BEWARE ROCK STARS WHO THINK AND THEN TALK AFTERWARDS

The worst offenders are the truly repellent likes of Yes, Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, those bands with wind-up toy time signatures, castrati vocalists and reams of wretchedly vacant philosophizing that was so steeped in skull-fuckingly dull clichés that I suspect even  Edgar Guest would call these guys grunting , formless worms choking down their own fecal trails. Still, there is some of this ambitious stuff that I think works, on their own terms--King Crimson, The Mothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. The lyrics from all three bands were idiosyncratic and free of pud wilting platitudes, and the music for the three of them was, overall, unique and entirely original blends of marginal influences that, when stirred the right way, created something just as original. Peter Townsend had been called an intellectual so often by both the rock and the mainstream press that I suspect he came to believe and sought to live up the image of the Thinking Artist. The irony was that he already was doing Art, a special and original kind of music; his sagging jock strap of an ego trip with Quadrophenia robbed him of that talent,which is to say his wit, which is to say again, his mojo, saying finally, his pretensions made him hand his balls over to the Muse , who was done playing with him. He never got his groove back. I do think good rock and pop musicians and songwriters can be taken seriously to a degree, but there is always the danger of pomposity and self-congratulating bombast, the inflated sense of importance, that nearly always saps the music of real inspiration and vitality. Yes, even the best of our generation's singer-songwriters have been maudlin, precious and bordering on hard-edged baloney-mongering. But they have a knack, in general, to recover from their worst work and give us something actually inspired, focused, full of conviction. Still, others have not regrouped from their worst efforts. Sting, post-Police, is an auto-didactic tourist in other culture's music; he is lost in his pretensions, lost to us. Joni Mitchell decided she wanted to be a composer and a poet of an extremely diffuse, Eliot ilk and tried to merge meandering imagery with badly conceived, Mingus inspired impressionism; she has been minor league ever since. Peter Gabriel, in turn, has been largely quiet on the solo front and involved himself instead in other projects; this keeps our memory of his music a fond one.

 Robert Christgau said it back in 1969, reviewing his album “OUTRAGEOUS”:

 “…. Fowley is such a gargantuan shuck that he ought to be preserved in a time capsule. …” 

That line has stuck with me and characterized Fowley for decades, and now it comes full circle where we have an opportunity to examine how the Sixties counter culture produced marginal sorts who were happy to have a niche somewhere in the music greatness of others, and those like Charlie Manson who wanted to change the world into a larger version of their insane selves. It was a crap shoot either way, and lucky for us, Fowley wasn't as crazy as he pretended to be. It's always been my impression that Kim Fowley, who died January 15, 2015, preferred you spoke about him in the past tense when you were in his presence. One imagines he would have relished the chance to eaves drop on what was said at his own funeral.

Only a fool too fast of tongue of slow to truth would argue that Fowley didn't have some kind of observable genius in the happenstance of his life. He was an Ezra Pond sort his era, someone with a smattering of talent themselves who had a more acute instinct for the large talent of others . It can be a tedious thing to hash through again, but it bears repeating that Fowley's greatest masterpiece was creating a series of performance oriented personas, all the extreme, gaudy, tacky, neurotic and, rather, desperate in their attempts to equal the art being produced by artists he was attracted too. Fowley was someone who, like thousands of others at the time, were trying to berserk themselves into genius who, despite hard work and an unblinking commitment to the mask he was wearing, never convinced anyone that there was anything there but an egocentricity that was oddly ingratiating Fowley , I suspect, knew that we were onto his game from the get go and let it remain as such. Fowley was someone who wanted to leave his mark on history and didn't quite much care what damage to his reputation he suffered in doing so. It wasn't damage at, I think he'd have explained to us, since this was a reputation he was reputation he was creating in place of one that didn't exist in the first place. What he wanted was to be known, to be creative, to be a part  of the throng at the higher creative plain. He wanted to leave his mark on history, not change it, not destroy it, not change to course of things to come. He desired to be in the perennial now of whatever was intense at the musical time and space, and to have a sufficient version of his cover story to accompany. He was man who lived his life in the present tense. 

What is remarkable is that he remained in the game as long as he did. Fowley was a fake, which was the source of authenticity. He decided to "act as if..." and never stopped acting.I regard Fowley's whole life as being something like Kafka's Hunger Artist; the man who refuses to eat draws a crowed around him, and it's that artist's job to keep the crowd distracted while maintaining his cover. Fowley kept the mask on but remained an approachable anomaly . No easy thing to do.

 He's following what Grace Slick did when she retired from music. "All rock and rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire." As much we argue that the muse for some rock musicians keeps on bringing on new ideas and new perspectives, rock, and roll are the music of the young which means being confused, prone to emotional extremes, being naive, arrogant, self-loathing, the entire gamut of lesson-learning all of us suffer through on the way to becoming adults, citizens, parents, taxpayers. For someone in their fifties to be singing old songs about being a rebel and such and writing newer tunes that don't have much to add to what they've already committed to chord progressions indicates someone who hasn't learned anything. 

