Since it was actually snowing (!) the day it came in the mail, I thought it only appropriate to offer a few remarks about the Bob Dylan holiday album, Christmas in the Heart. Actually, consider it a warning.
No, not that it’s bad – in fact, I think I may (dare I say?) love it, like a child loves a new toy or Santa loves figgy pudding. But I feel an obligation to warn you that if you don’t like the throaty croak of Dylan’s last few albums, this one may leave you scratching your head even more than this year’s Together Through Life. OK, much more.
Personally, I’m on the record as being a proponent of Dylan’s singing; his voice may be unconventional (OK, shot), but what he does with that battered old instrument never ceases to amaze me – think Clapton playing the hell out of an ancient, out-of-tune Stratocaster. And his recent material benefits from the weathered feel of his vocals, much more than his old nasally whine adapted to his less-than-well-remembered ’80s work.
But does Bob’s gravelly voice go with Christmas? Yes, there are times when it sounds patently, hilariously ridiculous, but for the most part, to me, it seems heartfelt, nostalgic, mournful, hopeful and funny – actually, sometimes all at once. Unlike some other holiday albums from singers with more traditional (read: good) voices, he seems to really be feeling “The Christmas Blues,” not just showing off his pipes. (more…)
You know this album. Even if you have somehow managed to miss it over the years, you know it from the countless other albums it has influenced in the 31 years since its release. Music From Big Pink is the closest thing we have to a sacred album in the annals of rock and roll. But let’s put the myth aside for a moment, and discuss the music.
The Band’s debut album was released in 1968, one of the most tumultuous years in the history of this country, and the world for that matter. It was a time of immense social and political change. There was civil unrest, assassination, war raging in Southeast Asia, the rise of the drug culture, and some of the most earth-shaking music ever made as the soundtrack to the whole mess. To say that the Band was unknown would not quite be accurate. They had been slugging it out on the road with Ronnie Hawkins for years, and more recently they had served as Bob Dylan’s backing band. It is fair to say that they weren’t on the radar of most people at the time. So in the midst of all of this change and chaos, what did these four Canadians and one American do? They released an album that took us back to our roots via popular music. Lives were changed. Eric Clapton decided to quit Cream after he heard the album. George Harrison paid close attention to the sound, and became even more disenchanted with the Beatles. (more…)
Waiting to get into the men’s room at Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon, I noticed a tall (relative to me, anyway), attractive young lady with a guitar standing quietly by. She was soft-spoken, seemed kind of shy, and turned out she was also visiting from California. Based in Arcata at that time, Lila Nelson was playing an early set before Rachel Taylor Brown that Spring night in 2008, and was about to completely rip apart my initial impression of her.
Lila Nelson described herself to me as shy, even after I had already determined that she was anything but. One thing was for certain though – she was “on” the entire time during my visit to her home in April of ‘09, a year after I first encountered her in Portland. (more…)
When it comes to telling the true story of Woodstock, more properly known as “An Aquarian Exposition: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair,” it’s hard to imagine anyone better suited for the role than Michael Lang. Now, 40 years after the world-changing event and right on time for the various activities celebrating the anniversary, the man who conceived the festival has decided to tell his story in The Road to Woodstock, co-written with Holly George-Warren.
One thing you learn early on in his book is that Michael Lang is a die-hard optimist. There’s no dream that can’t be realized, no obstacle that can’t be overcome. That attitude served him well on the road to Woodstock, because to say there were obstacles to getting the festival up and running would be a major understatement. Lang also manages to find the good in people, and despite profound disagreements with his Woodstock Ventures partners and others, there is no mudslinging here. (more…)
In 1957, Izzy Young started the Folklore Center on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, which at the time was the epicenter of the folk music craze. If you’ve read Bob Dylan’s book “Chronicles” you know that Dylan spent a lot of time hanging around the Folklore Center when he first arrived in New York City. Six years later, Young had to move his store to Sixth Avenue, which was somewhat removed from what was going on in the Village. In order to keep his dream alive, Young began to host concerts in his second-floor location.
