Spicy: 8 Band in 4 Weeks

If variety is the spice of life the last month was particularly spicy for me. 

A few years ago I played with a drummer who performed very similar setlists between two different bands, adding the difficulty of having to recall the slight variations between the two, be it tempos, endings, extended solos, etc. In the past four weeks I’ve played with eight different bands, but I had the luxury (and also the curse) of having virtually no crossover between the various acts. That didn’t keep me from making countless mistakes, but at least the endings were unique!

August 19: my regular gig with Second Time Around.

August 19: a 50 minute setlist of a makeshift funk band playing tunes from The Commodores, Stevie Wonder, Patti Labelle, KC and the Sunshine Band, Kool and the Gang, etc.

August 20: a two hour rehearsal of Genesis tribute music that didn’t lead to a live performance but did require something close to twenty hours of preparation. I can tell you that Tony Banks continues to be my musical hero, as not only do his composition skills never fair to impress, but the keyboard part to “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” kicked me in the ass.

August 25: a gig with The Ripleys, a classic rock band that usually plays as a power trio but added keyboards for this particular performance.  Great time, and it forced me to learn how to play “Tempted” by Squeeze, a pop song with surprisingly complex chord changes.

August 27: my regular church gig at Elmhust Prebyterian.

Sept 1: my regular gig with Block 37.

Sept 2: a duo performance with Ken Slauf playing mostly light rock such as Van Morison, Elton John, Marc Cohn, The Beatles, etc.

September 16: for the third year in a row, a reunion gig with my old high school band, I ON U, playing mostly 80s rock tunes.

During these four weeks I performed something close to 150 distinct songs. In a few months I'll probably be hard-pressed to remember how to play any of them, but for a brief month I had a monster repertoire! It was great fun.

Now it’s back to normal during the non-summer months as my various acts struggle to find a gig here and there, but given my recent schedule I think I’m okay with that.  Sometimes after a run of spicy meals, a bland one isn’t so bad.

Two Albums I Missed

I must have been preoccupied in 2004 and 2005 – something to do with three kids under the age of eight I suppose – because aside from Rufus Wainwright’s Want Two, I can’t recall any new album that I purchased during that timeframe. Flash forward thirteen years or so and I’m filling in a few gaps, and I’ve found two gems from the mid 2000s that I missed the first time around: Paul McCartney’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and William Shatner’s (yes, that William Shatner) Has Been. Both are fantastic, and dare I say, McCartney’s album from 2004 may be among his top five albums of his entire post-Beatles career.

McCartney is one of those artists who I want to like more than I actually do, and therefore often overrate an album in retrospect. People often refer to his 1989 release Flowers in the Dirt as a great ablum, but listen to it again sometime and you may conclude that it’s a pretty good album. Sure, he makes a bold statement with Elvis Costello’s co-written opening track, and the album chugs along nicely for a while, but it falls off the rails completely by the end (and track two – “Rough Ride” – blows). But when compared it to his prior efforts, Press to Play and Pipes of Peace, its high marks are exaggerated.

Chaos is something different. With the help of producer Nigel Godric and a supporting cast of musicians mostly named Paul McCartney, the former Beatle recorded what is undoubtedly his best in the past twenty-five years and probably his best since Back to the Egg. (I had previously considered Tug of War great but realized that I conveniently overlooked ”Dress me up as a Robber” and “Ebony and Ivory.”) Unlike so many McCartney albums, there isn’t one track on Chaos that leads me to reach for the “next track” button, and many of the songs are downright stellar.

McCartney proves he can still deliver a deftly-crafted pop song in “A Fine Line” and can make a gentle nod to his Beatles past with tracks like “Jenny Wren” and “English Tea,” but for me the standouts are songs that offer an unexpected darker side. My favorite albums moments are:

• The 2:05 mark of “How Kind of You” as the drums and electric guitar kick in. The tune is lyrically hopeful but juxtaposed nicely against a rather melancholy harmonic progression that’s only enhanced by the drone of a harmonium.
• The opening of “At the Mercy,” a particularly complex song both melodically and harmonically, deliciously dark by McCartney’s standards with a universal lyric.
• The entire track of “Riding to Vanity Fair.” This gets my vote for the best song on the album, a gem that lifts the veil from Paul’s sunny disposition and wades in the waters of resentment.