That's why novelists and poets have the advantage in the aging process, as they are allowed to get older, become grumpy, maybe more confused and fatalistic, so long as the language they choose to write in, the quality of the actual writing, sustains the narrative. So, bravo Rollins. Of course, we are speaking broadly here, and there are more than a few songwriters who can negotiate to age and write engaging material. I can think of a dozen artists who are like that, and likely another dozen after pausing to consider a second round. But I think the output becomes more erratic as you get older, more difficult, perhaps if you've already created a large body of work over a several-decade span. There is that need to keep producing work even though you're aware that you have more misses than hits. 

Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, dozens of others pursued new work into their later years, and there is that aspect where the fresh ideas reappear as recognizable formulas in newer songs. But this aspect of the aging artist, that later work will, in most cases, not be consistent in quality, is evident in the other arts, whether fiction, poetry, film making, drama. There are poets such as John Ashbery who likely published ten books beyond his best days as a bard, Clint Eastwood's movies have become more minimalist and brutally efficient in terms of film storytelling, sometimes to the extent that some of his later flicks seem like parodies of his best days, and novelists like Updike, promiscuously productive, had an extended string of novels and short story collections and poetry that were, at best, exercises in keeping oneself busy. 

We do have to tread carefully in this area and temper our expectations for older artists who continue to create new work since it should surprise none of us that artist styles, approaches, subjects of concern change over years of living experience and that judgment of new material over what's considered their "best" work needs the context of the long view. Often enough the new approaches, new designs are valid in their own right and are powerful statements of where an artist happens to be at a later stage in their life. This does not imply that the work is bullet-proof from critique or that it works aesthetically. It requires a more nuanced discussion than the rate-a-record approach most of us grew up with.

From the vault, a too short favorable review of My Aim is True published in my college newspaper

 If nothing else, one of the things that the Seventies have given rock and roll is the chance for a new artist to regurgitate the most glaring of cliches and be considered by older critics who long for their youthful heyday (first cigarette, the first bout with sex, first visit the free clinic) as something in the vanguard of the movement, a "fresh and invigorating voice that outlines the future of rock and roll," and so on. Bruce Springsteen combines elements from Phil Spector records, old rhythm and blues tracks, and bare rock and roll with the lyrical free form-ism of Dylan, resulting in a pastiche of styles that sounds forced, histrionic and bone dry of motivation. Patti Smith wants to merge early Sixties rock, ala Stones, and "Louie Louie" with the legends of dead poets, sounding in the end merely silly. Tom Waits combines black jazz hep jive with Jack Kerouac and sounds stupid. The more jaded among us from this parade of pretenders are leery of anyone trying the same thing. 

My Aim is True by Elvis Costello takes one by surprise. Like Springsteen, the backbone of Costello's music is old rock and roll. But apart from that, they differ radically. Springsteen has a tendency to stretch his material to the breaking point, pouring crescendo upon crescendo, verse upon verse, trying to create an epiphany that never culminates into prosaic glory. Costello, though, is stripped down to a vernacular toughness, and Costello's singing, similar to Springsteen's but more tactful, is full of buoyancy, emotion, and conviction, without any overkill. The songs number twelve in all on the disc, unusual for a rock disc, and each exists as polished lyrical gems of a cynical, penetrating working-class intelligence.

Costello's strength, a virtue that Springsteen, Smith, and Waits lack, is his ability to use rock cliches for their total value. Costello gets the heat to the meat instead of brandishing them like a set of museum pieces that one is supposed to bow to in historical awe and respect. The rockability stuff is done with a verve that equals Buddy Holly, his use of reggae captures the required gloomy, sinister mood, and his boogie material does a lot more than plot the course for the band. His lyrics, though, are imbued with a seventies sensibility, an awareness of absurdity works minor miracles with motifs that one might have considered as resources of comedic irony in this current,post-hip climate. The gifts would be nothing less than restoring to all the old rock and roll and pop music styles the capacity for emotional impact. Though not notable for originality or innovation, My Aim is True is a real piece of work, and Elvis Costello has an intelligence that can develop into something more complex and rewarding. My aim, for now, suffices as an excellent example of rock revisionist traditionalism.

THE BYRDS AND THEIR PUNK VERSION OF HEY JOE

 

Hey, Joe by the Byrds on their 1966 Fifth Dimension album. This song was recorded by too many bands over the decade, and there is not much difference among the 50 or so versions I'm aware of. The reason I was drawn to the song as a naive teen was because it broke the mode the cycle of love-sick Gene Pitney/Leslie Gore pop melodies and melodramas that dominated my conscious mind at the time and gave me and other unsuspecting youth a taste of a real tragedy concerning the consequences of cheating on one's partner. 

