There seem to be two camps of people when it comes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: those who feel that rock and roll deserves a permanent place to showcase the important effect it’s has had on popular culture, and those who believe that the intention of rock music was rebellion against the mainstream; that a stuffy old shrine goes against everything the music stands for, and screw you if you don’t agree with them. I belong to the former group, partly because I’m from Cleveland, Ohio and got caught up in the hysteria of bringing the Rock Hall to the north coast, and also because I feel that there needs to be a place where people can look at rock and roll as an art and examine its history. I’ve been to the museum, and could have stayed for days marveling at Hendrix’s guitar and fragments of Keith Moon’s drum kit.
This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and there’s a star-studded concert in Madison Square Garden to celebrate the occasion. In conjunction with the anniversary, Time-Life has released a nine-DVD collection called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live. It includes eight discs of Hall of Fame inductions and a DVD featuring some of the performances from the 1995 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert that took place in Cleveland. Since the very first induction back in 1986, we’ve seen and heard about the induction ceremonies (usually in New York) that are a gathering of music legends. They get up on stage and perform their biggest hits; give speeches that are sometimes emotional, sometimes raucous, sometimes spiteful, and at the end of the night all of the inductees and presenters come together for one kick assjam session. With this DVD collection, it appeared as if music aficionados — you know, you and I, the people who made these rock stars legends — were finally going to be included in these events, and not just through the chopped-up versions we’ve seen on VH1.
For all the correspondence from Uncle Donnie that we have on record (or in piles in Lev’s basement), it’s worth noting that he could, on occasion, fall out of touch with people. The trick was to reconnect with those folks before they died. Barry Gibb was one of the fortunate ones. -RS
TO: Barry Gibb
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career Advice
Barry, old pal, how have you been? It’s been so long since we last saw you at your brother Robin’s birthday party in Miami—what was it, five years ago? Nine? I don’t remember much about that night, but I do recall thinking the nude caterers were a bit much. The spinach balls were lovely, though; Mitzi’s been trying to recreate them in our kitchen ever since. I tell her the nudity had nothing to do with the quality of the food, but she never listens.
Speaking of my beloved, the other night, she was watching repeats of French television (this satellite TV gets damn near everything), and came upon a performance of “To Love Somebody” by a couple singer/songwriter types, and we got into a discussion about you. You did such a good job on American Idol a couple years back (though I didn’t quite get the Dr. Zaius costume—was that supposed to be ironic?), yet never capitalized on it. That’s a shame, particularly if you want to have a place at the table in pop culture these days. With such an enormous back catalog of hits, you should be out there reminding people of your greatness, and getting new fans to bask in that greatness. I think I can help you, if you take my advice in several key areas: (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.”
In part two of this flashback edition of Vin Scelsa’s Live at Lunch, singer-songwriter Jules Shear talks about the R&B inspiration for “If She Knew What She Wants,” how he feels about artists licensing their songs for commercials, his romantic relationships with singer-songwriters Pal Shazar and Aimee Mann, and his role in the creation of MTV Unplugged in the late ’80s. In between the bursts of candid conversation, Scelsa spins songs by Cyndi Lauper and Johnny Cash, a foot-stomping cover of Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’” courtesy of B.B. King and Eric Clapton, and a cut from Shear’s first band, the Funky Kings.
However, the biggest surprise of the entire June 28, 2000, Live at Lunch broadcast is Shear’s speaking voice. Suffice to say it’s not what you’d expect if you’ve ever heard “Steady,” his sole entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (though Lauper’s cover of Shear’s “All Through the Night” reached #5 in ‘84). My own personal reaction is best summed up by the following verse from “Stereo,” the opening track on Pavement’s 1997 album Brighten the Corners:
What about the voice of Geddy Lee?
How did it get so high?
I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.
(I know him, and he does.)
Then you’re my fact-checkin’ cuz.
