Posts Tagged ‘Robert Plant’
Thursday, November 5th, 2009 by Scott Malchus
In the midst of all my mid-life reflection last week, I received an email from a guy I hadn’t heard from in 
twenty years. John* had tracked me down through the massive power of the Internet, so of course, I immediately directed him to the Basement Songs (we writers are kind of narcissistic that way). After a friendly exchange of e-mails that detailed an overview of our lives, John checked out a couple of my columns and wrote me a follow up e-mail. He told me to disregard the previous e-mail as bullshit. He then wrote one of the most confessional letters that has ever shown up in my Gmail inbox. I’m not going to go into details because his life isn’t an open book like mine (again, narcissism), but I will say that John had a rough time in the ’90s. Happily, through the love of a good woman who never gave up on him, he’s dug himself out and now leads a happier life.
I understood what he was talking about. I went through a period of months a couple years ago in which I suffered through a paralyzing depression. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and each day it got harder and harder to get up and face life. I, too, am lucky that I had a good woman and good friends to help me through the times and to right the course of my life. Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever tripped into the dark sides of your psyche and dragged your loved ones with you? If you haven’t been through that hell, then you, my friend, are fortunate. (more…)
Tags: Alison Krauss, Basement Songs, Raising Sand, Robert Plant, Scott Malchus, T-Bone Burnett
Posted in Basement Songs, Featured, Featured - Frontpage, Music | View Comments
Friday, September 25th, 2009 by Ed Murray and Mojo Flucke
For the prosecution: Mojo Flucke, Ph.D.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution will prove that Eric Clapton has committed numerous crimes against rock, namely:
• Making music way more derivative than legally permissible for a rock god
• Exploiting fans by releasing milquetoast pap
• Squandering monstrous talent
Clapton is not God, contrary to the Islington graffito proclaiming it during his tenure in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. He is, however, an excellent blues mimic, taking compositions like Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” William Bell and Booker T. Jones’ “Born Under a Bad Sign,” and for Mayall, Freddie King’s “Hideaway.” He can derive like few others on earth, in a musical milieu where creatively covering other compositions is the best way to connect with the audience.
Yet great blues musicians contribute at least one or two original compositions–or the definitive interpretation of someone else’s song–to the canon of blues standards. B.B. King has “The Thrill Is Gone” and “Every Day I Have the Blues.” Junior Wells, “Messin’ With the Kid.” John Lee Hooker, “Boogie Chillen’,” “Boom Boom” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer.”
Clapton’s got nothing. “Layla” is known for its innovative coda written by Domino Jim Gordon and a legendary main riff written and co-performed by Duane Allman. “Sunshine of Your Love” was co-written by all three members of Cream. Its undisputedly legendary guitar solo opens not with an original Clapton-improvised phrase, but the melody from “Blue Moon.”
Left to his own devices, Clapton churns out total dreck. There’s a lot to choose from; I’ll keep it brief by offering the “greatest whiffs” from three different decades: (more…)
Tags: B.B. King, Billy Gibbons, Blind Faith, Bluesbreakers, Booker T. Jones, Cream, Derek & The Dominos, Ed Murray, Eric Clapton, Freddie King, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, John Mayall, John Paul Jones, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Mojo Flucke, Paul Butterfield, Robert Johnson, Robert Plant, Rock Court, The Yardbirds, William Bell
Posted in Featured, Featured - Frontpage, Music, Rock Court | View Comments
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 by Dave Steed
After what will probably go down as the worst week in the Bottom Feeders series, we crank it up a notch with some superstar artists and some really well-known songs. Here’s another week of artists whose names begin with the letter P, as we continue looking at songs that charted below #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the 1980s.
Pet Shop Boys
“Love Comes Quickly” — 1986, #62 (download)
“Suburbia” — 1986, #70 (download)
“Left to My Own Devices” — 1989, #84 (download)
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are awesome. If you’re unfamiliar with Pet Shop Boys, pick up PopArt: The Hits (2003) for a near-flawless retrospective of their career. What’s most amazing about that double album is that it’s not in sequential order, yet the ‘80s Pet Shop Boys sound still melds well with their new-millennium tunes. I admit, though, that I kind of lost track of them after their 1996 album Bilingual, even though I think that album is excellent. They are probably going to be my next “catalog” artist, where I have to own everything they put out (which can’t be easy with a dance-oriented duo like these guys, what with the million remixes and side projects). Both “Love Comes Quickly” and “Suburbia” are from their debut album, Please; “Left to My Own Devices” comes from their third studio album, Introspective.