In this case, the cuckold wasn't going to sob and bleed all over the carpet as would be the metaphorical case for Pitney or Gore. Instead, this fellow answers questions from an inquiring pal about what his game plan is, and Joe makes it plain, he's going to get a gun and shoot her dead. That's getting proactive in the worst sense of the word. I was aware that it didn't put women in the best light and would hardly suffice as an example in problem resolution. Years later, after bitter experience and summary reeducation by sharp females who tolerated my foibles, I became aware of the idea of misogyny, the outright hatred of women. I've been trying to mend my ways ever since. 

But at the time, I was engrossed by the sheer drama of it all, the portrait of a lonely guy so anemic in self-esteem that he would rather kill his cheating girlfriend than calm down, feel the feelings, and seek another less destructive path. The one thing I would say as regards anything resembling a defense of the song's treatment of women was that it was an introduction to the idea that emotions are not only dramatic but infinitely and witlessly complex as it goes. It was part of education. But as we say, quantity changes quality, and the surfeit of versions of the renditions leeched the drama from the lyrics and made the ascending chord progression less a measure of tension building than it was a model of metronomic monotony. 

 But the Byrds version is unique concerning the tempo, which is jacked to nearly punk-pogo dynamics and David Crosby's vocal, which is breathless and sounds winded and excited on adrenaline as would a criminal who had, as the lyrics let on, shot his wife. Forget the sultry and soulful writer of the ballads Everyone's Been Burned or Guinivere, the tunes of sensitive minstrels rhyming away life's ironies. Hey Joe is a blunt revenge fantasy, and Crosby sounds wicked, a man who wants blood. But the biggest payoff is Roger McGuinn's twelve-string work, which aligns itself with that Coltrane-inspired note clustering he did for Eight Miles High. He riffs throughout the tune, swift, jabbing riffs, odd chord accents, more jabbing and dissonant riffing, a busy counterpoint to the pulsing bass, the earnest cowbell throughout, the bated vocalisms: this has the drama that comes at that moment when watching a two-story house on fire and the structure collapses in unredeemable sparks. This is the best version of the song ever released.

BLUE CHEER DESTROYED ALL POWER TRIOS

 

It wasn't hip at all to like Blue Cheer when their 1968 debut Vincibus Eruptum was released. It was the usual accusations as the established critics expressed their disgust. Out of tune, they cannot play their instruments, unbelievably bad imitations of Hendrix and Cream. Some of us liked what these three guys were doing, though.I liked them precisely for the reason that others hated them for, for being atonal, loud, feedback, distorted in ways that had nothing to do with conventional ideas of texture and musical color and everything to do with making you aware of the nature of the sound, which sheer electricity wielded by some angry and impatient men eager to make a noise where there was stultifying silence previously. Blue Cheer was the perfect band for the coming age of speed freakery. The chemical essence wants to take things apart and then reassemble them rapidly, haphazardly, inspired, and excited momentarily by new combinations of components be had from that which was gutted. Like it or not, something new was occurring here, and it was something that could only happen if the players--Dickie Peterson bass and vocal, Leigh Stephens guitar, Paul Whaley drums--had more than a competent grasp of their instruments.

I was introduced to the solar skronk and abrasive swing of Sun Ra at the time through many visits to the Grande Ballroom and developed a taste for the mind fuckery of free-jazz that came from Coltrane Pharaoh Sanders, Ayler, Coleman. It helped that WABX, the FM underground station in Detroit, played some black Avant grade music. So I found similarities between what Blue Cheer was doing and the esteemed black musicians who (may have ) influenced them. The band may well have had no idea of what they were doing conceptually, and the conceit is mine alone. Still, all the same, Blue Cheer handily deconstructed the entire power trio format, pushing into to its three or four-chord limit with long jams that were groaning, grainy, belching, aggressive nonlinear improvisations keyed to only emotion.

They were to the power trio what Neal Cassady was to drive. I consider Dick Peterson an able, if not great, bassist. Still, unquestionably, one of the most terrific white-blues screamers of all time--his singing was rage, self-pity, and uncontrollable impulse fused in each frayed, corrosive syllable he spat out.  His bandsaw -on-steel vocals, joined with guitarist Leigh Stephens' PULVERIZING ATONAL GUITAR SOLOS and drummer Paul Whaley's trash can demolition, Peterson and crew lay the groundwork for a generation of metal and punk bands to come: MC5, STOOGES, MOUNTAIN, LED ZEP, RAMONES, MOTORHEAD, DEAD BOYS. Even the Velvet Underground, with their feedback skronk, couldn't match Blue Cheer's steel-belted forays into electrified abandon; the Velvets merely taunted the strings of their guitar, Blue Cheer sounded like they punched holes in oil tankers. And Peterson's vocalizations were the perfect match, screech, rasp, and banshee wail all rolled into one bag of verbal outrage, maintaining a punk's slouch. His was the rusty yowl that deserved to be praised and dreaded for the unflinching combination of fear and rage it represented. 