In February of 1967, Tim Buckley walked into the Folklore Center for the first time. Buckley was about to start work on his second album for Elektra Records, Goodbye and Hello. His self-titled first album had been released the previous year. After spending some time speaking with the young folksinger, Young was so taken with him that he decided that Buckley should do a concert at the Folklore Center, despite the fact that Young had yet to hear him sing.
The concert took place on March 6, 1967. About 35 people were crammed into the small space. The concerts weren’t usually recorded, but Young did have a Nagra tape recorder, which he loaned out for people to make “field” recordings of real folk music. Young asked Buckley is he could record the set for his Pacifica radio show, and Buckley readily agreed. There were no microphones, or mixing consoles, or monitors, or pa speakers. Young merely pushed the button on the recorder. (more…)
To be honest, I had my doubts about Day Two of Folk Festival 50. First of all, I was still tired from the day one. Next, it appeared that the lineup wasn’t quite as strong as it was on Saturday, and yet it was hard to deny that there were some compelling artists scheduled. The weather was also a bit iffy, with rain and thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon.
Josh Ritter was the first performer on the Fort Stage on Sunday, and he was one of the prime reasons that I was at the festival. I’m a big fan of the Idaho songwriter, and his set did not disappoint. He appeared with his full band, and they sounded great on songs like “Right Moves,” and “Real Long Distance” from Josh’s most recent album, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, and on the title track from his 2003 album Hello Starling. The real standout however, was one that Josh played solo, the beautiful and powerful anti-war song “Girl In the War.” He dedicated “Another New World” to Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Not only is Josh a wonderful songwriter and performer, he comes across as a completely genuine guy, and the early audience at Fort Adams was very appreciative. (more…)
I’ve been looking for a vinyl copy of Electric Ladyland for awhile now. Occasionally I would find one while cratedigging, but discs themselves would always turn out to be in really rough shape. I think I’ve said before that I don’t care that much about the covers. As long as they’re in reasonably good shape, I’ll pick up the album if the vinyl is relatively clean. I’m not really a collector. I just want the music. I finally found the great Hendrix album last weekend at my favorite vinyl haunt, Hold Fast in Asbury Park. The cover was in pretty bad shape, but the vinyl wasn’t bad, and the price was right.
There are some albums that just sound like they were recorded in the middle of the night in a dimly lit studio. Electric Ladyland is a classic example of that. This is music of the night, dark, almost frightening at times. It’s the third and final album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, although the participation of bassist Noel Redding is minimal. Redding, along with manager Chas Chandler, was unhappy with the amount of time the band was spending in the studio. Hendrix not only invited friends to the sessions, he insisted on multiple takes of songs. So he ended up playing a lot of the bass parts (on a right-handed bass), while Redding sat it out in the pub.
The recording of actually began at Electric Ladyland began at Olympic Studios in London, but the sessions got down to serious business when recording moved to the newly opened Record Plant in New York City. Hendix was well known as a perfectionist. He insisted on 43 takes of “Gypsy Eyes,” and still wasn’t happy with the finished recording. He made Traffic’s Dave Mason (uncredited on the album) play the acoustic guitar part for “All Along the Watchtower” 20 times before he was satisfied. You know what? It was worth it, wasn’t it? There were other guest musicians along for the ride as well. Listen to Steve Winwood’s fantastic organ playing on the chilling “Voodoo Chile.” A third member of Traffic, Chris Wood, played on the album, as did future Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles, renowned keyboard player Al Kooper, and Jefferson Airplane bass player Jack Casady (credited as Jack Cassidy). The album was recorded by Gary Kellgren and Eddie Kramer. (more…)
To say that Sunday, February 15, 2009, was a busy day for me is an understatement. I had decided to devote the entire day to Parlour to Parlour shoots, after discovering that I couldn’t spread them across two days. Basically, nobody was willing to give up any of their precious Valentine’s Day hours for an interview. In hindsight, I should have known better than to propose V-day for anything other than a date. But all was well that ended well: I did have a date of my own on the 14th, and I made the rounds on the 15th to visit three different artists I had discovered through my time at Performer Magazine. Daniel James from Leopold and his Fiction was the first I met that day.