While listening to this album for the first time I had assumed that it was about his breakup with Heather Mills, but alas, they didn’t divorce until 2008. Still, Chaos exudes uneasiness, reminding me of Ben Folds’s Songs for Silverman in that it may have captured the beginning of a downfall that didn't come to fruition until a few years later.

All in all, Chaos is a beautifully rich and complex album.  I’ve listened to it more in the past six months than any other album I own.

And now to William Shatner. When I saw him perform “Common People” on The Tonight Show with Ben Folds and Joe Jackson, both of whom are among my favorite musicians, the song peeked my interest back in 2004. And then I awoke the next morning to get the kids ready for school and forgot all about it.

Fast forward eleven years later, when – in an effort to prove to my friend Kevin that 1995 was in fact a terrific year for rock music and not its nadir – I purchased the album Different Class by the band Pulp, and the fantastic third track “Common People” suddenly reminded me of the Shatner performance. I finally took the plunge and purchased Has Been earlier this year on the advice of a musician friend of mine, and lo and behold, the former Captain Kirk – with the help of producer and co-writer Ben Folds – pulls off a brilliant combination of wit, vulnerability, frustration and hilarity.

Shatner can’t sing. He knows he can’t sing, and when I mean he can’t sing, I don’t mean he can’t sing well, I mean he CAN NOT SING. It’s okay. Instead, he executes something close to beat poetry behind a backdrop of Folds musical compositions, and the results are often mesmerizing.  My favorite tracks from the album:

• “It Hasn’t Happened Yet.” After the entertaining cover of “Common People,” Shatner lets the listener know that the album isn’t going to be one big joke, that lyrically he can match the uneasiness and regret of a good Jackson Browne song. Wonderfully evocative.
• “You’ll Have Time.” Sure, it goes on a bit long, but it’s an excellent example of how a performance can raise the ante. Reading the lyrics to this song and one might think, “meh,” but hear the lyrics out of Shatner’s mouth, and it’s comedic perfection.
• Nothing wins me over more than an artist who doesn’t take himself too seriously (and there have been plenty of times in Shatner’s career when he seemed to take himself WAY too seriously), and in “I Can’t Get Behind That” he and Henry Rollins recite a litany of things that make their blood boil. And then Shatner says, “I can’t get behind so-called singers that can’t carry a tune, get paid for talking. How easy is that?”  I’m sold!

So there you are. Two of undoubtedly dozens of great albums I missed in the mid 2000s. If you’ve got a few more suggestions, send them my way. It seems there’s always time to make up for lost time.

A Reader Fears for my Soul

Once in a while I receive a written comment about a blog I’ve written, usually a funny or complimentary note and sometimes an interesting insight. Last month my inbox included the following all-caps comment from a woman who read my 2016 blog entry, When Music Meant Going to Hell.

Amanda writes:

YOU BETTER PAY HEED MY FRIEND... GOD IS COMING BACK FOR HIS BRIDE AND IF YOUR SITTING IN A ROOM ALLOWING THE DEVIL TO ENTERTAIN YOU WELL THATS JUST WHERE YOU'LL BE WHEN HE COMES AN GOES... IF YOU KNOW IS SATANIC WHY KEEP LISTENING... WHY KEEP PARTICIPATING... WALK AWAY... DO U THINK YOU'LL BE LISTENING TO THAT IN HEAVEN WITH GOD NO... DAY BY DAY YOU BECOME A BETTER PERSON AN CHRISTIAN ONE LESS SIN TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

Now, I don’t know Amanda, so I don’t want to poke fun at her for her poor grammar, her use of all-caps or her typos, and even though I chuckled at Amanda’s self-righteousness, after thinking it over for a while I came to conclude that she and I aren’t as far apart in our thinking as one might suspect.

