We did it! More specifically and much less modestly, I did it — I won Tuesday’s election!
My victory even got some coverage from Associated Press national political writer Liz Sidoti, who wrote, “A slew of cities selected mayors …”
A win-win all around!
One of the many things I love about Popdose is our collective freedom to write different kinds of posts: Sometimes you gets yourself a Cold Shot related to some bit of blues news, or sometimes we reach back into the archives to espouse the greatness of an evergreen-but-bona-fide classic.
And still other times, such as this week, we share discoveries that might not be new—but they’re new to us.
Not long ago, cruising Bomp’s spam of the week, this tasty little CD came up for grabs: Bo Diddley’s Drive By: Tales From the Funk Dimension 1970-73, compiling tracks from four lost classic Chess albums issued in the early 1970s and available on—get this—Australian import.
Are you kidding me? After buying roughly 8,000 albums and being graced by probably as many promo copies, record titles alone rarely—if ever—sway an album purchase. But with a name like that, even in these cash-strapped days, it sounded just too good to pass up. Blues-funk of the early 1970s can be fantastic, as the old guard like Bo Diddley, Albert King, and Buddy Guy latched on to the urban sounds coming out of Chicago blues clubs and the second wave of the Memphis Stax soul sound led by Black Moses himself. So Mojo laid his money down. (more…)
If Mojo don’t love you baby, then grits ain’t groceries, eggs ain’t poultries, an Mona Lisa was a man. Yeah, that’s right, that’s what my man the late James Booker used to sing in “All Around The World” while wearing that sexy eye patch with the star on it.
It just stuns me that more people don’t appreciate this New Orleans great, he’s a footnote, an afterthought in the hall of fame of American pianists (not just blues or jazz players, I mean all-time greats). Heck, he’d weave classical motifs into his blues, like in “Gitanarias” and the “Black Minute Waltz.” From the sounds of things, he took these musical side streets just for the sport of it.
And of course early in his career he played a little B-3 and did the James Brown thang on cuts like “Beale Street Popeye.”
But he was at his best playing cuts like “Something You Got” and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” in the classic New Orleans doctor-professor impresario style. His complex left hand rhythms complemented the furious, ornate melodies coming out of the right, making most other blues cats look like ham-fisted piano-beaters. Dig yourself some live “Tico Tico/Papa Was a Rascal” and listen to the interplay between his steady left and deadly right. (more…)
When I heard the news that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital, I was just about to leave work. I had a feeling that by the time I arrived home later that evening, he would be gone. And even though I was right, it still hit me in shock. Out of that shock came two sudden reactions: They came from two different parts of me that I think were equally meaningful, but equally opposite. In a way, they seemed to parallel the two different images of Jackson that dominated his image over the last two decades. One was the brilliant singer and dancer. The other, the face-shifting weirdo living a life seemingly out of control. Like Michael Jackson’s life, my emotions were in a state of Jeckyll and Hyde. So here are my two “tributes”: first, the sad anger of Hyde, then the quiet reflection of Jeckyll.
* * * * * * * * *
This is a sad end to what turned out to be a sad life.
This is going to get extremely ugly, folks — and not just in the way that Elvis became a kitsch messiah when he passed. Like Elvis, I wouldn’t not be surprised if the “Michael is alive” sightings start pretty soon. Then there will be all the people claiming his estate: people he owed money to, family members, record companies, people coming out of the woodwork saying that “the kid IS his son.” And the people who bought tickets to the O2 shows: Do you think they’ll get their ticket money back? Not bloody likely.
Part of me is so unbelievably cynical that I would not surprised if it turned out that he knew that he was dying, and scheduled the concerts as a way of paying off part of his debts, knowing he wasn’t going to survive to make the shows. Considering he had already postponed the first few weeks in advance, I have a feeling he was just going to keep postponing shows until he finally passed. Is that a lousy attitude to have? Perhaps, but considering all that has happened in the last twenty years or so, you also have to remember this: all the weird shit that we’ve heard about him — all the stuff he told us not to believe in the tabloids — he put it in the tabloids (or at least, approved of his people letting the stories get out). It was his belief that he could control his image, while refusing to adapt to a more salacious press over the course of his career, that ending up tipping his image from eccentric genius to weirdo. It would be another way — his last and greatest feat of media and cultural manipulation — to announce a series of comeback/goodbye concerts that would never take place, and then die while working his ass off to rehearse for them. At the end, it would be all about the music again.