Standing next to the Happy Hollows‘ Sarah Negahdari at the Knockout in San Francisco’s Mission District, on the night I first saw Leopold and his Fiction perform live (the Hollows had just finished their opening set), I remarked to her that the band’s fierce grooves reminded me a lot of the blues rock & boogie of early the ’70s band Cactus. Her reaction to that statement was pretty much the same as that of Daniel James, Leopold’s chief songwriter, singer and guitarist, when I dropped in on his San Francisco apartment about six months later — “I’ve never heard them before.”
It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of, and in retrospect, it was remarkably short-sighted, but when Laura Nyro, unhappy with attempts to market her as a celebrity, announced her retirement from the music business in 1971, I lost track of her until many years later. This despite the fact that she came back five years later with a brand new album called Smile *. Hell, five years is no retirement at all these days. It’s merely the normal recording cycle for major artists.
All through the late ’60s and early ’70s there was no more important musical voice in my life than that of Laura Nyro. For me, she was right up there with the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. Still after her 1971 covers album Gonna Take A Miracle (recorded with Labelle), an album I adore, Laura left the music business, and when she came back I had moved on to other artists. It’s a damn shame, really. After Smile there was the live album Season of Lights in 1978, and Nested in 1978, and then another long break before Mother’s Spiritual in 1984. Then came Laura: Live at the Bottom Line in 1989 *, and Walk the Dog and Light the Light * in 1993. As I said, I missed a lot of great music. What’s worse is that Laura was no longer on my radar when she died of breast cancer in 1997. She was only 49 years old. Hers is a death that haunts me to this day. (more…)
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the rarest of breeds in the music world: the protest remix.
It’s unclear which is more inconceivable today: that a major label would release a stinging protest song aimed at the government of an extremely wealthy country, or that the song would crack the Top 40. But thanks to the overwhelming good will that came from Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in late 1984 and USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” a few months later, benefit fatigue had thankfully not yet kicked in, and “Sun City,” shepherded by Steven Van Zandt, became a surprise hit in late 1985. Now consider some other curiosities about the track:
– Two of the verses feature rappers, a full six months before Run-DMC and Aerosmith would drop their game-changing collaboration.
- The production was by New York big beat maestro Arthur Baker, who was adored by musicians but not exactly known as a hitmaker.
- The majority of the artists who sang on the record hadn’t scored a Top 40 hit of their own in years, if ever.
Indeed, “Sun City” is about as hipster a benefit/protest record as you’re likely to find. Daryl Hall and John Oates, Pat Benatar and Bruce Springsteen are easily the biggest commercial names at the time to appear on the record, while socially conscious artists like Peter Gabriel, Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett and, of course, Bono would find mainstream success in the coming years. The rest of the contributors are a who’s who of New York cool. Joey Ramone, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, Run-DMC, Duke Bootee, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Stiv Bators and Lou Reed all make appearances, as do Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, George Clinton, a pre-comeback Bonnie Raitt, Temptations David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Wolf, and Herbie Hancock. (Jackson Browne contributes as well, though getting him to work on a protest song back then was like shooting fish in a barrel.) Bob Geldof’s name appears on the 12″ single’s back cover, though one wonders if that was the benefit record equivalent to giving Berry Gordy writing credit on a Motown single; whether he contributed to the track or not, you gotta put Bob’s name on it.
The song itself is easily the best of the big benefit singles, with a crazy catchy “I ain’t gonna play Sun City” chorus and a slammin’ rhythm track assembled by Baker. And again, one must give credit to Van Zandt and Baker for leading off the song with rappers, an unprecedented move at the time. Some stations refused to play the song for that very reason – which just seems hilarious in today’s musical climate, where whitey is the odd man out – and that makes its rise into the Top 40 all the more impressive. What, then, would Baker do with the remix?
