Saint John

Since John Lennon’s tragic murder, both musicly and personally, he has been sainted, if not deified, by his fans and the media.  The Lennon-McCartney songwriting team is the most successful duo in music history.  Since John’s death, though, he has been the Mozart to Paul’s Salieri (Yoko Ono even said as much.)

Aside from the music, John has been seen as a visionary, a man of peace, a “working class hero.”  Paul’s the writer of sappy love songs and of little or no mental substance or social consciousness.  His years of reclusivity in the Dakota, after the birth of Sean, are affectionately known as his “house husband” years.  He baked bread and raised his child.   People with romantic notions about John point to these years as evidence of what a great human being he was.

It, then, surprised me to see this 1999 interview with his (famous) son, Julian.  I assumed that his oldest son had mended fences with him and they were on good terms when he died.  Apparently, he was not such a great father to Julian even after fatherhood and marriage to Yoko had seemingly softened him.

My point isn’t to bash John Lennon.  If he were here, I think he would admit to being a flawed character.  I just wish others would acknowledge that he was human and far from perfect.  He didn’t walk on water.  He was not a saint.  He was not the author of world peace.  Hell, he wasn’t even really a man of peace. The man who penned “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” for Sean didn’t even give his ex-wife enough money to do more than clothe and feed him.  Understanding him as a brilliant musical mind and a fascinating and important person seems more appropriate to me.

Macca on Colbert

McCartney will be on the “Colbert Report.”  His appearance is to promote the new Fireman album Electric Arguments.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_en_tv/tv_mccartney_colbert

Noel spot on about Radiohead

“Radiohead, I’m totally having it until the little fella starts singing.” — Noel Gallagher, Q magazine

I couldn’t agree more!  I have a couple of Radiohead albums and I love the music…until Thom Yorke opens his mouth.  That’s a pretty damned good band, but I really could do without Thom Yorke’s whiny singing.  He’s a brilliant guy but not the best of vocalists, at least not in my humble opinion.

Brian Wilson Presents Smile — Brilliant!

Smile might be the greatest album never released.  Or, more accurately, it may be the best album to take 38 years to be released.  Even Axl Rose doesn’t sit on projects that long.

I got my hands on MP3s of Smile maybe 12 years ago.  I also got the Beach Boys box set that had some Smile stuff in it.  Someday I’ll write about the album (as a Beach Boys release) but suffice it to say, it is amazing.  It’s quirky, odd, almost avant garde.  It’s definitely trippy and might have been a huge flop had it seen the light of day in 1967.  There again, it could’ve given Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band a run for its money.  We’ll never know.  [If you really want to know more about Smile, just google it.  There are dozens of websites about it.]

It’s really hard to get me to pay much attention to old bands retreading their old material (e.g. The Who doing a Quadraphenia tour or the annual Stones tour on the strength of 35 year old songs.)  So, when Brian Wilson Presents Smile was released a few years back, I completely ignored it.  One, I assumed Brian could no longer sing.  Two, it wasn’t a Beach Boys release.  Three, I figured that I already had Smile as it should have been released.  I was happy with my bootlegs.  But I saw this disk at the library the other day and it called to me.

The most simple way to sum up my feelings about this album is that it is brilliant!  Throw whatever positive adjectives you want at it, they all work; great, fantastic, stupendous, tremendous, awesome, amazing, etc.  If you like the Beach Boys (or just quirky music) run to the store and get it.

Many of the songs on Smile were sung by Carl Wilson, probably the best singer of the Wilson brothers.  Carl, sadly, passed away years ago, thus, Brian had to be the vocalist.  Even deaf in one ear, he nailed the songs.  Unlike some of his contemporaries, his voice is still in tact, and it seems natural to hear the songs sung by him.

