Some just empty
Boarded up
Decaying day by day
It's like returning to a town rebuilt after a war;
Some placed survive but not unchanged
Similar but not the same
Disorienting as if in a dream
But clearly wide wake

Rock N Roll Short Takes # 2 - The Rolling Stones
In a career spanning [as of this writing] 574 years.. whoops! 57 years and 23 studio albums, and just as many live albums [or more now with the From the Vault series] and in the mid-teens for compilation sets, the Stones have surprisingly few totally essential albums. Now having an 8 year gap between albums 21 & 22 and 12 years between 22 & 23 certainly doesn't add prolific to their list of accomplishments. There will be only two albums that have different US and UK track listings, I will use the CD versions for these two compilations that use the US versions. So let's start there.

Big Hits [High Tides & Green Grass] & Through the Past, Darkly [Big Hits, Vol. 2]
These two collections from 1966 and 1969 respectively will cover most everything one needs from the early Stones years. Big Hits has [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction, It's All Over Now, The Last Time, 19th Nervous Breakdown and Get Off My Cloud. Through the Past has the non-LP singles Jumpin' Jack Flash and Honky Tonk Women plus Paint It Black, Ruby Tuesday, Let's Spend the Night Together, She's A Rainbow and 200 Light Years From Home. The only reason I go with these two sets over the Hot Rocks collection is the duplicate songs from the Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers albums. With these two albums, the only duplicate song is Street Fighting Man. 
Taken together, these two albums rate an 8.5 / 10. I'd say they are the 5th and 6th most essential Stones albums, Through the Past ahead of Big Hits.

Beggar's Banquet - 1968's Beggar's Banquet is the album that probably was the turning point leading into the Stones becoming The World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band. Very acoustic and very rural the album touches on country [Dear Doctor, the first appearance of Jagger's country twang voice], country-blues [No Expectations, Prodigal Son], a touch of Appalachia {Factory Girl] and the beginnings of the Stones' version of their blues-rock [Parachute Woman, Stray Cat Blues]. But it's most remembered for thew two incendiary side opening tracks, Sympathy For the Devil and Street Fighting Man. Contrary to popular myth, Sympathy For the Devil was NOT the song being played when Meredith Hunter was stabbed by the Hell's Angels. [It was Under My Thumb.] And Street Fighting Man was banned a lot of places, too hot for the times, although Jagger decried "It's stupid to think you can start a revolution with a record." Compared to what the Beatles were doing - slowly disintegrating and drifting away from each other, the Stones had basically locked their problem child out and Keith Richards completely took over, locking himself and Jagger in as the band's leaders.The Stones would shortly fire Brian Jones from the band he started. But this is the metamorphosis album for what was to come.
I rate this 9 / 10 but it's only the 4th most  essential Stones album.

Let It Bleed - Let It Bleed is the Stones album I resisted the most. Mostly because it included the heavily overplayed You Can't Always Get What You Want. Which after years of avoiding I can occasionally tolerate and now the most annoying Stones song goes to Start Me Up, followed VERY QUICKLY by Sympathy For the Devil and Dead Flowers. But as I've mellowed a bit and really analyzed the Stones catalog, I've come to determine that Let It Bleed is the most important Stones album. This is where it all came together The anger of Street Fighting Man is now the enflamed dire warning of Gimme Shelter. The seedy pervert of Stray Cat Blues is the hopped up maniac of Monkey Man and the anti-hero of Live With Me. The country-blues comes through on a devastatingly understated take on Robert Johnson's Love In Vain and the fun acoustic take of Honky Tonk Women, Country Honk and of course the title track. The under rated track here is Midnight Rambler. Of course I prefer the live version from Get Your Ya Yas Out because it shows what the Stones do - they lock into a groove and just ride it, the band huddles together and Jagger blows harp and they just groove.
This rates a 10 / 10 and is the best and The Most Essential Stones album. 