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Tags: Bottom Feeders, Dave Steed, Mike Pinera, Pet Shop Boys, Pink Floyd, Planet P Project, Platinum Blonde, Player, Pleasure, Plimsouls, Robert Plant, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 by Ted Asregadoo
DOWNLOAD THE FULL MIX HERE
There was a time — maybe 25 years ago — when mentioning Phil Collins in the pantheon of frickin’ awesome drummers was greeted with thoughtful nods. Nowadays? Not so much. The reaction you’ll probably get from folks who don’t know how good Phil is behind the kit would run the gamut from a snicker to a sneer. In a way, I don’t blame them. After all, if you look at Phil’s creative output since the mid-’90s, it’s a story of an aging rocker whose slide into adult contemporary sludge is a bit tragic. Tragic because the ballad-heavy output of hits Phil produced eclipses the complexity of his earlier work that demonstrates what a talented guy he was on the drums. Phil’s been around long enough to know that what makes for a great drummer is not flash, but knowing when to add that bit of spice to a song that will really make it shine.
My good friend Scott Malchus and I are both drummers. Because we both spend (and spent) hours in the woodshed and basement behind the traps working on our chops, it doesn’t take huge leaps of logic to know that when listening to music, our ears are finely tuned to what the drummer is doing.
Scott suggested we do a mix that highlights Phil Collins’ work as a session drummer, and I have to say that after re-listening to these songs, there are some mighty fine drum moments in this mix.
“Pledge Pin,” Robert Plant (download)
Ted: By the early 80s, some hard rock icons like Robert Plant revamped their musical styles for more radio-friendly songs. If there’s a good one word description of Phil work on “Pledge Pin” it would be “sly.” On the surface you do hear the major accent of the snare on the 2 and the 4, but crank the song up and you’ll be treated to a lot of subtle and complex minor accents and quirky fills that never detract from the groove. This is by far one of my favorite non-Genesis tracks where Phil shows he can kick some serious ass behind the kit. (more…)
Tags: Eric Clapton, Howard Jones, Mix Six, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Philip Bailey, Popdose, Robert Plant, Scott Malchus, Tears for Fears, Ted Asregadoo
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Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 by Ken Shane
It certainly wouldn’t be accurate to say that Buddy and Julie Miller have bad luck. After all, each of them has had wonderful career as songwriter and performer. They’ve each had fine solo albums. A variety of country artists have had success with their songs, including Lee Ann Womack and Dierks Bentley.
Buddy has played guitar on tour with Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and more recently Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and he’s produced albums in the studio he built in their Nashville home for Allison Moorer, Solomon Burke, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Together, Buddy and Julie have played inspirational shows all over the country.
But back to that luck thing. Written In Chalk (New West Records) is only the couple’s second album together. The first, Buddy and Julie Miller, was released exactly one week after September 11, 2001. Then, just days before this new album was released, Buddy was admitted to a hospital in Baltimore complaining of chest pains. He needed immediate bypass surgery, and though he’s coming along fine now, he is temporarily unable to go on the road to support the new album. Buddy and Julie are people of faith, and it’s their faith that has sustained them through setbacks and success.
This was supposed to be Julie’s next solo album, her first since 1999’s Broken Things. Most of the new record was finished, when her brother died tragically, causing the recording process to come to a halt. They tried to get back to it, but it wasn’t working. Meanwhile Buddy was working on his own Grammy-nominated Universal House of Prayer, and producing other artists. Finally, the circumstances were right for Written In Chalk to come together. At least two of the songs on the new album are songs that were originally intended for Julie’s solo album, songs that I heard her perform as long as five years ago.