His back-up band is dynamite.  They do everything vocally the Beach Boys did on the original Smile.  Musically Brian Wilson Presents Smile is nearly identical to Smile as it can be found in bootleg form. [EDIT — I CHANGED THE FOLLOWING TO REFLECT THE FACTS I’VE LEARNED AND SOMETHING OF A CHANGE OF HEART] The most glaring change was to the choruses of “Good Vibrations.”  Brian brought back the original Tony Asher-penned lyrics to the song, replacing his cousin, Mike Love’s re-writes.  I personally don’t like the changes, but I like them better than when I originally wrote this.  I also don’t like Mike Love, so anything that sticks it to him is fine by me.

If you’re still reading this post, stop and go over to amazon.com or wherever you like to buy music and pick up this one.  Tell ’em I sent ya.

Video Flashback: Kingdom Come’s “Get it On”

I was lucky enough to see the first of the two Monsters of Rock shows that rolled into the Pontiac Silverdome, June 17, 1988.  It was my last day of my junior year in high school.  We went straight from school out to the Silverdome.  It was also the first time I drove my car (16th birthday present) anywhere.  Someday I’ll write more about that show.

The band that opened up the show was Kingdom Come.  This song was a hit at the time.  These guys, who were little more than a pretty good Led Zeppelin tribute band, really went nowhere after that tour.  They faded into oblivion.  This song was pretty good at the time and got the crowd going for the show.

So here’s your spring/summer 1988 flashback.

Sir Paul McCartney on “Carnival of Light”

Beatles fans will know of the unreleased song, “Carnival of Light,” an avant gard piece put together for events at the Roundhouse theater in London in early 1967.  It was never credited as a Beatles song when performed at the Roundhouse, but it certainly was done while the group was a working unit.  As Sir Paul explains, George and Ringo vetoed it being placed on the Anthology series.

I’ve heard bits and pieces of what purports to be “Carnival of Light.”  It’s mostly electronic sounds and noodling.  It exists in bootleg form and is something of a Holy Grail to Beatles fans.  I’m not sure it’s the sort of thing that would blow anyone away, but I hope it finds its way onto the market someday.

Video flashback: Van Halen’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman”

I remember catching a bit of “America’s Top 10” (with Kasey Kasem) one Saturday morning and an excerpt of this video was playing.  Until I found it on youtube a few months back, I had not seen the video before or since.  From what I can gather now from the ‘net, Van Halen hit no. 9 with this song for the week of April 17, 1982.

The video is pretty cheesy.  It borders on tastelessness, but it’s also funny in a very campy way.  This was back in the good ole days of objectifying women in music videos.  It’s mostly harmless fun, but would probably never be played on MTV these days (not because MTV has standards, but because it’s politically incorrect.)

I love the noisy guitar intro. Those are the kinda sounds I used to like to get out of my guitar when I played.  Eddie’s the man.

RTE debuts U2 single

It’s been over four years since U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.  The band’s new album, No Line on the Horizon, is slated for release here in the States on March 3.

RTE (Radio Ireland), as with all U2’s singles got to debut their new single, “Get On Your Boots.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090120/ap_en_mu/eu_ireland_people_u2

Give it a listen.  Tell me what you think.

FM buried the radio star

Entire books could be written about this topic and my guess is that there have been a few. Mine certainly aren’t novel observations. But I feel the need to say a few words on it anyway.

FM radio, which was once was cutting edge and did so much to advance popular music forms, has essentially killed pop and rock music. Video may have killed the radio star, but radio buried his corpse and pissed on his grave. FM radio is unlistenable. Commercial radio is shockingly awful! Corporate-owned radio stations – by “corporate” I mean huge multi-national media conglomerates like CBS – have ruined about every format imaginable. Classic rock stations play the same 5 or 10 greatest hits of by the biggest bands from ’64 to ’84. Don’t expect to hear a Who or Led Zeppelin song that wouldn’t make one of a “best of” package. The adult contemporary/lite rock stations are sickening in the run-up to Christmas, playing the same 45 Christmas songs over and over and over and over and over… 24 hours a day for 2 months. If I ever hear a George Jones or Merle Haggard or Hank Williams, Sr. on a country station, I swear I’ll run naked around my neighborhood for 6 hours straight. (Okay, I’ll think of something that won’t frighten the neighbors.  The point is that no matter what I bet, I’ll never have to worry about losing.)