Sticky Fingers - While Let It Bleed is the essential Rolling Stones album, Sticky Fingers is the DEFINITIVE Rolling Stones album. This is one you would hand to anyone who asks "What are Rolling Stones all about?" The two kind of go hand in hand since some of the songs were already around [Sister Morphine dates back to 1968]. But this is where the Stones gelled into the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band. At least four of these songs are Stone cold Stones classics: Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, Can't You Hear Me Knocking and Bitch. Brown Sugar may be the quintessential Rolling Stones track - I'll hear arguments for Start Me Up but I'll be hard to Sway [hee hee]. Brown Sugar probably defines the Stones of this era, i.e. the Mick Taylor years: Keith locking into the groove and Mick Taylor throwing out beautiful lines almost effortlessly. [Bobby Keys sax solo was tacked on much later but remains an essential part of the song to this day]. Wild Horses was given to Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers but the Stones take here is just amazing - dripping with a pain, weariness and honesty that the ever defensive Jagger rarely gets to. It took a long time for me to connect I Got the Blues to it's real roots - the great Stax Records soul ballads, particularly Otis Redding's These Arms Of Mine. Unbelievably there are two tracks with no Keith [except vocals on Sway]. Mick Taylor plays admirably on Sway - I would like to hear a longer ride out one day - and absolutely beautifully on Moonlight Mile. Slide guitar virtuoso Ry Cooder plays on Sister Morphine - this is apparently where Keith leaned /"stole" the Open G tuning which he would make his trademark sound. I can forgive the former kitschy favorite now nails on a blackboard to me Dead Flowers - in a few years it may fall back into rotation like Shattered has. This is still vital Rolling Stones.
I rate this a 9 /10 and would declare this the 2nd Most Essential Stones album - I might even go 1a with Let It Bleed - they are that close.

Exile On Main Street - now lauded as the best and Most Essential Rolling Stones album [It's not.], this sprawling double disc set still rates very high in the greater scheme of the Rolling Stones catalog. Eight of the first ten cuts are truly essential listening for any fan of rock & roll and anyone interested in the Rolling Stones in  particular. My personal problem with Exile has always been the side three tracks Turd On the Run, Ventilator Blues and I Just Want To See His Face. These tracks feel like filler, throwaways added to pad out the record to for sides. The rest of the songs play out wonderfully, All Down the Line and Soul Survivor bordering on essential Stones tracks. The album veers all over stylistically - the gospel tinged Let It Loose and Shine A Light, the countyish Sweet Virginia, the blues of Shake Your Hips and Stop Breaking Down, the breakneck rockabilly of Rip This Joint and the soulful Loving Cup. And then there are songs that one can only describe as Rolling Stones songs: Rocks Off, Tumbling Dice, Happy and the Us Against the World of Casino Boogie and my personal favorite Torn And Frayed. Still for all it's greatness and really, really good, I can't forgive the duds of side three.
I rate this 8 / 10 and consider it the 3rd Most Essential Stones album.

After these Essential Stones albums, the catalog then falls into which era of the Stones you like. Some Girls was the first Stones record I bought, maybe one of the first 10 albums I ever bought [1978? That's about right.] and the second Stones album I was exposed to [Mom bought Black & Blue into the house - almost universally panned, it remains a personal favorite]. Some Girls is one of those records you like a lot but if you're paring your collection down would be one of the last ones sold - but you could and would sell it. A lot of people would put Tattoo You on the list of Essential Stones records - and good for them. When I listen to it, the first side - the fast, groovy side carries the whole record. There are a couple of good songs on the second side -  Heaven and Waiting On A Friend - but nothing else that makes you for the car CDs. They're as forgettable as much of the Emotional Rescue album.

Rock N Roll Short Takes # 1 - The Beatles
  I just felt the need to address some things in a bit of an expanded way but not necessarily completely. In this case, addressing the best, the most essential and the most over-rated, in my never humble opine of course. in addressing the Beatles catalog, I will use the now universal British catalog / CD issues.

A Hard Day's Night - the first completely original [i.e no covers] Beatles album, this is the pinnacle of the early "rock & roll" period of the Beatles, if just for the singles A Hard Day's Night and Can't Buy Me Love.But it also contains two of their best early ballads, Paul's And I Love Her and John's If I Fell. It's also chock full of joyous upbeat songs with great harmonies [Tell Me Why, When I Get Home] and George's I'm Happy Just To Dance With You is a pretty good toe tapper. You Can't Do That is one of the great early riffs that might be necessary to get to I Feel Fine, Ticket To Ride and Day Tripper.
Rate it an 8 / 10. 5th most essential.