Leigh Stephens' broadsides were genuinely beautiful cascades of dissonance, pulverizing atonal breaks, the emphasis on pulverizing. I saw these guys at the Grande as well. It seems to me that I think about it decades later that this was not a man of sub-competence flailing and noodling about the frets, but someone who knew what he wanted to sound like and could get the result he desired, and that he was someone who could duplicate that sound on command.

Paul Whaley, in turn, had the most expansive, most enormous, most sledgehammer-like drumming style of the period. His sound was of every building and bridge that ever collapsed under its own weight. This is to say that I think the first two Blue Cheer albums need to be reconsidered.

MADE IN OJAI

Soulful, soul searching, soul-bearing, soul matching, all terms to describe the singer-songwriters who write tunes less as candidates for hard rotation on the radio or various streaming services and more like updates on their status psyches. Much of it is endearing and attractive, depending on the artist's melodic craft and canny poetics we might be considering. Joni Mitchell? Yes. Paul Simon? Of course. Jackson Brown? Perhaps, provided what here from him is low dosage and brief. A little bit of information from the annals of someone’s psychic equilibrium goes a long way. There is a propensity among many a self-revealing artist to overshare, to dwell, to paint their remembrance in thick coats of idealized colors. Ecstasy or perpetual despair. 

Made in Ojai by the duo Smitty and Julija (Smitty West and Julija Zonic), it is a tuneful disc, well-produced, lushly arranged, and highlighting the soulful vocals from the pair. The record is a mixed bag of results, with a few of the songs taking a long time to evolve into something more intriguing. “I Just Wanna Sing this Song with You” begins with doleful piano, simple arpeggio figures that dwell a shade too long, with the song easing in slowly to some crystalline vocal harmonies from West and Zonic. It is, though, a longish ballad of laying one’s heart to the glorious presence of another. The duo’s harmonies elevate the words and soar over the hesitant piano in the choruses, infusing the lyrics with heartfelt emotion. This song, though, drags when, I think, it should pick up the pace and rhythmically engage a listener in their joy, and regrettably, this is an element that hampers many of the other songs. Particularly the next song, “Let Her Go,” where the philosophical lesson of letting go of past loves, regrets, and missed opportunities to grow are lost in what becomes inevitable tedium.

Zonic has a fascinatingly vulnerable voice, suggesting a quiver, a quake, a certain fragility that suggests a trammeled soul that has gathered its wits and finds the words, the voice, the eventual wisdom to push on over the horizon. One wishes the song were more melodically proactive in the sentiment and less dirge-like. A listener exhausted by the excess of earnestness through these songs can take a rest with a nice bit of amusement, a tune called  “Trust Fund Hippy.”This is a  suitably and incisive dig into an obnoxious hipster indulging his counter-culture aesthetic with inherited money, oblivious to his own absurdity. Following suit, the music is up-tempo, with an old-time feeling, rather remindful of the Phil Ochs classic “Outside a Small Circle of Friends.” There is quite a bit to enjoy and admire in Made in Ojai, but one does wish they would have varied the fare, taken it beyond the confession box they seem comfortable in, and engaged their wittier instincts.

Originally published in the San Diego Troubadour. Used with permission.

MY LYRICS CAN BEAT UP YOUR LYRICS

 

In a feature in the current issue of Slate, Jack Hamilton adds some lighter fluid to the controversy slowly boiling over who was the better wordsmith for the Beatles, Paul McCartney or John Lennon. Not coincidental with the release of the pricy two-volume, slip-cased set The Lyrics where McCartney describes his authorship of  150 songs both for the Beatles and other projects, Hamilton, as one could expect, bucks conventional wisdom and argues that Sir Paul was the superior lyricist. Do you remember any time in your younger life when you wax incessantly, continuously, and oppressively about one album, one particular album, was the greatest album ever made and that super-great album is a work of art unlike any other we've ever seen as a species and the likes of which we will ever seen again? Do you remember forgetting about that extra-fantastic disc and then listening to years , maybe decades later, and then realizing it hasn't traveled through the ages as well as you claimed? And remember what you said at the time? 

I remember my hyperbolic tantrums arguing the genius of many records I have since abandoned to resale shops long ago. That is what Hamilton's defense of McCartney's lyrics for the Beatles read like, a gushy mash note. Of course, the man had a way with words, but...please calm down... Like anyone else obsessed with what the Beatles have accomplished and how it was that they created a body of work without peer, I've dived into the weeds to determine who had the more outstanding mind and pen, John or Paul. After much scrutiny, cogitating, late nights scanning lyric sheets wearing headphones while the Beatles blared loudly and made my hearing even worse than it was, my conclusion is that it's a draw between the two. 