In my original essay I discussed the subliminal message craze of the early 80s and how much of my childhood was spent worrying about the buried meanings and messages in the music I was listening to. I stayed away from bands that overtly referenced Satan and the like, but I was being told that bands like Led Zeppelin, Supertramp (seriously? SUPERTAMP?), The Eagles and Pink Floyd were going to send me to hell, all for some silly lyric taken out of context or an album photo that included a hidden figure on the balcony of a hotel. 

The whole discussion devolved quickly into a case of sanctimonious finger-pointing, almost gleefully, like the wonderful Christian leaders of the Middle Ages who burned people at the stake for daring to print bibles in languages other than Latin (despite the original books having been written in Hebrew and Greek – funny), or the accusatory claims of the fine citizens of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It seems that throughout history people have claimed to know what God wants or doesn’t want, and oddly enough those wants keep changing over time.

But Amanda has a point. We really shouldn’t immerse ourselves in pursuits that we find morally repugnant. I don’t watch horror films because I don’t revel in the suffering of others (even if the suffering is an act) and don’t want those images imprinted in my mind. (Think watching violence doesn’t matter? Think again.) Similarly, I wouldn’t want to spend any time reading white supremacist propaganda except only to better defend against it, and I don’t listen to music that glorifies violence or demonizes race or religion. Some professions may require an immersion into sordid waters, like an author writing about ethnic cleansing or an investigator attempting to solve a human trafficking case. But for those of us who aren’t actively working in these types of pursuits, I really do believe we’re better off avoiding the underbelly of humanity for the most part.

So Amanda, I agree with you that I shouldn’t be listening to music that overtly contradicts my values. But here’s the thing: I don’t want you or anyone else deciding for me what those values are and what constitutes a violation of those values. I’m quite capable of deciding for myself where the boundaries are. 

Keep on doing your thing, Amanda, and I’ll keep on doing mine. Something tells me we’ll both be okay. I’ll just be taking my journey using lower-case letters.

Falling For Randy Newman

Sometime during 1991 I tuned into Randy Newman's music in full force, the result of – if memory serves – a “Greatest Albums” list by Rolling Stone that included Newman’s 1972 release, Sail Away. I’d heard Newman before – a song of his was included in the movie Parenthood, I recalled the gimmicky “Short People,” and most recently I’d fallen in love with his magnificent score to Barry Levinson’s Avalon, still among my favorite movies ever and whose main character my son was named after – but delving into a full-length album (if one can call thirty minutes “full-length”) was a whole new experience. I was in love. Within a year I purchased three additional Newman CDs and watched him perform at the Fine Line in Minneapolis, a solitary expedition as no one else I knew had even heard of Newman, much less wanted to see him. This was probably for the best, as I didn’t want anyone screwing up the experience of hearing Randy sing “Real Emotional Girl” by talking or laughing or otherwise mucking up my musical bliss. (For the record, when Randy played the aforementioned song, you could hear a pin drop – a good audience).

Shortly after hearing Sail Away I began to dissect what made a Newman song sound like a Newman song aside from the croaking voice and sardonic lyrics. I messed around with the chromatic runs and dissonant chords Newman uses and mimicked some of the harmonic phrases he leans on. The result? At least one Newman-esque song on nearly every one of my albums.

The first was “The Wild Child” off of my very first cassette recording back in – not coincidentally – 1992:

Then came “Tell it Like it Is” in 1996...

...followed by “We Are Two” in 1999.

Most recently, I recorded “Long Day,” a Newman rip-off if there ever was one:

To say Newman’s albums influenced my writing would be a little like saying The Band influenced Marc Cohn. Hell, I even wrote a short story (a favorite of my writings) in which Randy Newman plays a central role. Check out the conclusion to “Nosebleed.”

Now, at age 73, Newman has released Dark Matter, an album that returns to form after the somewhat lackluster Harps and Angels in 2008. The first four songs are gems, and the rest of the album is good too, though Newman pilfers his past with a song from the TV show Cop Rock (remember that show?) and another from Monk. Yes, he plays the same harmonies he's played for the past forty years – the final section of the opening track is almost a carbon copy of the song "Glory Train" from Faust – but there's enough going on here to keep your interest. I was working out at XSport Fitness while listening to the album for the first time, and I laughed out loud during "The Great Debate" and then nearly cried during the middle section of "Lost Without You." This is what's always set Newman apart from other writers. Yes, he can be witty and make you chuckle, but when he wants to, he can place you in another man's shoes and make you ache for him, or maybe it's an ache for yourself.