As you might expect, Written In Chalk reflects the sorrow that the Millers have had to cope with in recent years. Julie in particular has a knack for crafting the most heartbreakingly beautiful songs that contain not one ounce of self pity. That’s great songwriting, and it’s especially evident on the magnificent “Don’t Say Goodbye,” a tribute to her late brother that features harmony vocals by Patty Griffin. Julie is also featured on a lovely tribute to June Carter Cash called, simply, “June.” (more…)
Tags: Alison Krauss, Allison Moorer, Bottom Line, Broken Things, Buddy Miller, CD Review, Cruel Moon, Dierks Bentley, Emmylou Harris, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Julie Miller, June Carter Cash, Kami Lyle, Ken Shane, Lee Ann Womack, Lefty Frizzell, New West Records, Patty Griffin, Raising Sand, Regina McCrary, Robert Plant, Solomon Burke, Steve Earle, Stuart Duncan, Universal United House of Prayer, Written In Chalk
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Thursday, November 6th, 2008 by Dw. Dunphy
A funny thing happened in the middle of the 1990s: Record labels looked into their vaults and found that most of their best selling titles had been in circulation for awhile on CD and, as one would expect, weren’t as exciting to the buying public anymore. Remember that in the initial run of the compact disc labels were suddenly flush with cash, old assets were getting new sales life and all was right with the world. Once they had reached the tipping point where most consumers had CDs of Rumours, Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt. Pepper’s, etc., they had a crucial decision to make. Shall we now go out into the great, wide world of new music acts and fill our rosters with exciting, up and coming talent?
Nah, too much work. Let’s reissue those old CDs again, only this time, we’ll stuff the back nine with B-sides, unreleased tracks and live cuts. It sounds crass, but don’t knock it. It works. The labels did get a kick-up of interest through this process of “double-dipping,” and sometimes it was for the best. Labels like Rykodisc and Rhino took a lot of care in representing classic albums, often bringing them back with better, remastered sound to make the package more palatable to those who had tinny, digitally fraught originals. Other labels took notice and, as you’d expect, the business of the deluxe reissue started booming. CDs wound up with extra tracks best left on the cutting room floor, songs pared with awful guide vocals, blooper reels, inclusions of little to no interest to the average music fan. The Elvis Costello fan has felt the impact the hardest, as Mr. MacManus’ output has rotated from the original Sony Music auspices to the Ryko reissues, then to the Rhino reissues, then to his current home at Universal Music. You could own four separate versions of My Aim Is True, each with its own plusses and minuses, none rising above the rest to definitive status.
Look, I’m a fan and a collector. I’ve been skunked more than once by the “special edition” label. I know what it’s like to buy something only to have it supplanted only a year later by the bigger, better, badder version. To prove my point, I have dedicated this week’s post to some of my favorite special edition extras. These are things the labels would rather we left alone. After all, some of these tracks are the only reason why you ought to repurchase these things, and I’m going all renegade by just plopping them here for your perusal. I’m a rebel and I’ll never, ever be any good. Ready to receive your bonuses? Oh la Saleema! (more…)
Tags: bonus tracks, Dw. Dunphy, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Genesis, joe Jackson, Neal Morse, Robert Plant, Yes
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Thursday, June 26th, 2008 by Jon Cummings
The stifling heatwave that gripped southern California for a full week blew away just in time for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss to fill L.A.’s Greek Theatre with music and people for two nights early this week. Unfortunately, while the music was quite wonderful, many of the concertgoers at Monday’s gig seemed kinda miffed – or at least nonplussed.
“I’m bored already,” a fiftysomething woman told my wife not four songs into the main attraction. Afterward, a man I’d never seen before sidled up to me and said, “I thought Plant was gonna play more of the old stuff. Didn’t you? I’d heard he was gonna do a solo set at some point.”
Apparently not. In fact, from a quick scouring of Plant-obsessive websites, it appears that Monday’s set was identical to the ones this new dynamic duo have been playing throughout their tour behind the magnificent Raising Sand album. Still, I’d guess that more than half the 5,800 souls who filled the Greek arrived expecting Robert Plant to be, you know, Robert Plant.