The solution to this problem, I am told, is satellite radio. I simply refuse, though, to pay to listen to radio. When I was a kid, TV, radio, and water were free (more or less.) Remember when the promise of cable TV was that there were more channels and no commercials? That didn’t last too long. If you have cable you pay to watch TV and have to see the commercials. They’re not going to lure me in with promises like that. I’m willing to listen to ads on the radio, I just want – demand! – better programming.

So far, the only solution I’ve found to this problem is my local high school-run station, WSDP in Plymouth, Michigan. 88.1 (the Escape) is kind of like college radio and is commercial-free. There are some pretty bad top 40-type songs that get played frequently but, for the most part, the music is stuff you don’t hear on corporate radio.

By the way, I know there’s internet radio, too. I’m not the most tech-savvy guy. As far as I know, it’s not possible to listen to web-based radio in my car, which is where I do most of my listening.

For now, I go on railing, screaming at the windmill. Maybe someday, some corporate customer service department lackey will hear my gripes and pass them along to the powers-that-be. One can hope, can’t he?

Dig Out Your Soul and the Top Albums of 2008

The music mags have put out their “Best of 2008” lists. Mojo and Q listed their “top 50” albums and Spin cropped its list to the “top 40.” Considering that it was only released in October, Oasis’s Dig Out Your Soul faired respectfully. For those that care about lists and Oasis, DOYS made it onto Mojo’s list by the skin of its teeth, making no. 50. It did better with Mojo’s big Brit rock mag competitor, Q, who planted DOYS at no. 32. Spin’s list had ten fewer entries, so DOYS looks comparatively good sitting at no. 38.

I’m a big fan of Oasis and DOYS. I think those guys never get the credit they deserve for making consistently good albums with lots of big guitars and some good lyrical work (and some bad, too.) I am admittedly biased, but it seems Oasis got short-shrifted on these lists. They are better as a band, and DOYS is better as an album than bottom feeders on albums of the year lists. I can’t imagine that there are 20 albums released in 2008 that are better than DOYS. My guess is that it didn’t help that the album wasn’t released until October. Some of their competitors had a chance to mature, to breath a bit. Except for Oasis die-hards, it seems like the band has little critical cache these days.

Also, the so-called music experts have seen every Oasis album since Be Here Now have talked about each successive album as some sort of “comeback” attempt. In truth, Oasis never went anywhere. They put out an album every 2 to 3 years, which is a pretty standard cycle for today’s artists. U2 hasn’t put out an album since November 2004, but I don’t think critics will talk about their “comeback” like they do (and have done) with Oasis for the better part of a decade. When the critics see you as perpetually making a “comeback,” they never stop judging you for your last great release. If people would judge each Oasis album on its own merits, they would do better critically.

None of this matters much to Oasis. Us fans get a bit irked by this, though.

I’m not interested in most of the bands on those lists. A band that got a lot of love was Kings of Leon. Perhaps I haven’t given them a fair shake, but their stuff that I’ve heard is, quite frankly, unlistenable. I just don’t get it. Fleet Foxes was also highly lauded (no. 1 on Mojo’s list) and I’m dying to hear their entire album. The songs I have sound like a folk band channeling Smile-era Beach Boys. “White Winter Hymnal” is a pretty damned good song but if that’s all Fleet Foxes have to offer, I’ll stick with Smile, Smiley-Smile and Pet Sounds.

Noticeably absent from all three of the lists I saw was Here We Stand by the Fratellis. It’s a fantastic rock record. These guys were the darlings of British rock scene a few years back after Costello Music was released, but for some reason Here We Stand, which hit #5 on the British album sales chart, has been snubbed. I think Here We Stand has Costello Music beat. Maybe the critics don’t think much of fun rock and roll these days. Maybe to get attention your music has to be folksy and take itself seriously. Or just steal from the Beach Boys and the experts will anoint you as groundbreaking and original, the next and new best thing.