As Newman says in this excellent interview, that's the purpose of music.  To make you feel.  Period. Mission accomplished.

A Colorful Record Night

A while back my vinyl buddies and I converged yet again amidst the picturesque lawns of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin to play music selections at Kevin's "Wall of Sound," this time with the theme of colors.  Love may be the most cited word in popular music titles, but the broader category of color may come in a close second.  Blue alone could fill up several weeks worth of music (and most of these would have love in the title as well).  In fact, I specifically tried (but failed) to avoid blue and black just to force me to listen to songs I hadn't heard before.  In a bit of a breach of etiquette, I started with a song by The Boomtown Rats called "Diamond Smiles," except that diamond isn't really a color, is it?  But the song is SOOO good.  

We will be meeting one last time at the end of August before changing venues entirely as Kevin moves into a new home.  The Wall of Sounds has been been good to us the past many years.  We shall see if the new abode does the old one justice.

So, without further a do, here's a list from a night of many colors (forgive any typos):

Blue Tip, The Cars, Aaron

Diamond Smiles, The Boomtown Rats, Paul (note: not really a color, but awfully good)

Man on the Silver Mountain, Rainbow, Kevin

Purple Haze, The Cure, Jonathan

Red, Sammy Hagar, Aaron

Put on Your Old Brown Shoes, Supertramp, Paul

Bluebeard, Cocteau Twins, Kevin

The Flurries Wide and White, Matt Beckler, Jonathan

Black Fathom 4, Kansas, Aaron

Cold Grey Morning, Kansas, Aaron

Union City Blue, Blondie, Paul

Blue Jay Way, Beatles, Kevin

Black and Blue, Van Halen, Jonathan

Not a Color, Billy Squire, Aaron

Silver Rainbow, Genesis, Paul

Red Balloon, Faces, Kevin

Black Star, Radiohead, Jonathan

Charlie Brown's Parents, Dishwalla, Aaron

White Lightning and Wine, Heart, Paul

Black Cars, Gino Vannelli, Kevin

Sound and Color, Alabama Shakes, Jonathan

Forever in Blue, Journey, Aaron

Blue Chair, Elvis Costello, Paul

Red Jesus, The Cult, Kevin

Blue Monday, New Order, Jonathan

White and Nerdy, Weird Al Yankovic, Aaron

On the Greener Side, Michelle Shocked, Paul

Pink World, Planet P, Kevin

Sky Blue Sky, Wilco, Jonathan

Red Neck Friend, Jackson Browne, Aaron

Love is a Wonderful Color, Icicle Works, Paul

Silver Tightrope, Amegeddon, Kevin

Bottle of Blues, Beck, John

Red Eye, Moondoggies, Jonathan

And…Somewhere I've never Traveled, Ambrosia, Aaron (note: also no color, but played just to piss off Jonathon, which is entirely within the stated rules of Record Night)

Blue Continental, Shaw Blades, Aaron

Red Fox, Big Country, Paul

Tangerine, Led Zeppelin, Kevin

Golden, My Morning Jacket, Jonathan

Red Light, U2, Kevin

Blue Light, David Gilmore, John

Love over Gold, Dire Straits, Paul

White China, Ultravox, Kevin

Jealous Again, Black Crowes, John

Midnight Blue, Lou Gramm, Aaron

Pink Thing, XTC, Paul

Red Skies At Night, The Fixx, Kevin

Black Diamond, Kiss, Aaron

Silvertown Blues, Mark Knopfler, Kevin

Blue Heart, Peter Murphy, Kevin

Blue Mask, Lou Reed, Kevin

Blue Jean, David Bowie, John

Red Red Sun, INXS, Paul

Crimson and Clover, Joan Jett, Kevin

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John, Kevin

Bluebird, Paul McCartney, Kevin

Green Flower Street, Donald Fagen, Paul

Ruby, Donald Fagen, Paul

Midnight Blue, Styx, Kevin