As I said, it’s cynical — because it’s so sad. I’m just at that age in life that I grew up in the midst of Thriller mania during my formative years, and don’t look at that time or that music as “oldies” the way those 30 and under might. And that’s why this news hits me in such a raw place inside, because the reality is that for someone who was such a combination of brilliant and big all at once — who actually WAS a superstar and actually deserved all the critical acclaim that he was given — the last twenty years ended up being a string of worsening stories and very little music. His musical legacy ends up almost a side note: distorted by the non-musical events over the majority of his adult life. And now that his life ends like this — with both a bang and a whimper…it’s just sad.
* * * * * * * * *
Now that I’ve taken care of my “Mr. Hyde” post, I think I need to give due time to “Dr. Jeckyll”:
The thing that always struck me first about Michael was his voice’s malleability, and I mean that in the best of terms. While Off the Wall may very well be a stronger overall album than Thriller, the earlier album mainly stuck to mid-tempo dance music and ballads (with a slight exception for the more funky, horn driven album closer, “Burn This Disco Out,” which would make an awesome tribute track for Lost in the ’70s (hint, hint)). On Thriller, you had the tribal rhythms of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” the “yacht rock” of “Human Nature,” the percussive funk of “Billie Jean,” up-tempo pop of “P.Y.T.,” and even hard rock with “Beat It.” And the unifying ingredient was that Michael could sing his ass off on every one of them. To paraphrase his pal Eddie Murphy’s comments about James Brown (one of MJ’s idols): he meant that shit.
I think it was Mel Torme (or maybe Tony Bennett?) who said that the reason so many singers from previous generations like Michael Jackson was that “he [was] one of the only modern singers who actually sings.” It took me a while to figure out what he really meant, but I finally got it: Michael can take a song and make it his own, because he actually got into the words, the music, and how the voice should bridge both of them, to being out the emotion in each and accentuate the best of both. He got into the songs with real emotion — not the pseudo-emotion that many pop singers (especially today) have, where they trill, or get loud, but have no connection to the song below the surface. Michael actually got so into “She’s Out of My Life” that he started crying at the end of the final take. He didn’t just sing the song: for those three minutes, he was living it. That’s something so wonderful, so ineffable, so fearless, that you can’t really teach it. You either have it as an instinct or you don’t; it’s why pop music is an art when done right.
That when, when I think about the descent his life took in the last 20 years of his life — which probably started the moment I saw the cover of the Bad album for the first time and said “What the hell? Who IS that?!” — I can still find redemption in the music, and those moments where all the world seemed to be listening to and singing the same songs. When elementary school music teachers were hanging posters of MJ in their classrooms (mine had the one of Michael in the sleeveless yellow sweater with his hands in his pockets) and gym teachers were having classes do aerobics presentations to “Beat It” for their families.
My cynical side is just disappointed and angry. My other side just says “I’m sorry, Michael. Sorry it ended like this. Sorry for the life you got pushed into by your dad, and probably fucked you up big time for the rest of your life. Maybe that push, and that childhood stardom, ended up awakening the genius as well, but that’s no excuse. I just hope now you’re at peace.”
Let’s get a couple things straight: Terence Trent Howard, a.k.a Terence Trent D’Arby, a.k.a. his latest name–which came to him in a dream–Sananda Francesco Maitreya, is a certifiable nut. He also doesn’t seem to have someone in his entourage who can reel in his nutty musical impulses, which leads to peculiar interludes, asides, giggling, and soliloquies in his recordings. He likes making weird concept albums, rock-opera things that sound like what might happen if Wilson Pickett were fronting Styx.