As for songwriting partners and as lone authors of single songs while in the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney seemed an evenly matched pair as lyricists, with McCartney having a substantial edge for composing engaging and deceptively simple melodies. Lennon, to be sure, could write a lovely song as well and do so throughout the band's lifetime, but  McCartney has the advantage. As Beatle lyricists,  one can strongly argue that the two were equal for fluidity and agility of expression. Their distinct personalities gave the metaphorical Beatle Universe (with some exemplary additional contributions from George Harrison) a remarkably fresh and finally unpredictable take on the human experience.  McCartney was a fine lyricist with the Beatles, and I'd even agree brilliant at times. Still, I believe the old saw that Sir Paul's best abilities as lyricist and melodist may well have remained dormant if Lennon hadn't become such a significant presence in his creative undertakings. And yes, I would agree Lennon might have remained yet another Rocker doomed for inevitable anonymity if he hadn't made McCartney's acquaintance.  This will, without doubt, be argued about till the end of time.  Notably, McCartney has been showing concern over his legacy as he approaches his final curtain, wanting the world to realize the weight of actual contribution to the Beatles' longevity, perhaps even a desire to take Lennon's reputation as the superior lyricist and intellect down a peg or two. 

'Though fueled by resentment, I suspect,  there is no getting away from the fact that the solo efforts by Lennon and McCartney, including struggles with Plastic Ono Band and Wings respectively, are depressingly substandard considered against the work they'd done for the Beatles.  Of course, both bodies of post-Beatles music have pockets of the old magic, charisma, wit, and melodic bite. Still, Lennon had descended from the ranks of an artist to becoming merely a Professional Celebrity, an amazingly clueless personality whose lyric acumen was now little else but sloganeering no more subtle than a bumper sticker. McCartney, in turn, couldn't seem to write a cohesive song anymore; his song structures were erratic, jarring, disjointed, too often coming less well than office buildings abandoned during construction. His lyric writing was gibberish, and those who want to defend the words he wrote for Wings are doomed to come off as foolish wishful thinkers. 

BARRETT, SYD

 

The late Syd Barrett, founder of Pink Floyd and probable acid casualty at the age of 60 in 2006. His time in the limelight, as a creative force, was brief, barely a blip in the scheme of things. Although his tenure with the band was brief, very brief, it's a legacy that cannot be dismissed, nor one that we can afford to forget. Syd Barrett did one thing very brilliantly in his musical career, co-founding Pink Floyd and being the central creative for their debut album, The Piper at the Gate of Dawn. 

Usually, someone who starts off the bright star and budding genius who flames out early is consigned to the ain't-it-a-shame file and only recalled in diminishing rounds of generational recollection. Still, Barrett's name has remained constant in discussions of Pink Floyd's career in the years since his deterioration and departure from the band. Although Roger Waters, Gilmour et al. found their own voice and peculiar sense of combining experimentation with mainstream expectation, Barrett's influence on the unit was never transcended, forgotten, or obscured; it's more like the groundbreaking work Barrett did in the short time at the band's start was rather refined, expanded, nuanced and tweaked in subtle, often sublimely achieved ways. Although it doubtlessly gores Roger Waters' ego to confront this, the Barrett imprint on Pink Floyd was never erased. 

Waters' claim to greatness is that he had taken Barrett's diffuse template and personalized it into a cryptic, caustic world view, just as the band maintained the blurred eclecticism and made music that was individually achieved yet contiguous with Barrett's briefly realized genius. Barrett may have been one short wonder, but the bullet he fired went far and pierced many layers of armored conservative sensibility regarding music. His achievement for such a short production time casts a longer shadow than a few dozen others who've had decades to make music.

THE ROLLING STONES DITCH "BROWN SUGAR"

 It's not that the Rolling Stones have suddenly become "woke" and aware of social injustice, but it did make news that the aging Bad Boys of British rock have dropped the tune  "Brown Sugar" from the playlist of their current tour. With the recent death of drummer and founding band member Charlie Watts, there appears to be a sense of an ending emerging quickly for the band. It was released as a single in 1971 and later included on their Sticky Fingers album that same year. It's one of those tunes that you hate yourself loving. On the surface, it has all that one loves and expects from a Rolling Stones song, including brash guitar chords powering grabbing your attention, a rhythm section that kicks in hard and sways and swings without relief until one comes to the chorus, a rousing anthem of droogish vigor, a sassy saxophone solo, all of which supports a hectoring, lively, dually insinuating and braying vocal by singer Mick Jagger. It's the kind of song that makes you want to put your shoulder to the wheel and take command of something. But under the adorably gritty rock and roll, the text, the lyrics, the sordid spectacle of it all, a tribute to racism, slavery, sadomasochism, rape, misogyny. It's a violent little white supremacist fantasy whether the Rolling Stones intended it or not:

Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in the market down in New Orleans
Skydog slaver know he's doin' all right
Hear him whip the women just around midnight

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should

Drums beatin' cold, English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' when it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doin' all right
You should have heard him just around midnight

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good?
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should

Brown Sugar, how come you dance so good?
Brown Sugar, just like a black girl should

I bet your mama was a tent show queen
And all her boyfriends were sweet 16
I'm no school boy but I know what I like
You should have heard them just around midnight

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should

I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, wooo!
How come you, how come you dance so good
Yeah, yeah, yeah, wooo!
Just like a, just like a black girl should

© Mirage Music Int. Ltd. C/o Essex Music Int. Ltd

Pretty miserable stuff, this. Most of us of a certain age knew the song was a racist, sexist, misogynist male chauvinist wet dream when it was released. Most of us, I trust, are hidden behind the flimsy veil of irony, and some of us, in print, rationalized how Mick and the Boys were, in fact, bringing America's great sin, slavery, into a larger and more honest conversation among the fanhood. Perhaps they did, but I don't think that was their intention, and I don't think the largest segment of their fan base, young white males still trying to determine how to be adults, either got whatever subtle lesson the Stones were casting or gave a damn. It was the Stones, damn it, and it had a great riff, a badass rhythm, and it made you strut. If you were male, the song momentarily made you feel like you were in control of things, whether an imaginary plantation with a slave or a captain of Indus, try or a general of a tank division. 

All the apologetics, defenses, rationalizations, and furtive intellection couldn't quiet the nagging suspicion that the tune was a deliberate and arrogant slap in the face to a great many people." Brown Sugar" was and is a mean-hearted song. They were called out for their demeaning depictions by feminists, black activists, and prematurely "woke" males at the time of its release. I doubt there was a single of us who hadn't wondered at some time or other when the Stones would ditch the tune. When they wrote and performed it, there was a kind of vulgarly hip cache in being a roving cocksman who could get loving whenever he wanted it. But this is an attitude, a pose, a stance that hasn't aged well through the decades. It remains an example of how embedded racism was in rock and roll and within the counter-culture at large despite whatever legal advances had been accomplished. I don't think the Stones are personally racist in their politics or core value systems (whatever they happen to be or have been). However, they carried habits acquired through generational legacy, which, it seems, they are still trying to shed. So maybe 'Brown Sugar" is a start, and they will continue to reconsider their song list for objectionable content. Perhaps that would reduce their sets to a quick and tight 40 minutes or fill out the rest of the time with Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters covers.

No subject is off-limits so far as narrative art goes. Still, we have to realize that out of millions of would-be Nabokovs and Jaggers , on a handful can anything so artful with the subject matter--sex with minors, rape--that the work transcends the gaminess and has an effect that forces concerned readers/listeners to think on issues more prominent than the indulgence in lust. I consider Jagger's song "Back Street Girl" to be a masterpiece. He cannily, concisely, convincingly gets at the rationale of a moneyed male, making it clear to his mistress that she is nothing other than a mistress; she is not to try to be a part of his more prominent, more public life. It's a cruel scenario, but it is sharply told against Parisian atmospherics that create a legitimately ironic outcome, an air of romanticism in the city of light slamming up against the harsh exchange that is the subject of the song. It's an influential character sketch where one can argue with some certitude that Jagger has done the world some delicate favor by tackling this seamy storyline.Brutal, yes, and that was Jagger's intention I believe. Writers with the instincts to create particular personas that are convincing albeit repelling generally avoid the instinct to moralize or provide sermons of any sort rendering judgment; it's more effective to have the character reveal themselves in their voices. What got my attention about the song was that it wasn't a tune talking about the glories of bedding dumb women and then disposing of them, nor was it an ove-rromanticized ballad, a tribute, a pedestal-placing tribute to a perfect woman who captured the protagonist's heart. It was instead the narrator undisguised, unfiltered, plainly asserting what he expects, what he requires of the anonymous woman on the back street. It's an ugly appraisal, but an honest one and in some way seems an attempt by Jagger to deal with the malevolence of his persona as a libertine.