Rubber Soul - After the mishmash of Help! which found John very under the spell of Robert Zimmerman [Help!, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away], the band knocked this gem [plus the non-LP double A sided Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out] out in a mere two weeks of sessions. Again very acoustic and organic [i.e. Dylanesque] it again shows Lennon leading the way with very honest [Norwegian Wood, In My Life] sometimes cutting [Nowhere Man, Girl and especially Run For Your Life] lyrics and his first call for universal love The Word. Paul adds two excellent numbers in Michelle and I'm Looking Through You George's If I Needed Someone is pretty good and the Buck Owens-ish spotlight for Ringo [Lennon-McCartney-Starkey credited] What Goes On features great harmonies and a pretty good vocal from Ringo. And then there's the sheer silliness and fun of Mac-Len's Drive My Car. For people who wonder why Paul McCartney is considered in innovative and creative bass player, I suggest getting an earful of his work on The Word and What Goes On.
I rate this an absolute 9 / 10. Taken with the Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out single, I think that this is The Most Essential of all Beatles albums.

Revolver - Revolver may be the most important album in the Beatles catalog and among the most important in rock & roll. In their search for new sounds, the engineers invented ADT [Artificial Double Tracking"], variable speed recording, close up miking of instruments and the use of backwards tapes. Plus for John's The Void [later rechristened Tomorrow Never Knows], the ran John's voice through the rotating speaker of a Leslie organ [2nd verse]. [Lennon suggested an opposite approach - hanging him by his feet  from a rope and swinging that / him around a microphone, an idea Martin told Lennon he 'was working on' but never got tried.] As for the songs, it's more an electric than acoustic record and by this time at least John and George had tried LSD. Lennon contributes the acid tinged She Said, She Said , the lazy drifting I'm Only Sleeping, the tale of the pill pushing Dr. Robert and the acidic jab of And Your Bird Can Sing. Paul adds the wonderful For No One [one of my faves by Paul], Elanor Rigby and the rubbery soul of Got To Get You Into My Life [an ode to Mary Jane and I don't mean any girl, nudge wink]. Two of George's numbers are very good, the sneering lead off Taxman [with brilliant bass work and guitar solo by Paul] and Love You Too are pretty good. Unfortunately, the album also has the damnable cutesy ear-worm Yellow Submarine. But that can be forgiven in the grander scheme of things.
I have to rate this a 9 /10 also. Taking this album and the criminally under rated non-LP single Paperback Writer / Rain as a whole, I'd say this is the 2nd most essential  Beatles album.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Billed as a concept album [It's really not other than McCartney suggesting that the Beatles can pretend to be another band so they could experiment (further) with the music and sounds andf the removal of the little 2-3 second break between the songs.], SPLHCB is the album most everyone claims is the most important in rock & roll [As I just told you, it's not.] and a favorite. I get it. I do. There's still a lot of innovative sounds and some absolutely knock your socks off songs. IMHO, the clams [Within You Without You, When I'm Sixty-Four (the start of Paul's musical pablum songs like Honey Pie, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Hello Goodbye and Your Mother Should Know)]  are less forgivable. Stating for the record again: the final song, A Day In the Life is the best thing the Beatles ever put on record. The whole first side flows most wonderfully. SPLHCB into Ringo's vocal for the album With A Little Help From My Friends into John's NOT ABOUT ACID Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds into Getting Better, Fixing A Hole, She's Leaving Home and Being For the Benefit Of Mr. Kite [inspired by an 1840s circus poster Lennon had]. The remaining bits: Paul's Lovely Rita [a fave of mine also], John's Good Morning Good Morning [inspired by a breakfast cereal commercial] and the reprise of SPLHCB are okay as well. I will state here also, a lot of the records the critics and people who blindly follow then cry are the best aare usually not in my opine. An example being the Beach Boys Pet Sounds. It's okay but I don't get all the fuss, especially if one compares it to the groundbreaking Rubber Soul or Revolver. This is one of those cases. But here's a kicker - one has to include the non-LP single , the first two songs cut - Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane when considering this album. This adds points, a lot of points.
I rate this a 9 / 10 also.  I'd say it's the 3rd most essential Beatles album.