It’s nice to see Raul Malo back in the spotlight. The onetime Mavericks frontman hadn’t exactly gone quiet, but over the last several years his big voice has been muted somewhat by label difficulties and diffident promotion (not to mention an underwhelming reunion with his former band). Fortunately, that’s all changed with last week’s release of his new album, Lucky One, which is receiving a welcome reception from critics and a nice push from his new label, Fantasy. (Yes, that Fantasy Records, which is now part of the Concord Music Group and is building a nice little stable of Americana artists to go with prodigal — if not fortunate — son John Fogerty.)
Malo co-wrote every track on Lucky One, which brings together the myriad influences that have long kept his work so interesting. The swinging “Moonlight Kiss” is equal parts Bob Wills and Dean Martin, and recalls the jazzy sound Malo brought to a set of classic-country covers on his last album, After Hours. (That disc had been Malo’s third consecutive covers album, and followed a collaboration with legendary producer Peter Asher that had the misfortune of being released by the Sanctuary label just before it collapsed in 2006.) Another key track on Lucky One, “Lonely Hearts,” allows Malo and producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) to immerse themselves in their beloved Latin rhythms. Then there’s a pair of big ballads, the epic and haunting “One More Angel” (inspired, if that’s the word, by the death of a friend’s daughter) and the lovely “So Beautiful,” which is proving a highlight of the sets on Malo’s current tour.
Malo rolls into Austin for SXSW gigs this Thursday and Friday, 3/19 and 3/20. Popdose caught up with him last Friday as he was preparing for a show in central California, on the heels of a two-day whirlwind through SoCal’s two Houses of Blues and a Wednesday-evening stopover to perform “Lucky One” on the Tonight Show.
Was that your first late-night booking in awhile? And more important, did you get to hang out with the kid from Superbad [fellow guest Christopher Mintz-Plasse]?
Yeah, it was my first time with Jay Leno … actually my first late-night show as a solo act. I did get to meet him – he’s a real nice kid. Of course, later that night my boys were like, “Dad, you hung out with McLovin!” I was an instant hero. (more…)
For someone who doesn’t know a lot about hip-hop (as we surmised from his memo to the late Tupac Shakur), Uncle Donnie does seem to be well acquainted with certain hip-hop movers and shakers.  Apparently, he’s close enough with Mr. and Mrs. Shawn Carter to score an invite to their “did-they-or-didn’t-they” nuptials last year. Of course, after receiving this missive, who knows if he’ll be invited back if they ever renew their vows? —RS
Anyway, I see that you’re riding high on the charts with I Am … Sasha Fierce, though I’m not sure who Sasha is, and I haven’t trusted the whole alter ego thing since Garth took my advice on the Chris Gaines thing back in ’99. What’s going on? I mean, you could be even bigger than you are right now, but I think you could use a little guidance. Since we’re old pals, I thought I might offer you some advice:
Play more inaugurations. The video of you singing “At Last” at that Obama inaugural ball was outstanding—a real moment. Have you ever been on the TV more often than you were the week after that ball? I think not. Imagine how much exponential publicity you could receive if you played more inaugural balls. I think Iraq is having an election soon. And those eastern European countries are always going to the polls for something. Your name could become synonymous with democracy, and you’d be in the news almost constantly. It’d be better than playing Vegas.
Make a duet record with Jay-Z. You two are great together. “Crazy in Love?” Are you kidding? Mitzi still shakes her rump to that, and even has the rap down cold. People will pay for more. In the grand tradition of Allman and Woman, Johnny Cash and His Woman, you and your hubby could do HOVA and His Bitch. It’d be a little like those records Kristofferson did with Rita Coolidge back in the 70s. Remember them? Probably not—that was a bit before your time. But trust the Skwatzenschitz—they were awesome. You could be as big as Rita Coolidge.
Make an ass calendar. Gather a dozen photos of your badonkadonk—one for each month of the year—and put them on a calendar for 2010. You might not even have to put your name on it—you have the most recognizable tookas this side of J-Lo, so people would probably just know it was yours. You’ll make millions—I guarantee it.
A song isn’t necessarily “finished” just because it’s been recorded; any producer will tell you that the mixing is what really makes a record. Subtle tweaks and shifts in emphasis can bring new tones to a recording; a new instrumental backing might place the song in a different context altogether. Smart artists know this, and use remixes to explore differing shades of meaning in their work.
