August 31, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from Bonnie Raitt, Rosie Flores, PJ Harvey, Bon Jovi, Rod Stewart, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Muse, and Mastodon
Ellie Greenwich wrote songs for teenagers with an extreme sense of
fantasy and wish fulfillment that characterized the best of the Brill
Building recordings. "Chapel Of Love" may be the ultimate wedding song,
if only because it's written from the point of view of someone who's
sure that she's marrying the love of her life and that nothing will
ever go wrong. "Be My Baby", the definitive Phil Spector "Wall of Sound"
record, has even more of a wish fulfillment approach. And still more dramatic
is "River Deep Mountain High" and unsuccessfully (commercially but
not artistically) revive the career of Ike and Tina Turner using the
lyrical device of extreme expression juxtaposed against childhood memories and desires.
If this outpouring of good feelings is too much for you then check out the other side of her songwriting, specifically the mini-dramas she wrote with then-husband Jeff Barry for the Shangri-Las. "Leader Of The Pack," "Give Us Your Blessings," and "Out In The
Streets" (found on a terrific 20th Century Masters Collection)
all tell tales of tragedy, alienation, and regret and show off a dark
side that one wouldn't think possible in the early 1960s.
August 25, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from Ennio Morricone, the films of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Cray, and The Wiggles.
If you were surprised to see Steve Wynn's "Amphetamine" in the midst of Bandslam--a kind of alt-rock version of High School Musical-you weren't the only one. So let's use it as an excuse to talk about Steve's career.
Many of you remember him as the founder of the first great guitar-based postpunk band the Dream Syndicate. The words "guitar-based" seem like a redundant term, but at the time, 1982, guitars were nearly hunted to extinction, which was surprising as they seemed to aggressively fuel the revolution that brought about the glorious 1977 wave of the Clash, the Jam, the Ramones, et al that we're always so fond of talking about. But those six-string creatures were hard to find in the MTV era of the Human League, Ultravox, and Duran Duran that dominated the airwaves.
The Dream Syndicate's debut album, The Days Of Wine And Roses, brought back the nearly invisible echoes of early Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crazy Horse-era Neil Young, early electric Dylan, and Marquee Moon-era Television and was in many ways the first great album of the college rock era. It helped pave the way for the Replacements, Husker Du, the Minutemen, and you know the rest.
What you might not know was that the second Dream Syndicate album, Medicine Show, offered up even better songs, rivaling Days', and was followed by two more strong DS albums. Steve then spent the next 20 years making a series of solid records, including a great early 2000s trilogy with his band the Miracle 3 from which "Amphetamine" comes. If you love Nick Cave, Neil Young, and Tom Waits, do yourself a favor and click on "Amphetamine," "Burn," "Carolyn," and "Boston" within the Basics section of our Steve Wynn Essentials and ask your self -yet again -how you missed this the first time. But hey don't beat your self up-that's why we're here in the first place.
August 17, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from John Hughes films, iTunes Mexico, Mink Deville, Jimmy Page, and Les Paul.
It's a shame that Willy DeVille emerged in the early days of punk and CBGBs, because he really was ahead of his time, which was ironic for an artist who worshipped at the altar of doo-wop, early '60s soul, and Italo American rock. Had he come around about 10 years later in the NPR-era of roots re-appreciation that's embraced everybody from John Hiatt, Los Lobos, and the Neville Brothers to current focus Sharon Jones, he might have found, if not fame and fortune, at least a following.
A student of both street-corner romanticism and West Side Story-like realism, one could feel the broken hearts, the sharkskin suits, the love and death in such DeVille songs as the mini-operatic "Venus Of Avenue D," "Guardian Angel", Drifters-in-Lou-Reed's-clothes "Spanish Stroll," and the could've-been-a-great-Springsteen-single "Maybe Tomorrow." As with artists like Big Star, the Velvets, and Leonard Cohen, the re-appreciation will build, though sadly it will be posthumous in Willy's case. Let's try and speed up the process as part of some small compensation for this month's lost
August 11, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from artists who performed at the original Woodstock festival (Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, Mountain, Santana) and artists who follow in their footsteps (Detroit Cobras, Los Lonely Boys, Amp Fiddler)
No question about it ⎯ Woodstock, the event, was a culturally defining
moment, yet now the word Woodstock is gratuitously name-dropped and the object of multiple branding opportunities. So let's use this opportunity, instead, to talk about Wattstax ⎯ an event often referred to as the Black Woodstock. It's a leap technically, because Wattstax was really of a piece with the early '70s, offering up some of the best performances from that era's soul icons ⎯ Johnny Taylor, the Staples Singers, Isaac Hayes, and a very young Richard Pryor.
Where it really matters, the comparison of Woodstock to Wattstax is more than appropriate: the event captured a key cultural moment in African American history with its expression of pride, solidarity, and community (the concert opened with Jessie Jackson and the crowd's recitation of the famous "I Am Somebody" poem). The soundtrack album is just fine, but you might be better off with a good best-of from Isaac, the Staples Singers, or Johnny ⎯ or individual tracks from Stax 50 - A 50th Anniversary Celebration.
The real revelation, however, is the Wattstax movie .
It works as an excellent chronicle of both of the concert's highlights (especially Isaac Hayes career -defining set) and offers up a look at South Central Los Angeles, circa 1972. It's also one of the best rock docs ever.
August 4, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from Paul McCartney, Warren Zevon, A-Ha, Dave Matthews, and Blaxploitation films
The phrase singer-songwriter is undoubtedly saddled with the baggage of the '70s and often associated with music that's mellow, sensitive, and/or overly sentimental. Let's not let that happen with Warren Zevon, shall we? Like Neil Young (especially with Crazy Horse) and Tom Waits, he had more in common with the early punk movement (though nobody in the class of '77 would acknowledge it at the time) than he did with the Eagles.
Zevon's first appearance on record in 1966 was as the songwriter of "Outside Chance," a non-hit A-side for the Turtles; and it sounded nothing like "Happy Together," "You Showed Me," "Elenore," or any of that band's other feel-good hits. Instead the record is a full-fledged garage punk classic in the vein of the Standells and the Seeds.
Zevon's first successful album, Excitable Boy, was produced by Jackson Browne, but the record's best songs ("Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner," "Lawyers, Guns And Money," and the title track) are sardonic, dark, and/or humorous ⎯ and sometimes all three. His last three records (among his best) were all concerned with death, the two before The Wind (ironically titled My Ride's Here and Life'll Kill Ya) were conceived without his own clear knowledge of impending mortality. And how many people do you know who wrote songs with Hunter S. Thompson, Mitch Albon, and Carl Hiaasen?