Abbey Road - Abbey Road was the last Beatles album recorded and according to all, it was an attempt to get back to the Beatles old way of making music. In the end they compromised, played nice, played well mostly together and generally acted tolerant of each other. Anyone seeing the dour Let It Be movie [done a mere 6 months earlier] would never have thought this was possible. It's an impressive piece of work even though it has little to actually say and doesn't break a lot of new ground. Aside from the clanger of Maxwell's Silver Hammer ["God that was so fruity" Harrison opined; Lennon called it "more of Paul's granny music"] the songs are pretty good. Even Ringo's Octopus' Garden is catchy in a not cringe inducing way. George steals the show with his hit single Something and the FM staple Here Comes the Sun. [He also helped Ringo arrange Octopus' Garden which shows again some fluid country type playing.] Paul's Oh! Darling is another clssic, sort of a cousin to Lady Madonna, Hey Jude and Don't Let Me Down.[Lennon stated in his Playboy interview "He should have let me sing it - it's more my style anyway."] John's I Want You [She's So Heavy] may be too much for some people but it's a great interplay between the band and Billy Preston on organ. Also one of those songs on which McCartney shows his innovation as bass player. And then there's the medley. For jamming together 1 song [You Never Give Me Your Money] and 7 unrelated little bits of "songlets" it's pretty impressive. Taking this album with the non-LP single The Ballad Of John And Yoko / Old Brown Shoe but with it's lack of much groundbreaking it's merely damn good.
I rate it again 9/10 but I'd say it's only the 4th most essential Beatles album.

After these five, the idea of 'essential" Beatles begins to come down to what you like in the catalog. Some would say Magical Mystery Tour because the CD includes I Am the Walrus and the non-LP singles Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, All You Need Is Love and Baby You're A Rich Man.In the era of Amazon, I'd say pick and choose the songs you like.Unless these essentials turn you into a full fledged Beatles nut / completest, I'd say the two collections 1962 - 1966, 1967 - 1970 can do you pretty good,.

Rod & Woody

Rod and Woody

Remaking my Faces travel CD and also putting together my Rod Stewart [Mercury Years] CDs for the car. As I have mentioned before, the two are inextricably linked, along with Ron Wood’s I’ve Got My Own Album to Do [1974] and the first two Jeff Beck Group records.

   I got the Faces ‘Box set” Five Guys Walk Into a Bar kind of by accident. Me and Brother Nate went to the closing of the short lived Virgin store up on Central and it caught my eye. I asked Nate and he was all over it “Man, you’ve GOT to have this.” At the time I had a Best Of which I liked most of [Borstal Boys – no thanks.]  but not the deeper catalog. In spite of an unnecessary 3^rd version of Miss Judy’s Farm instead of another great track like Fly In the Ointment and/or Nobody Knows and using the short version of Maybe I’m Amazed [although a live take makes up for it] it’s a really, really good set. Of course it’s 4 CDs for a band that only made 4 albums and a poorly done live record, so one could argue for just putting the 4 albums and then a wealth of BBC recordings and rehearsals and out takes. But compiler and keyboardist, the late Ian McLagan [“Mac”] said he sat down and started with Flying, which he followed with On the Beach, Too Bad… following the flow not unlike how I do my own CDs. Also included are some ‘covers’ of Rod and Woody’s  ‘solo’ tunes [more on that in a bit] like Maggie May, Take A Look At the Guy, [I Know] I’m Losing You and Cut Across Shorty, plus the standard rock, blues  and soul that all of the bands of the era cut.