Yet his voice is beautiful, powerful, and rough. His grasp of soul singing is extraordinary; he can effortlessly flit from gospel to jazz to hard funk to pop to Memphis-style soul shouting, and even pull off late-’60s psychedelic soul, which was pretty weird to begin with but yet he makes it sound cool. He’s kind of like Prince, except more flawed in a Sun Ra kind of loony way (both D’Arby and Ra had issues with U.S. Army service, so they have that in common). (more…)
Manchester boasts arguably the most fertile British rock soil, having birthed a million bands from John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers to 10cc to the Buzzcocks and the Smiths. In my lifetime, the scene was never hotter than in the mid-to-late 1980s, when it was dubbed “Madchester” and gave rise to a bunch of bands that all quickly came and went. One of the first, and the hottest, was the Stone Roses, whose self-titled debut hit American shores in 1989.
Not a lot of Americans hipped themselves to The Stone Roses, which is a shame, because it contained some rockin’, melodic tuneage that provided an antidote to the synth-y tripe, hair-metal power ballads, and teenybopper nymphs like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson polluting the charts at the time. These guys shut up and played their funky guitar lines that took their cues straight from James Brown and Parliament as much as they did their 1960s English pop forebears. (more…)
In my Cratedigger colum last Saturday, I got out my vinyl copy of the 1965 Miles Davis album, E.S.P. The journey from that classic album to this DVD of a 1987 Miles concert in Munich is more than just 20-plus years. Musically, it’s a lifetime, stretching from the acoustic hard bop of the great Miles Davis Quintet to the hard funk of his late ’80s band.
One of the great misconceptions about Miles is that following the six-year hiatus that began in 1975, when he stayed off the road to address health issues, he was never the same as a trumpet player. If this DVD exists for no other reason, it would have value simply because it gives the lie to that perception. Miles plays wonderfully here, and he plays a lot. According to keyboard player Adam Holzman, “When he first made his comeback, he was not that strong and he was building his lip strength so he didn’t play a whole lot. By ‘84,’85 he was playing a very healthy amount on stage again. He had all his strength back and he was on top of it.”
Miles Davis: That’s What Happened (Eagle Rock) is a well-shot document of a particular evening in Munich when Miles, just four years from his death, and his band appeared before an enraptured German audience. They play songs from his then current album, Tutu, including the title track, and the Middle Eastern-influenced “Portia,” which closes the set. “Human Nature,” made popular by Michael Jackson, and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” both featured on Miles’ 1985 album You’re Under Arrest, are also included. A medley of “One Phone Call”/”Street Scenes”/”That’s What Happened” opens the show and finds Miles playing brilliantly over a thick groove laid down by bassist Darryl Jones. Jones, of course, went on to take over the bass position in the Rolling Stones when Bill Wyman retired in 1993, and has been with them ever since. (more…)
Ian McLagan is one of rock’s most revered performers. He was a member of the Small Faces, as well as the Faces, and has played with a who’s who of rock and roll, including Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and many, many others. His unique keyboard stylings can be heard on hundreds of recordings, including such classics as Stewart’s “Maggie May” and the Stones’ “Miss You.” He currently resides in Austin, TX, where he performs weekly with his band, the Bump Band. His latest album, Never Say Never, is available on 00:02:59 Records.
You’ve been living in Austin since 1994. What brought you there in the first place?
It was actually an earthquake. The earthquake in L.A. on January 17 felt brutal, and I’d been promising my wife that I’d consider leaving L.A., but was getting so much work there. After the earthquake I just said, ‘let’s get out.’ We did a little research. It didn’t take long. There’s really only one music city in America. I mean, Seattle’s cool and everything, but it’s got English weather, and New York is fine, but it gets a brutal winter. It was just checks and balances. It’s obviously Austin, and we moved here a few months later, in May of that year, almost 15 years ago.
At some point you put together the Bump Band. When was that?
I’ve had a Bump Band since ‘79. Obviously the L.A. versions were different. I toured Japan with Ronnie Lane in 1990, and we rehearsed here in Austin, at what was then the ARC (Austin Rehearsal Complex), and that was run by Don Harvey and Wayne Nagel. Don Harvey was the drummer on that tour, so he was the first person I called when I was going to move here. He found me (guitarist) “Scrappy” Jud Newcombe, and from there the three of us have been together 15 years.
And when did (former Spirit, Jo Jo Gunne) Mark Andes join?