On those few occasions when Plant allowed a smidge of the old Zeppelin pomp to sneak into his voice or demeanor, a Pavlovian standing ovation would erupt. Most of the time, however, Plant remained a cool customer, reveling in the Southern-goth rockabilly-bluegrass concoction that he, Krauss, and producer/sideman T Bone Burnett have cooked up for this album and tour. And the plurality of patrons who had driven into L.A.’s Griffith Park expecting an evening of Cock Rock didn’t know what to do with themselves.
It’s a shame, really, because in their ambivalence they may not have noticed what a remarkable show the “Raising Sand revue,” as Plant has labeled it, truly is. Using the album’s riveting blend of R&B, early-rock and gospel covers as a springboard, Plant, Krauss and Burnett retrofitted classics from the Zep catalog (“Black Dog,” “The Battle of Evermore”) as well as a Ray Charles chestnut (“Leave My Woman Alone”) and a couple old-timey hymns. During one centerpiece of the set, Krauss’ always-virtuosic fiddle easily replaced the synths that once washed over Plant’s solo hit “In the Mood”; in mid-song she briefly banished contemporary music altogether to indulge in a couple verses of the 17th-century Child ballad “Mattie Groves.” (more…)
Tags: Alison Krauss, Jon Cummings, Robert Plant
Posted in Live Music, Music, Popdose | View Comments
Thursday, April 24th, 2008 by Scott Malchus
Around this time last year, I was in the throes of a terrible depression. It was unlike any wave of emotions I’d ever been through in my entire life. For four long months, I would struggle to get through my day without turning into Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, having to sneak away and cry for ten to fifteen minute jags. I never analyzed the cause for my mental woes, but I have a pretty good idea what was weighing heavy on my mind. Every year at this time, as we approach the CF Great Strides walk, I can’t help but get a little overwhelmed. 2007 just happened to be particularly difficult.
I wrote the following Basement Song entry while I was slashing through this depression with a dull butter knife. This week, I wanted to revisit this entry because a) I never had a chance to actually share the song with any readers and b) most of the emotions I wrote about still exist. This song, “The Greatest Gift,” continues to move me whenever I hear it, especially the intricate guitar playing by the late Kevin Scott MacMichael (formerly of Cutting Crew). What I poured into this entry came out in one twenty-minute sitting. I decided to repost it as originally written without any further edits or polishes. I hope you enjoy it (and the song).
What can you say about a song that is like a parasite? It latches into your brain, your heart, your soul, and grows tendrils, sucking the life out of you. It becomes everything that you are, everything you think about, everything you want. A song like that is what I find so wonderful about music. A song like that is what loving music is about. It’s not something you can explain. Good song. Bad song. It’s your damn song, so who gives a shit what everyone else says. A song like that is magic. A blessing and a curse. A song like that is the definition of a basement song.
Last week, I received a copy of Robert Plant’s Fate of Nations album, released in 1993. I was riding a wave of euphoria — life felt good after several weeks of depression. For those of you who keep up with the blog, you know why I’m depressed so much. You may not understand it. I don’t even understand it most of the time. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but I continually find myself sinking to such depths of despair that I don’t know if there is a way out. For the first time in my life last week, I actually saw how a rational person might think taking their own life could be a means to an end. I would never do that, but I understood how they could feel that way. (more…)
Tags: Basement Songs, Robert Plant, Scott Malchus
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Sunday, January 13th, 2008 by Dw. Dunphy My mom, God rest her soul, hit the nail on the head. She always used to ask me, “Why must you do everything ass-backwards?” She had a point. Shoes went on before pants, finalizing efforts always preceded initializing efforts, and have you ever seen me get out of the backseat of a car? It’s like some horrid recreation of a breach birth.
So in this modern age, you can put a shiny, silver disc into the face of your car’s dashboard and hear wonderful sound. You can put a machine the size of a candy bar into your pants pocket and a headset the size of dental floss with tiny tumors into your ears and hear wonderful sound. Me? I like records.
(more…)
Tags: Alison Krauss, Bruce Springsteen, Celine Dion, cross-dressing, Foo Fighters, iPod, iTunes, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Robert Plant, Rush, Shrinky Dink, Storm Thorgerson, vinyl, Whack-A-Mole
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