Stewart’s solo albums themselves are full of covers – one part of being on 10 albums in 5 years. Like Joe Cocker, Rod is a wonderful interpreter of other people’s words and Rod’s voice is the only one of a very rare few that can pull off [If Loving You Is Wrong] I Don’t Want To Be Right or [I Know] I’m Losing You. Like David Ruffin, there is just soul in his voice – a soul that can tell you of the pain and sorrow of the breakup or the joy of being with someone who lights up your world or the weariness of the world traveler so far from home.  Rolling Stone once said his solo albums “were defined by two special qualities: warmth, which was redemptive, and modesty, which was liberating. If ever any rocker chose the role of everyman and lived up to it, it was Rod Stewart.” Rod also had the smarts to surround himself with top players for his own records [when he wasn’t using the Faces Ronnie Lane, Mac and Kenny Jones , sometimes credited, sometimes not]. Steamhammer Martin Quittenton and ex-JBG drummer Mickey Waller played huge roles on Every Picture Tells A Story, Never A Dull Moment and Smiler. And that’s not Nicky Hopkins on the piano, it’s the multi-talented Pete Sears [soon to join Jefferson Starship].

Then there is “Woody.” My beloved musical mentor J. Michael Leone of opined that Wood was the “absolute worst choice that the Rolling Stones could have made to replace Mick Taylor.” Which I get. Woody is not a ‘lead guitar’ player in the style of Taylor who could reel off incredibly beautiful licks at the drop of a hat [see Time Waits For No One]. But conversely, I don’t think Keith Richards and Taylor had that magical weaving that Keith loves – two guitars weaving in and around each other in a way that you can’t tell who is playing what. Having said that, there is no doubt that what Woody said in the Stones Shine A Light movie is right – “He [Keith] KNOWS I am [the better guitarist].”  One has only to put on a track like the Faces My Fault or Bad N Ruin to hear what Woody can do. Ironically, it’s one of Wood’s rare turns on the lead mike on the recently commercially featured Ooh La La.  I hope it drives some more folks to check out the Faces and discover some of the goodies waiting there.

Of course it couldn’t last. Eventually Rod killed the Faces, moved to L.A. [Atlantic Crossing] for nicer weather and lower taxes and freed Woody to join the Stones. The Stones auditioned a lot opf players – Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher [neither of whom would put up with Jagger or Keith for long – it’s much nicer being the boss than a side man], Eric Clapton [who famously told Woody when he arrived next “I’m a much better player than YOU” to Which Woody replied “No argument – but you’re gonna have to live with the guys too!” Woody was right, Clapton would have been dead in short order.] and almost settled on Muscle Shoals session man Wayne Perkins. But in the end, it was Woody notably for being British. He basically passed the audition as a sideman for the Stones 1975 tour [between Faces tours mind you].

“I wanted someone that was easy to get on with, you know, that wasn't too difficult and that was a good player and was used to playing onstage," Jagger said. "It's quite a lot to ask of someone to come and do a big American tour with a band like the Stones, you know? I mean, not that I think the Stones are any really big deal, but it tends to be a bit of a paralyzing experience for people.”

Rod never did capture the same spirit of the Faces entirely – Hot Legs kind of does – had a few good not great but better than Smiler records in the latter half of the 70s, did that disco song , had some more hits in the 80s but by the 2000s he was not much more than a nostalgia act cutting oldies and standards

Wood kicked the Stones in the ass and they did Some Girls [very good] and Emotional Rescue [has its moments] in short order. He acted as ‘lukewarm water’ between the fire and ice of the Glimmer Twins through the choppy waters of the 80s and was finally ‘made’ in 1990. [Up until then he was just a ‘hired gun.’] He also did sessions painted, partied and put out a solo album every decade.  But his job is basically riding shotgun to Keith and being a foil onstage for Mick Jagger.

But there’s still the music of that magical period. Tthe 4 Faces , 5 Rod Stewart and Wood’s own 2 records [I’ve Got My Own Album To Do and Now Look]  in a six year blast.  It can’t happen again – no record company would let anyone over expose themselves like that anymore and one supposes that one must crank it out while you can while you’re young.  But it’s all there on the vinyl or CD or streaming service. I would recommend listening on a real set of actual speakers placed around a room or a real set of 70s or 80’s era headphones like my ancient but trusty Realistic [i.e. Radio Shack] Nova 40s. This music is meant to move air and let the sound breathe, not be compressed and jammed down your ears through ‘ear buds.’  Let it breathe, let it bleed, go ride the music.