Henry Rollins tells it like it us

His music ain’t my style, but Henry Rollins is a cool guy.  He’s got the muscle to back up his talk, too.

You gotta love him looking out for the working people on tour.

Joe Walsh: an unheralded rock legend

Maybe I give the place too much credit by talking about it, but what the heck.  A guy that needs to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work outside his most famous group, the Eagles, is Joe Walsh.  Joe Rocks.  Of course, his talent has been recognized since he was an important addition to one of the biggest selling rock bands of all time.   His solo work, or stuff with the James Gang, is, in my ever so humble opinion, vastly more interesting than the Eagles’ music.  It surely rocks harder.

Joe’s also one of the most entertaining guys in rock history.  He’s a great interview; completely hysterical.  It’s impossible not to like him after hearing him for a few minutes doing a radio interview.  Although he’s been clean and sober for years, he still sounds drunk (but makes more sense than a drinker.)

One of my favorite from Joe’s catalog

Rest in peace Etta James

Sadly, one of the most beautiful singers of the past century has passed on.  I don’t profess to know a lot of her catalog, but like just about everyone else, I love “At Last.”  It’s one of the most incredible vocal performances in popular music that these ears have ever heard.

http://music.yahoo.com/news/legendary-blues-singer-etta-james-dies-calif-163709371.html

VH goes acoustic

and makes a documentary with Roth.  Interesting.

http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/–223429483

http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/video-gaga/never-seen-van-halen-really-got-acoustic-david-165118289.html

SMiLE (Random Thoughts Part 2)

A month or more ago, I took disc 1 of The SMiLE Sessions and SmileySmile, mixed the SmileySmile songs in where they seemed to fit with SMiLE, and made a SMiLE-SmileySmile CD.  Where the songs were on both albums, I used only the SMiLE versions (as they are superior, for the most part.) That’s what I’ve been listening to (instead of those other albums separately.)

Ironically, when Brian was in what some believe to be one of the worst periods in his life emotionally and physically, he was fixated on health.  ”Vega-tables” was intended for SMiLE and a weaker version made SmileySmile.  It calls for the listener to brush his teeth, walk and get lots of exercise.  Then there’s the happy snippet “I’m In Great Shape.”  ”Gettin’ Hungry” is about longing for a woman (and obviously sex), but I can’t help but think Brian was inspired by food.

I wonder where the food and health-themed songs fit in the symphonic tale Brian and Van Dyke Parks were trying to tell.  Maybe — and I’m stabbing in the dark a bit — the food thing goes with the idea that SMiLE’s Americana thing.  After all, Brian would have grown up with the birth of fast food chains and drive-in burger joints.  By the late 60′s, people began thinking of food from a health-conscious point of view.  That food and physical fitness were on the Beach Boys’ minds just as Mike Love was about ready to dive head-first into Transcendental Meditation seems to make sense.

That Paul McCartney is known to have chomped on vegetables during the recording of “Vega-Tables” is perfect considering his later conversion to vegetarianism and (mild) animal activism.

Hey, Wolfie can really shred!

I had no idea the boy had such skills! He’s really good.  It shouldn’t surprise me given the musical talent in his genes.

After 16 years…

we finally get a new Van Halen-David Lee Roth song.   “Tattoo” debuts tomorrow.  Preview clips were available online, but UMG has pulled them all due to copyright.

Here’s the purported track listing for the new album which will be released in a month.

01. Tattoo
02. She’s The Woman
03. You and Your Blues
04. China Town
05. Blood and Fire
06. Bullethead
07. As Is
08. Honeybabysweetiedoll
09. The Trouble With Never
10. Outta Space
11. Stay Frosty
12. Big River
13. Beats Workin’

A Different Kind of Truth

Van Halen’s new album, A Different Kind of Truth, is set to hit stores on February 7.  The first single, “Tattoo,”  will debut on January 10.  Finally we’ll have new Van Halen material.  It’s been a long time.

New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2011

For my generation, Dick Clark’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” was the show to watch on New Year’s Eve.  We were too young to go out for the evening, so most of us stayed up to watch the ball drop and then bang on pots and pans or light firecrackers (not at my place.)  The only alternative to that was Guy Lombardo, which is what my grandmother would have had on if I were at her place.

I don’t really have much reason to watch “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” anymore.  I’m not big on most of the current pop stars.  Most NYE’s the last 20 years have been spent out of the house.  But I did watch last night, half enthralled with the spectacle of it.  A few things stood out.

