“That’s Leonard’s Jeep,” Robert said as we walked his dog past the monastery. My wife and I had driven north about ten miles, most of it curving two-thirds of the way up Mt. Baldy, to watch my professor’s cabin while he was away on a business trip. The most important part of the job was to make sure his old dog, Toby, was looked after, and walked twice a day. As he showed us the normal route that Toby liked to go, he pointed over to the Buddhist monastery right across the street, halfway between his cabin and the public campgrounds. There were a few vehicles outside the building, all of them likely part-time visitors who would come up for a few days at a time to gain peace and wisdom at the feet of the monks. Among the vehicles there was a silver Jeep, which was likely bought by the unofficial Poet Laureate of Canada to make his nearly-weekly trips from Los Angeles to Baldy, trying to shake a depression, a “cloud” that had settled over him sometime in the early 1990s, and had literally kept him unable to create anything new, either on the page or in the studio, for nearly a decade.

“We’ve had breakfast a couple of times,” Robert added, as he let Toby off the leash and let him wander the ravine separating the monastery from the road. And that was that. No juicy gossip would be forthcoming. But, then again, I wouldn’t have expected any. Not about Leonard Cohen, who even before his period at Mt. Baldy seemed to already carry an almost Buddhist sense of mysticism, both in his work and his very presence. The man was a study in Taoist contradictions: a poet who became a songwriter, while most popular artists went about it the other way around. A man with a voice once called “the worst to ever be signed to a major label,” yet one that perfectly suited both the man and his songs: full of passion, mystery, and the texture of a well-aged port. An Anglo-Quebec native with much more in common, it seemed, with the artists of continental Europe than the Quebecois or English who surrounded him. A Jew whose most well known songs were populated with associations to Christian imagery. A man who looked and sounded like a philosophy professor, and yet always came off as the coolest motherfucker on earth. (more…)

Popularity: 12% [?]

For anyone who grew up in the Midwest, John Cougar speaks our language. We’ve stuck with him through the early years on to the Farm Aid thing through to his modern-day output.

For those keeping score, he went from Johnny Cougar to John Cougar to John Cougar Mellencamp and then, simply, “John Mellencamp.” (Trivia: Lou Reed referred to him as “my painter friend Donald” on New York.) He’s put us through more name changes than The Artist formerly known as “the artist formerly known as Prince.” It all stemmed from his first manager giving him a rock-star identity in the 1970s, with which he landed a couple formulaic hits. Later, Cougar-Mellencamp took control of his own career and morphed into a real musician worthy of the Rock Hall.

Because of the name changes, it was sometimes hard to find his records (under the Ms? The Cs?) but once we did there was always a bushel of corn-fed, no-bull rock-n-roll to be found between them thar grooves. While Cougar-Mellencamp might have made his name a moving target, there was never any doubt where the needle of his rock compass pointed—straight toward Detroit, where rock and soul fused to make crashy rhythms for which you had no choice but to lace up your dancin’ shoes.

Shucks, in “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.,” the litany of artists he names in tribute includes a peck of Dee-troit singers: Jackie Wilson, Mitch Ryder, spotlight on Martha Reeves and don’t forget James Brown! (OK, The Godfather of Soul wasn’t Detroit but don’t forget a Cincinnati label first put him on the map, and that town lies only about 40 miles east of Mellencamp’s hometown of Seymour, Ind.).

In fact, one could make the argument that he is the modern-day fulfillment of what Mitch Ryder could have become if he hadn’t disbanded the Detroit Wheels and gone Vegas—in the most putrid, pejorative sense of the word—right at the peak of his career. They certainly both were charismatic white singers from the Midwest with a deep respect for black performers. Cougar-Mellencamp did have a country bent to his music that Ryder didn’t circa his Detroit Wheels period, and a conscience that still gets him mocked by certain high-fallutin’ East- and West-coasters who think they’re the bee’s knees and just can’t get his quaint-liberal schtick because they never baled no hay, worked a day in a factory, or used a “buy here-pay here” used-car lot. (more…)

Popularity: 13% [?]

Sometime in 1985, a new label-wide policy was instituted regarding all new signings. There were to be none. Nada. The staff was called into a departmental meeting to receive the news, which, to my mind, might as well have been notice that the oxygen supply to the building was being abruptly cut off. Success at the major label level involves constant evolution. Like the care and feeding of a miniature bonsai tree, sculpting, shaping, and pruning the roster is a delicate and subtle business that eventually yields strong roots and fine blossoms. To withhold basic nutrients is to doom the entire undertaking to a slow and withering death, and not one I cared to be a party to.

But this new edict, however strange it seems, actually led me straight to my next signing.

That morning I had gone through the previous day’s mail, sorting promising looking demos into one stack, and depositing the rest in the trash. Exactly what a “promising demo” looks like is anyone’s guess, and tossing the others is not flattering behavior for an A&R man, but the company also had one of those “no unsolicited tapes” policies so I suppose any route out of the building for these offerings was more or less the correct one.

On this particular day I received a twelve-inch vinyl record in a white sleeve with a picture of three large bowling balls in triangular formation. These bowling balls bore the inscriptions “Steve,” “Bob&,” “Rich.” I took one look, declared the item preposterous, and threw it away. Two hours later, fuming from the meeting which ended all further A&R activity, I returned to my office and declared out loud to no one in particular, “Well, if I’m going to waste my time, I might as well waste it on this!” With that, I fished Steve, Bob, & Rich out of the wastebasket and slapped in onto the turntable. I cranked the stereo’s volume way up, figuring to disturb just about everybody within earshot with this complete rubbish. What emerged from the speakers, however, was not the misguided and amateurish attempt at immortality that I had imagined but rather an incredible piece of writing and performance called “Let My People Go-Go” (download). Even the track’s count off, not “1-2-3-4″ but rather “Father, Son, and Holy Cow!” had me going wild. The lyrics were sublime:

Moses went up to the mountain high
To find out from God, “Why did you make us? Why?”
Secret words in a secret room…
He said, “A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!

What a hoot! Still, there was a moratorium to be observed, so I simply made a cassette copy of the record and threw it in the bottom of my tape bag to enjoy again at my leisure. (more…)

Popularity: 11% [?]

Patti Myers wants her favorite band in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — and she wants you to help get them there. “If you are fortunate enough to own any of [their] music, then you have been blessed with a precious gift,” she says. “If you’re not familiar with their music, you’re missing a beautiful experience. [They have] a way of drawing you into the song, holding you captive, then releasing you, feeling better for it.”

Myers has even posted an online petition that she one day hopes to submit to the hall’s selection committee, extolling the band’s achievements and concluding, “Their classic music is still heard on the radio today all around the world, proving that they have earned their place in the Rock Hall of Fame.” That petition has attracted 94 signatures to date.

Patti Myers’ favorite band is Player.

Just in case you can’t make it through the year without one more sighting of celebs in tuxedos and bolo ties, tonight the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its newest members during a ceremony broadcast live on VH1 Classic at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. (Apparently the ceremony isn’t quite important enough to knock “Flavor of Love” and “The Salt’n'Pepa Show” off the mothership: VH1 proper is waiting until March 22 to air the induction ceremony, presumably in heavily edited form.)

All this week, my colleagues at Popdose will be discussing who’s in, who’s out, who should be in, who shouldn’t be, and whether or not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a good idea in the first place. We begin today with the story of Patti Myers and other music fans who, on a wing, a website and a prayer, have undertaken to build a groundswell for their favorite acts to gain admission into rock’s hallowed Hall.

First, though, a preview of this evening’s festivities. (more…)

Popularity: 15% [?]