 Yes, I agree. Musical styles, genres, you name, need to change to remain relevant in the march of history scurries towards an always uncertain future. The idea is that whatever art one loves that had its origins in the marketplace will remain relevant and, dare we say, the word? suitable. That's the hope, and it's a fact that popular music styles have been altered, adapted, extended, made more straightforward by younger artists picking up the task of creating sounds for the ears of the buying public. Still, the mergings of whatever "old school" with the taste of the current crop of teens currently glutting the marketplace haven't always been smooth, pleasant, or, bottom line, interesting.  Cold to say, but heavy metal under any of its specialized micro-genres is a dead end. Rap and hip-hop are fashion cliches these days. Jazz, it can be said, is graduating to the classical concert hall, elevated as art music, which means smaller audiences and grants from whatever federal or local government agencies. Speaking of the evolution of country-rock fusion, it seemed some years ago that the movement has gotten to the point where the songs, the arrangements, are painted by numbers affair, a kind of assembly line professionalism where songs contain elements of rock and country--power chords, blues guitar licks, hard backbeats for rock, pedal steel guitars, fiddles, harmonica flourishes for the country--that lack all authenticity or conviction. I am thinking specifically of Shania Twain, a Canadian who is an outstanding example of country pop-rock that has been grimly calculated to appeal to a broad audience. Quantity, remember, reduces quality. It seems the same thing that happened to the exhilarating genre of jazz-rock when in a short period, it got formalized to a very recognizable set of riffs, solos and resolutions, all-flash, speed, and no improvisation. "Rock this Country" likewise is all riffs and no heart, teeter-tottering between the rock accents and the country lilts. It is a Frankenstein monster, neither alive nor dead, merely ganglia of nerves pulling the beast in different confusing directions. It's an apt metaphor; the producers are so obsessed with making sure the distinct parts are balanced that we think of the hulking movie monster learning to walk.

Music to Twitch By

 I don't pay much attention to original film music, and I admit I may be missing some quality listening. Some scores catch my attention, though, especially when the music is better than the movie. David Cronenberg's 1991 film adaptation of Burrough's novel Naked Lunch was a dreary and humorless indulgence that failed to "get" any of the hilarious horror and delirium the book so readily conveyed. The Ornette Coleman-Howard Shore collaboration on the soundtrack, though, is rather magnificent in the way it combines orchestral tone-poetics with Coleman's outer-rim saxophone improvs. Therein lies the true heart of Burrough's world, the struggle for control as the material world dissolves.

Worth mentioning is a dizzying soundtrack from Shirley Clark's 1961 film about a room full of junkies in a dirty, cramped flat waiting for their drug dealer to show up, The Connection. The soundtrack by Freddie Redd is fragmented bop that agitates and exhilarates and turns up the volume as these fellows in dire need of a fix sift their lives and lies in a string of sketchy monologues. Bear in mind what William Burroughs had to say about these situations when one is Waiting for the Man: "The Man is always late..."

It's easy to think that Zappa once assumed that he could make movies the way he made music. If that's the case, then he succeeded with his feature 200 MOTELS, which was an inert, shrill, abrasive, incoherent hodgepodge of musical and visual styles that were meant, I suppose, to mock every nit-witted conceit of American culture within earshot. Zappa never impressed me as a trenchant satirist-- his jibes are less potent than those of George Carlin or even Mad Magazine--but I always found much to admire in his music, his compositional chops. However, the music here is merely a mess, as irredeemably ugly as the movie they accompanied.

A Faint Recollection of Fairport Convention

 

It seems to be a reasonable expectation that people of genius with extraordinary lives and stories to relate would be able to tell their tale in a manner as robust as the lives they've lived. A slight sour truth to accept is that not all extraordinary songwriters aren't the best narrators of their journeys. My expectations were raised by the revelatory musings of Rolling Stone guitarist and songwriter Keith Richards' memoir Life, a memoir that was all sex and sizzle and jaw-dropping revelations.  Richard's witty, regaling truth-telling about his life on the edges of rock and roll had me insisting that any future musical remembrance be equally careening and in your face. The demands were cooled considerably by other biographies I read after the vicarious thrill of Richard's enthused embrace of his wild ways. Bob Dylan's book Chronicles, Vol. 1 had the Maestro speaking obliquely about his life, influences, not revealing much that wasn't already in the dedicated fan's knowledge base. That wasn't wholly unexpected since Dylan has been cagey about talking about his personal life.

 When he wasn't making things up, he simply out large chunks of his coming of age.   Similarly, Jorma Kaukonen wrote of his time as lead guitarist for the San Francisco's iconic Jefferson Airplane in Been So Long: My Life and Music, a memoir of his life growing up in the fifties and thriving as an artist in the swirling 60s counterculture. His prose was flat, and his feelings influences, friends, politics, and the free-love spirituality of that pugnacious decade are soft-spoken. The detachment from his history made it seem like he talked about someone else's life and career. Kaukonen, perhaps, would instead have not been charged with writing about them at all.

 I suppose the lesson was that although there's an overabundance of rock stars with stories as horrid, funny, and chaotic as Keith Richard's. Some of the stories are quieter in the telling, deservedly so.