• Lady Gaga doesn’t have necessarily a nice voice, but she can belt out a song.  There are not many entertainers of her caliber.  Without a doubt, it’s fun to watch Lady Gaga just to see what she wears.  I think the globe-like thing she was wearing when she first hit the stage was supposed to be the NYE crystal ball.  A friend suggested she was symbolically wearing a burka which covered the globe, but which was later lifted (symbolizing freedom, I s’pose.)  Only she knows.
• Thank God for Ryan Seacrest.  Dick Clark is a great guy and a legend, but that stroke really did a lot of damage.  He can hardly talk.  Seacrest, love him or hate him, really did a good job putting on that show.
• Jenny McCarthy is a nice sort of side-line hostess.  She’s been goofy and sassy since her MTV days.
• Justin Bieber’s a nice kid… more on that in a moment
• Pitbull looks and sounds more like a cage fighter than a rapper-singer.  Not my style.

Now, Justin Bieber tackling The Beatles’ “Let It Be” can’t be ignored.  You can imagine that doing a song like that, on a stage of that size, would draw either a lot of praise or criticism.  It’s drawn both and deserves both.  Kudos to Justin for having the guts to play a song that could only put him in a lose-lose position, at least with older fans.  If he pulls it off, “It’s a great song to begin with so how could you screw it up?”  If he flops, “The kid is a no-talent pretty boy who just showed he’s incapable of actually singing a song.”  Being a Beatles fan and not a Belieber, I say the kid did alright.  The band behind him help.  They played a very clean, stripped down version of the song.  No horns and strings and stuff; guitar, bass, piano, drums (maybe some organ.)

Justin fell flat when he tried to get the crowd to sing the chorus.  He doesn’t have the strength of personality to do that.  He also doesn’t have a strong enough voice to belt out a song that originally was sung with so much seeming emotional depth and vocal power.  That said, I didn’t hate it. I respect him for trying.  Judge for yourselves.

 

My Winter Albums (Part 1)

Some songs remind us of love, family, friendships, joy, sadness, birth, death, events in our lives and even entire years or seasons. (At least that’s true for me.)  There are entire albums that, regardless of their release date, remind me of winter or are good albums to listen to during that season.

These are my winter albums.

5150, Van Halen — I faked being sick so I could stay home from school and hear the worldwide debut (on radio) of the new Van Halen’s first single, “Why Can’t This Be Love.”  Of my own memory, I can only recall that the day was cold and gray.  The song, though decent, was a bit of a letdown.  Amazon.com says the single was released on March 26, 1986, which sounds about right.  The entire 5150 album.  Was released in April of that year.  Why does it remind me of winter?  I don’t know other than to say that it was cold when I first heard the first single.  I know “Summer Nights” is on that album, but I had played it probably a hundred times before the ground thawed.

Rubber Soul, The Beatles –  I don’t know why exactly, but this album seems like one to listen to as fall breaks into winter, about this time of year.  That’s probably because I always envisioned in my mind the lyrics to “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).”  I imagined the couple drinking wine next to a roaring fire — though the “fire” that was “lit” in the song was the woman’s house burning to the ground after rejecting our protagonist.  Before I had the album, I had Love Songs, the compilation album of Beatles ballads that Capitol released in October 1977.  That has four songs from the British Rubber Soul album.  Love Songs was a Christmas present for me that year and I used to listen to it while wrapped in a blanket, laying on the floor, looking at the cold, gray sky outside.

The Beatles a/k/a “The White Album,” The Beatles — It opens with “Back in the USSR,” a song that plays on love in the cold Russian weather (in stark contrast to “California Girls”; sunshine and girls in bikinis.)  The outro, bleeding into the chiming guitar of Dear Prudence, is a howling, cold arctic wind.  After that, the entire two record set sounds like something that’s played indoors, away from the elements.   As far as I’m concerned, there’s no music on that album you’d think of playing at a beach or a picnic.

Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes — “White Winter Hymnal,” I think, sets the tone for the whole album.  These guys nailed the sound of winter (if there is such a thing.)

GN’ R Lies, Guns N’ Roses — In the old days, people used to be music in stores.  Those stores sold music on these large black discs called “vinyl records” or LP’s, meaning “long playing” discs.  These stores also used to sell music on small, rectangular cartridges that had magnetic tape in side them, which contained the music.  These cartridges were called cassettes.  Then there were CD’s or compact discs, which were shiny, plastic-encoated metal discs smaller than an LP.  I once worked in such a store, and spent a lot of hours in it during the holiday season of 1988.  That “record store” was Musicland in the Westland (Michigan) Mall.  We record store employees were encouraged to open and play sample cassettes or CD’s and we played GN’R Lies quite a bit.  Westland is (or was) a blue collar, hard-rockin’ town, and rockers by the hundreds came into the store around Christmas of that year to buy this album.  We were constantly running out of it and having to restock it.  It wasn’t the only big seller that year, but it is an album that makes me think of the winter of my senior year in high school.  I’m no GN’R fan, but it was a decent little album.  “I Used To Love Her” is a classic in my book.

To be continued, should the inspiration hit me…