Go absolutely apeshit, that’s what. The A-side mix is over nine-and-a-half minutes long, and the “Not So Far Away” dub mix is a gargantuan twelve-and-a-half minutes. He samples Daryl Hall’s voice and turns it into a percussion track – something Girl Talk would turn into a copyright supervisor’s nightmare some 20 years later – and allows what I can only assume to be Hancock to noodle for the final five minutes of the dub mix. And, per usual, there are lots and lots of edits, though the credits for those edits go to Albert Cobrera (note the spelling) and Aldo Miran, which has to be the Latin Rascals (Albert Cabrera and Tony Moran) in disguise. Can anyone confirm or deny?
One of my favorite things about the A-side mix was how Baker turned the last lines in the verses sung by Springsteen, Bono and Bobby Womack into a cappella bits, only to bring the track thundering in on that fourth drum beat in the final measure. And man, listen to that Bono vocal. He hasn’t put anything that passionate to tape in ages.
These days, of course, “Sun City” has as much relevance as songs about occupied Germany, since apartheid came to an end in 1994. I am also reminded of a professor of mine who taught a class on the Sociology of Popular Music (help me out, Ohio University grads: he had a wooden leg, and would sometimes turn it around backwards to mess with people): he thought “Sun City” was fascinating because it’s basically musicians singing to other musicians. After all, no one buying this record was about to play Sun City, were they? (You could make a similar argument that Michael Jackson was singing about how he and his fellow pop stars are the world, and the ones who make a brighter day, blah blah blah.) And, adding an extra dose of irony, half of the artists who sing on this record were nowhere near the Sun City concert director’s radar (though if the video below is to be believed, Daryl Hall turned down $2 million to play there), which means that their declaration that they ain’t gonna play Sun City is like me saying that I’m not going to do business in Dubai. It’s good to have principles, but it’s a lot easier to have them when you know that you will never have to exercise them.
Still, you can’t deny that “Sun City” did an incredible job raising the average person’s awareness to an alarming human rights issue, and that was Van Zandt’s primary goal all along. That the song cracked the Top 40 as well was gravy. I will confess that I did not rip either of the tracks below (still need to save up the coin for a USB turntable, right after I plunk down my soul for the upcoming Beatles version of Rock Band), and the dub mix has a skip in it, but hopefully this will make up for it: the video I’ve included for “Sun City” is done “Pop-Up Video” style, woo hoo! Who would have thought that a third of the video’s budget was spent covering Jimmy Cliff’s hotel room?
Post script: I spent a day at Sun City in 1997, and while this may fly in the face of the thousand words before it, I have to say, the place was pretty sweet.
Since it was actually snowing (!) the day it came in the mail, I thought it only appropriate to offer a few remarks about the Bob Dylan holiday album, Christmas in the Heart. Actually, consider it a warning. 
You know this album. Even if you have somehow managed to miss it over the years, you know it from the countless other albums it has influenced in the 31 years since its release. 
![road-to-woodstock-cover-image-677x1024[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/road-to-woodstock-cover-image-677x10241.jpg "road-to-woodstock-cover-image-677x1024[1]")
When it comes to telling the true story of Woodstock, more properly known as “An Aquarian Exposition: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair,” it’s hard to imagine anyone better suited for the role than Michael Lang. Now, 40 years after the world-changing event and right on time for the various activities celebrating the anniversary, the man who conceived the festival has decided to tell his story in 
To be honest, I had my doubts about Day Two of Folk Festival 50. First of all, I was still tired from the day one. Next, it appeared that the lineup wasn’t quite as strong as it was on Saturday, and yet it was hard to deny that there were some compelling artists scheduled. The weather was also a bit iffy, with rain and thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon.
I’ve been looking for a vinyl copy of 
– Two of the verses feature rappers, a full six months before Run-DMC and Aerosmith would drop their game-changing collaboration.