  Beeswing: Fairport, Folk Rock, and Finding My Voice, 1967–75, a new book by acclaimed Richard Thompson, guitar hero, songwriter, and singer and co-founder of the influential British folk-rock band Fairport Convention Richard Thompson, is appealing, soft-spoken but overly cautious telling of the facts of his life. Not without sin, sizzle, disaster, or tragedies that need to be overcome as eventual success comes to the music and the music maker. His style is reflective, meditative to a degree, choosing his words and descriptions carefully. There's also a tangible air of hesitancy while he recounts his story, a seeming concern to avoid the dramatic, the sensational. Too much caution, however, as there are moments where eloquent rumination on incidents would have given Beeswing greater philosophical heft. To this day, it's one of my low expectations that old guard rock stars have something resembling a pearl of elegant and lengthy wisdom that's formed over their years of music-making on an international scale. Thompson is the soft-spoken sort, it seems, and the soft written as well. Elegant in his brevity and occasionally minimalist prose, he trades not in scandal, gossip, or revenge snark; he goes forth like Joe Friday in Dragnet, just the facts as best he remembers them, told as well as he can manage. The album sold meagerly, but it was a fruitful starting point for the legendary band as they progressed. Sandy Denny, a woman blessed with an ethereal and silver-toned voice, replaced original co-lead singer Judy Dyble, Thompson's girlfriend. The addition of Denny to share lead vocals with singer, guitarist, and songwriter Ian Matthews coincided with Fairport's burgeoning desire to grow conspicuous American influence and instead explored and made use of their own rich of British and Celtic music folk styles. The following three records-- What We Did On Our Holidays, Unhalfbricking, Liege, and Lief—marked a band that had invented a new kind of folk-rock, based on a fascinating combination of blues, jazz, and rock filtered through the gossamer textures of British and Celtic melodic construction and overtone. Fired by the unique sensibilities of Thompson's guitar work, the songwriting collective in this band gave the world that singular thing in pop music history, a distinct body of work.

Thompson doesn't belabor song meanings or origins nor deep dive into the tricks and techniques of his laudable guitar skills, preferring to limn lightly through the scuffling days of the years 1967 through 1975. Again, there isn't much in the way of sordid detail, strong opinion, or linguistic scene-chewing, but the book does provide a breezy, montage-like feel of Fairport and the bands they knew gigged in the same towns at the same clubs, pubs, and meeting halls. The elements of low paying gigs, the band's eventual adapting an abandoned, unheated pub as band living quarters and rehearsal space, creative tensions in the band, and having a singer in Sandy Denny who was as strong-willed and undisciplined as she was brilliant, and alluring are the ingredients of a rich tale that here seems told only by a third. Beeswing has concise and breezy pacing that the book gives off the feeling of being a treatment for a motion picture music biopic. The chronology of events has the air of a "greatest hits" list with the details scantily fleshed out to satisfy the requirements of a screen screenwriter who can squeeze everything into an entertaining and pat 120 feature. After reading, you're left wanting to know more and can't but feel a bit cheated. 

What might deeper feelings there have been within Thompson when he had to fire Denny from the band? He makes a note of the difficulty in weighing Denny's great talent against her insecurity and hard-drinking. At this point in a much-detailed story, we witness a conflicted choice to make sure that the band he co-founded remains a stable entity for the sake of his free expression and reason to exist. It's apparent that as much as he loved Denny and cherished her talent, he felt it better that he and the rest of Fairport move ahead without her. Thompson writes of this deftly but is sketchy on the emotional details. 

The book is full of matters that cry for a fuller accounting, episodes such as Thompson's eventual conversion to Sufism, meeting his eventual wife and songwriting-performing partner, encounters, and music with John Lee Hooker and Van Dyke Parks, and Linda Ronstadt. Incidents get mentioned, briefly described, sometimes with significant poetic effect, but too often being a glancing overview of a crowded with meaningful encounters and musical landmarks. In the end, the style and amount of details are suitable for a making-of-the-band movie or an outline for a limited series for a streaming service. As a book, though, it's a slight effort often poetically expressed. Thompson has a reputation as a potent lyricist who condenses emotional states and situations to brief, evocative epiphanies. It may be the case that his habit of compositional mind influenced his decision to avoid revealing too much of his inner life.  The subtitle of Beeswing: Fairport, Folk Rock, and Finding My Voice, 1967–75, tells us that the book covers only eight years of the author's career, hinting that there's another part of the story to be told, another volume forthcoming. With one book done, it would be a sweet deal if Thompson warms up to the idea that he's now a writer and composes the next volume fearlessly, with verve, detail, and nuance.  Thompson is a magnificent talent, and the world needs him to tell his tale of a critical and endlessly enthralling time in popular music history with the vividness it deserves. 

(Originally published in the San Diego Troubadour. Used with permission).