It’s the right strategy for the times. The de-emphasis on The Album as a cohesive whole, as a side-effect of the shift to digital content, means that The Song is again king — creating a climate where, say, LCD Soundsystem can release five radically dissimilar versions of “All My Friends” simultaneously, each with a particular emotional affect, without having to commit to any one of them as the “definitive” version.
It’s liberating for the artist, keeping your options open like that, but it’s a fraught position. There are a lot of choices to make, and things can go wrong as easily as they go right. And these choices are difficult enough for a living artist, still in the process of building a catalog; how much more so, then, for an artist who is no longer with us, and whose extant recordings have become a part of the cultural canon? How do you take something that is already complete, already definitive, and make it new again?
Now take those questions and multiply them by a factor of Johnny. Fucking. Cash.
On Johnny Cash Remixed (Compadre Records), released this week, a number of producers —including Pete Rock, Teddy Riley, and Mocean Worker — tackle what seems like a fool’s errand, not so much by remixing per se; rather, they drop Cash’s vocals into new and diverse musical settings. (more…)
Hello, my name is Tony, and I run a blog called Way Out Junk that focuses mostly on out-of-print children’s and novelty albums. Jeff contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in writing a weekly column for Popdose, highlighting songs from some of these albums. I said I’d give it a try, so here goes!
Here are two Public Service Announcements for an organization geared to teens called “Wayout.” I still don’t know much else about the organization itself, other than the fact that they were able to score two celebrity endorsement deals. The first, by Johnny Cash, sounded natural and unforced all the way. With his song “What Is Truth?” playing in the background, Cash tells you that if you need guidance and are going “the route” like he did, contact “Way Out” for help.
Dorsey Burnette, on the other hand, sounds like he’s reading off a piece of paper handed to him as soon as he stepped up to the microphone. It doesn’t help that he got stuck doing a PSA about venereal disease. After rattling off some statistics, Burnette says, “That makes V.D. kind of a hangup, don’t it?” He also informs us that “V.D. is a bummer by anybody’s standards.” I don’t even think he gets the name of the booklet right. I show it listed as “How the Bad Bug Bites,” and he calls it “How the Big Bug Bites.” If these are the people who wrote the literature for the organization, I can understand them not being around anymore!
If you know more about this organization, please share it with the rest of us. And if you’d like to hear more PSAs from them, including ones on teen suicide, getting along with your parents, and witchcraft(!), you can download them here.
There seem to be two camps of people when it comes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: those who feel that rock and roll deserves a permanent place to showcase the important effect it’s has had on popular culture, and those who believe that the intention of rock music was rebellion against the mainstream; that a stuffy old shrine goes against everything the music stands for, and screw you if you don’t agree with them. I belong to the former group, partly because I’m from Cleveland, Ohio and got caught up in the hysteria of bringing the Rock Hall to the north coast, and also because I feel that there needs to be a place where people can look at rock and roll as an art and examine its history. I’ve been to the museum, and could have stayed for days marveling at Hendrix’s guitar and fragments of Keith Moon’s drum kit.
TO: Barry Gibb
In 
It’s nice to see Raul Malo back in the spotlight. The onetime Mavericks frontman hadn’t exactly gone quiet, but over the last several years his big voice has been muted somewhat by label difficulties and diffident promotion (not to mention an underwhelming reunion with his former band). Fortunately, that’s all changed with last week’s release of his new album, Lucky One, which is receiving a welcome reception from critics and a nice push from his new label, Fantasy. (Yes, that Fantasy Records, which is now part of the Concord Music Group and is building a nice little stable of Americana artists to go with prodigal — if not fortunate — son 
Hey, there, Beyoncé. It’s been too long, I know. Mitzi and I really wanted to be at the wedding last year, but the dress she bought for the occasion gave her hives, and she couldn’t recover in time. We hope you liked the Macy’s gift card. They had a great deal on table linens recently; we got some very nice vinyl place mats that look like tree branches. If you’ve got anything left on the card, I highly recommend the place mats.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=99bafab4-a5fe-4805-9b03-b093d9a9fdc0)