(Laughing) It’s funny you should mention that. He joined in June, five years ago, and left two or three weeks ago.
I’m sorry to hear that.
I saw him … actually there was a party at the ARC. It was the 10-year anniversary since it closed party, and Mark came from Houston for that. So it was nice to see him. So, I mean, we’re still pals and everything. I think he’s just focusing on different stuff. He probably doesn’t want to tour anymore. (more…)
Do you like those smooth soul ballads? Maybe you like to kick back with your lady, or man, and chill out with the lights low, and the Delfonics singing softly in the background. If that appeals to you, I’ve got a suggestion for you: stop reading this right now. Because to paraphrase Tina Turner, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears don’t do nothing nice and easy.
The eight-piece band, led by the irrepressible Joe Lewis, has come storming out of Austin, TX with their Lost Highway debut, Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is. They were a huge hit a couple of weeks ago at South by Southwest, and now they appear poised to conquer the rest of the world.
I’m not big on coining terms, and someone has probably come up with this before me, but the most fitting name I can give to their music is punk soul. Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears come at you with the kind of energy and aggression usually reserved for only the most committed punk bands, and their soul groove is deep and fierce.
The most obvious influence here is James Brown. Just check out “I’m Broke” to see what I mean. There are also echoes of Wilson Pickett and Joe Tex. And just when you think Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears might be a one-trick-pony, they come at you with “Master Sold My Baby,” which blends dark Delta blues with a New Orleans second-line beat.
There’s nothing here to tell me whether Lewis is a great technical singer. He is certainly a great soul shouter, but since there are no ballads, and not much in the way of melody, he is not called upon to explore the full range of his voice. He openly admits that he didn’t sit down to write any of these songs. “If I sit down and try to write a song, it sounds contrived. All the songs on this record, I just made up as I went along. I couldn’t do a lot of ‘em again if I didn’t have ‘em on tape.”
Fortunately, the Honeybears rhythm section knows how to lay down a wicked groove, and the band knows how to play together as a unit, instead of seeking individual glory. The groove established, Lewis adds his stream-of-consciousness lyrics to the pot, and the stew really begins to simmer.
Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is was produced by Spoon drummer Jim Eno, who was very pleased with the band’s spontaneity. “We were able to do about 75 percent of the album live, and that’s something that you very, very rarely do.” That immediacy jumps right out at you from the speakers.
The soul revival continues apace.
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Alkaline Trio, Agony & Irony (Epic)
purchase this album (Amazon)
These Chicago-bred emo pioneers have been gradually sanding down the rough edges of their sound for years — and with their Epic debut, a glossy sheen is officially all that remains. Longtime fans are already grousing about Agony & Irony, but the album’s FM-ready sound is already yielding dividends for the band: Alkaline Trio was featured on an episode of The Hills in May. That won’t be of much comfort to those pissed-off purists, but it should give a pretty big boost to the band members’ bank statements. By their next album, their transformation into the emo version of the Goo Goo Dolls should be complete; in the meantime, they should get a semi-credible hit or two out of Lit-esque tracks like “Love Love Kiss Kiss.” (MySpace)
James Brown, Gravity (Volcano)
purchase this album (Amazon)
Not James’ finest hour, to be certain — but it does contain his last major Top 40 hit, the Rocky IV soundtrack anthem “Living in America,” and it probably represents his last more or less consistent album. It’s hard to decide which is more surprising: That Gravity was out of print, or that Volcano — the imprint that once was Scotti Brothers — is still in business. Those Survivor and “Weird Al” Yankovic royalties must be more lucrative than anyone could have imagined…
John Coltrane, Dakar (Prestige)
purchase this album (Amazon)
One of Coltrane’s earliest albums gets the Prestige reissue treatment here — no bonus tracks, but it’s remastered, and considering that these sessions were recorded in 1957, the difference is probably noticeable, to say the least. Coltrane’s foils for Dakar are Cecil Payne, Pepper Adams, Mal Waldron, Doug Watkins, and Art Taylor — and though Adams and Waldron contribute some solid songs, this isn’t one of Coltrane’s essential releases (check out the way his solo trips and falls down a flight of stairs on “Witches’ Pit”). For completists and jazz fanatics only. (more…)
